"Must Try" distros and DEs?

nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 87 points –

Hey folks! I'm getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I'm planning to convert into a "cyberdeck" with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in breadboard, and other hardware hacking fun.

On the OS, I'm planning to try NixOS as a baremetal hypervisor (KVM/QEMU) and run my "primary" OSes in VMs with hardware passthrough. If perf is horrible, I'll probably switch back to baremetal after a bit. But, I'm not likely going to be gaming on it so, I'm not likely to have much issue.

Once the hypervisor is working in a manner that I like, I should have an easy time backing up, rolling back, swapping out my "desktop" OS. I've been using Linux as my pretty much my only OS for over a decade (I use MacOS as a glorified SSH client for work). Most of my time has been on distros in the Debian or RHEL families (*buntu, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, CentOS, etc) and I pretty much live in the terminal these days.

With all of this said, I am coming to you folks for help. I would like you folks to share distros, desktop environments, window managers that you think I should give a try, or would like to inflict on me and what makes them noteworthy.

I can't guarantee that I'll get through suggestions, as my ADHD has been playing up lately, but I'll give it an attempt. Seriously. If you want me to try Hannah Montana Linux, I'll do it and report back on the experience.

EDIT: Thank you all for your fantastic suggestions. I'm going to start compiling them into a list this weekend.

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Hyprland DE is the new hotness

just steer clear from the community https://drewdevault.com/2023/09/17/Hyprland-toxicity.html

...or the dev https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/111363547103465966

"yes, I do believe that there could be arguments to sway my opinion towards genocide."

Wow.

Yikes. What is it about Hyperland that attracts these kinds of people?

from what I've read it's rather the lack of moderation (due to the dev's views) that doesn't reject them. similar situation to the Nazi bar.

It's like Arch, but x10. People think Arch > Any other distro, Wayland > Xorg, Hyprland > any other DE, Rust > C, etc

Yeah, I've been wanting to try Hyprland but have been holding off for that exact reason.

Currently on i3, maybe I'll give sway a go.

If you're a tinkerer it's kind of addicting. I thought I'd give it a try just to see what it was like, and ended up staying up all night customizing it, and now about a month later I don't really want to go back to KDE (been using KDE for almost 20 years)

That's one that I've been that I've been meaning to give a shot.

It’s great but still really unstable. I’ll be sticking with Sway / DWM for a bit longer.

However, it looks promising.

Hyprland would look so sick on a cyberdeck

I sooo want to use it but for now i am stuck with a 1080 TI.

Recently there supposedly have been nVidia improvements and success stories. Check the Hyprland wiki to see if it makes sense for you to try. Or is it only the 2000 series and above that have benefitted from Wayland driver improvements?

2000 and above unfortiantly. I am planning my next PC build so it shouldnt be too long till i can try it.

Must try distros: Fedora, Mint, Void. But seriously, if you are using Nix to begin with, why use anything else? Nix is as good as it gets. If you really want to do a combo, I would recommend Fedora or Mint using Nix as just the package manager and not the hypervisor. All distros are basically the same nowadays.

Must try desktop environments: Xfce, Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE Plasma

I've never really Fedora or Void. Will definitely try those.

Of your DEs, I think KDE is the only one that I've not used significantly. I need to fix that. I think MATE deserves a place there too.

ETA: As for why not just Nix or Nix as a package manager? I've become accustomed to being in VMs all of the time and really like the way that doing so impacts how I interact with a system and extra capabilities provided.

Try those but also wanted to say enlightenment. I don't even know if it still exists. If it does, give a try.

Why do you say Nix is good as it gets? I am an old graybeard mostly( SuSe, Debian and FreeBSD)

In short: Nix tracks all installable software and dependencies using a Merkel tree data structure to ensure fully reproducible builds of software. This Merkel tree also provides properties similar to that of a C.O.W. filesystem where you can snapshot and rollback system software build configurations in O(1) time, it just rewrites a fixed number of symbolic links to the root of the desired Merkel tree. In my opinion, it is the most technologically advanced package manager currently in existence.

Every input that goes into building a piece of software on Nix OS (or in the Nix package manager in general) is hashed and placed into a database on the system. These hash IDs become dependencies for everything they are used to build. By tracing the chain of hash IDs you can guarantee that every single bit that goes into the build of the system software is accounted for. If two separate computers with the same ISA are running the same tree of packages verifiable by their hash IDs, you are guaranteed that both computers are running the exact same software. All dynamic libraries, shared libraries, executable files, and even the config files in the package database refer only to other files in the database.

When you use Nix OS, not just the package manager, the C compiler, boot loader, and kernel are themselves build inputs. You can even roll back to a snapshot of a working system from the bootloader menu if you accidentally break your system (as long as the package database is not corrupted).

Finally, the system itself is both built and configured using a declarative programming language. So you install software by declaring that it should exist, and the package manager computes precisely which dependencies must be installed to realize what it is you have declared in the system configuration files. Making a change to what is installed requires simply altering the lines of code in the system configuration file. You can also use these configuration files to easily construct Docker images or Flatpacks.

I'm really looking forward to Plasma 6 and Cinnamon just had a pretty good release do there's a couple for you :)

What Plasma 6 features are you looking forward to?

There's not really anything specific but it'll be the first time I experience a full plasma upgrade since I started using Linux in 2022. From what I've seen of it, the interface is going to be a lot cleaner though so I guess I'm looking forward to that.

For a totally different experience, and if you ever want to spin up a distro in a "container" there's BlendOS https://blendos.co/

I'm an Arch user so I'm sort of staying where I am but am always open to ideas, so I tried Blend a while back. As said on this page for the distro: https://itsfoss.com/immutable-linux-distros/

"In other words, you can install any package on the distro (RPM, DEB, etc.) while getting the immutability and update reliability as one would expect."

That pretty much describes it and I recall, it did well. I also tried this one which is touted to be AI enhanced and feels more like they are making good progress: https://www.makululinux.com https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/new-makululinux-release-brings-ai-to-the-max-177104.html

To get the AI to the max, you need to pay a fee, but It's all in the name of supporting development.

Intriguing. I do have reservations about "all-the-package-types" but need to give that a try, for novelty, if nothing else.

Wow, I don't pay as much attention to developments in the space as I did a few years ago and I can see I should start to again. These are some pretty interesting distros you've linked.

My #1 distro recommendation would be Fedora Atomic (immutable Fedora variants).

It's still a bit "underground" and hasn't reached huge popularity yet, but I see its potential that it will very soon.

I have ADHD too and Fedora Atomic is a lifesaver. Why?

  • You can "distrohop" anytime you want by rebasing. With that, you basically swap out the OS with something else (examples will follow), but keep your data and some settings. If you are on Fedora Workstation (Gnome) and want to have KDE, installing and removing those packages is a huge huge mess. On the OSTree variant, it's just one command, 5 minutes of waiting, and bam, you have a clean install. I do that all the time.
  • Less bugs and better security by reproducibility. Every install is the same.
  • Very quick rollbacks if something did go wrong. You can't brick your OS, which I did a lot before.
  • Huge choice. See at universal-blue.org , it provides vanilla images with some quality of life changes, as well as custom ones, including "unsupported" DEs and spins, e.g. a gaming distro. They aren't forks per se, they are basically build scripts and maintain themselves, which is why they're always up to date and way better than Nobara for example.
  • Distrobox pre-installed: you can just create an Arch container and use the AUR from it. So you don't need to run (and troubleshoot) Arch on bare metal, but can comfortably benefit from all great things Arch provides

Similarly OpenSuse Aeon. A Benefit of Suse is the greater portability of the tooling.

I just went through setting my new PC up with Fedora Kionite (the atomic KDE version). I had some issues at first, but now that it's running it's awesome! Though I should mention I'm using an alternate distribution called Universal-Blue (basically provides batteries-included images of atomic Fedora), specifically kionite-nvidia.

The things I ran into:

  • My monitor has a long startup time, so I had to increase the GRUB timeout to see previous kernels
  • Kionite didn't start after initial rpm-ostree update (fixed by disabling internal GPU)
  • Steam games didn't work properly (fixed by switching to X11, probably due to NVidia GPU)
  • Sometimes the first login after boot doesn't work on the default TTY, probably due to sddm (fix by switching to TTY2 when it occurs)
4 more...

XFCE with Compiz as the compositor

Or just straight Compiz

Make sure you enable all the funny effects like the cube, cube animations, 3D windows, advanced window animations, transparency effects, sky box, etc.

All easy to do with compiz config manager.

That's a name that I've not heard in a long time. Wasn't aware that Compiz was still active. It was my favorite compositor until the Gnome 3 switch.

Yeah I'm surprised it doesn't show up as much anymore despite being both a performant and highly customizable platform.

Lots of the effects aren't available on other DEs, and the team behind has so far actually maintained all the plugins.

If you are an advanced linux user then I would suggest giving a try to the following distros: arch, void, gentoo and (like you said in the post) nixOS.

The reason behind is that this distros are focused on the tinkering aspect of linux, the experience of setting up everything the way you want.

If you want to give a shot to WMs I would suggest i3, sway, dwm, dwl, river, bspwm, Qtile and hyperland (maybe focus more on the Wayland ones if you want to try the latest software).

Apparently you can already try Cosmic on NixOS

I'm slightly biased, but if you already know a bit of Linux and desire more control / customisation, or want to understand how a system is put together, then I highly recommend Gentoo Linux. The install process is pretty simple, and with the new binary package hosts you have the option of quickly installing precompiled packages to get a system installed or up-to-date.

The USE flags on packages, combined with portage the package manage enable an unparalleled level of configurability, the community is welcoming and respect user choice about how they want to configure / use their system, and the documentation on the wiki is top notch - I'd say better than the arch wiki in terms of quality overall.

Yeah. Gentoo has been on my list for a while. I'm pretty comfortable building things from source (don't even bother with packages for Neovim these days - they never seem up to date for my distro). Curious to see the workflows.

Chiming in to also recommend Gentoo. It's a pretty stable rolling release distro, with access to pretty new packages when necessary.

If you still want Gentoo, but you are human who don't have infitive amount of time - Arch would do.

Or try Gentoo's new binary repo.

why though? what is. the point of gentoo than

Choice. Customisation. Building from source is a means to an end, not an end itself.

Why not? Best of all worlds. Convenience of a binary package repo along with the benefits of still being able to use portage and use flags for packages where the default build doesn't meet your needs.

You obviously missed the part where I discussed the option to use the binary package repository and mix and match binary and from-source packages.

I wouldn't recommend specific ones, but I would recomnend you try out distros with unique features. Such as an immutable one, one that is built from source, one with packages, one with snap, one with flatpack, etc.

This will help you understand and evaluate what you like.

Don't know if it is a must-try, but LXQt has come a long way. The file browser is excellent. Everything is fast and snappy and very traditional (start button, system tray, etc.). Runner up I guess.

You can run Alpine as a desktop. The Edge branch. New software, got what you need, installs and updates fast.

Alpine as a desktop? Now that's weird and I'll have to give that a go.

Manjaro KDE.

I cant really understand how people are still recommending Manjaro, just get Arch pure or EndeavourOS. Its more up to date and has fewer package conflicts and inconsistencies because they arent arbitrarily held back. Also doesnt ddos aur. It even has a guided graphical installer. Additionally if you need some GUI to manage your packages then just install pamac to get the same one as in manjaro or use pacseek.

That's nice.

The fact that you think Arch is a better replacement for Manjaro tells me that your opinion is not worth considering.

Manjaro is Arch in a trenchcoat and on crutches lagging two weeks behind with its packages. Holding them back doesnt provide any additional stability and on the contrary has repeatedly caused conflicts. They simply dont have the capacity to check all the packages so its pretty much useless to prevent timely updates. The only difference between then is that manjaro has a few more preinstalled Apps and pamac. And EndeavourOS covers that, its a kind of Arch for beginners, easy install, and lots of Software preinstallable.

Ok.

It's always sad seeing you people get up in arms just to hate on manjaro. It's like you feel it's your duty to enter into an argument whenever someone mentions something good about Manjaro.

I think it's tribalism at play.

Every linux enthusiast should try Qubes at least once. The architecture is totally different, vastly more secure in many ways than most Linux distros. It's definitely not for everybody, but if privacy and security rank high on your priority list it's worth a look. It never ends up in Linux top ten lists for some reason, but it's an incredible OS.

What is your actual personal use case, all you mention is a terminal, which every distro will support, likely with many different choices as to terminal options?

Beyond the usual browsing I'll mainly be doing tinkering with hardware, gateware, firmware, CAD, art, projects that I may or may not finish, and the like. It's going to be my "everything but playing video games" machine.

I'm assuming you're running a Ryzen 7040 series then. No kernel support for the FPGA yet.

Also, Linux is great for gaming. Not sure why you'd limit yourself there.

I'm assuming you're running a Ryzen 7040 series then. No kernel support for the FPGA yet.

Honestly, I wasn't aware that they had included a fabric. That's really awesome, whether it is supported yet or not. I have a couple of dev boards and intend to build a board with a previous gen Xilinx chip that can fit in the expansion bay.

Also, Linux is great for gaming. Not sure why you'd limit yourself there.

100% agreed. However, I already have a Steam Deck and console, so, it's more that gaming is already covered by other devices than thinking the system is not capable. I'm intending to take advantage of the modularity to turn the laptop into a platform more physically spacialized for tinkering.

Not quite your setup but I run Debian stable KDE with KVM.

I am also using distrobox to run applications in containers. It’s nice having arch/ubuntu/fedora/gentoo software running in a container and the application gets exposed to you stable environment. Another option is Bedrock Linux to look at

That's absolutely my thought. Having a rock solid system close to the metal that doesn't really get touched is something that I've become used to from work. It gives a lot more insurance against having to do as many re-installs and maximizes compatibility.

Forget a DE, sounds like you need a WM. Definitely check out some tiling options like i3 or sway, especially since you spend so much time in the terminal.

Some great newer tech distros would be Fedora Silverblue, or if you like Debian, there is VanillaOS. They are immutable distros, and they introduce a new way of using Linux. I like to pair it with distrobox, which lets you use regular Linux applications in a container.

While I don't have much experience using nixos as a hypervisor I do have a few years experience using Proxmox on top of Debian. Managing multiple VMs and backups are very straightforward with Proxmox. As for your daily driver VM, the skies the limit, well mostly your HDD space is the limit. I've realized that after trying a ton of different distros the only real difference is the package manager and the preinstalled software.

I love Proxmox, especially with CEPH as backing storage for VMs. I've never thought about it as a local hypervisor. Might be worth a try, if I don't like NixOS.

Proxmox is questionable nowadays, you should try LXD/Incus instead. Read more here: https://lemmy.world/comment/6507871

I have meant to try out LXD for a while but it has dropped of my interest due to Canonical's shenanigans. Incus being a community fork gives me more comfort in trying it. I wasn't aware of Proxmox using hackery to make use of an ancient kernel, as seems the claim in that thread. If this is the case, I will indeed be migrating away.

Yeah I get your thing with LXD and Canonical. I've been moving a ton of clusters to Incus because of the obvious reasons and I'm happy with it, obviously the fact that the original people who made LXD on Canonical are now working on Incus is a big plus.

Regarding the Proxmox kernel you can read this: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_VE_Kernel but frankly if you search the web for "proxmox kernel bug" what you'll find are tons of different issues on almost every version. Another thing that I really hate about Proxmox is the startup, the amount of daemons and scripts they run to make the thing work.

I recommend you try Gentoo and DWM. You don't have to use this setup forever, but at least try setting it up. Installing Gentoo, patching DWM and st, etc. is fun and it's an interesting experience. If you want to use Wayland, check out dwl and the foot terminal emulator. Perhaps you're actually gonna like Gentoo and stick with it, I think it's a great distro. They also provide binaries for larger programs, so you don't have to compile stuff like Firefox. But definitely try out custom kernels.

I'd say try anything (except debian) with hyprland, it's the dream of anyone who wants to customize their desktop experience.

As for non-standard distros, try Alpine, Void or if you have a lot of time, Gentoo.

As for distros I'd actually recommend, try fedora or any of it's spins

What's your favorite distro for running Hyprland?

I run Hyprland on Arch. It seems most of the people who run window managers instead of full fledged desktop environments prefer the minimalism of Arch.

Probably arch or arco, but I think credits has a hyprland spin now

One neat little distro is bedrock linux. Its pretty sweet being able to grab packages from the aur on something like Debian.

We just had a post about Distrobox earlier today. It gives you the same funstionality on any distro.

Garuda might be worth a try. I used it for a couple months and really enjoyed it, I only stopped because Nvidia drivers kept breaking.

I'm going to be on an AMD CPU and didn't opt for the discrete GPU at this time, nor will I be purchasing an Nvidia device until they start being consistently FOSS-friendly.

Yeah, I unfortunately didn't know about the "Nvidia hates Linux" thing when I bought this laptop. I guess I know better for next time.

Coreboot. As low level as you probably get. Embedded secure element OS maybe

I do intend to dig deeper into OSHW and eventually build a modern, fully open-source laptop eventually but, we'll see if I can get there within the decade. Coreboot/Libreboot would definitely make the mainboard implementation a lot easier. Hopefully, Framework gets around to Coreboot support.

Cool. There are definetly companies working on that, so its just a matter of getting stuff to work, like Battery life etc.

  • Chromebooks (hardware is shit and often unrepairable and un-upgradeable)
  • Novacustom / System76 / Nitrokey using 3mdeb Dasharo
  • starlabs

Framework tried it afaik, but it gave problems. But then they should fix them...

Fedora rawhide’s an interesting bleeding edge experience. I’d recommend installing fedora minimal and setting up your system from there. The rpm system’s rather robust when it comes to installing the correct dependencies when done correctly so I personally haven’t had any issues with version conflicts.

LeftWM. I've been using it for about a year now and I have no complaints vIt doesn't hold your hand as much as other WMs, but it is extremely powerful if you're willing to do some manual setup.