Share Your Favorite Linux Distros and Why You Love Them

InternetPirate@lemmy.fmhy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 104 points –

So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:

  • Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
  • Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.

For example:

  • Distro (first-level comment)
    • Reason (one answer)
    • Other reason (a different answer)

Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.

354

Debian

  • Very stable, and can run the bleeding edge through Snap/Flatpack/Appimages, Distrobox, or VMs/Containers

Low resource footprint — smaller than EndeavourOS on my laptop. Stability is fantastic. Bookworm practically just came out, so the packages are all much newer than they were in Bullseye, making it a viable option for someone who wants an uneventful Linux distro that fades into the background and lets you get stuff done.

The new release bookworm solves most hardware/software problems

Arch, BTW

I was distrohopping for like a year or two when I first got into Linux desktop. As soon as I installed Arch for the first time that stopped. Now the thought of a distro pre-installing packages gives me the heebie jeebies. You don't get to tell me how I sync with NTP servers!

1 more...

openSUSE Tumbleweed

The big advantage IMHO, is the out of the box BTRFS set up that lets you simply roll back to a non-broken state, right from the grub menu, should an update break your system. I haven't had to use it yet, but it is a huge source of comfort knowing it is there.

Also, many people coming to opensuse remark how much snappier it is than other distros.

Garuda uses this feature on an Arch base, it's saved me a couple of times. Props to openSUSE for developing the way to make that happen!

BTRFS has saved my life a bunch, I'm the kind that enjoys experimenting and changing stuff just to see what happens

I had to scroll waaaaay down to find this. Mindboggling how underrated this distro is!

It's getting 3/4's of the votes of Debian. I think their profile has increase a lot in the last year or so.

Security by default. Firewall is set up blocking ports for UDP etc. so you are protected out of the box.

It is up to date so you can often get newer hardware working due to newer kernels.

Fedora

Only FOSS software and repositories unless otherwise enabled

Cutting edge application releases so I get the newest toys after they’ve been decently tested

Applies patches for better programs work under Wayland (SDDM with git patches before long awaited 0.20.0 release).

Arch Linux

  • Packages are kept up to date so it's often the first distro to support new hardware, APIs, etc.
  • AUR provides a huge library of software that isn't often in package manager repos.
  • Rolling release so you don't have to deal with repository upgrades every 6 months to 2 years.
  • btw

My current isn't vanilla arch, but Endeavour OS, because as an unexperienced user I wanted to have the least trouble while installing, ... I regret it ever since, because I began with a Plasma desktop and ended up with i3, mainly because of tiling, problems with some utilities, keyboard switching, etc. In the end, I still love the system, one can get quite minimal with it.

I love that you talked about regretting it. Using one of the arch-based diaries that obfuscates the installation process honestly destroys a lot of the benefit of using arch. Having to vaguely understand how the system fits together makes fixing issues a million times easier.

Yep. And I still forgot to mention one thing. It is a 2016 Macbook Pro, which basically means just more work fixing.

My favorite too. For me on other distros I was typically running into bugs that I'd find had already been fixed upstream months previously - and then I had to either live with the bug or do some hack to manually install the newer version. Somewhat related to this, but as Linux gamer it was also frustrating to have the older Mesa drivers all the time because it couldn't support the older kernel version the distro shipped or something.

Pop!_OS

I agree, it's great!

  • image with baked in nvidia drivers which work out of the box without too much fuss
  • if you encounter problems, you can refer to the system76 website or use a solution provided by the community, since it's based on Ubuntu
  • installation with full disk encryption enabled by default
  • right now it uses a slightly customized version of GNOME as DE (with "normal"/traditional windows and optionally a tiling wm), but system76 is working on a Rust-based DE, named Cosmic DE

I’ve been using Pop for about 2 years. I have yet to run into an issue that I couldn’t fix. It’s the first distro that made ditching windows easy.

I feel the same coming from Mac. Things seem to just work. I'm not a Linux wiz so minimal headaches while learning to tinker make it perfect for me.

I've been trying to convert to linux since the mid-2000's. Ubuntu and derivatives, fedora, and SUSE. Gaming and my lack on knowledge always brought me back to Windows.

In 2018 I tried Manjaro and loved it. But I broke it without the knowledge to fix it multiple times. The Arch BTW memes were strong at the time so I took the plunge and studied the wiki, and documented my own installation process and really learned a lot in the process. Proton was released and suddenly gaming got WAY better. I didn't remove my windows install completely until 2022 but Arch has been my home on my main machine.

I have since put together a proxmox cluster and run many distros for various things but that's a whole other rabbit hole!

EndeavourOS

I'm on it right now. Got a new Thinkpad a couple weeks ago and just wasn't in the mood to install Arch the normal way when I finally had alone time at 11pm, gave Endeavour a shot and was like oh, this is convenient 🤩

It's my first time with Arch based Linux, takes some adjustment, but I've been loving it.

Endeavour has been my default for a long while now, using Plasma KDE. It supports the flexibility needed to customise and make my own themes for as a low-vision user, and smooths a lot of the rough edges of pure Arch. I had Arch installed previously, but again, having that additional helping hand, coupled with a truly wonderful community, really made all the difference. I left Windows after the mess that was 8, I couldn't go back..

Also on endeavor. I like arch, but it's too much work. Endeavor is good enough for me.

Manjaro. It just worked on any device I installed it on. And wifi just worked with no fiddling.

Then I installed it on surface tablet. What didn't work, I found kernel fixes I could implement.

Of all the distros, for me, it was the easiest to use, install and manipulate!!

Switched to Manjaro after running vanilla Arch for several years and haven't looked back. I appreciate the slightly less bleeding edge updates and extra added stability around it.

Easy installs are probably less of a big deal nowadays after Arch overhauled their installation process.

NixOS

declarative configuration

Easy and fearless updates

Dependency Hell, begone

Single command to compile & install packages from many git repos

Can turn basically any distro into nixos in minutes

A great selection and amount of packages and modules to build/install/enable

Do it once, do it right. Save work be redeploying the same configuration (or submodules) on mutiple machines or the same machine multiple times.

Very good with containers and VMs

I have been thinking to give NixOS a spin but feel like it's above my brain capacity for me to handle. Do you also use homemanager and Flakes? Homemanager kinda makes sense (manage packages for non root users) but what does Flakes do?

I am already trying it and I am still no expert. How I understand flakes is that it is a file with inputs, like nixpkgs and other flakes or repos you might depend on and some outputs that can be things like a nixshell with packages and environment variables, custom packages and configs like your NixOS configurations and home manager. When you use your flake for the first time, by entering a nix shell with nix develop, building a package with nix build, rebuild your NixOS system with nixos-rebuild --flake .#<hostname>, etc, nix will generate a flake.lock file that stores the hashes of all of your inputs and thus pinning the input versions. This means that if you ever run any of those commands again, you should get the same result because the inputs are pinned and the same version. If you want to update, you just run nix flake update and it will regenerate the flake.lock file with new hashes for the newest version. The advantage with flakes is that it is fully reproducible, even if one of your dependencies changes, because the hash is specified and centrally managed in the inputs of your flake.

Nix flakes can be used for your NixOS system by adding the nixos configurations in the outputs of your nix flake and adding the dependencies like nixpkgs to the inputs. You can also combine it with home manager by either specifying it as a separate output or adding it as a nixos module inside the nixos configurations output. You just copy your existing nixos and home manager config to the folder with your flake and reference them inside the flake.nix. If you added home manager as a nixos module, you only need to run nixos-rebuild switch --flake <path-to-flake>.#<hostname> and it will automatically rebuild both your NixOS configuration and home manager configuration. You can then backup the folder with your flake and configurations by uploading them to GitHub for example.

The best resource I found was this 3 hour video by Matthias Benaets: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y&feature=share7

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. It does sound complicated haha. I should probably follow along the YT video. Thanks again!

Arch Linux

The Arch Wiki is in a language made by users for users. Meaning that its easy to understand because the wiki allows to talk about issues, alternatives and more hints about each small topic, every other wiki has some structure where important details are missing or not taken seriously.

Starting with a blank slate is so refreshing. It takes time to build everything up from scratch and I understand that you can get a great experience out of the box with other distros, but I love the simplicity of not having any bullshit I didn't install myself.

True, yeah, didn't think about the downside that you need to build it up from scratch. But people could use arch based distros I guess? Never used them.

Arch and KDE as a DE because I'm a borderline-obsessive tinkerer.

Although NixOS is tempting me, but I haven't moved past the virtual-machine-specimen-jar phase with that yet lol.

I always am going to run into heavy issues when using Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora. On Arch, things also aren't always smooth, but the issues are mild, always solvable and transparent.

Arch. I can't live without the AUR at this point.

We cannot forget about the wiki, which is a great resource for not only the Arch distro, but for any Linux install.

Seriously, the ease of installing any and all programs from the main repo's or the AUR is such an extreme advantage over all other distros!

And it makes keeping your system and programs updated a breeze.

Seriously, I realize this every time I have to install something on my server (running AlmaLinux). Now I've manually set up a personal LURE repo for some software that I use.

EndeavourOS

Easy to set up, very helpful community. If you liked Manjaro or think Manjaro is sketchy but like the idea of a slightly pre-configured arch, check it out.

This, basically Arch but quick to install with all the most important things installed and ready without being bloated.

It's arch. It just happened to be the composition i had my previous arch setup as. Yay for AUR stuff, KDE Plasma for DE. Includes a couple of useful tools and makes for a very solid OS.

Anyone who has been in the Ubuntu sphere of things with Linux, should take a moment to try arch. EndeavourOS is perfect for these people.

Same. I’ve done the vanilla Arch thing and it’s alright, but the quality of life enhancements that come with EndeavourOS make it a great daily driver.

It’s the only distro I could get DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k, and my Radeon RX 6750 XT working with, consistently.

Manjaro

more out of the box than what Arch comes with.

Nice default configuration. Good choice of gnome extensions and themes pre installed

PostmarketOS

• Android-free Linux distribution specializing in supporting older smartphones.

• Up-to-date software based on Alpine Linux and focused on privacy and security.

• Highly portable construction centered around a single software base regardless of what device it’s running on.

  • Goal of keeping a given device running and updated until it physically falls apart.
  • Has the widest supported device list of all mobile Linux projects, supports a ton of old Android phones to varying degrees.

Runs all your favourite programs, on your phone, bells and whistles included

Arch Linux

Easy config with archinstall script if you want to choose options from a list when installing

Build the system from the ground up choosing how you want it to work

Extensive documentation with useful troubleshooting sections for many articles

Comments in the AUR can be a helpful troubleshooting source or indicate the quality of a package hosted there

AUR offers a lot of resources for a straightforward way to install software that isn't in the main repositories

Pacman package manager works well and PKGBUILD files are simple enough to edit if you want to alter how a package builds

Ubuntu

A lot of proprietary software is easier to install here

For when I can't get stuff to work on nixos 😅

I don't have time to fuck about, I use ubuntu mate because it gets out of my way and does what I expect it to do.

Because it just works. Because it's based on free Debian and not corporate RedHat. Because mainstream Linux needs a flagship distro and that distro needs to be used and supported.

easy enough to use for me (I'm a linux newb) and I can setup steam on it!
edit: forgot to mention I can get hibernation working on Ubuntu when I couldn't figure out how to do that in Fedora

Mint. Easy to setup, fast to run, and very reliable.

Mint

Generally works in cases where Ubuntu would and you don't have to deal with Canonical's choices.

Yeah, but I rarely if ever leave those constraints, so it does not matter to me at all. Day to day, I use macOS anyway, and Mint only comes on my desktop PC.

Gentoo

There are dozens of us! And you can join us at !gentoo@lemm.ee if you haven't yet!

I love it because it's super configurable, lets you choose compiler optimizations (and through USE flags, features that you need in your packages - you don't have to include everything).

My Linux knowledge has skyrocketed compared to before I used Gentoo. Which of course means it's NOT the distro for people who want something that just works, but honestly, now that it's working properly, I feel it's actually pretty hard to break, and when it does break, I know how to fix it! Versus with Linux Mint a decade ago, if I broke it, I had no idea where to get started and just reinstalled it.

Of course, about half a year ago I decided to move from x11 and OpenRC to Wayland and systemd. And I use KDE. And have Nvidia graphics. Soooo it was a fun ride both relearning how my init system works, and also running into problems with Steam, etc.

I also try to keep my kernel in single digit megabytes, but occasionally I find something missing and have to recompile with more "bloat". So right now I believe it's around 11 MB, but I'll see about improving it over my next vacation. Not that 11 MB takes long to load off a gen4 NVMe drive, but the ePeen needs to be stroked! Also no initial ramdisk, to save even more boot time.

I just reinstalled Gentoo and switched to a Systemd setup as well. I held off for as long as I could but it's just so nice!

I'm using the binary kernel for now, but I'll compile my own when I find the time. 11MB is nuts!

Great to hear! Though I will admit that it took me HOURS of reading the kernel config options I was disabling. But it was also very informative so it didn't feel like a waste of time at all.

I usually run some commands while running the binary kernel that will disable every module not currently running in the config file, and then build the kernel from that.

I’m guessing you prefer building everything as a module if your kernel is that small?

Encourages hardware-based optimization and kernel specialization

Gentoo Linux

Being a source based distro, programs are compiled and optimized to your system configuration. Additionally you can add/remove features you dis/like using USE flags.

It allows me to run any weird combination of applications I feel I need on a given day, (fairly) easily integrating basically all open source packages with a custom/local overlay and have those managed as part of the system just like everything else.

It has an option to use Open RC init system instead of systemd. Systemd probably isn't as annoying anymore but I can't be arsed to make the switch.

EndeavourOS

An installer of Archlinux with sane default but also has all of Arch Power

Fedora Silverblue

The best thing for an inexperienced user. It's simply unbreakable. Immutability rocks.

Except it breaks every couple months and the devs have no concept of rolling updates back.

Source: Silverblue user for 2 years.

My wife has been using Fedora Silverblue for almost 4 year on two laptops. There were no issue, nada, what so ever. It really just works. Yes, some bug could occur. And Fedora bug tracker is an awesome place for dealing with that. I believe, nobody will roll back a change just because of a single bug report but in my experience most bugs are being fixed pretty quickly if a reporter provides info to do that.

Flatpaks were impossible to install JUST THE OTHER DAY.

This is a random hearsay. Please, show a link to the bug report.

Sure, why not?

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/5452

Before you get all semantic, despite being on "flatpak" github page, the problem only affected Fedora.

Should I also link to the time where rpm-ostree could not update or install anything? Which of those times should I link?

Ok. Bug was fixed. Bugs happen. I guess a regular user will get the fix eventually.

Also, that didn't break the system. Sure, a new app wouldn't be possible to install but the system worked overall and users were able to perform their tasks;)

Ohhh, the narrative is changing, previously you were denying any bad things. Progress, perhaps?

Keep in mind it was impossible to install the distribution when rpm-ostree broke and it would be useless when flatpak broke. Of course, you could check the forums and see workarounds but that's not very different from downloading an older ISO in any distribution.

Alas good luck being a normal user when you decide to install something because... well, it's your computer. And then it doesn't work. Repeat this for multiple days several times a year because Fedora devs have no concept of rolling back updates and you got yourself a problem.

Void

Supports musl on every architecture I have. ARM, AARCH64, x86_64 - no problem.

• Rolling release that is remarkably stable. • Supports a wide variety of architectures. • XBPS package manage • Lightweight, systemd free.

Fedora

I want to preface this by saying that Red Hat absolutely deserve your ire in light of the recent news.

I appreciate that Fedora has relatively recent packages for a fixed release distribution. I really appreciate how they ha e pioneered in desktop-oriented technologies to help make Linux a more palatable experience for regular users, and I'm glad to see these gradually be adopted by others over time.

I'm happy to hear that the Fedora project still mostly operates Independently under redhat / IBM, but I'd be lying if I said the IBM acquisition didn't worry me to the point of looking into alternatives.

Agreed. I've been using Fedora Silverblue for about a year. I love the immutable OS paradigm but IBM/Red Hat's recent actions have left me feeling uneasy and I want to find an alternative.

I've also been using silverblue for about a year, it works well. Didn't know about IBM acquiring Rad Hat, sad news.

For a similar experience there is Vanilla OS that I tried briefly and that seams to have similar immutability features and hastle free setup with a vanilla gnome desktop. It's based on Ubuntu.

There is also NixOS which takes the immutability to another level. The entire system with all packages are configured in a config file. Which is nice if you want to have an identical setup on multiple machines but makes it a bit less user friendly imo.

NixOS, I have a fetish for configuration files

I'm currently doing my second pass of Nix after diving deep into it last time and coming out unsatisfied. The same problems that I had before with it are problems I'm seeing again:

  • disjointed configs pulled from random source or build repos on the internet
  • unintuitive grammars with parameters that require you to download an autocompletion spec
  • flakes that aren't immediately easy to grok

Contrast that with my last Guix experience:

  • Lisp form, super easy to understand grammar
  • Recipes are so trivial that I've written three on my first day
  • Source tree is included and you are expected to add branches to it

The only problem with Guix that I can see is that it's not as popular

Flakes are extremely simple (my whole system is a flake: https://github.com/cmargiotta/dotfiles ), but they are basically not documented.

The grammar is really really bad, I prefere a lot the Guix one too! I am using NixOS only because the last time I tried Guix I didn't find a lot of packages for their extremist GNU policy (I agree, but I need some packages), is it still like that?

Slackware

  • the most rock stable distro imo. No systemd or snap stuff. Packages are almost (if not fully) vanilla version from upstream. Simple yet efficient unix-style approach to everything like package management, slackbuilds are really good too.

Slackware gets a lot of hate, especially from the btw bros. People are spooked about having to manage their own dependencies. But I couldn't agree with you more on simplicity and stability. I've been daily driving slackware since 99 or 00, and I don't think I've ever broken something I couldn't immediately roll back and fix.

I tried to install Ubuntu on a sbc recently. And within an hour of installing this and that with all the different dependencies, I had a completely unusable system. And I had no idea how to fix it. It was totally my fault but reminded me what I love about slackware.

Debian

-Simple distro free of too much bloat without being too bare-bones

-Stable, but can also be changed to be a bit more updated if you want that instead-

Now now, saying Debian is free of too much bloat is going way too far, dude, even as as Debian enjoyer I cannot allow such statements to pass.

Haha fair, I guess that is a pretty objective statement. In my opinion, compared to some other distros and operating systems, it's pretty bloat free, but I guess if you're used to something else that is even more bloat free that you would probably disagree.

Nixos. For all its complexity and dilemmas and issues it has given me, it's the comfiest for me and gives me really cool features

It still blows my mind that with nixos, setting up and continuously renewing an ssl cert is literally just two lines in the config file. I use nixos on my homeserver, thinking about switching my laptop to it too (currently Void linux).

@amanwithausername got an older laptop celeron processor running xubuntu? Any better ideas?

Hmmm never used xubuntu per se, but XFCE already seems like a good option for a low-spec computer. You could probably chip away at the resource usage some more by building your own desktop environment around a bare window manager, but honestly at this point the gain is negligible. If anything, you might want to look into tiling window managers just because they can offer a much more fluid and customizeable desktop experience as opposed to floating WMs. I'm using BSPWM right now, but considering switching to wayland with hyprland or qtile.

As for choice of distro: Not sure if NixOS would run well on your machine -- my homeserver is also a pretty low-spec computer (dual-core Intel Atom), and nixos-rebuild switch takes ages to run. Otherwise, go for Debian Testing if you want stability, Void if you want to not have systemd. There's also Devuan, which is basically Debian without systemd, but iirc it's not as popular as Void. But honestly if xubuntu works for you, then it's fine.

Also, some miscellaneous tweaks for improved performance:

  1. IF YOU BOOT FROM A HARD DRIVE REPLACE IT WITH AN SSD! Solid-state drives are pretty cheap nowadays, and the upgrade from hdd to sdd is the single biggest performance improvement you can do for an old laptop
  2. If on x11, disable compositing. On XFCE, there should be an option for it somewhere in the settings. If on a bare window manager, simply don't install any compositing manager (picom, xcompmgr, etc.). The downside is screen tearing and no proper window transparency, but it does put less strain on the CPU.
  3. Consider looking into a custom linux kernel? I boot linux-tkg on my main laptop and it gives some pretty good performance improvements. But I'm not so sure whether it would translate well to a low-spec system.
  4. Again, not exactly a performance tip, but consider formatting your boot partition as btrfs. Apart from all of the other cool features that you get with BTRFS, transparent file compression can, in some cases, be a win-win-win situation: less disk usage, faster file access, and longer SSD longevity. On low end system tho it may actually be the case that the CPU is the bottleneck as opposed to the disk, so transparent file compression may actually slow things down. Here are the settings I use for btrfs on my laptop (thinkpad with a core i7-5600U, mSATA solid state drive): lazytime,noatime,autodefrag,compress=zstd:3,discard=async,space_cache=v2,ssd. Again, not sure how well these translate to a low-end system, you should do your research.
  5. If your system supports uefi, consider using EFISTUB as opposed to Grub. Much faster boot times. Another option is to add two efi entries: one for EFISTUB (and have that be the default), and a second one for Grub, for when you need to change boot options or boot into recovery mode.

Since you mentioned slow build times...

You can do nixos-rebuild --target-host to build locally and deploy over ssh. You can also use something like nixops.

Congrats for making it to the treasure! I'm like half way in and not sure if I can fight through...

just keep on going. i cant be happy on any other distro, so i have to use nixos

We're looking to create a comprehensive list of the most popular Linux distributions and the reasons why people use them.

I'm curious, do you intend to put up the results somewhere?

Garuda Linux

Nvidia driver installation options that correctly set the mode setting, dkms drivers installed ootb, common apps like GreenWithEnvy ootb, great Nvidia support

Fish shell by default with auto-complete previews as you type and lots of great aliases

Besides Wiki and AUR that all Arch derivatives share, they have their own wiki that documents the changes they're made to Arch and a very good forum for help

Post install wizard for easily adding common applications

A lot of people think it's just Arch with an installer and lots of bloat and a neon theme but it's a lot more than that.

Bootable Snapper snapshots enabled by default

This really is my favorite Garuda feature - it's saved my install more than once so that I can roll back a messy update, figure out what broke and why it broke, and then make sure the next update works

  • Arch
  • Debian
    • My favorite overall, they're community-run, stable, well-maintained, have a rich history of being awesome, and they're just top quality general-purpose distros. I tend to use Arch for more recent desktop systems and Debian for server systems or older desktops.
  • NixOS
    • What I'm dabbling with currently, the concepts here are amazing but it's a bit of work at first to truly get value out of it. Still, seems to be a good option for my next notebook OS.
  • Fedora Silverblue (respectively the immutable variants)
    • Also cool, as is Fedora in general, although with the recent Red Hat fiasco and Fedora's plan to introduce opt-out telemetry I'm more hesitant now. Some time ago I'd have listed Fedora at the top but now it's slid down a bit.
  • Mint
  • Kubuntu
    • Easy recommendations for new users coming from Windows
  • VanillaOS
    • I like the idea of making it possible to install packages from all distros (they will then run in a distro-specific container). I wouldn't use it, but it's cool
  • Kali
  • Tails
  • Alpine
    • From the more specific distros
  • Slackware
    • Honorable mention, because it introduced me to Linux back in the day (yes, I liked starting the hard Unix way). I wouldn't recommend it these days but it's kind of like the granddaddy of all Linux distros, and it was awesome in its prime. I'm sure it can still be used today but it's gotten quite niche.

MX Linux

MX Linux

Option for no systemd, great community, good overall appearance, great set of custom tools.

Arch linux (btw). Because it's easy to install and has the most accessible package manager of em all.

...

...before you shoot rocks at me and try to burn me alive.... download an arch iso, run it, and then type "archinstall". Thank me later.

"Oh, but its still veeeeeery hard to inst-"

crux

The user repositories are decentralized, and very straightforward to setup, meaning anyone can package something, and share it with the community.

The packaging system is the simplest I've ever found in a distro, meaning that making your own package is a very simple and quick process.

The setup and configuration is really simple and friction less (for example, daemon start/stop scripts are standalone and sit in /etc/rc.d).

Uses a port tree system for packages similar to openbsd.

Arch (BTW)

I'm currently happy with it

So many powerful tools that are not easy to find on other distros.

Basically, have fine tuned my setup so much that it's almost impossible to think of another distro.

And with archinstall I'd argue it's about as easy to install as most "normal" distros these days.

I'd also agree... but everytime I tried to use archinstall, it always failed, felt impossible for me to install arch

Void Linux

It has it's own package manager which is nice and performant, it has another script similar to the AUR to an extent, runit is simple and sensible.

Lubuntu

EndeavourOS

basically Arch, including the AUR

Genuine interest, being an Arch user myself: why pick EndeavourOS over Arch? What does it do extra/differently?

I picked Endeavour because some friends were waiting for me to get online, so I had to hit the ground running with some good defaults. I could really have picked any distro, I'm flexible but Endeavour was lauded for a quick install and I wanted to try an Arch distrib. I was up with KDE, Steam, NV drivers and Discord in 20min so it was good.

I customized it more in the following weeks, like I'd do with any distro. Now I've heard about Garuda I kinda regret I didn't go that way. I'd like that BTRSF+snapshots option but I don't have patience to set that up for the time being - either converting the FS and setting up grub myself or reinstalling with Garuda, seems like a hassle for now.

KDE Neon

Based on Ubuntu, is KDE's "flagship" OS (so I trust they know what they're doing with their own DE), and is the first to get bleeding edge KDE updates. Everything else is pretty much standard Ubuntu.

Arch

  • Minimal and I install whatever the hell I want on it
  • AUR

Fedora Workstation on desktop, perfect mix of stability and up-to-date packages.

Unraid on the NAS, does pretty much everything I need and haven’t put any thought into using something else.

Ubuntu Server on a few VMs, although I’ll probably look into different options in the future as I’m not a huge fan of Ubuntu.

Arch/SteamOS on Steam Deck, of course.

Debian for anything that I just need to run forever.

Lubuntu with lxqt desktop environment and i3 window manager.

Arch. It's a "build-your-own" distro without the hassle of compiling everything from source, like with Gentoo (still love Gentoo, though). Also, it has pretty big repos with the AUR on top of that.

And no, it's not unstable, if you can read. My oldest Arch install was 5 years old and even then, it didn't break. I just wanted to do a fresh install for no particular reason.

I've been a Mint faithful for a few years now

Arch.

I don't love it, like at all. But it's the least buggy and easiest to use one I've tried.

I really wish there was a simple plug and play, everything just works and doesnt break on updates distro.

its a tie between linux mint and garuda linux, linix mint for stability and garuda for being an arch based linux for people like me that are too stupid to get arch running by itself

Linux Mint

  1. **Stability**. Mint is stable, easy to use, and has a good help forum.  I am better with the end-user side than the developer side.  This allows me to focus on what I need to do.

    1a. If I need to do something more complex that requires the terminal, there are plenty of sites that explain it step by step. So, I don't need to become a programmer to tweak my system.

  2. **Simplicity**.  It's easy to find where to go to change settings and add new programs.


  3. **Safety**.  Linux has repositories of trusted programs, and it's super simple to download from them.  Even with trusted sites for Widows programs, I did get a couple programs that came with malware.  The open source nature of Linux eliminates much of the profit motive for scammers, plus other developers would quickly expose such attempts in the Linux community.


  4. **Speed**.  When I had a dual boot system, the Linux OS booted on avg in 15 sec, where Widows took 30-60 sec.  I can't quantify, but the Linux OS overall seemed to run smoother faster than Widows too.


  5. **Security**.  I've never had to deal with viruses or malware with Linux. (This may change as Linux gains increased market share, but, so far, so good.)  Linux doesn't come with bloatware or potential spyware either.  There are many Widows programs -- MS Games, Cortana, MS Photos, etc --  that cannot be uninstalled.  Cortana cannot be disabled.  (It says it can, but it still runs in the background.  Who knows what data it is collecting.)


  6.  **Conscience**.  MS has a multibillion dollar contract to develop VR headsets for soldiers.  These will be used to control machines (and maybe robots) on the battlefield.  Once we have troops off the battlefield, war (and all its horrible consequences) will become a much easier choice.  I know my govt has lied about EVERY war after WWII (at least).  Staying away from MS helps me to not fuel the war machine and promote peace.

NixOS. Reproducible, Wide Package selection, Hard to fuck up + Not yet another Arch based distro

Universal Blue / ublue-os

Clean separation

  • The base system is separated from applications and user data
  • Integration of Flatpak applications via Flathub
  • Toolbox and Distrobox support, run applications from any distribution in a containerized environment

Based on Fedora

  • Fedora uses the latest technology and is quick to adapt new features such as PipeWire, BTRFS, Wayland and etc, yet remains very stable.
  • Free and Open Source
  • Created by the Community
  • Sponsored by Red Hat.
  • Strong security and follows good practices

Cloud-native approach

  • Reliable, atomic updates with built in rollback
  • Known-good state and fewer failures
  • Significantly reduced configuration drift
  • No compiling or building Nvidia drivers on the local client, they come premade on the image
  • Boxkit:

A base image and action for Toolbx and Distrobox. Sure, you can use the distro you're used to, but what if ...

This image is going to experiment with what a "born from cloud native" UNIX terminal experience would look like. It is used in conjuction with a
and designed to be the companion terminal experience for cloud-native desktops. We're starting small but have big aspirations.

Nvidia support

  • Multiple Nvidia driver streams (525xx, 520xx, and 470xx)
  • CUDA support
  • Container runtime support
  • Secure boot
  • Hardware-accelerated video playback
  • Selinux support
  • Multiple Fedora flavors and releases
  • Post-install setup with just
  • Multi-GPU support with supergfxctl (optional Gnome Shell extension)

Built-in container tools for developers

  • Consume packages and software from any repo without risking breakage on the client
  • Easy consumption of other OCI images, if it's on the CNCF Landscape it's a first class citizen thanks to Podman!

Fedora

  • it's up to date
  • little to no bloat
  • stock gnome shell
  • uses latest technologies
  • just works

OpenSuse, Fedora second.

Ubuntu

It works, I can customize it if I want, and I don't really care about the snap drama.

What is this snap drama? It has been many years since I looked into Ubuntu.

They're pushing their packaging system, some apps install as a snap by default rather than deb. A lot of people are upset and would rather see them support Flatpak. Of course we can use whatever we want.

@InternetPirate I've been happy with Ubuntu since 2007, I don't always like Canonical's choices, but they're easily changed. Recently tried Vanilla OS, easy install and seems solid, good alternative to Nix I think.

undefined> Ubuntu

With each release unsnapping gets more annoying... Now I have to get Firefox from alternative sources...

@manpacket I prefer Flatpak, but Snaps do seem to be getting better, then again I have a history of foolish optimism 🤔

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/using-flatpak.html

$ flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP

They still haven't figure out how to make console experience not miserable, maybe one day...

how is that miserable?

From what I understand from this page and other sources - you have to type that to run gimp or other app. At least that's the impression I'm getting from the documentation. I run most of my stuff from the console and don't like to use aliases.

Fake news.

flatpak install gimp, in terminal, try it.

Solus

Great user forum & support. Everyone I've talked with has been super helpful. Solus leads are easy to get a hold of.

Easily the best distro I've used for gaming. No set up was required from me, it just works.

Manjaro. I love it's simplicity and ease of use. It's the closest I can get to Windows without actually using Windows. I'm glad it makes using an Arch distro easy and accessible. KDE is a godsend as well.

Manjaro

• Supports a wide variety of hardware, including ARM devices such as the Pinebook Pro.

• Up-to-date rolling release.

• Multiple DE’s available with customized, clean interfaces.

  • Recommends rolling back system clock when they forget to update security critical website components.