I use Fedora 38, it's stable, things just work, and the software is up-to-date.
I use Mint. As a beginner the Windows-like feel is convenient for me but once I get the hang of it I could see myself trying something else
This is what I recommend for Linux newbs. And they can stay with it if they're happy with it. It's also a decently competent Linux distribution which is a hell of a bonus.
@Anolutheos@Lolors17 I use Mint Debian edition. I got fed up opening my laptop and having to update when MS said so, so switched to Ubuntu, then Mint, the LMDE and have stayed for 4 years. It's not exciting, cutting edge, etc but neither am I! It just works all the time. Updates are easy and everything is boringly reliable - I love it!
Hopefully LMDE6 is a game changer for the most popular first Linux distro. If the CosmicOS by System76 doesn't win that title.
My grandparents were 1,5 years with Mint but LMDE5 has now been for 10 months and it is awesome. Literally 0 issues since day 0 whereas Win7 and Win10 caused constant headaches for me over the phone.
@Nuuskis Are you using a System76 machine? If so, how do you find it? And importantly how would you rate the keyboard against a ThinkPad / Lenovo?
Unfortunately I'm not. I'm running numerous Thinkpads until System76 releases their in-house produced Virgo laptop with hot-swappable mechanical keys and open source bios (Coreboot). It'll also have the trackpoint from Thinkpads.
@Nuuskis That sounds like an interesting arrangement too - let us know when you do that and how you get on! šš
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I like it for being a rolling release with quality control. On the one hand I don't like its restrictive defaults but on the other hand I know enough to work with them and that's given me a leaner system.
I like Tumbleweed because it's utterly boring and predictable while being rolling.
I like it because I can appreciate a good lizard.
That's also what I run.
I want a boring up to date system with a good KDE desktop that just works (even with an nVidia GPU). Tumbleweed is fine. I don't want to mess with my computer, I want to use it. I messed with it ages ago when I had to enter xmodelines by hand to make the damn thing work, I'm glad we're past that.
Same here. Very good KDE Plasma and KDE apps integration, rolling and up to date apps, and very stable at that and if something would go wrong I can easily at boot switch back to a state before the update. Pure gold.
Debian as a server base OS is well-tested and (for me) ultra reliably stable.
I use Arch. I use the command-line to update, I am very glad that I can do the updates when I do want them. Of course, going over the update list is my responsibility, but such is the power my OS grants meāI can make or break things.
Otherwise, yeah, it's the customization it offers me. I can make it as janky as I want it to be, or rice it to my heart's content.
I use arch too. Mainly because of rolling releases. I love the install once last forever philosophy. i also like that arch ships vanilla upstream packages, quickly.
That said arch makes very few choices for you. It aends you to the excellent wiki to make your own choice. So the first install may take a bit of time if you're new.
To be fair, the fact that Arch makes very few choices for us users is one reason, perhaps the biggest reason, I was hesitant jumping in at the start. A well-meaning friend pushed me off the ledge of hesitation and into the thick of things. Did I feel nervous? Hell yes! But was it worth the frayed nerves? I guess it is.
So many nice things about Arch. I got into Linux with Ubuntu, switched to Debian for many years, and now use Arch.
Why Arch?
AUR provides a huge library of software that natively integrates into your system, including git versions of major components like kernel/mesa so you can test the latest features.
Rolling release means it's always up-to-date and you don't have to worry about version-hopping to the next version every release cycle.
Follows upstream projects closely
I installed all my Arch installations with the Calam Arch installer ISO. The one big complaint I see with Arch is the complicated install process, but with Calam installer it's no different than most other distros.
I came to Arch for the customisation, I stayed for the AUR
Mint is up to date but less buggy than Ubuntu, and it has served me well for years without problems. The UI is very conventional so I don't spend time thinking about where stuff is. It supports multiple packaging systems now, so it's easy to find and install software. You don't have to go to anywhere as dodgy as the Arch User Repository to find what you need. Mint is not too conservative, not too cutting edge either, and not restrictive due to ideology. It's boring and it works and I can just get on with stuff.
I got a Mint laptop recently, and I've been loving it (even though I don't need it to do much).
When I used Debian, it was stable and I love it.
Now I use Alpine (Edge). I like it because I feel like I am learning more about troubleshooting issues but also because the packages are very up to date.
As a desktop Linux user who doesn't develop or code in any way, or work with servers, or containers, I found Alpine to be very accessible and the community has bren very patient with my different issues.
Despite how comfortable it is, I think I may end up going back to Debian or finally taking Fedora for a spin. Not for at least a year though.
I use Arch because it's so customizable and there's so much more freedom. Once I installed Arch I realized I'd never go back to Ubuntu. I'm so used to using the command line all the time now it feels weird and annoying when I have to use something with a GUI desktop environment (I use i3.) People always tell me when they see my system in public (it's a ThinkPad) it looks clunky, but even the inability to set custom time/date settings in KDE was mildly annoying to me.
I sincerely think CLIs and TUIs are no harder than "user-friendly" GUIs but they're just too far from the average modern person's experience for this to be acknowledged. Using nmtui to connect to WiFi is hardly more difficult than what Windows or macOS do.
I also really love pacman, the AUR, and the Arch Wiki.
Arch Linux because it has sane defaults, is rolling, up to date, helpful community, awesome wiki and is minimalistic.
Sane defaults?
Yeah, it has almost no defaults, allowing you to tailor the installation to your needs.
That really depends on your definition of "sane defaults." Even a lot of the computer science professionals I work with wouldn't consider Arch Linux defaults as sane. I picture sane defaults to include a lot more basic functionality that Arch doesn't have out of box (automatic suspend, desktop environment, lock screen, etc.).
I use Arch for the exact same reason you do though. Once you get past the tedious stuff like setting up your networking stack, setting up idle suspend, etc. it's nice to choose whatever WM/DE you want and customize it how you want.
EndevourOS. Easy to install and customizable/up to date as Arch can get.
I use Fedora. I like the combination of recent, stable, up-to-date software, new releases every six months, and firmware updates for my ThinkPad direct from Lenovo.
Ever tried paru? Did the jump a while ago and it is slightly better, the best kind of better.
I've been messing with paru to gauge its functionality against yay.
So far I'm unimpressed. The cli display is somewhat tidier/neat. I like that. But when it comes to actually installing something, it's less than stellar.
For instance, if I want to skip any confirmation, I can use the undocumented flag --noconfirm. But that only works if I'm passing the flag to install, -S. If, say, I'm searching for a package, simply typing paru <package>, then the interactive menu no longer works. It simply exits with the message 'nothing to do'.
yay, on the other hand, works flawlessly with the --noconfirm flag.
I noticed that paru has some upgrading/updating features that are nice. I might use it once in a while to upgrade/update the system. But that's pretty much it for now.
Thanks for reminding me of paru! I've checked and I have it installed already. But I confess that I'm so used to yay that I completely forgot about paru.
Do you have any paru tutorial you recommend?
I like that I don't even care about it. The main user of it is my wife, who is non-technical. It's the only computer she uses, for everything (browsing, shopping, banking, word processing, printing) for 20+ years, and if you ask her which distro it is, well, she doesn't know what "distro" means.
She doesn't "use Linux" because she wanted to "learn Linux" nor to "try this distro". She uses youtube, instagram, the bank site, amazon, libreoffice, etc. The closest she gets to the OS is accepting the package manager prompt to update.
I wish one day most people can answer your question with "I don't know, whatever came with my computer", because it'll mean all of them are as easy to use, as unobtrusive and as unimportant to the user as possible.
But to finally answer it, kubuntu, some ancient, still updatable LTS version (can't even recall when I last upgraded), because it was easier for my wife to adapt, coming from windows 95 when she started using it.
I tried Tumbleweed for a while but ended up going back to Fedora. Super polished while still fast moving.
Running Endeavor OS. Painless installation, everything works outta the box, good community, no release/lts bullshit. If it breaks, just rollback.
Gentoo. Great rolling release that is stable and had timely updates, but has the flexibility to configure my system down to the tiniest details, with a great and knowledgable community. I love source-based distros and Gentoo is definitely the best.
Had to scroll too far to find Gentoo.
Does source-based mean you need to build every package from scratch? How long does it take to update? Do you use it on a laptop or desktop?
Yes, though there are some prebuilt binaries for large packages. I use gentoo on a desktop and updates don't take too long, minutes. Big updates that cause lot of packages to rebuild can take hours.
Relatively fast updates, AUR, PKGBUILD, Downgrade, the Wiki, the community, not controlled by some corporate entity, no telemetry, and last but not least the logo ;)
Fedora, why I like it:
The community is strong with lots of knowledgeable users with patience to help others out.
The release cycle gets the balance just right between having predictable updates and the latest software. Fedora's testing process is very good, you rarely have problems.
Controversial one: strong financial backing from Red Hat means that Fedora is very unlikely to sell out or turn evil, at least not without a lot of notice.
Fedora 38 is awesome!
Pacman sounds cool, wakka wakka.
pop os : 1. fast installation 2. nvidia works.
Ubuntu MATE. I love its simplicity, and the fact that it's based on Debian.
Also, UbuntuForums and AskUbuntu are great places to find help.
Arch: I like the knowledge and understanding that comes with regular usage. I've learned a lot about my system that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Also the PKGBUILD system / AUR.
Nobara for my gaming rig, same as OP + lots of out of the box gaming fixes.
Tumbleweed for the laptop, rolling release while (in my experience) being a bit less likely to break than arch.
Ubuntu/Debian/MicroOS/Alma for servers depending on whether I want stability + some fresher software, mountain-like stability, automatically updating container hosts or if I need redhat compatibility.
Mint if its someone elses old computer they want to "just work", since I dislike being tech support more than necessary.
i use arch, it's amazing, everything i wanna do works other then games since i have some old cheap nvidia gpu which is hardware fault itself, i wanna do developer tasks just works, wanna do tweaks just works and it's fun to use. i tried using other Distros i just can't use debian based or arch based just bare bone arch with gnome or xfce depending on my mood. if i switch fedora is always my 2nd choice but not sure after some news released on red hat I didn't stick to fedora because of lack of package or something like that just package management things kept me in arch.
Void linux rolling release, xbps fast installing packages
I like using Lubuntu because it's lightweight and feels pretty snappy on my 2009 laptop.
Kubuntu 22.04. All my games run like butter without much tinkering. I learned most of my Linux stuff on Debian or Ubuntu in the early days and most of what I need comes in .deb form.
I've been distrohopping for the decade+ I've been using Linux. Keep coming back to Arch. Once I get the initial install done, everything works and I don't need to touch anything.
I might as well ask here:
Im running arch on my Desktop. Mostly just to Experiment a bit, nothing to serious, Laptop is ubuntu, and both are dualboot with Windows for Gaming (nvdia gpu in both).
The Main reason to use arch was to play around with Windows Managers like hyprland. However I get the feeling that some stuff is simply missing and or configured wrong on the System.
Is it a better idea to start with something like endeavor with sway and start ricing from there?
Ubuntu usually provides you with system working out of the box. Same goes for Fedora and its spins. Arch is DIY distribution, which means that the "missing" stuff you have to install/configure yourself. archinstall gives you just a basic start.
If you don't know your way around bare window managers, then yeah, it would be a good idea to try with things preconfigured: EndeavourOS should give you that, Fedora Sway spin also.
Or you could bite the bullet and try to provide the missing things yourself and learn in the process. What are you missing?
Its more among the lines of "oh shit, this should probably work" but does not work. For example copy and pasting, some audio stuff. It just feels like a lot and i often feel like im just bruteforcing until something works well enough until it doesnt.
I like most of it, but some stuff just feels very time consuming, just to get basic features working. I want some of that, but some basic comforts would be nice.
both are dualboot with Windows for Gaming (nvdia gpu in both).
If you don't mind the question, what games do you play? Have you tried gaming on Linux at all? Gaming works really REALLY good nowadays.
Indie games ive tried work well, which is pretty good. A big factor for using windows is Gamepass and my slow internet, where it is more convenient to play the downloaded games under windows.
Other than that its a bit of sim racing in/and VR.
Im also doing a bit of CAD Stuff with Fusion 360 and my experience with Free CAD wasnt very good.
Most of this is probably a simple getting used to it process, but so far dualbooting works quite well.
Debian 12 have been rock solid for me. Use it for gaming with my Nvidia card and the driver installation have been painless and easy. Mainly been using it as a normal desktop using Gnome and gaming with Steam.
Was previously running Arch based distribution ArcoLinux, but was getting tired of the updating maintenance and config file conflicts.
Debian is just stable and a few updates a week. Flatpak fixes the old packages that repository have for those applications I just āneedā.
Rock stability. Everything works. I run debian oldstable, even bookworm is too much for me at the moment. Yes, seriously. I tried to connect to my work office using azure web client and the keyboard layout was wrong. When I went back to debian bullseye, it worked as expected. By the way, this bug also happens with arch and fedora.
I have installed arch as well because sometimes I just want to play with things. I'm very interested in immutable systems, but NixOs is too difficult for me and I'm afraid I will spend too much time on it.
Red hat is super well supported and documented, and more importantly for me, has the amd proprietary drivers for my card. I do ai stuff so I really wanted rocm set up nice.
After trying dozens of distros the enjoyment of the new faded and I just wanted something that installed with the minimum amount of fuss and was stable as a rock. The distro that has best fit that combination of attributes (at least on my machines) has been Linux Mint.
It has the most accessible package manager of em all. And ofc I'm talking about Arch Linux (bah teh wei.)
For me it is Fedora as well. Before that I was using EndeavourOS but wanted to use something a bit more stable. Haven't distrohoped since!
Debian Bookworm. On my laptop and all my servers.
I'm a seasoned professional Linux sysadmin, so getting a distro installed has never been a problem for me (thanks to my first proper distro being Gentoo).
In the end, it's the stability and "knowing what to expect", that always makes me come back to Debian.
I don't know how you deal with non rolling releases on your machines you actually use for work. By the end of the lifecycle all the tools are ancient
ChojinDSL
It depends on your use case. In my case I mostly manage bare metal servers running certain services or docker.
For servers I don't want rolling releases. That just means stuff is going to break on a regular basis. In my opinion, Arch Linux is the worst offender here. I don't know if it's gotten better since last I used it. But with Arch Linux the problem was, that you had to keep up with the updates. If you forgot to update some machine in a while, it could happen that you missed some update that changed some critical things, and everything else already moved on, and the only way to fix it was to hunt down the intermediate package version and try to install that manually, or just wipe and reinstall.
As far as "ancient" tools is concerned, it depends on what those tools are. Bugfix and security patches is what I'm most interested in on a server. Just because there is a newer version of software out there with some new features, doesn't mean that I need those features, or that they're relevant.
For the cases where I need something newer, there's docker, flatpak and backports repos, (if not third party repos for certain tools).
For servers I donāt want rolling releases
Yeah I wasn't talking about servers.
It's easier to install when using DualBoot.
EndeavourOS is just what I needed when I started to DualBoot with windows, besides being just easier to install, some games I play still require Windows, like most dx12 games since they're currently broken due to some driver error in the latest Nvidia drivers.
I love Arch and can't see myself using anything but it, but I don't have the patience to do a manual install every other week or so because I got bored or am to lazy to actually fix my system, especially while dualbooting.
Easy installation, just worksā¢, and it's basically a Debian Sid so it's relatively up to date. Siduction!
I was excited when I bought an Amiga 500, and ever since then the main thing I noticed is that the EXCITEMENT of getting a computer was always over-ruled by my ability to exploit it's powers and use it.
So my perspective is that all computers and operating systems SUCK. But some suck less than others...
So using Manjaro KDE, it sucks less because it's very simple and easy for me to install whatever I like - having AUR available, being able to search with pamac to include repos, AUR and Flatpak (even snap if I was that desperate).
KDE also gives you super powers to fuck upmodify your desktop experience and shortcuts.
It's been good to me for 6 years now. After going Ubuntu>Mint I was excited to leave Debian and try something else, I never made it to the Redhat camp (always interested to try Fedora) and hopefully will never feel the need.
So yes, what I like MOST is - it mostly just works. And when it fails, the forum is awesome.
Crux user here. I like the port tree system and simple package building recipes. It's also a distro that kept things very simple over the years despite the rise of dbus and systems. Also the mascot.
I use Ubuntu LTS. It's stable, things just work, and it's got 10 years of free support. That's a very long time to not worry about my machines.
I don't get it. You end up with ancient packages and have to install ppas to get modern tools, or write code that can't take advantage of modern tools and have to do workarounds
This is a similar reason as to why I use Debian as my base operating system and for just about every service I run on my host, the processes are containerized using Docker. It gives me the flexibility to choose the best āoperating systemā that supports the software I want to run at the release cadence that suits how I want to consume it for a given piece of software, and the base host OS is just that and nothing more. Upgrades to new Debian releases are non-events and I get no surprises with my apps in containers.
I can upgrade the underlying container base operating systems as I need which I choose Alpine, Debian, and Ubuntu based on which fits my needs. Alpine gets updates quickly, Debian is good for core services that I would normally run natively on my host, and Ubuntu hits well for wide support of almost every other service I need. So I get a stable base with the option to go as quickly as I need if I have a need for a newer package. Itās not always about having the newest software, itās about stability where it counts.
Exactly. I haven't used PPAs, pinning or backporting for many years now. Docker, Flatpak and Snap take care of nearly all use cases.
No PPAs, no workarounds. Just Docker, Snap and Flatpak. OS upgrades become trivial. Nothing breaks.
$ sudo docker ps -q | wc -l
17
Currently running 17 containers.
E: If you haven't looked into VS Code's "dev container" feature for software development, you should check it out.
I use EndeavourOS, Gnome on my desktop and KDE on my laptops. I really like the AUR and the integration with yay. Started with Ubuntu about 7 years ago and had always used Debian based distros, moved to Arch when I wanted to learn more about Linux and now I use EndeavourOS as my daily driver.
On my servers I use a mic between Debian 11 and 12
Easy support for the newest Linux desktop technologies, like Wayland and Pipewire. I fun Fedora.
I started using Kali Linux earlier this year. Iām by no means a hacker but itās the first version of Linux with a UI that clicked for me. Itās built off of Debian so Iām pretty familiar with its package management and itās been really easy to get a barebones version running on different computers.
i've been distro-hopping a lot and always come back to linux mint. It's that one distro i can't fuck up when fiddling with things. it just works
Using Fedora
What I like: When I plug my laptop into HDMI it remember the audio settings so if I last had the audio go out of the speakers it defaults to that.
The package manager.
New releases make it to the repositories quickly.
The software is as vanilla as possible; no changes made by the distribution except to get it working.
The wiki.
+/- No nagging graphical updater.
+/- Users can share build scripts for building software from source very easily
+/- No particular stance on free software licenses.
While I know it's not the best distro, I don't care to re-image, I left that life behind with Windows.
Manjaro-
I love the fact that I can have "Stable" and "Unstable" kernels installed simultaneously. It's a nice handy way to recover or narrow down if an issue is related to the kernel. They've done an excellent job with the default Grub settings to allow this as well as side-by-siding with Windows if I want (which made transitioning from Windows to Linux easier).
What makes you say "I know it's not the best distro"?
Let me preface this with the fact that I still love and am not switching off of Manjaro.
Manjaro's been kind of a contentious distro, it uses more bleeding edge than Debian-based, but opts to hold its own release schedule and repo separate from Arch's which Arch fanboys will swear to the moon and back is just as stable. To their credit, Manjaro's released some bad updates in the past.
It's also had some security issues with SSL certs not getting renewed, however to my knowledge, your computer would default to not making unsecured calls like that, and secondly, ended up fixed by the dev soon enough. What really pissed people off was that the devs decided that instead of updating the cert (which would be a quick and easy process), they would demand that everyone changed the date on their computers to a time prior to the cert's expiry. I didn't run into this issue because I don't update the day of, I usually like to give it a couple extra days anyway just in case of situations like this and because, frankly, I get on to use my computer, not watch updates run. I agree their response was in poor taste, but I also kinda figure that's not exactly out of the norm from Linux devs (ie. Gnome and Linus Torvalds).
Lastly, a lot of people talk about how the AUR handles installs based on Arch versioning, so if you install AUR apps, there's a chance of incompatibility in Manjaro since Manjaro is usually behind Arch a little bit. I can't say that I've had this issue at all, but
You have to specifically enable AUR
When you do, it warns you of this potential incompatibility
If possible, I'd be using something in the official repo or flatpak far sooner than AUR for sake of support, security, and not having to way for AUR to Build
These are valid complaints folks have had, but none that have really been deal-breakers to me, and not worth the trade-off of a more minimal OOB experience. You have the people that are more used to more stable distros that don't like it being "less stable", and you have the Arch folks that don't like that this isn't as minimal and DIY as Arch. Way I see it, I like to game, I don't like having to fix my computer, and it's struck a nice balance for me. I'm sure Garuda or Nobara would treat me well, but I've already customized my environment to suit me, and tbh, distro's aren't the end-all be-all of Linux, would you do with it is - kinda the whole point of its modularity š
Workstation:
Used to love gentoo, but it kept breaking on me.
Went Ubuntu until they went stupid, then arch for a while but again, breakage.
Debian works, I have to spend 0 energy on it, and I can layer on different vms and lxc for whatever other distros I want.
Server:
Was freebsd because it was perfect and jails were next level shit but people keep putting out software that was obnoxious to install without docker, so debian as hypervisor/zfs and freebsd for most apps, debian for the obnoxious ones. Perfect system.
kiss, upstream, wiki, community
Been using Linuxmint as daily driver now for 2-3 years. I can do all my remote work needed (Outlook using Prospect Mail, MS Teams, Slack, Zoom, Libre/OnlyOffice).
Also Steam gaming on Linux has vastly improved incl everything that works with Proton. RocketLeague and a few others I always play run perfect within proton, and I've found lot of Linux native A-titles like Tomb Raider, Dying Light,Payday2 and Warhammer that all run awesome and gave kickass graphics running natively.
TIMESHIFT has been a life saver a few times when I was messing with various AMD graphics drivers (kisak) and custom kernel like XanMod. Knock on wood it's been almost a year since any major issues though. But I know I can roll back a day or two (or max, a week) and have everything restored and running within a few hours. It's awesome.
The job security.
xubuntu. stable and apps are reasonably up to date. i'll probably switch to mint with the whole snaps thing though. fedora is the one distro i never tried in my distro hopping phase though so...
I use Fedora 38, it's stable, things just work, and the software is up-to-date.
MX Linux AHS because of xfce, it's fast, stable, use a recent kernel, no systemd.
It's very popular so I can search "how to get current default default sound output device Ubuntu" and not get an answer
Devuan testing branch and Artix for consistent stability and updates/upgrades.
I use Mint. As a beginner the Windows-like feel is convenient for me but once I get the hang of it I could see myself trying something else
This is what I recommend for Linux newbs. And they can stay with it if they're happy with it. It's also a decently competent Linux distribution which is a hell of a bonus.
@Anolutheos @Lolors17 I use Mint Debian edition. I got fed up opening my laptop and having to update when MS said so, so switched to Ubuntu, then Mint, the LMDE and have stayed for 4 years. It's not exciting, cutting edge, etc but neither am I! It just works all the time. Updates are easy and everything is boringly reliable - I love it!
Hopefully LMDE6 is a game changer for the most popular first Linux distro. If the CosmicOS by System76 doesn't win that title.
My grandparents were 1,5 years with Mint but LMDE5 has now been for 10 months and it is awesome. Literally 0 issues since day 0 whereas Win7 and Win10 caused constant headaches for me over the phone.
@Nuuskis Are you using a System76 machine? If so, how do you find it? And importantly how would you rate the keyboard against a ThinkPad / Lenovo?
Unfortunately I'm not. I'm running numerous Thinkpads until System76 releases their in-house produced Virgo laptop with hot-swappable mechanical keys and open source bios (Coreboot). It'll also have the trackpoint from Thinkpads.
@Nuuskis That sounds like an interesting arrangement too - let us know when you do that and how you get on! šš
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I like it for being a rolling release with quality control. On the one hand I don't like its restrictive defaults but on the other hand I know enough to work with them and that's given me a leaner system.
I like Tumbleweed because it's utterly boring and predictable while being rolling.
I like it because I can appreciate a good lizard.
That's also what I run.
I want a boring up to date system with a good KDE desktop that just works (even with an nVidia GPU). Tumbleweed is fine. I don't want to mess with my computer, I want to use it. I messed with it ages ago when I had to enter xmodelines by hand to make the damn thing work, I'm glad we're past that.
Same here. Very good KDE Plasma and KDE apps integration, rolling and up to date apps, and very stable at that and if something would go wrong I can easily at boot switch back to a state before the update. Pure gold.
Debian as a server base OS is well-tested and (for me) ultra reliably stable.
I use Arch. I use the command-line to update, I am very glad that I can do the updates when I do want them. Of course, going over the update list is my responsibility, but such is the power my OS grants meāI can make or break things.
Otherwise, yeah, it's the customization it offers me. I can make it as janky as I want it to be, or rice it to my heart's content.
I use arch too. Mainly because of rolling releases. I love the install once last forever philosophy. i also like that arch ships vanilla upstream packages, quickly.
That said arch makes very few choices for you. It aends you to the excellent wiki to make your own choice. So the first install may take a bit of time if you're new.
To be fair, the fact that Arch makes very few choices for us users is one reason, perhaps the biggest reason, I was hesitant jumping in at the start. A well-meaning friend pushed me off the ledge of hesitation and into the thick of things. Did I feel nervous? Hell yes! But was it worth the frayed nerves? I guess it is.
So many nice things about Arch. I got into Linux with Ubuntu, switched to Debian for many years, and now use Arch.
Why Arch?
I installed all my Arch installations with the Calam Arch installer ISO. The one big complaint I see with Arch is the complicated install process, but with Calam installer it's no different than most other distros.
I came to Arch for the customisation, I stayed for the AUR
Mint is up to date but less buggy than Ubuntu, and it has served me well for years without problems. The UI is very conventional so I don't spend time thinking about where stuff is. It supports multiple packaging systems now, so it's easy to find and install software. You don't have to go to anywhere as dodgy as the Arch User Repository to find what you need. Mint is not too conservative, not too cutting edge either, and not restrictive due to ideology. It's boring and it works and I can just get on with stuff.
I got a Mint laptop recently, and I've been loving it (even though I don't need it to do much).
When I used Debian, it was stable and I love it.
Now I use Alpine (Edge). I like it because I feel like I am learning more about troubleshooting issues but also because the packages are very up to date.
As a desktop Linux user who doesn't develop or code in any way, or work with servers, or containers, I found Alpine to be very accessible and the community has bren very patient with my different issues.
Despite how comfortable it is, I think I may end up going back to Debian or finally taking Fedora for a spin. Not for at least a year though.
I use Arch because it's so customizable and there's so much more freedom. Once I installed Arch I realized I'd never go back to Ubuntu. I'm so used to using the command line all the time now it feels weird and annoying when I have to use something with a GUI desktop environment (I use i3.) People always tell me when they see my system in public (it's a ThinkPad) it looks clunky, but even the inability to set custom time/date settings in KDE was mildly annoying to me.
I sincerely think CLIs and TUIs are no harder than "user-friendly" GUIs but they're just too far from the average modern person's experience for this to be acknowledged. Using nmtui to connect to WiFi is hardly more difficult than what Windows or macOS do.
I also really love pacman, the AUR, and the Arch Wiki.
Arch Linux because it has sane defaults, is rolling, up to date, helpful community, awesome wiki and is minimalistic.
Sane defaults?
Yeah, it has almost no defaults, allowing you to tailor the installation to your needs.
That really depends on your definition of "sane defaults." Even a lot of the computer science professionals I work with wouldn't consider Arch Linux defaults as sane. I picture sane defaults to include a lot more basic functionality that Arch doesn't have out of box (automatic suspend, desktop environment, lock screen, etc.).
I use Arch for the exact same reason you do though. Once you get past the tedious stuff like setting up your networking stack, setting up idle suspend, etc. it's nice to choose whatever WM/DE you want and customize it how you want.
EndevourOS. Easy to install and customizable/up to date as Arch can get.
I use Fedora. I like the combination of recent, stable, up-to-date software, new releases every six months, and firmware updates for my ThinkPad direct from Lenovo.
@coralof @Lolors17 same
pacman/yay
Also, Arch wiki.
All else is aesthetics.
Ever tried paru? Did the jump a while ago and it is slightly better, the best kind of better.
I've been messing with paru to gauge its functionality against yay.
So far I'm unimpressed. The cli display is somewhat tidier/neat. I like that. But when it comes to actually installing something, it's less than stellar.
For instance, if I want to skip any confirmation, I can use the undocumented flag --noconfirm. But that only works if I'm passing the flag to install, -S. If, say, I'm searching for a package, simply typing
paru <package>, then the interactive menu no longer works. It simply exits with the message 'nothing to do'.yay, on the other hand, works flawlessly with the --noconfirm flag.
I noticed that paru has some upgrading/updating features that are nice. I might use it once in a while to upgrade/update the system. But that's pretty much it for now.
Thanks for reminding me of paru! I've checked and I have it installed already. But I confess that I'm so used to yay that I completely forgot about paru.
Do you have any paru tutorial you recommend?
I like that I don't even care about it. The main user of it is my wife, who is non-technical. It's the only computer she uses, for everything (browsing, shopping, banking, word processing, printing) for 20+ years, and if you ask her which distro it is, well, she doesn't know what "distro" means.
She doesn't "use Linux" because she wanted to "learn Linux" nor to "try this distro". She uses youtube, instagram, the bank site, amazon, libreoffice, etc. The closest she gets to the OS is accepting the package manager prompt to update.
I wish one day most people can answer your question with "I don't know, whatever came with my computer", because it'll mean all of them are as easy to use, as unobtrusive and as unimportant to the user as possible.
But to finally answer it, kubuntu, some ancient, still updatable LTS version (can't even recall when I last upgraded), because it was easier for my wife to adapt, coming from windows 95 when she started using it.
I tried Tumbleweed for a while but ended up going back to Fedora. Super polished while still fast moving.
Running Endeavor OS. Painless installation, everything works outta the box, good community, no release/lts bullshit. If it breaks, just rollback.
Gentoo. Great rolling release that is stable and had timely updates, but has the flexibility to configure my system down to the tiniest details, with a great and knowledgable community. I love source-based distros and Gentoo is definitely the best.
Had to scroll too far to find Gentoo.
Does source-based mean you need to build every package from scratch? How long does it take to update? Do you use it on a laptop or desktop?
Yes, though there are some prebuilt binaries for large packages. I use gentoo on a desktop and updates don't take too long, minutes. Big updates that cause lot of packages to rebuild can take hours.
Relatively fast updates, AUR, PKGBUILD, Downgrade, the Wiki, the community, not controlled by some corporate entity, no telemetry, and last but not least the logo ;)
Fedora, why I like it:
The community is strong with lots of knowledgeable users with patience to help others out.
The release cycle gets the balance just right between having predictable updates and the latest software. Fedora's testing process is very good, you rarely have problems.
Controversial one: strong financial backing from Red Hat means that Fedora is very unlikely to sell out or turn evil, at least not without a lot of notice.
Fedora 38 is awesome!
Pacman sounds cool, wakka wakka.
pop os : 1. fast installation 2. nvidia works.
Ubuntu MATE. I love its simplicity, and the fact that it's based on Debian.
Also, UbuntuForums and AskUbuntu are great places to find help.
Arch: I like the knowledge and understanding that comes with regular usage. I've learned a lot about my system that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Also the PKGBUILD system / AUR.
Nobara for my gaming rig, same as OP + lots of out of the box gaming fixes.
Tumbleweed for the laptop, rolling release while (in my experience) being a bit less likely to break than arch.
Ubuntu/Debian/MicroOS/Alma for servers depending on whether I want stability + some fresher software, mountain-like stability, automatically updating container hosts or if I need redhat compatibility.
Mint if its someone elses old computer they want to "just work", since I dislike being tech support more than necessary.
i use arch, it's amazing, everything i wanna do works other then games since i have some old cheap nvidia gpu which is hardware fault itself, i wanna do developer tasks just works, wanna do tweaks just works and it's fun to use. i tried using other Distros i just can't use debian based or arch based just bare bone arch with gnome or xfce depending on my mood. if i switch fedora is always my 2nd choice but not sure after some news released on red hat I didn't stick to fedora because of lack of package or something like that just package management things kept me in arch.
Void linux rolling release, xbps fast installing packages
I like using Lubuntu because it's lightweight and feels pretty snappy on my 2009 laptop.
Kubuntu 22.04. All my games run like butter without much tinkering. I learned most of my Linux stuff on Debian or Ubuntu in the early days and most of what I need comes in .deb form.
I've been distrohopping for the decade+ I've been using Linux. Keep coming back to Arch. Once I get the initial install done, everything works and I don't need to touch anything.
I might as well ask here:
Im running arch on my Desktop. Mostly just to Experiment a bit, nothing to serious, Laptop is ubuntu, and both are dualboot with Windows for Gaming (nvdia gpu in both).
The Main reason to use arch was to play around with Windows Managers like hyprland. However I get the feeling that some stuff is simply missing and or configured wrong on the System.
Is it a better idea to start with something like endeavor with sway and start ricing from there?
Ubuntu usually provides you with system working out of the box. Same goes for Fedora and its spins. Arch is DIY distribution, which means that the "missing" stuff you have to install/configure yourself.
archinstallgives you just a basic start.If you don't know your way around bare window managers, then yeah, it would be a good idea to try with things preconfigured: EndeavourOS should give you that, Fedora Sway spin also.
Or you could bite the bullet and try to provide the missing things yourself and learn in the process. What are you missing?
Its more among the lines of "oh shit, this should probably work" but does not work. For example copy and pasting, some audio stuff. It just feels like a lot and i often feel like im just bruteforcing until something works well enough until it doesnt.
I like most of it, but some stuff just feels very time consuming, just to get basic features working. I want some of that, but some basic comforts would be nice.
If you don't mind the question, what games do you play? Have you tried gaming on Linux at all? Gaming works really REALLY good nowadays.
Indie games ive tried work well, which is pretty good. A big factor for using windows is Gamepass and my slow internet, where it is more convenient to play the downloaded games under windows.
Other than that its a bit of sim racing in/and VR. Im also doing a bit of CAD Stuff with Fusion 360 and my experience with Free CAD wasnt very good.
Most of this is probably a simple getting used to it process, but so far dualbooting works quite well.
Debian 12 have been rock solid for me. Use it for gaming with my Nvidia card and the driver installation have been painless and easy. Mainly been using it as a normal desktop using Gnome and gaming with Steam.
Was previously running Arch based distribution ArcoLinux, but was getting tired of the updating maintenance and config file conflicts.
Debian is just stable and a few updates a week. Flatpak fixes the old packages that repository have for those applications I just āneedā.
Rock stability. Everything works. I run debian oldstable, even bookworm is too much for me at the moment. Yes, seriously. I tried to connect to my work office using azure web client and the keyboard layout was wrong. When I went back to debian bullseye, it worked as expected. By the way, this bug also happens with arch and fedora.
I have installed arch as well because sometimes I just want to play with things. I'm very interested in immutable systems, but NixOs is too difficult for me and I'm afraid I will spend too much time on it.
Red hat is super well supported and documented, and more importantly for me, has the amd proprietary drivers for my card. I do ai stuff so I really wanted rocm set up nice.
After trying dozens of distros the enjoyment of the new faded and I just wanted something that installed with the minimum amount of fuss and was stable as a rock. The distro that has best fit that combination of attributes (at least on my machines) has been Linux Mint.
It has the most accessible package manager of em all. And ofc I'm talking about Arch Linux (bah teh wei.)
For me it is Fedora as well. Before that I was using EndeavourOS but wanted to use something a bit more stable. Haven't distrohoped since!
Debian Bookworm. On my laptop and all my servers.
I'm a seasoned professional Linux sysadmin, so getting a distro installed has never been a problem for me (thanks to my first proper distro being Gentoo).
In the end, it's the stability and "knowing what to expect", that always makes me come back to Debian.
I don't know how you deal with non rolling releases on your machines you actually use for work. By the end of the lifecycle all the tools are ancient
For servers I don't want rolling releases. That just means stuff is going to break on a regular basis. In my opinion, Arch Linux is the worst offender here. I don't know if it's gotten better since last I used it. But with Arch Linux the problem was, that you had to keep up with the updates. If you forgot to update some machine in a while, it could happen that you missed some update that changed some critical things, and everything else already moved on, and the only way to fix it was to hunt down the intermediate package version and try to install that manually, or just wipe and reinstall.
As far as "ancient" tools is concerned, it depends on what those tools are. Bugfix and security patches is what I'm most interested in on a server. Just because there is a newer version of software out there with some new features, doesn't mean that I need those features, or that they're relevant.
For the cases where I need something newer, there's docker, flatpak and backports repos, (if not third party repos for certain tools).
Yeah I wasn't talking about servers.
It's easier to install when using DualBoot.
EndeavourOS is just what I needed when I started to DualBoot with windows, besides being just easier to install, some games I play still require Windows, like most dx12 games since they're currently broken due to some driver error in the latest Nvidia drivers.
I love Arch and can't see myself using anything but it, but I don't have the patience to do a manual install every other week or so because I got bored or am to lazy to actually fix my system, especially while dualbooting.
Easy installation, just worksā¢, and it's basically a Debian Sid so it's relatively up to date. Siduction!
I was excited when I bought an Amiga 500, and ever since then the main thing I noticed is that the EXCITEMENT of getting a computer was always over-ruled by my ability to exploit it's powers and use it.
So my perspective is that all computers and operating systems SUCK. But some suck less than others...
So using Manjaro KDE, it sucks less because it's very simple and easy for me to install whatever I like - having AUR available, being able to search with pamac to include repos, AUR and Flatpak (even snap if I was that desperate).
KDE also gives you super powers to
fuck upmodify your desktop experience and shortcuts.It's been good to me for 6 years now. After going Ubuntu>Mint I was excited to leave Debian and try something else, I never made it to the Redhat camp (always interested to try Fedora) and hopefully will never feel the need.
So yes, what I like MOST is - it mostly just works. And when it fails, the forum is awesome.
Crux user here. I like the port tree system and simple package building recipes. It's also a distro that kept things very simple over the years despite the rise of dbus and systems. Also the mascot.
I use Ubuntu LTS. It's stable, things just work, and it's got 10 years of free support. That's a very long time to not worry about my machines.
I don't get it. You end up with ancient packages and have to install ppas to get modern tools, or write code that can't take advantage of modern tools and have to do workarounds
This is a similar reason as to why I use Debian as my base operating system and for just about every service I run on my host, the processes are containerized using Docker. It gives me the flexibility to choose the best āoperating systemā that supports the software I want to run at the release cadence that suits how I want to consume it for a given piece of software, and the base host OS is just that and nothing more. Upgrades to new Debian releases are non-events and I get no surprises with my apps in containers.
I can upgrade the underlying container base operating systems as I need which I choose Alpine, Debian, and Ubuntu based on which fits my needs. Alpine gets updates quickly, Debian is good for core services that I would normally run natively on my host, and Ubuntu hits well for wide support of almost every other service I need. So I get a stable base with the option to go as quickly as I need if I have a need for a newer package. Itās not always about having the newest software, itās about stability where it counts.
Exactly. I haven't used PPAs, pinning or backporting for many years now. Docker, Flatpak and Snap take care of nearly all use cases.
No PPAs, no workarounds. Just Docker, Snap and Flatpak. OS upgrades become trivial. Nothing breaks.
Currently running 17 containers.
E: If you haven't looked into VS Code's "dev container" feature for software development, you should check it out.
I use EndeavourOS, Gnome on my desktop and KDE on my laptops. I really like the AUR and the integration with yay. Started with Ubuntu about 7 years ago and had always used Debian based distros, moved to Arch when I wanted to learn more about Linux and now I use EndeavourOS as my daily driver.
On my servers I use a mic between Debian 11 and 12
Easy support for the newest Linux desktop technologies, like Wayland and Pipewire. I fun Fedora.
I started using Kali Linux earlier this year. Iām by no means a hacker but itās the first version of Linux with a UI that clicked for me. Itās built off of Debian so Iām pretty familiar with its package management and itās been really easy to get a barebones version running on different computers.
i've been distro-hopping a lot and always come back to linux mint. It's that one distro i can't fuck up when fiddling with things. it just works
Using Fedora
What I like: When I plug my laptop into HDMI it remember the audio settings so if I last had the audio go out of the speakers it defaults to that.
While I know it's not the best distro, I don't care to re-image, I left that life behind with Windows.
Manjaro-
I love the fact that I can have "Stable" and "Unstable" kernels installed simultaneously. It's a nice handy way to recover or narrow down if an issue is related to the kernel. They've done an excellent job with the default Grub settings to allow this as well as side-by-siding with Windows if I want (which made transitioning from Windows to Linux easier).
What makes you say "I know it's not the best distro"?
Let me preface this with the fact that I still love and am not switching off of Manjaro.
Manjaro's been kind of a contentious distro, it uses more bleeding edge than Debian-based, but opts to hold its own release schedule and repo separate from Arch's which Arch fanboys will swear to the moon and back is just as stable. To their credit, Manjaro's released some bad updates in the past.
It's also had some security issues with SSL certs not getting renewed, however to my knowledge, your computer would default to not making unsecured calls like that, and secondly, ended up fixed by the dev soon enough. What really pissed people off was that the devs decided that instead of updating the cert (which would be a quick and easy process), they would demand that everyone changed the date on their computers to a time prior to the cert's expiry. I didn't run into this issue because I don't update the day of, I usually like to give it a couple extra days anyway just in case of situations like this and because, frankly, I get on to use my computer, not watch updates run. I agree their response was in poor taste, but I also kinda figure that's not exactly out of the norm from Linux devs (ie. Gnome and Linus Torvalds).
Lastly, a lot of people talk about how the AUR handles installs based on Arch versioning, so if you install AUR apps, there's a chance of incompatibility in Manjaro since Manjaro is usually behind Arch a little bit. I can't say that I've had this issue at all, but
These are valid complaints folks have had, but none that have really been deal-breakers to me, and not worth the trade-off of a more minimal OOB experience. You have the people that are more used to more stable distros that don't like it being "less stable", and you have the Arch folks that don't like that this isn't as minimal and DIY as Arch. Way I see it, I like to game, I don't like having to fix my computer, and it's struck a nice balance for me. I'm sure Garuda or Nobara would treat me well, but I've already customized my environment to suit me, and tbh, distro's aren't the end-all be-all of Linux, would you do with it is - kinda the whole point of its modularity š
Workstation:
Used to love gentoo, but it kept breaking on me.
Went Ubuntu until they went stupid, then arch for a while but again, breakage.
Debian works, I have to spend 0 energy on it, and I can layer on different vms and lxc for whatever other distros I want.
Server:
Was freebsd because it was perfect and jails were next level shit but people keep putting out software that was obnoxious to install without docker, so debian as hypervisor/zfs and freebsd for most apps, debian for the obnoxious ones. Perfect system.
kiss, upstream, wiki, community
Been using Linuxmint as daily driver now for 2-3 years. I can do all my remote work needed (Outlook using Prospect Mail, MS Teams, Slack, Zoom, Libre/OnlyOffice).
Also Steam gaming on Linux has vastly improved incl everything that works with Proton. RocketLeague and a few others I always play run perfect within proton, and I've found lot of Linux native A-titles like Tomb Raider, Dying Light,Payday2 and Warhammer that all run awesome and gave kickass graphics running natively.
TIMESHIFT has been a life saver a few times when I was messing with various AMD graphics drivers (kisak) and custom kernel like XanMod. Knock on wood it's been almost a year since any major issues though. But I know I can roll back a day or two (or max, a week) and have everything restored and running within a few hours. It's awesome.
The job security.
xubuntu. stable and apps are reasonably up to date. i'll probably switch to mint with the whole snaps thing though. fedora is the one distro i never tried in my distro hopping phase though so...
MX Linux AHS because of xfce, it's fast, stable, use a recent kernel, no systemd.
It's very popular so I can search "how to get current default default sound output device Ubuntu" and not get an answer
Devuan testing branch and Artix for consistent stability and updates/upgrades.