I’d like to settle on a distro, but none of them seem to click for me. I want stability more than anything, but I also value having the latest updates (I know, kind of incompatible).
I have tested Pop!_Os, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu. Arch and Pop being the two that I enjoyed the most and seemed the most stable all along… I am somewhat interested in testing NixOS although the learning curve seems a bit steep and it’s holding me back a bit.
What are you using as your daily drive? Would you recommend it to another user? Why? Why not?
Debian stable, the os for 50 year old nudists.
It’s the stable branch of one of the oldest distributions around.
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mint
it “just works” and I dont have to update it constantlybut my daily driver is endeavourOS
Don’t yell but Fedora/Ubuntu was my first exposure to Linux so I’m prejudiced toward them. I didn’t have a lot of exposure to 'nix in the 90s since the family only had Windows.
Currently NixOS having been a long time Arch user. The power of Nix is unbeatable once it finally clicks.
I keep hearing about NixOS, is it possible to leverage both NixOS and the AUR from arch?
Not that I’m aware of though it would be cool if possible. Thankfully everything I’ve needed has been found in NixOS Packages or Flathub as my last resort. My current setup if you’re curious.
Debian for servers and debian for desktop. Debian everywhere!
Lubuntu my beloved. Ubuntu enough for me to google myself out of anything but lightweight enough to make me feel good about what I’m spending cycles/battery on… and familiar enough that I don’t need to learn a whole new desktop paradigm when all I’m gonna do with the desktop gui is start an app anyway.
It used to be Fedora, and I still want it to be Fedora. It was solid, stable, cutting edge, and easy to work with both on the command line and in the super-up-to-date Gnome desktop. DNF is great once you make a few tweaks, I don’t care about systemd, and it supports all of my hardware with basically no tweaking right out of the box. And the Anaconda Installer isn’t all that bad once you get used to its idiosyncrasies. I’ve been a distrohopper for like 15 years now, but I always end up hopping back to Fedora. Or I did, anyway, but with IBM-RedHat’s shenanigans as of late, I’m looking for a new home. Current thoughts:
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I used to run Arch (btw), and could go back to it, but I’d prefer something more brainless to maintain (Arch isn’t hard to maintain - check updates before you install, be careful with the AUR, it’s golden - but I just don’t have the spoons anymore). It’s actually what I’m running on the laptop I’m using to post this.
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I’m not going to use Ubuntu or anything else involving Snap because I hate dealing with Snap (YMMV - I know it has its fans, but I don’t like the way Canonical is handling it’s stuff there, and I only have room in my depression-addled brain for one universal package format).
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I love the new Debian, but the Gnome desktop is already out of date, and it’s just going to get farther behind. I have to decide if I want to give up cutting edge Gnome in favor of holy-Mary-Mother-of-God stability.
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Some up and coming immutables look very interesting; blendOS and Vanilla OS in particular, but also OpenSuse Aeon. Just not sure I’m ready to go immutable, old grognard that I am.
But seriously, RHEL - just re-open the source code, thanks, you asshats.
Edit: I really need to learn how to proofread before I post.
As a Fedora user, I don’t understand why you care this much about RHEL? I agree the decision is very bad, but Fedora is downstream from RHEL and
- Is not owned by Redhat (although they are it’s sponsor)
- Will never go closed source, as it is community run and this would infinitely degrade the quality of RHEL.
If you really prefer using Fedora, I think the paywalling of RHEL’s sourcr code has little to no affect on you.
You make good points. My jumping off the Fedora ship was a knee-jerk reaction to the RHEL doofusry, and not one based completely on rational thought, sadly. And now I’ve been hopping around spending more time researching stuff and trying things out than getting things done lol.
So yeah. I might just go back to Fedora…
Yeah, I almost distrohopped for the same reason!
Even if you do go back to Fedora, you’re a more experienced user than you were before.
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I’m a programmer, but I’m more an animator, modeler, and musician. Because of that, I usually end up with either Mint (like on my desktop) or, if I need something really suave with multimedia, KUbuntu. KDE is an incredibly useful and friendly suite of software, and Plasma doesn’t just look good as a DE, it makes sense from a usability standpoint and isn’t trying to pretend that it’s running on a phone.
Unless it is running on a phone, but that’s another story.
Used to be Arch, now I shill for Debian.
Not to long ago I would of said Fedora but recently I’ve switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and I’m really enjoying it. Still learning the ins and outs though.
I’ve been using Arch Linux as a daily driver for about two years I believe. As with any other distribution, it depends on the user’s preferences, experience and needs, whether or not I’ll recommend them Arch.
What I like the most about Arch is the customization from the ground up, the rich, detailed and yet user-friendly Arch Wiki, the AUR (although one shouldn’t depend on it too much) and that after the installation everything seems more trouble-free than the distributions I’ve tried before. Arch almost never broke for me and even then fixing the issues weren’t a big problem. It’s not as difficult as it is often portrayed.
Nor is it as easy as it is often portrayed. A new user could be comfortable starting with Arch Linux, but it doesn’t hurt to have experienced another distribution that is intended to be user-friendly.
I tried quite a few of distros and I keep on going back to Fedora. A lot of things come out of the box such as Flatpak, it won’t pester you about the password when you just want to install a app and i barely find myself solving issues with command line.
My other two favorites are Mint and Pop, i can recommend these to beginners and I really just like a good out of the box experience, avoiding command line where possible. Are there others that tick these boxes?
I’ve tried basically every reasonably maintained distribution, and keep coming back to Arch. It just feels right. And it just works right too. The package manager is excellent, and that is one of the things that makes or breaks any distribution for me. I also love that it comes with nothing, so you know what you get, and it’ll be setup how you want it. With other major distributions, I spend a considerable amount of time removing things first, which is something I just don’t want to do.
I’ve been trying out NixOS recently. I really appreciate what it is trying to do, but the complexity of nix-command is quite overwhelming
I’m running NixOS on my laptop and I really like it though I haven’t been able to get Resilio going. It’s challenging sometimes but when I have things the way I want them I have a great sense of order. So it’s the most satisfying Linux I’ve tried.
Have you tried syncthing?
No I haven’t. You recommend it? I’ve otherwise been happy with Resilio for years.
I’ve been using Syncthing for a couple years and it works pretty well. Haven’t tried Resilio but the main difference afaik is that Syncthing doesn’t have an iOS client and Resilio isn’t open source.