But there is no automatic repair voodoo anywhere, on any distro. That driver is proprietary, only NVIDIA can fix it.
Consider to revisit this, cuz this is basically (at least for me) most of uBlue’s schtick:
And the way it’s setup, is so that you don’t get the broken update ever on your device in the first place.
So, contrary to what you might expect, this black magic (or just excellent engineering) somehow does exist.
But they rely on rpmfusion, an external repo packaging the proprietary NVIDIA stuff for Fedora. The repo is not supported by Fedora, and the drivers cannot be fixed by anyone.
Not sure what you’re trying to say here. Would you mind elaborating? FWIW, Bazzite’s model (by default) allows automatic fixes to be applied to a broken driver without requiring any manual intervention from its user.
In your case it’s still an excellent choice.
Though, other opinionated images by uBlue (like e.g. Aurora and Bluefin) do deserve a mention. I’m on Bluefin (through secureblue to be more precise) as I desired more hardening than what Fedora offers by default.
The excellent part is also that it’s possible to rebase to another branch without reinstalling. So, let’s say you’re actually interested in experiencing these different images without going through the installation process over and over again. Then, you simple enter the following command:
rpm-ostree rebase ...
With being replaced by whatever is required for the image and/or branch you’re interested in. Then, simply reboot, (pro-tip: make a new user account and through the new user account) experience the other image. Rinse and repeat to your heart’s content.
Why are you even considering Manjaro?
If gaming is the priority, then I honestly don’t think anything out there can beat Bazzite in terms of ease of use, ‘hands-off’-ness, robustness and stability.
Honorable mentions include: Nobara and Pop!_OS.
I just wanted to offer some nuance to the table. After everything has been learned, enabling some (otherwise complex and obscure) features can be accomplished by a single line in your NixOS config. Like, this efficiency can not and should not be ignored.
You can find some of my thoughts on Fedora Atomic in another comment found under this post. Spoiler alert; for a lot of people, it’s what they seek from NixOS but (by contrast) with excellent delivery. I won’t ignore that it doesn’t have some of the more insane/interesting functionalities that NixOS provides. But, some just want atomicity, reproducibility and (some) declarativity; and Fedora Atomic does deliver on those without requiring you to go into the deep and learn an entire new language that’s only used for managing your distro 😅.
I would argue that NixOS absolutely is the OS you get if your time is worthless
Hard disagree. Does it require you to climb through heaps of trash documentation? Absolutely. But, if you persevere, you got yourself a rock solid system that will even make Debian Stable jealous; all while requiring no maintenance.
Why does your brother use NixOS in the first place?
Don’t get me wrong; I think NixOS is a very interesting project with a very bright future. It probably wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I said that NixOS has single-handedly inspired the current immutable revolution. However, it’s also a distro that wants you to learn and digest its ways before it will return the favor.
But, based on my reading/understanding of your comment, your brother doesn’t strike me as a seasoned Linux user. Am I right? Btw, NixOS is hard unbeknownst of how many experiences you got with other distros. However, I would simply never recommend a new user to use (Gentoo, Guix System or) NixOS. There are definitely outliers, but they would have to find it themselves then.
Furthermore, a CLI instruction is DE-agnostic. So you don’t need to cover the same topic with explanations for at least 3/4 desktop environments. GUI instructions also change a lot faster than their CLI counterparts; so by providing the commands one provides the method with the best longevity. Overall, it’s just so much more efficient.
The main difference at this point isn’t what you can do with them, but how they’re set up by default
Excellently distilled most of my post.
I wonder if distros are interested to further blur the lines themselves; like how Debian and Fedora both enable Flatpak by default.
To be honest, I think the homogenization is a net positive.
Definitely. But I feel like we fail at capitalizing on this. Though, in all fairness, the fact that derivatives have lost (some of) their significance does convey to me that we’re currently in a major shift. I just wonder where we’ll end up and if there’s anything we (as a community) can do in order to accelerate the process.
Thank you for touching upon the human-side of things! I wonder if my original point could be distilled to “Can we, humans, simply act more rational?” 😅.
The philosophies behind the different distros is definitely something I didn’t touch upon earlier. Thank you for mentioning that!
I wonder how different the philosophies are between Arch, Debian Sid, Fedora Rawhide and openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Hats off for the efforts provided by maintainers. But I feel as if that potential should be better utilized (in part) to achieve greater goals.
Traditionally; definitely. But if the purpose of package managers is to acquire packages fit for use with the distro, then the position of alt packaging formats (e.g. Nix) and/or solutions that make use of container technology (e.g. Distrobox) at least provide some food for thought.
Like, if I choose to install Debian (Stable) and openSUSE Leap and then proceed to install all my packages through distro-agnostic ways accessible on both distros (e.g. Flatpak, Brew, Nix etc.), then wouldn’t you agree that these systems become remarkably close to one another?
Unfortunately, perhaps understandably so, popularity is very hard to measure on Linux. Though, while far from representative, ProtonDB’s measurements do exist and provide us some insights. As for the distros found on the chart:
Note that Flatpak is not a distribution, but a packaging format.
BoilingSteam’s article in which their thoughts and reflections are written can be found here.
Update 2: After trying out EOS, Arch, Manjaro, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Universal Blue, among many other options, I’ve come to the decision that I’m okay with sticking to Mint for now on my main desktop and setting up UBlue Aurora on my work laptop, but might consider switching to Kubuntu or Fedora if I want something similar at work and at home (one of my main draws away from Mint was that it didn’t offer a KDE option), or to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if I must have a rolling distro for some reason. Thank you all for your guidance, and happy distro hopping!
Thank you for the update!
Could you elaborate upon your decision-making?
You can divide distros into two categories:
E.g. Zorin OS is a derivative of Ubuntu, which itself is a derivative of Debian. After the gargantuan effort it takes to make Debian possible, Ubuntu’s maintainers ‘grab’ Debian, apply a set of changes and ship it as Ubuntu. After which, Zorin OS’ maintainers grab Ubuntu, also apply a set of changes and ship it as Zorin OS.
Of course, not all derivatives are created equal; sometimes a single change is applied that by itself constitutes the fork. And other times, the changes are so massive that they blur the lines between independent and derivative; Ubuntu’s changes to Debian is a good example of this.
Derivative distros can’t simply change everything as they see fit; some things are simply essential parts. In most cases, these include:
But what other factors/aspects that are important for the average user to know about each ‘base’?
I was about to write a long ass dissertation, but it became very unwieldy. Consider asking for specific bases and perhaps I will respond for those.
On a final note, it’s worth mentioning that differences between different distros have never been as blurry as they’re today. With e.g. Distrobox, one can install whatever package from whichever distro they want. Thus, we aren’t as tied to the packages provided by the base distro as we were used to. Furthermore, most distros have different ‘variants’ that allow access to different channels or release cycles. E.g. for those who want Debian packages but bleeding-edge; there’s Debian Sid etc.
Sure, a lot more can be said; like how corporate interest plays into all of this. But what has been mentioned above should suffice for now.
Fam, with all due respect, reconsider how you go about interacting with the community for support.
We love to help, so don’t get me wrong. But you have to allow us to help you. Paramount with this is communication; so consider responding to questions asked by those who reach out to help.
Like, I’m not exaggerating when I say that your issues would have already been resolved if you had been (more) responsive.
There’s also the herd mentality; i.e. peeps like to up vote something that has already been up voted and down vote something that has already been down voted. I was the first to up vote; with my vote it became +2 -7. So, since then, it has received 4 up votes and 6 down votes. Which is at least an improvement.
The point I wanted to make is that there’s more to it. I wouldn’t simply refer to it as symptom of toxicity and call it a day.
If it is the default on the distro they intend to use, then, by all means, they should definitely go with it. Btrfs has been really stable for a pretty long time anyways. Just don’t use it for RAID 5/6 and you’d be absolutely fine.
I think we’re misunderstanding eachother. So perhaps consider to outline if you agree with the following:
testingbranch; even Bazzite has.