Which one(s) and why?
Which one(s)
Arch.
why?
- The Arch-Wiki
- I like pacman
- The Arch-Wiki
- I wanted a rolling-release distribution.
- The Arch-Wiki
- It just works. I had only one more serious problem in ~8 years of running Arch
- Did I mention the Arch-Wiki?
Edit:
Having said that, I have an eye on immutable distros. Maybe one day I’ll try one out.
EndeavourOs makes it super simple too
So does archinstall.
The Arch wiki really is amazing. It’s also still very useful for Linux stuff in general. The qemu page has come in handy more than a dozen times.
Yeah, I use Mint and the Arch wiki is still one of my first stops when I have an issue
you forgot arch wiki
Debian. Seemed like the most generic “Linux” there is. Nothing special, nothing weird. Just Linux. Gray, boring, system defaults Linux.
It’s funny cause it started out as one of the most opinionated Linux distros.
still is, and always has been. and that’s not a bad thing.
And because of that, custom configurations are wonderfully easy to make, technical issues are rare, and the few issues you do experience are quite possible to solve. Which is why I settled on Debian.
I settled on openSUSE Tumbleweed because it’s rolling and reliable. I chose KDE Plasma long before I chose my distro.
Same. Although I am running Debian on the server.
same!
Using this right now. It’s been a little less stable then I’ve heard other people claim, I had about a day and half where I was consistently freezing up 5 minutes after login. After that was patched it had been fine.
The real test for me is if I can walk away from it for 3 weeks and update the system without the world exploding. That was what always broke Arch for me.
I used to use Leap but I switched to the Tumbleweed repos and updated with no issues. It did take a while though.
All my problems have been of my own making. Also I updated one computer after 18 months or thereabouts and it was fine although I wouldn’t recommend leaving it that long on a computer you actually use!
I am now at NixOS. I like the reproducibility and immutability of the distro, but the documentation is far from great and configuring the OS you want is not that straightforward. I also don’t like that even though it has a great number of packages, they tend to be slightly outdated.
I am not sure if I will stick with it, but I really like that I can create very specialised configurations that are also portable. I am currently using KDE but I am thinking of switching to Hyprland once I get more comfortable around NixOS and home manager/flakes, as nothing beats tiling managers in my opinion.
After trying out a few distros over the last 20 years or so (
openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Fedora and Silverblue were the ones I actively used for a stretch of time on desktop, Debian and CentOS on server), I also landed on NixOS.Who knows what the future brings, but things feel more settled to me than they ever have. Maybe that’s because there’s a (declarative) solution for every custom setup, it’s just a function of time and profiency in Nix. Or maybe it’s because I invested quite a bit of work into a trivially reproducible setup for most of my machines and workflows (all in one glorious version-controlled flake), that the sunk costs are too high to switch elsewhere.
I’m still willing to experiment with DEs/WMs, currently running Gnome on my main and Sway on weaker machines. Hyprland is a bit out there for my taste, but I’m really looking forward to giving Cosmic DE a try once it’s ready.
I also settled on NixOS after Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian -> Fedora -> Silverblue -> NixOS. Couldn’t be happier and no plans to leave.
NixOS/hyprland is the perfect blend of practicality and fun for me
It works pretty solidly, sometimes doing something others can do imperatively in a single command can be a pain though
Nixpkgs is actually one of the most up to date software repositories. (~90% according to repology)
You may be using a release channel which will only be updated for important security updates.
Another vote for Nix!
Fedora atomic GNOME aka silverblue
- It has very good defaults, works out of the box, I can switch anytime to another de or a ublue image without messing around with my setup
- selinux
- podman
- flatpak centric
- auto updates
- widely used
Current Cons:
- openssl is not installed by default (for gsconnect)
- gnome-tweaks is not installed by default
- uses toolbx instead of distrobox. Toolbx is better for servers, distrobox better for desktop, imo.
- flatpak firefox isn’t used
Opensuse micro has distrobox as the default shell. It still needs some work before i daily drive it tho
And it uses firefox flatpak and iirc it installes gnome tweaks by default. Opensuse does right what fedora missed until today.
But, ostree is incredible. There’s no ostree on opensuse and what do I want with btrfs snapshots if I can have ostree’s image based approach? I love opensuse for tumbleweed but fedora rocks with ostree. I could switch to a ublue image but I can also just overlay the packages which isn’t that bad. It’s just bad for newcomers. And no newcomer should have to use ublue because the official image lacks stuff. But it is what it is.
I want to settle on Debian Stable, I really do, but I use Hyprland, so I’ll have to wait until we get Debian 13 (hopefully 13 and not 14 lol).
Hyprland is surprisingly easy to build/install from source.
Even on Debian 12? That’s what I’ve installed now and I really want to give it a shot.
Edit: tried setting up Hyprland via the Manual install from Releases way, it needed a few libxcb dependencies and it needed execute permissions, but after that I hit a roadblock: libxcb-errors which doesn’t seem to be available on Debian.
I guess I could have taken solving the depencies for granted. I’ve built and installed it on both Arch and Fedora but obviously those repos would be more up to date.
Yeah, I switched to AwesomeWM for the time being, but I’ll be honest, I’m getting fed up of it all. I think I’ll try Fedora later and if that doesn’t work for me… I really don’t know what I’ll switch to.
Fedora has an official package of it as well.
How is Arch “making things difficult for oneself”?
I set it up once 8 years ago and have since migrated my install across several SSDs.
Still runs like butter.
Arch. Minimal, fast, rolling and it doesn’t break. Plus, the AUR and the Wiki are unvaluable.
Had been on: RedHat (199something), Mandrake, Slackware, Ubuntu and Debian before.
I thought Arch was notorious for breaking all the time? Is that a specific version of Arch?
This is a misconception. Arch breaks only if you mess enough with AUR. If you keep with official repo and maybe Flatpaks, you’ll be fine
You can use AUR with moderation as well and you’ll still be fine
Dunno, during 8ish years I have only hada couple of minimal problems due to updates (and the solution was promptly available on Arch homepage). Can’t speak for other, though.
That’s not my experience - have been using arch for around four years and it broke only once by not letting me log into the system after I failed to update pam configs after the system upgrade.
We’re using Arch 2
(No it doesn’t, it just has some bugs here and there, e.g. my media keys don’t work after a couple days of uptime (gnome). I stopped actively looking for and reading the release notes years ago as it just works… and if it doesn’t, I still have a btrfs snapshot from before the update)
I tried Manjaro for awhile and had some major system breaks. Manjaro is/was often pitched as newbie-friendly arch, so having it break made me think arch was going to be even worse.
Been running endeavour for a few years now though, and haven’t had any real issues. Much smoother than my Manjaro experience.
Agree about manjaro they doing really weird things about their system and it’s breaking.
unvaluable
You’ve edited this post and left this in (or added it!?) so I suppose you mean it!
I just made a mistake, sorry :-P English us not my first language.
Sorry, I was just joking; it’s clearly a typo and I don’t think anyone misunderstood (or maybe even noticed).
No problem, man ;-) I didn’t take it as an offense. Have a nice day!
I learned, and learned, and learned, and every step led me to simplify, simplify, simplify.
Now, I’m a Debian man. If I didn’t install it, it probably isn’t on there, just like I like it.
Yeah might have gotten stuck on Debian as well if I didn’t make the mistake to run stable when I first tried it. Choosing stable made sense to me since I wanted a stable os but when I was greeted by “ICE weasel” that was way behind the Firefox I got used to on Ubuntu and other software being terribly out of date I decided to move on.
Well then I got stuck on Arch.
But while it would be easy to say “never looked back” that’s not true of course, these days I tun Debian on most of my machines (only that they are servers) and Ubuntu on some (like my work Laptop) my personal Desktop and laptop are Arch though and probably always will be.
Debian. So many other distros are based on it anyway. I use it on damn near everything now.
I settled on two.
-
Arch for my desktop, because there I like having an always up-to-date system with the latest drivers and libraries so that I can always try the latest versions of whatever it is I want to play with next. Pacman is also a pretty good package manager, and almost any piece of software that is not in the default repos can be found in the AUR. For the rest, I also like that Arch just gets out of your way and lets you configure your system how you want.
-
Debian for anything that runs unattended, like all my homelab services. It’s well tested, offers feature stability, has long-enough support, and doesn’t do weird things every other release like forcing snaps or netplan or cloud-init on you. Those “boring” qualities make it the perfect base to run something for a long time that doesn’t scream for attention all the time.
-
Debian: stability
Same! Distrohopped for years, but for ~15 years Debian has been rock solid for both desktop and home minimal server.
EndeavourOS.
I’m naturally a tinkerer and an avid gamer, with very recent hardware so an Arch based distro fits really nice.
It has just the right amount of pre-installed stuff. Not quite as bloaty as Manjaro or most ubuntu-based distros, but not quite as DIY as vanilla Arch. I know I can install and uninstall anything on Linux but when a distro already comes with just the right baseline for me, work smarter, not harder.
Ubuntu/Debian based distros didn’t quite suit me, I love the AUR to death, I love the Arch wiki (even if a lot of it can be used just fine on other distros), I love rolling release and having the latest everything. I do use PopOS on my laptop since I use it a lot less and therefore I want to update it less often.
Only issue is when they ship dumb defaults sometimes that break my workflow but I can diagnose and undo them I guess.
Was on Fedora for 3 yrs now and decided to distrohop to EndeavourOS like yesterday. Reason: jc141 releases were finnicky on Fedora; very very probably my fault lol.
Gotta say, I’m impressed with the system and makepkg is just so comfy to use wtf.
Might go back to Fedora eventually but EndeavourOS has been a smooth sailing so far. I think I’ll stay a while.
Mint unironically. I’ve reached a point where I’ve got a lot of things going on in my life that I don’t have the time and just need something that works and I don’t need to fiddle around with much.
Servers are a different story but for Desktop, OpenSUSE.
Because:
- It’s stable even on their rolling OS (Tumbleweed)
- Gaming works exceptionally well
- CUDA works with little effort
- RPM-based (personal preference)
- zypper is an excellent package manager and my experience has been better than that of yum/dnf
- Extensive native packages and 3rd party repos
- No covert advertising in the OS
- Minimal (no?) Telemetry
- Easy to bind to active directory
- it feels polished and well built
- I do not have to mess with it to make it work
Part of my transition from Windows to Linux was that basic tasks like installing software or even the OS itself shouldn’t be a high effort endeavour. I should be able to point to a package file or run a package manager and be able to go about my day without running “make” and working my way through dependency hell.
I say this as a Linux user of all different flavours for well over 15 years who has a deep love for what it brings to the table. If we want it to be common place with non-IT folks, it needs to work and it needs to be simple to use.
I liked LEAP when I tried it a couple of years back. They’re getting rid of it soon, and I don’t really like rolling releases so probably won’t try anything SUSE any time soon.
Arch btw
