Mint. I used to distro hop so much and just got tired of having to reload everything. That was the last one I had done prior to having no more time to switch. 😅 Plus, it just works and it's easy.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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I use Debian. The current release has pretty up to date software. It's super easy to install ( I don't have as much time to fuck around with my OS as I used to). And it's stable as fuck.
Debian. Used to use others but realized they all just added crap I didn't want, or could add myself with a simple script.
I was a Slackware then Fedora, then Ubuntu as my daily drivers (whipe trying other distros, or Kali for specific purposes) before settling here.
PCLinuxOS.
Stable and rolling for regular people OS.
Heard that distro while looking into wikipedia.
Alpine:
- Rolling release (Alpine Edge) yet stable
- Extremely lightweight
- Very customizable
- After setting it up I find that it works very well
- Decently sized repo
- OpenRC rather then SystemD (I prefer the way it handles services)
I wonder how hard is it to download apps on Glibc-free systems, On Systemd-free systems ik there is Flatpack and stuff , asking this bcs many apps on Linux only work on Glibc.
Is that usable for regular Joe or enthusiast grade?
I wouldnt call it enthusiast grade, every day usage is easy but installation can be tough (it gives you a barebones system).
Then that is not for me yet.
Mint, first one I tried, and works just fine. It's xfce with i3wm.
2 flavors of Fedora with KDE on it:
- Aurora-DX for some dev work on the side. Once you get used to distroboxing / devcontainers, it's rock-solid and mean dev environment (saw some minor issues with how certain GUI apps were scaled, but that's about it).
- Nobara for gaming (tried Bazzite and it'd prolly work for that purpose as well).
Unfortunately, had to keep Windows on one other machine (fuck you KORG for not providing anything working on Linux), but that's limited to being a glorified music player now 😄
Idk if you can get korg working on wine.
Began moving all my hardware to Linux this year since none of them will run win11 without fk-about-ing - and I just don't want to. So my server, media box and laptop are all cut over, only my main desktop left on windows a bit longer but it's goose is cooked too.
I've tried dozens of distros over the years but I've settled on Fedora KDE.
The why:
- Skipping x11 and head straight into Wayland so I don't have to worry about that in the future.
- I wanted something more up to date than debian-based and less cutting edge then Arch-based.
- Stability and support of being in the RHEL family
- Flatpaks
- Tried to get on with gnome to get away from the 'start menu' paradigm but ended up getting on with kde better.
In my opinion skipping x11 Will make compatability worse.
Different distros for different uses:
- Debian with KDE for my casual servers and Docker boxes.
- Nobara for my main gaming PC.
- Linux Mint with Cinnamon for my general purpose PCs and my #JustWorks uses.
- Arch for my pimp mobile test machines.
I'm currently using bazzite due to its really solid out of the box support for gaming hardware and peripherals.
I'm really surprised everyone uses arch. I have three theories as to why:
- There actually aren't that many arch uses but when arch users have the opportunity they won't hesitate to say "BTW I use arch" were as others don't really bother.
- There are lots of arch users and everyone uses it because they want to be able to say "BTW I use arch"
- (Very unlikly) There are lots of arch users and it's because it's actually a good distro that people like.
(This is mostly a joke jsyk I'm sure arch is a great distro)
In my experience, the only quirk of arch is its installation. pacman and the AUR are great and I really did not have any issues with stability. First time I tried arch I used a tiling window manager, custom menu bars and all that "hackerman" stuff, which was not stable at all and forced me to reconfigure and tweak my machine all day every day. Now I am using a full blown Gnome desktop environment and it is rock stable. My only wish is to have an /etc directory just like Intel Clear Linux.
Primarily I use Arch on my desktop (and by proxy, my Steam Deck which runs SteamOS), which is what I've landed on after a ton of distro hopping. The idea of Atomic distros catches my eyes, but for me in its present state there are too many steps needed in order to make deeper changes (for example, installing a kernel module) - but I quite like SteamOS on my Deck since I know it will always be in a "consistent" state, for example.
On servers I run a mix of Rocky Linux and Debian.
Arch mostly so i can get whatever package i want without having to use flatpak. don't get me wrong i love them, however i don't have the best internet so updating a whole other environment was quite the burden which is why i stooped using pop os and went back to arch. It also kept me from enjoying Fedora Silverblue on my laptop so i guess i am sticking with arch till i get better internet xD
im a notorious distro hopper lmao, right now i am using manjaro for the first time. previously i was using Pop OS where i had plasma installed for the DE rather than using cosmic or whatev they call it... but it seemed like there were a few issues between Pop and plasma, so i hopped to manjaro
first time using a distro that uses pacman so there are a few growing pains for me
I distrohop aswell,I mostly stuck with cachyos.
Fedora 41 KDE Plasma
For the simple, shallow reason it looks great and feels snappy.
Personal rabble:
spoiler
I would say that it does not feel as "set and forget" as Mint, but I enjoy the feel of of environment.
I am pretty new at Linux in general - only have experience with a Mint environment before.
I did have some issues with Fedora - mostly audio problems in Steam games and it can feel slightly more intimidating to work with ( compared to Mint) but after digging into various help threads and trying stuff( responsibly) I did reach a point where I reached a satisfied conclusion - even if I am not sure what exactly I did that solved the problem
Cachyos.
Used to use pure arch but I like the cachy optimisations and their repos
You can put Cachyos tweaks kernels and repos on top of arch or nixos if you like.
I know you can basically turn arch into catchy, but I see no reason to when there is a pre made distro.
As for Nix, I think it looks very interesting but I very much love arch for my desktop and am not really looking for a replacement at the moment, but it is number one on my list for the future if things change
I know you can basically turn arch into catchy, but I see no reason to when there is a pre made distro.
Makes sense
As for Nix, I think it looks very interesting but I very much love arch for my desktop and am not really looking for a replacement at the moment, but it is number one on my list for the future if things change
Aswell as fedora in copr and Am pretty sure its only the kernel no optimized packages for both nix and fedora.
Gentoo for anything my I use a mouse with, Arch for everything else. I like Gentoo for the customization. For things where I want to run a service, Arch is my go to as it keeps working without drama. Anything complicated, Gentoo is better.
Currently, Arch btw. I was on Ubuntu in the 12* days, but arch wiki had the solutions to every problem I encountered, so naturally migrated. I want to switch to NixOS but ran into some issues getting my finicky nvidia/amdgpu laptop to work. I might go blendOS as a holdover, it seems like a good mix of the two. Also I have some issues with Manjaro (tried for a while) but pamac cli at least handles all of my aur and pacman needs properly.
I use Fedora on my desktop, and mint on my laptop (this one is going to get wiped soon for Fedora as well). I tried manjaro but it just wasn't for me. I installed it on the recommendation of my friend, and I like it a lot. Except for it not staying asleep because a part on the motherboard kept sending a wake command -__- . But a CMD fixed that issue.
LMDE. It really does just work.
How does it fare compared with the standard Mint?
I've been considering try it but because of the focus on Cinamon I keep delaying it.
I used to use Arch btw.
Now I am on Nix, I just love shell.nix files. I haven't spent much time on my configs yet, but once I finish them, they'll be super easy to set up again, thats cool.
Mint on my ancient MacBook because I didn’t really know any better and it’s working just nice for me, and Asahi/Fedora on my M1 mini, because it’s the only option.
I use LMDE. I use it because Mint has proved that it is worth using (for example: it provide easy way to install multimedia codec by only click "Install Multimedia Codec" in applications menu) and I want it to success.
Sorry if my english is bad
Debian. Because it's the best about "Just Works" (yes, even moreso than Ubuntu, which I tried). It has broken once on me, and that was fixed by rolling back the kernel, then patched within the week.
BUT I'm also not a "numbers go up" geek. I don't give a shit about maxing out the benchmarks, and eking every last drop of performance out of the hardware; to me, that's just a marketing gimmick so people associate dopamine with marginally improved spec numbers (that say nothing about longevity nor reliability).
If you wanna waste something watching numbers go up, waste time playing cookie clicker, not money creating more e-waste so your Nvidia 4090 can burn through half a kilowatt of power to watch youtube in 8k.
(/soapbox)
My gpu is an nvidia 970 and my cpu is a 4th or 5th generation core i7. I just don't play the latest games anyway, I'm a PatientGamer, and I don't do multimedia stuff beyond simple meme edits in GIMP.
It has plenty of power to run VMs, which I do use for my job and hobby, and I do coding as another hobby in NVIM (so I don't have to deal with the performance penalty of MS Code or other big GUI IDEs).
It all works fine, but one day I'll upgrade (still a generation or two behind to get the best deals on used parts) and still not waste a ton of money on AAA games nor bleeding-edge DAWs
Arch, pacman is why
Fedora because it's stable and effective.
Fedora Core (the first one) was my first love in Linux. I tried SuSE before that but wasn't as polished as it is now. That was more than 20 years ago!
Bazzite for my gaming pc, steam deck, and family members. It just works and they cant fuck it up. Even brother laser printers official drivers installed for my mom's comp. Gotta check the details of that cups exploit though. My gamig pc is also the fallback pc I expect to always have working and for servicing any others if problems come up.
Arch or arch based, except manjaro which has screwed me over too many times, for having easy access to pretty much any software that can run on linux, or just stuff that requires too many hoops to jump through to get working on atomic distros like bazzite.
Dietpi on my SBCs like the ones running klipper for my 3d printers
Debian for my servers, homeassistant etc, but I'm planning on checking out coreos.
Also alpine just because.
MX Linux. It is Debian with setup and tools I really want but would be too lazy to prepare in one go. Love it as much as I love Debian.
Fedora.
I've tried them all but found it's the most reliable. It's upgrades are even more reliable than Macos and Windows.
Packages are very up to date but also well tested. Sometimes even newer than Arch for short periods.
The community is awesome.
I love Gnome, I've found it's more consistent than even MacOs in its design. And it has perfect keyboard shortcuts.
Arch.
Because of pacman. Building and writing packages is simple and dependencies are slim. Also packages are recent. And most likely "there is an AUR package for that". Also stack transitions arrive early, like pipewire.
Also let's not forget Arch Wiki, i bet you have read it as a non Arch user.
I administer Arch on 8 machines including gaming rigs, home server, web server, kids laptop, wifes gaming desktop, audio workstation and machine learning rig and a bunch of dev laptops. I also use ArchARM on RPi for some home automation.
Never considered switching since I switched from Ubuntu over 15 years ago.
I do have experience with several other rpm and apt based distros.
Fedora KDE.
I was happily using Windows 10 until a few months ago, but needed to build a new PC. I got a glimpse of Windows 11 on a friend's laptop and didn't like it. So I asked my Linux-friend which distribution he would recommend to someone who wants to try Linux, but doesn't want to stray too far away from the windows look and feel.
Kubuntu on my desktop, I prefer KDE as a DE and I'm used to the Debian ecosystem.
Linux Mint on my relatively low powered laptop that I rarely use.
Debian stable on my media server.
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