What is your go-to Linux distro and why?

AWizard_ATrueStar, 10 months ago

Right now I use pop_os. I bought a System76 laptop so it came with it. I like it because most things just work and I am lazy. Not the biggest gnome fan though. Previous to owning this laptop I tinkered with many distros but usually leaned towards lightweight DEs like xfce.

brainfreeze, 10 months ago

I've been toying with the idea of getting one of those. Would you do it again? Do you have any regrets or maybe wish you'd installed it on something else?

AWizard_ATrueStar, 10 months ago

I have been very happy with my s76 machine. Keep in mind it is a re-branded cleo, but s76 has put a lot of work into opening the hardware, and making pop work perfectly on the hardware. I have a Gazelle from about 3 years ago now, and have had no problems with it. I ended up purchasing a second laptop for my SO to use (a Galago Pro) which has also been problem free. When the time comes for me to replace this machine I will look to S76 first.

Any questions I'll be happy to answer if I can.

Bishma, 10 months ago

I use Pop_OS because I really like having so much much GUI control via the keyboard. I’m patiently waiting for Cosmic to update things a bit.

joaom, 10 months ago

Endeavour OS for me, use it both on my own laptop and my work one. BTW, it’s Arch-based

anteaters, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

openSuse. After my years of distro hopping ended over a decade ago I settled on openSuse Leap and never switched to something else again. It’s reliable and gives me the least bullshit. And by now it’s the one I have the most experience in.

//edit
Leap on my server and tumbleweed on my work laptop but Leap would be sufficient there, too.

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski, 10 months ago

I've been using MX, formerly known as Mepis, for over 15 years now. It's the most stable release I've ever used, and their repos are pretty up to date. The community is great also.

Kerb, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

i settled on fedora kde a few years ago(altho i recently switched to fedora silverblue kde)
imo a nice middleground.

if you are intrested in immutable distros, i can recommend silverblue (not as drastic of a change compared to nixos)

if you are intrested in nixos package management, you might want to try out the nix package manager on your current distro.

an intresting way to get the fresh but stable system you want is to,
install some rock solid distro like debian,
and then use the nix package manager and/or flatpacks to get the fresh software you want.

effingjoe, 10 months ago

VanillaOS is pretty neat. It has an immutable (kind of) OS, lets you choose which package formats you want to use (flatpak, snap, appimage, etc) and leverages containers (a la Distrobox) and their package manager Apx to give you seamless access to packages on other distros. It's Ubuntu-based right now but the next release is switching to debian.

To be fair, I don't have much time on it. My daily drivers are a chromebook and a steamdeck, but I did dust off an old laptop just to check it out for a little bit.

Reorder9543, 10 months ago

If you’re looking for stable and up to date, give openSUSE Tumbleweed a shot.

pfaca, 10 months ago

This is the way.

I changed GPU recently and felt like doing a fresh install and tried openSUSE Tumbleweed (was using EndeavourOS before). Very stable and fast.

Revan343, 10 months ago

I’m actually in the middle of deciding on a new distro, I’m trying to get away from Ubuntu/snap, but Debian 12 with LxQt or Xfce isn’t playing nice with my laptop. I just finished writing out Mint and Tumbleweed flash drives, gonna give them both a shot, but I’ve never really used openSUSE before.

Any tips? Particular things you like about it

Reorder9543, 10 months ago

Honestly, what I like about it started with the mascot. Otherwise, I like the fact that the rolling release has automatic testing to make sure it’s mostly reliable. Many people will also tell you how amazing YaST, their “control panel”, is. There’s definitely some stuff to get used to, like patterns and zypper. But, for a set and forget system, it’s hard to beat IMO.

5i5phyu5, 10 months ago

Absolutely. Rolling distro with stability is very rare in the linux world. Opensuse TW is rock solid with updated software. I stopped distro hopping because of it.

eayavas, 10 months ago

Also openSUSE project provide OBS, which is replacement of Aur on Arch.

Gymnae, 10 months ago

second that. after arch, manjaro, debian and ubuntu i landed there as my daily desktop driver.

for servers, i still stick with debian, but might also go for an immutable rolling release distro next

cupcakezealot, 10 months ago

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.

Ew0, 10 months ago

Gentoo, Void (Daily), Alpine or Antix (Bootable USB).

marmalade, 10 months ago

Used to be Arch, now I shill for Debian.

notfromhere, 10 months ago

What put you off Arch? I just started using it on an old (2015 era) notebook and it seems pretty decent so far

marmalade, 10 months ago

Nothing really. Arch is still great, I just kept having stuff happen where I’d suddenly find out there was a new bug in something at inopportune times. Just the nature of being bleeding edge. Nothing broke severely, but like if you want to join a Zoom call or play a game with friends or something, having something break randomly that you have to fix, even if it just takes a quick search or 5 minutes of troubleshooting can get tiresome.

Also, all of the customization stuff that Arch allows is not as appealing to me anymore since my skill level with Linux has reached a point where I can get super granular with pretty much any distro. Add to that flatpak reducing my need to depend on the AUR, and there you have it.

AstroLightz_, 10 months ago

Debian and Mint are my favorites. I love the included games in Debian, the UI for both (Using cinnamon), and their ease of use.

ImpossibleRubiksCube, 10 months ago

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.

TheV2, 10 months ago

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.

notfromhere, 10 months ago

Having spent years on Gentoo and done several installs, installing Arch the other day was a wall in the park and felt natural. I had to learn the new tech stack (nmcli, pacman, arch-chroot) but after that it was basically easy mode. You mean I don’t have to define compiler flags and feature flags and I don’t have to wait for it to compile or set up a cross arch compiler farm?

Ew0, 10 months ago

This is how I feel about Gentoo too but I use Void as a daily instead, no systemd and it feels more like what Arch used to be (e.g. Runit is like 5k SLOC whereas systemd is 100s of k’s).

Not bashing but everything seems well engineered with less cruft/bitrot than Gentoo. Of course there’s less customisability xbps-src is pretty decent at doing the job, or just write your own templates :)

TheFrirish, 10 months ago

Well I would have normally said Fedora but with the current RedHat issues I’m thinking of making a switch. but in my opinion Fedora was always rock stable and leading edge. currently looking at an alternative.