looking for half-stable Linux distro

Hello, i am currently looking for a Linux distribution with these criteria:

-it should be more or less stable, comparable to Ubuntu with or without LTS // -it should not be related to IBM to any way (so no fedora/redhat) // -it should not feature snaps (no Ubuntu or KDE neon) // -KDE plasma should be installable manually (best case even installed by default) // -no DIY Distros //

I’ve been thinking about using an immutable distro, but if anyone can recommend something to me, I’d be very grateful //

Edit: I’m sorry for the bad formatting, for some reason it doesn’t register spaces

MagneticFusion,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Peter1986C,
    @Peter1986C@lemmings.world avatar

    It is possible to install it on ext4 as well.

    Grangle1,

    In addition, if you don’t want to go the rolling release route, there’s OpenSUSE Leap (which is transitioning to ALP), as well as at least one immutable option if that’s more your thing.

    AlijahTheMediocre,

    I never understood the IBM/Redhat hate being directed at Fedora. Imagine being against using Debian because of the Ubuntu Amazon fiasco that happened years back.

    wer2,

    Probably because of what happened to CentOS. Who owns the Fedora trademark? How independent is Fedora really?

    I am not saying anyone should avoid Fedora, I can just understand why someone would.

    Para_lyzed, (edited )

    Just to clarify, I’m not trying to stand up for Red Hat in any of the following, just explaining the relationship between Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora. My stance on Red Hat has historically been neutral, but recently is erring towards negative after the IBM aquisition. My stance on Fedora has always been positive.

    Probably because of what happened to CentOS.

    Red Hat bought out CentOS in 2014. They took over their trademark, hired their development team, and placed Red Hat developers on the CentOS team. CentOS was downstream of RHEL, so Red Hat had an invested interest in it, since it actually resembles RHEL.

    That’s an important distinction: CentOS was downstream of RHEL, and could be used to replace it in enterprise applications. Fedora is upstream of RHEL, and not suitable for enterprise applications (too many package and kernel updates, everything changes frequently, short term release lifetime, etc.). When CentOS was discontinued in favor of CentOS Stream, it no longer had the same value in enterprise use as RHEL, and its competition to RHEL was mostly eliminated. Again, the most important distinction there is that CentOS competed with RHEL, which is why Red Hat took it over and killed it.

    Fedora is entirely community managed and developed, with FESCo being community-elected and making decisions in the interest of the community, not in the interest of Red Hat. Red Hat sponsors Fedora, but that relationship is merely financial. It provides money to the Fedora Project because RHEL is downstream of Fedora, and benefits from its continual development. Fedora does not compete with RHEL, so Red Hat has no interest in controlling Fedora, nor could they if they wanted to with the way the project is managed.

    Who owns the Fedora trademark?

    Red Hat, of course. But again, Red Hat does not have the means to control the development of Fedora, and they would get nothing but backlash from trying, and gain nothing from it. If Red Hat tried to take over Fedora and were somehow successful, the project could easily be forked and rebranded, with the community currently managing it taking over the new fork and developing from there. Fedora would become stale, and Red Hat would have to manage it entirely, which they clearly don’t want to do in the first place. The only significant difference would be that the new Fedora fork would not be sponsored by Red Hat, and development would slow down as a result. But again, this has nothing but disadvantages for Red Hat. Red Hat benefits from the Fedora Project’s active development, and since it doesn’t compete in their market, they get nothing from destroying it.

    How independent is Fedora really?

    That depends on what aspect of independence you question. Red Hat has no control over the development of Fedora, as that is managed by FESCo. So in that way, Fedora is completely independent. FESCo and the Fedora Project don’t develop for the sole interests of Red Hat; they develop for the community. Of course, Red Hat still benefits from that development regardless, but RHEL specific development is handled by Red Hat, not the Fedora Project, and changes to Fedora from Red Hat developers that would stains against the interests of the community would not be approved. The members of FESCo were elected because the community trusts them to make decisions the benefit everyone.

    Financially, the Fedora Project is quite dependent on Red Hat. That’s where the vast majority of their funding comes from. That funding is given to the Fedora Project because its development is mutually beneficial for both the Fedora community and Red Hat. That fact won’t change anytime soon. The testing, bug fixes, security patches, and feature upgrades from the Fedora community are incredibly valuable for Red Hat, and without a consumer desktop platform to test those changes, Red Hat would be greatly disadvantaged.

    I am not saying anyone should avoid Fedora, I can just understand why someone would.

    Personally, I can’t. At least I certainly can’t understand if their reasoning had anything to do with Red Hat or IBM. The Fedora Project is independently developed, and does not seek to satisfy the interests of either of those companies. I can understand someone not liking how frequently the kernel is updated, but then again, you don’t have to update immediately if you don’t want to. I can understand someone being apprehensive because there is some software available on Ubuntu or Debian, but it isn’t released for Fedora. I can understand someone not liking the dnf package manager; it is quite slow. I can understand someone not liking the folder structure of Fedora over Debian based operating systems. But I cannot understand someone disliking Fedora because they hate Red Hat or IBM. As fas as the end user is concerned, Fedora might as well have nothing to do with Red Hat or IBM. Yes, RHEL is downstream of Fedora, but that doesn’t affect Fedora in any way, it’s downstream, not upstream. Fedora is, always has been, and always will be a community driven project that primarily has the interests of the community in mind. The Fedora Project doesn’t care about what Red Hat wants or does with RHEL, as it doesn’t affect Fedora in the slightest. CentOS was destroyed because it competed with RHEL (or at least Red Hat believed that it did), and Fedora does not. If you don’t like Red Hat then don’t use RHEL, CentOS, or any of their downstreams, but don’t falsely associate the development of Fedora as being at risk of damage by Red Hat.

    Anyone who avoids Fedora because they dislike Red Hat or believe it is at risk from Red Hat is misinformed at best.

    bizdelnick,

    Seems that Slackware is what you are looking for.

    Petter1,

    OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Most stable rolling, in my opinion.

    bizdelnick,

    Even compared to Slowroll?

    WeAreAllOne,

    Slowroll is still experimental.

    Pantherina, (edited )

    Can you please like write the points in a list and not with these weird // in between? Lemmy uses markdown

    
<span style="color:#323232;">- this (that space between line and text is important)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">- is 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">- a list
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">* this
</span><span style="color:#323232;">* too
</span><span style="color:#323232;">* forwhateverreason
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span>

    
*italic*

**bold**

***both***
    Frederic,

    yes Debian, install latest MX Linux (23.2 AHS) and enjoy it, it’s a great distro, up to date, well maintained. There is a KDE version where you can install latest kernel from their AHS repo (6.6.11 as time of writing)

    Johanno,

    Of course debian.

    However pure debian needs some love before you can use it.

    If you want to use steam. Enable 32 bit arch.

    If you want to use flatpak. You need to install it and add the default repo.

    To install kde plasma you need only a single apt command.

    I personally run debian-testing/Trixie.

    Pantherina,

    I dont get Debian. It is so manual, everything needs to be done manually. They default to ext4 which is old as balls, their updates are not automatic (and apt-automatic is painfully complicated to configure) even though on a stable distro you can easily differentiate between security and feature updates.

    Everything that might be nicely preconfigured on Opensuse or Fedora is manual on Debian.

    And… you get years old packages, without any of the fixes the developers added in the past.

    As a semi-rolling Distro Opensuse Slowroll sounds nice. I think it already works, you change repos in Tumbleweed and thats it.

    Johanno,

    The testing branch is at most 3 weeks old. I get new software, not the newest. Kde plasma has a auto update function that works on bootup. (though I usually go into sleep mode and therefore update often by hand.)

    Yes debian is pretty plain and empty but once configured it works. Sure I would recommend Mint to people who don’t like to configure. However the Mint(debian) version is lacking a lot and there is no testing branch you can safely run of.

    Shareni,

    Sure I would recommend Mint to people who don’t like to configure.

    MX > Mint

    Pantherina,

    MX is a traditional derivative Distro afaik, often behind on Updates.

    Shareni,

    MX is preconfigured Debian with extra tools to help manage the system.

    We’re living in the age of flatpak and nix. There are plenty of options to install fresh and bleeding edge packages, while still having your system boot every time.

    Pantherina,

    I loved LSD conky lol.

    Never could get that to work and now on Wayland the whole concept would need to be rewritten to be a part of the desktop containmenr.

    Shareni,

    I’m guessing you replied to the wrong person.

    Can’t you make the same thing in eww and have it work on Wayland?

    Pantherina,

    No, and no idea, probably

    Pantherina,

    Never tried Debian Testing. Is probably nice.

    Jumuta,

    don’t shit on my kde neon like that :(

    kde neon doesn’t come with snap packages, it only supports it so that the user can install snap apps if they want to.

    it’s a great distro and i highly recommend it

    Grangle1,

    I’ve been using it for the past year and can confirm, snap is an option but not forced on you like the *buntu family. It even comes with Flatpak and Flathub installed by default (and does not force that on you either). You have freedom of choice.

    mvirts,

    Psst… Try nixos 😹

    Kerb,
    @Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    what does half stable mean?
    stable os with fresh applications?

    if thats what you are looking for,
    maybe debian with flatpacks for fresher softwares?

    or if you also dont like flatpack, maybe
    debian with nix

    Pantherina,

    Half stable = well tested, not artificially held back, not untested

    backhdlp,

    people will read stable and instantly comment debian

    Jokes aside, given that you said in a comment that it’s for non-tech-savvy people, I’d say Linux Mint, partially just because it will look familiar if they’ve seen any Windows PC.

    Pantherina,

    They mentioned KDE

    eugenia,
    @eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

    Definitely Debian. Or Mint if you also like the cinnamon desktop (which is similar to KDE’s in terms of default look).

    Pantherina,

    Cinnamon has no real Wayland support, along with all the fancy stuff like perfect fractional scaling, multi refresh rates, HDR support, and whatnot. At least Wayland support is important

    acockworkorange,

    They didn’t specify that requirement. For instance, I have zero need for any of that and therefore can keep on trucking on Xorg until Wayland reaches my DE of choice in a stable form.

    Pantherina,

    I imagine installing KDE on Mint is not a good experience. You would need to remove the entire desktop, all the iconsets etc. and then install KDE.

    Lets see which X.org desktop wins the race for 3rd place with real Wayland support! I sure hope for the best.

    acockworkorange,

    I have yet to find an actual description of said difficulties. I’ve used Debian based distros for over 20 years, with a recent hiatus of some 3 years recently when I simply stopped using PCs at home. A different DE was always just an apt-get away, then select which of the N installed DEs you wanted to try at the login screen.

    Pantherina,
    • setup autoupdates
    • setup virt-manager
    • install flatpak apps

    This is for sure different on GNOME than on KDE, my reference is GNOME and its horrible packagenames make debloating a pain.

    acockworkorange,

    What part of that is related to installing a DE side by side another? I’m genuinely asking. Never had to do any of that. Why are you doing it?

    Pantherina, (edited )

    Ok saw it

    acockworkorange,

    I imagine installing KDE on Mint is not a good experience. You would need to remove the entire desktop, all the iconsets etc. and then install KDE.

    Then WTF are you talking about here? How can your experience in DIY distro be applicable in any way to Mint?

    Pantherina,

    Oops, wrong comment, the Mint guy not the Debian guy. I would expect some theming issues. In general Mint->remove cinnamom->add plasma-desktop may be fine

    acockworkorange,

    Unless you’re running from a thumb drive, no need to remove anything. That’s really the beauty of it.

    Pantherina,

    In my experience mixing themes is a bad idea. So yeah, remove stuff.

    acockworkorange,

    Themes? They’re entirely different DEs. Again, your experience with DIY Linux is worth nothing. Stop spreading misinformation to newcomers.

    Pantherina,

    I have experience with GNOME and KDE and their themes overlapped a lot. If you say this is not the case with Cinnamon, that is cool!

    Flaky,

    What about Pop!_OS? It fits all the criteria. It’s an Ubuntu distro by System76 (known for their computers that run Linux) that foregoes Snaps for Flatpaks, so you get Ubuntu’s reliability/stability without the Snaps. It does default to its own spin on GNOME, however you can install an alternative desktop environment just fine.

    fanbois,

    Love popOS, but it did not play well with my multi monitor setup. It just couldn’t deal with different resolutions (qhd laptop, two fhd monitors) and sizes. Mint can. So I am back to Mint and stopped worrying about distro hopping.

    Starfish, (edited )

    Debian Stable as base OS, then activate unstable repos in a sandbox/container. Maybe even Distrobox for newer Apps.

    Vilian,

    kde neon don’t use snaps

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