yes i did a os one but i am wondering what distros do you guys use and why,for me cachyos its fast,flexible,has aur(I loved how easy installing apps was) without tinkering.
- Debian + Xfce on the desktop, because it (mostly, see below) just works, it’s snappy, reliable, and I don’t need my apps being constantly updated (I have very simple needs and use cases)
- Mint + Cinnamon on the laptop, because it’s still debian-based and because unlike Debian, Mint was able to connect my AirPods out of the box and I use them a lot when on the laptop… I also quickly learned to appreciate Cinnamon, I must say.
edit: typos
I wonder what you will think of lmde its linux mint with a debian base instead of ubuntu (It keeps some stuff for eg the desktop updated).
LMDE is snappy as hell and stable as a rock
Never tried lmde but love to try it if cachyos started breaking down.
I’ve seen lmde mentioned on Mint website but if I recall correctly they also presented it like a somewhat experimental version?
I remember there was only lmde 6 with download to 32bit and 64bit
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.
Guix SD because i like editing declarative ((`scheme)) config for my system in emacs
Man gnu endorsed distros are quite rare here.
I use EndeavourOS Xfce because it’s Arch with pacman and not Flathub or Snap. Plus, I love the simplicity and the performance boost you get with Xfce (even if it’s a small boost with a modern gaming PC).
yo finally someone who loves native packages more then flatpack.
Flatpak has its benefits, but there are tradeoffs as well. I think it makes a lot of sense for proprietary software.
For everything else I do prefer native packages since they have fewer issues with interop. The space efficiency isn’t even that important to me; even if space issues should arise, those are relatively easy to work around. But if your password manager can’t talk to your browser because the security model has no solution for safe arbitrary IPC, you’re SOL.
I am pretty sure flatpack is implementing native messaging, Which is what is used by the password manager:
https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/655Ah, so they actually got that implemented. Nice.
Flatpak annoys me
I kinda agree because you need to allow permissions, it’s more secure it’s just annoying.
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
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!
EndeavorOS. Because I wanted to have a rolling release distribution that is always up to date, and one that is good supported by maintainers and community. Good documentation is very important to me. And I trust the team behind EndeavorOS and Archlinux.
Also the manual approach of many things and the package manager based on Archlinux is very nice. I also like the building of custom packages that is then installed with the package manager (basically my own AUR package). The focus on terminal stuff without too much bloat by default is also a huge plus.
What they said.
What do you mean by personal package manager?
I didn’t say “personal package manager”. Do you refer to the part “basically my own AUR package”?
pacman
, the package manager of Archlinux that is also used in EndeavourOS, allows for installing custom packages. There is another tool part of Archlinux that let you build custom packages. These custom packages can be installed on your system, which is then seen like a normal package and handled this way with all the defined dependencies and information about the package. You can install the package from a local location, it does not need to be online repository.Then you can upload it to the AUR, which is exactly that: Arch User Repository. But you don’t have to upload it. Either way such a custom build package is what I referred to my own AUR package. For more information see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository
The focus on terminal stuff without too much bloat by default is also a huge plus.
Prob the reason why i hated garauda (Idk if is it because i picked the dragonized gaming ver)
Probably. I’m definitely not a fan of Garuda Linux (never used it to be honest). The styling and the bloat are not my taste. But the most important thing to me is, if I can trust those developers and maintainers? And I don’t trust most non common distros. Looking at their webpage, they also have a KDE lite version with less bloat and bare minimum packages to get started. This is actually awesome!
Sadly its kde only.
Gentoo because I like it.
And portage.
What distro do you use
I daily drive secureblue.
and why?
Long story short; I love me some security. Unfortunately, My device is far from ideal for running Qubes OS. From within the remaining options, secureblue comes out on top for me.
Linux Mint, because I don’t like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).
Well technically Mint has one terrible default nowadays that is hidden unverified Flatpaks.
I avoid flatpaks, so I don’t mind.
Sure but Flatpak is the package format for new users and it’s a very bad decision for a beginner focused distro to restrict it.
Enough packages show up.
I do agree cinnamon,mate and xfce us not enough but I found cinnamon the least buggy option.
Yk what I LOVE THAT, Why i liked linux mint when i was new.
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.
Plain old Fedora.
I know the hurdles, i know what to expect, and I’ve never been surprised by it.
Immutable sounds nice, AUR sounds nice, NixOS sounds nice, but i am utterly confident in my current choice’s reliability and comfortable with its idiosyncracies. Everything i want to do works very well.
If i had less time/energy or had to switch, Kubuntu would be my second choice. Less frequent updates and fewer creature comforts, but also very reliable.
I’m in the same boat. I was a kde neon person for a very long time, but I eventually got tired of some weird issues I was having that I couldn’t find a fix for. tried fedora on a bit of a whim and everything just worked. Nvidia drivers were a breeze to set up, gnome is very nice out of the box and doesn’t take the configuring I’m used to on kde, and even just having gnome boxes pre installed is super useful and I get to skip the virtualboxes setup. very impressed with it overall. never going back
the 9 month update cycle is my biggest issue, and it’s not a big deal
NixOS & OpenWRT are my two. NixOS’s Nix language as declarative config is such a great tool for setting up & maintaining a machines for the long-term that despite the initial learning curve has paid off in the long run (Guix or a Nix successor should also be in the same category). OpenWRT is the purpose-built tool it is for having an OS for a router with low overhead & a UI that can be easier to understand the config when networking isn’t something you do on the regular.
mint cinnamon because on my system it has no major issues and everything is easy to configure. i don’t have a lot of spare time so i can’t spend hours or even days troubleshooting why something won’t install or run. most other distros have been annoyingly buggy or too difficult to set up.
No Void here?
Oh well… I surely don’t use it because it’s popular…
- Runit
- Pkg manager
- KISS
- Up to date / rolling distro
- But stable
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I was thinking the same thing, but I don’t like void because it doesn’t have every package I want And they only offer old or extremely specific ones.
I went into void as my first DIY distro, mainly because I wanted to mess around with window managers and it was a very good experience. Runit made my underpowered laptop boot into linux in like 4 seconds, crazy fast. XBPS package manager was always really really fast too. I like the fact that nearly everything you need is in the official repo, instead of having to delve into the depths of something like the AUR. I also managed to make a contribution to the repos with the help of the community on the IRC chat rooms which were very noob friendly. Overall just a solid experience.