I’m wondering if a distro like the one I’m looking for even exists:
- simple as in KISS and vanilla. This excludes Debian where the package manager is too complex and packages deviate from upstream too much, as well as OpenSUSE, where systems administration relies on GUI tools too much and the package manager is even more complex.
- fixed release (excludes everything Arch-based)
So from the major distros, only Fedora is left as an option, where I really don’t know enough about it. Is it possible to do a minimal install of it? Is it built around a GUI app store? Does it rely on Flatpak like Ubuntu does with Snap?
Or are there other distros out there that I’m not aware of? Basically everything from the past 5 years I have no experience with. I’ve heard good things about NixOS, but it sounds weird as a daily driver.
Arch is “fixed release”? Since when…
They’re saying they want a fixed release, therefore excluding anything Arch.
On OpenSuse, sudo zypper install package-name
Not too complex if you ask me.
complexity =/= ease of use
You complained about reliance on GUI tools, so you’re going to have to explain how that isn’t easy to use if folk are to help you. What is the issue with that for you?
Most stuff on opensuse, you can also do on command line. Having a GUI to help people who like a GUI doesn’t mean people who like command line aren’t facilitated.
If you’re not in favour of Arch-like distro, don’t bother with NixOS and GuixSD. They’re both going to be a nightmare to work with.
“Hard to use” isn’t an issue for me. I simply dislike rolling release distros.
NixOS is kind of a hybrid rolling release distro. You’re better off with Linux Mint. Personally, I dislike Flatpak, and I don’t understand Scheme, so I’m on NixOS. Writing expressions is going to be a real pain, if you’re a developer.
Yeah, NixOS has both stable and rolling release channels so you can choose which you want to use, and you can even use unstable packages while on the stable channel. And you can just not update for a couple months and it’ll be fine.
I haven’t used it myself, and admittedly am entirely unfamiliar, but a buddy put popos on something recently and was talking about how smooth and simple it was. Might be worth a gander.
PopOS is Debian based, which has apt as a package manager (OP no likey likey).
Slackware is the solution then clearly.
Linux mint
Same package manager as Debian, isn’t it? Which OP said is too complex.
There’s also GUI package manager, if you want to use that.
Which he also mentioned he doesn’t like to depend on.
If you say Debian’s and OpenSUSE’s package manager are too complex for you, I can tell you that NixOS’ package manager is definitely not for you.
Mac OSX
Hannah Montana Linux.
if Hannah Montana Linux is to complicated, then Uwuntu
This is always correct.
Slackware. It’ll take a bit of getting used to but it meets your criteria.
I have the same recommendation, try slack out it really feets.
But I think it will be like Genie fullfiling your wishes - you don’t really know what you are looking for, but it might really suit you.
I was going to say the same
deleted by creator
Slackware is obvious choice, exactly what you are looking for.
It was my first distro and I miss it a lot. Simplicity and stability are main selling points.
You’ve picked pretty stupid criteria, but if you’re adamant on it, as another commenter said Slackware is probably one of the best options.
Fedora dances with Flatpak quite a bit, but you could double check if RHEL does (since that’s what Fedora is based on).
Again, while Slackware (and possibly RHEL) fit your criteria, your criteria seems pretty silly, and you’re likely to walk into bigger (and harder to solve) problems on more obscure platforms.
What’s the complex part about “apt” or “zypper”?
Taking apt as an example: The fact that it has recommended and suggested dependencies, meta-packages and virtual packages, that installing a package and then removing it again often leaves your system in a different state than before, that it has 7 different default front-ends for different tasks, (don’t mix them!), apt-pinning, blacklists, 5 different repository branches, …
After a hiatus in Mac and windows land, I came back into Linux a with similar wishlist.
It’s quite a diversion, but I actually went with FreeBSD. Now it’s not Linux but with the separation of base system and packages, you get a stable base that is released at a pretty fixed consistent schedule.
For packages you can pick from quarterly or weekly update schedule, so you can have a stable base OS with bleeding edge software. The binary package manager is easy to use, but if you want more control you can opt for building from source as well.
The init system is BSD based so all main config goes into a single rc.conf file, very easy to understand and work with.
Most mainstream applications such as Firefox, postgresql, nginx etc are just a
pkg installaway and it natively supports zfs (even as root fs) which was one of the reasons I got really interested in it 10 years ago.Of course, there is software, especially some younger projects that don’t support FreeBSD. So while there are thousands of packages available, some Linux only applications won’t work.
Personally, I would pick FreeBSD any time that the software I require supports it. I only run Linux (settled on pop is for now) if the software I need requires it.
Thank you for one of the few helpful answers in this thread.
It doesn’t quite fit your fixed release requirement, but have you checked out void? It’s like arch, but has no systemd and it’s more stable then arch
