For me it’s PeppermintOS.
I started my Linux adventure a few years ago, and haven’t owned a Windows PC since.
I currently use Arch on my main rig, and I wanted to install Linux on two old laptops that I found laying around in my house
I then remembered the first distro I ever used, which is PeppermintOS, and I was amazed at the latest updates they released.
They even have a mini ISO now to do a net-install with no bloat, with a Debian or Devuan base.
Sadly, I believe the founder passed away a few years ago, which is why I was really happy to see the continuation of this amazing project.
+1 for Peppermint. I installed it on a thumb drive and always carry it with me while travelling. This way I can boot it on the company laptop to safely steam video and browse social media while not touching the (encrypted) company disk.
I don’t think it’s mentioned here yet: Siduction
More well known but less common as a desktop: Alpine
I’m the boring old type that think the best distros are generally the most promoted ones.
Except Ubuntu. They have a special place in my heart. I had to fight their Snap system exactly like I had to fight the telemetry in Windows7, and eventually I got worn out and moved on.
The WebApp system that PeppermintOS uses is fantastic though and deserves more both recognition and use!
I generally don’t understand why people go for the smaller ones at all. I guess it’s good that someone does to prevent the whole scene being dominated by a single distro, but with some exceptions (e.g. you hate systemd for some reason and really want systemd-less arch, or you have a super niche preferences). For 99% of distros it makes very little difference which one you use, except that you’ll have fewer resources at your disposal (fewer packages, fewer stack overflow threads, fewer everything).
ubuntu pushing snap is what pushed me away. i had used it since warty and was a regular contributor in the official forums. i went back to pure debian, and have since added mint and manjaro (yes i know about its history) desktops, and a few dietpi on x64 (no sbc here), two of which run my piholes.
I don’t know about it’s history, can you enlighten me?
main source is ManjarNo
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Doing changes right is a bit hard. With immutable Distros, some changes are easier like adding or removing packages, bur core OS adaptions are harder.
But for example how would you convert regular Ubuntu to
- unsnap
- KDE Desktop, no GNOME at all
- rolling mesa and more
- …
This all gets messy, so people choose small distros
I’m on arch, which I consider one of the larger distros, where most such configuration is very simple. Not sure what rolling mesa is. I probably wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu to anyone who is against using Snap, but there are many distros to choose from if you want KDE as well? It’s more a question of why people would go for Hannah Montana Linux (figuratively speaking, some very niche distro).
But to respond to your core point, sure. If you do have a lot of customization needs for whatever reason, then by all means. (I still don’t get it)
I meant that its not easy to customize deep system changes and keep them working well, on your own.
There are Forks of Ubuntu like TuxedoOS, PopOS (?) and more that do rather big changes that could break things. So its best to have a community support them.
But I agree on your point. Currently I am on Fedora Kinoite but still dont switch to ublue, as I can do the changes on my own, on the official base.
If I had an NVIDIA card though, I think ublue is the only Distro thats reliable enough (if an update would break, you simply dont get it)
The nature of FOSS suggests (make that extra italic) that the most popular distros should be those that actually work the best. Totally agree that Ubuntu is an outlier, and even that is because of choices Canonical made – and corporate decisions really aren’t typically a part of FOSS.
That said, I truly enjoy smaller distros for hobbyism. I don’t necessarily see a use case where they should be chosen over a larger one, except for the really annoying fact that distros with corporate backing will always also tend to get quicker adoption.
I like to be able to browse docs and forum posts when I run into issues. Ubuntu sucks but is great at this, Mint is great but they suck at this.
NixOS
Archcraft
Bazzite, a gaming-oriented immutable distro with up to date Fedora packages and kernel, a lot of the kernel patches you’d want for gaming, automatic daily updates in the background, the option of installing the Nix package manager and Distrobox out of the box. They even have a Steam Deck version that works just like stock UI/UX wise but with all the added goodies.
Plus, on rpm-ostree/ublue-os as a whole, it just amazes me to no end you can basically look at deploying a distro as if it’s a git repo these days. Wanna try Gnome? Rebase to the corresponding image and reboot, your data is still there. Don’t like it? Quickly rollback or just pick the previous entry on GRUB. Incredible stuff, I’m sticking with those if I can help it for the foreseeable future.
+1 here. I wanted to write the same. Silverblue/ uBlue in particular has a huge potential.
It already is extremely user friendly, but if someone could develop an even more “noob”-friendly version with a great welcome-starter that shows you how to install stuff, a good looking KDE rice, and sells it as extra-distro with it’s own website and iso, then it could easily replace Mint as the #1 best beginner distro!
Heck, Bazzite is most of the way there. With how quickly it’s been improving, wouldn’t surprise me if it had all that pretty soon.
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It’s just difficult to install with a gui
I love the idea of peppermint OS but it didn’t work properly on my laptop both times I tried it, first time it wouldn’t install any of the extras I selected during the install process and the second time using the Debian 12 base it just straight up wouldn’t give me an option to install extras and the window would instantly close when I tried to open it. I really love the ideology behind it and it is a speedy OS but I’ve ended up going to LMDE instead while I toy with the idea of Arch.
Maybe it has more recognition than I’m aware, but Fedora has been really good to me since 2018!
Mint is surprisingly loved and disliked from what I have seen. Having used it since 2007 I am in the category that likes it for what it is. But I am somewhat surprised by the open hostility it gets for simply existing. Main arguments being that it is a dinosaur, uses X11, should not exist because anything not KDE or GNOME is just diluting desktop Linux and is part of the problem. It has no fancy corporate sponsor, it has a small team, and it for sure has warts, but you can claw Linux Mint from my cold dead hard drive because I have distro hopped like an addict and it just checks the boxes for me. It shows up and works, even on newer hardware with a little tweaking here and there, but I can use Nvidia, find network printers without effort, scan, install and update flatpak, backup the system, game, and get actual work done that is not fiddle farting around with esoteric configs all the time. I can post on actual forums with actual users on it and not some discord where someone will just post memes over my questions. I have a strong feeling it will exist for a long while given it’s history. And it is mind numbingly borning as an OS. I just sit down and compute, what a concept.
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How can someone speak such truth. Agree it is not perfect. But it just works and really well. Only big controversy I can think of is the website being hacked a couple of years ago, but they were open and transparent in my opinion about the hole thing. Also disto hoped a lot but I am always brought back to “green Ubuntu”. Can Mint team get ontop of Wayland please
If there was only a way to get automatic tiling on cinnamon it’d be my favorite desktop by far. Everything you need, nothing you don’t, sensible by default. It’s the right option for most people I think
Speaking as a relative linux noob, Mint is probably the most recommended distro I’ve seen now that Ubuntu jumped the shark. Not sure how anyone could think it needs more recognition.
Excellent - I’m about to install it for my aged mother, because windows keeps moving her cheese.
I want something that doesn’t change the workflows once she’s learned how to do a task, and that local techs can help her with, and that I can VNC to when I have to.
You can configure the system for backup and auto updates which is handy to keep it secure without any interaction. Only reason I ever had it fail was entirely me screwing it up, usually by distro hopping and formatting wrong.
Nyarch Linux
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Linux libre distros deserve as little recognition as possible. They prevent critical CPU security updates and fixes (I.E igpu leak) and suppress warnings that you are running outdated microcode, leaving you potentially vulnerable to exploits such as meltdown
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Gnuinos or Trisquel - Trisquel cos its clean and just works. Gnuinos cos its interesting, Devuan based and just fast.
It’s a nice one for low end machines
