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.
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.
Hannah Montana Linux
I don’t think it’s mentioned here yet: Siduction
More well known but less common as a desktop: Alpine
Nyarch Linux
Just to be an absolute rebel; Solus
All distributions of free, open-source and user-empowering software like Linux are great and deserve recognition. Whether it’s simple, new user-friendly distros like Linux Mint that make the transition process from proprietary garbage like Windows as easy as possible or advanced distros that are meant for power users like Gentoo, Arch or Void Linux. But these specifically deserve more recognition in my opinion:
Gentoo. People hate it for being hard to install or because it’s source based, but it allows you to customize everything, including build options for programs etc. It empowers users and teaches them a little about how their system works. Gentoo doesn’t tell the user what to do, the user is in full control of their system. ChromeOS is based on it, because it offers infinite flexibility and customizability.
Also, Tails OS. It’s what keeps many oppressed journalists and activists anonymous and secure, and it’s what Edward Snowden used to inform the public about the horrible things going on at the NSA. The same goes for Qubes OS and Whonix.
I don’t get the sense that people hate Gentoo, I think it’s mostly just people joking about it. That said gentoo is really cool and doesn’t always get the respect it deserves, but I think most people who actually follow through with it have some appreciation for it!
Void Linux for the arch and gentoo crowd. It’s a system that can be assembled more cohesively.
Nix and Guix - the ideas they bring to the table are revolutionary. I prefer Guix due to its use of Scheme (guile). But Nix is more mature and has more packages.
I’ve used Debian for years but tried Void on a really low spec netbook and it’s pretty nice. The install is pretty painless and not having systemd is an interesting change for me.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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EndeavorOS btw.
SteamOS
It’s a nice one for low end machines
All of them, thanks a lot for all the Devs hard work, I’ve tried and loved so many distros that I can’t choose any of them but lately I have been using cachyos which is a clean and fast arch based distro.
Plain ol Debian
Using it over years and discovered the expert installer a few months ago. Really good stuff, especially since they decide to build an extra repo for non-free-firmware, because a lot of people ditch Debian when their shitty WiFi doesn’t get recognized immediately after install because it needs a non-free-firmware.
been thinking about moving on from Pop_OS and doing the usual looking around – was going to be a toss up between NixOS, Void, Alpine, and Debian Sid – but recently caught Veronica Explains talking about Debian and realizing enough with all the noise – simple, stable, boring, ubiquitous sounds REALLY appealing …
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I’ve been using it on servers for over 20 years. It’s a great distro.
It’s a community project. Every member of the Debian project has equal rights and vote on major decisions. It’s not owned by a large company so it’s mostly avoided any controversy due to bad decisions (for comparison, see the controversy around CentOS Stream).
They mostly don’t change things if they work fine as-is. The network configuration in
/etc/network/interfacesis essentially the same format as it was 20 years ago. (for comparison, see Ubuntu deciding to change how it does things every few years). Probably the biggest recent change was switching to systemd in 2015, but even today they have a compatibility layer to convert packages with sysvinit-style services to systemd, and you can still switch back to sysvinit and completely get rid of systemd.You can upgrade to the next version in-place - just edit the apt repository config to point to the next version,
apt update,apt full-upgrade, and reboot into new kernel version. Most upgrades are seamless (but it’s still best to read the release notes).Most packages include a
README.Debianfile in /usr/share/docs somewhere that usually includes very brief instructions on how to get started with the program.It supports practically every system architecture. They still make an i686 build that works with processors as old as the Pentium 4. They also had an i386 build that worked on systems as old as the original Pentium, and only dropped it this year with Debian 12. Supporting an architecture doesn’t just mean the base OS - it also includes most of the packages too.
@dan what is the name of the distro.please tell me I am switching to Linux from windows and I don’t want to use Ubuntu.
I’m talking about Debian :)
What I love about Debian is there are always instructions regardless of whatever random package I want to use or Linux thing I’m trying to do.
I tried it once, and it was hella impressive, but I didn’t stick with it, I don’t know why. It just seems a little too much for me.
It kinda fucks up your FS (not in a data-loss way, but it gets really messy): it was showing 3.2TB… on a 509gb partition of a 1tb ssd. Heck, I only have 3TB in my whole PC
reminds me of /proc always being 128TB for no reason
Different tools handle that differently. Takes a little extra eye adjustment to tease out the information from
df -h, for example.that was from baobab… which is supposed to “just work”
Bedrock looks crazy impressive and ambitious but, adding to your point, I have to admit I keep forgetting it exists.
On that note, I’ll add Vanilla OS.
:-) BedrockLinux, my daily driver for a dozen years. :-)
woah, nice!
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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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