So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:

  • Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
  • Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.

For example:

  • Distro (first-level comment)
    • Reason (one answer)
    • Other reason (a different answer)

Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.

  • @[email protected]
    1•2 years ago

    NixOS. Reproducible, Wide Package selection, Hard to fuck up + Not yet another Arch based distro

  • @[email protected]
    -2•2 years ago

    Manjaro, it’s just very stable, has access to the AUR, actually looks good and feels like a modern OS should feel.

  • @[email protected]
    10•2 years ago

    I’ve been trying to convert to linux since the mid-2000’s. Ubuntu and derivatives, fedora, and SUSE. Gaming and my lack on knowledge always brought me back to Windows.

    In 2018 I tried Manjaro and loved it. But I broke it without the knowledge to fix it multiple times. The Arch BTW memes were strong at the time so I took the plunge and studied the wiki, and documented my own installation process and really learned a lot in the process. Proton was released and suddenly gaming got WAY better. I didn’t remove my windows install completely until 2022 but Arch has been my home on my main machine.

    I have since put together a proxmox cluster and run many distros for various things but that’s a whole other rabbit hole!

    • @[email protected]
      4•2 years ago

      • Android-free Linux distribution specializing in supporting older smartphones.

      • Up-to-date software based on Alpine Linux and focused on privacy and security.

      • Highly portable construction centered around a single software base regardless of what device it’s running on.

      • Goal of keeping a given device running and updated until it physically falls apart.
    • @[email protected]
      3•2 years ago

      • Supports a wide variety of hardware, including ARM devices such as the Pinebook Pro.

      • Up-to-date rolling release.

      • Multiple DE’s available with customized, clean interfaces.

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 years ago
        • Recommends rolling back system clock when they forget to update security critical website components.
    • lemminur
      7•2 years ago

      Being a source based distro, programs are compiled and optimized to your system configuration. Additionally you can add/remove features you dis/like using USE flags.

    • @[email protected]
      2•2 years ago

      It allows me to run any weird combination of applications I feel I need on a given day, (fairly) easily integrating basically all open source packages with a custom/local overlay and have those managed as part of the system just like everything else.

    • @[email protected]
      0•2 years ago

      I have been thinking to give NixOS a spin but feel like it’s above my brain capacity for me to handle. Do you also use homemanager and Flakes? Homemanager kinda makes sense (manage packages for non root users) but what does Flakes do?

      • @[email protected]
        2•2 years ago

        I am already trying it and I am still no expert. How I understand flakes is that it is a file with inputs, like nixpkgs and other flakes or repos you might depend on and some outputs that can be things like a nixshell with packages and environment variables, custom packages and configs like your NixOS configurations and home manager. When you use your flake for the first time, by entering a nix shell with nix develop, building a package with nix build, rebuild your NixOS system with nixos-rebuild --flake .#<hostname>, etc, nix will generate a flake.lock file that stores the hashes of all of your inputs and thus pinning the input versions. This means that if you ever run any of those commands again, you should get the same result because the inputs are pinned and the same version. If you want to update, you just run nix flake update and it will regenerate the flake.lock file with new hashes for the newest version. The advantage with flakes is that it is fully reproducible, even if one of your dependencies changes, because the hash is specified and centrally managed in the inputs of your flake.

        Nix flakes can be used for your NixOS system by adding the nixos configurations in the outputs of your nix flake and adding the dependencies like nixpkgs to the inputs. You can also combine it with home manager by either specifying it as a separate output or adding it as a nixos module inside the nixos configurations output. You just copy your existing nixos and home manager config to the folder with your flake and reference them inside the flake.nix. If you added home manager as a nixos module, you only need to run nixos-rebuild switch --flake <path-to-flake>.#<hostname> and it will automatically rebuild both your NixOS configuration and home manager configuration. You can then backup the folder with your flake and configurations by uploading them to GitHub for example.

        The best resource I found was this 3 hour video by Matthias Benaets: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y&feature=share7

        • @[email protected]
          2•2 years ago

          Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. It does sound complicated haha. I should probably follow along the YT video. Thanks again!

    • @[email protected]
      2•2 years ago

      You get it for the low price of loosing all fun/motivation in setting up, customizing and mintaining machines with other distros

    • @[email protected]
      1•2 years ago

      Do it once, do it right. Save work be redeploying the same configuration (or submodules) on mutiple machines or the same machine multiple times.