wanting to hop into the world of linux on a dual boot method (one of my favorite games unfortunately cannot be run on linux at all, and it’s a gacha. I don’t want to gamble with my account being banned, so I’m keeping windows for it specifically.) this’ll be my second go at it, I used Pop!_OS briefly but had some issues with wifi and didn’t love the GNOME layout. I have a new distro picked out, but I just was curious what other people are using in this community. was also wondering what made you fall on your current one.
and maybe as some bonus questions, what are some distros you’ve tried but didn’t like? what about a distro you want to try eventually? I’ve seen distrohopping is a thing, hahaha.
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Used Ubuntu for ~15 years, switched to NixOS a couple months ago and haven’t looked back.
I’ve made a habit of clean installing all of the desktops/laptops/servers in my life on the first point release of each LTS (i.e. 22.04.1). That would mean there was time for the dust to settle and for me to tweak my install/customization scripts from the previous LTS.
So since I knew I was gonna have to modify my Ubuntu install scripts to work with 24.04 anyways, I fiigured it was a decent time to try and see if I could get the install scripts converted to a nix config instead, and it ended up working a treat.
Mint on a couple of old laptops. Debian command line on a hobby server. Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi.
Didn’t love Arch (too complicated for my skills at the time). Fedora was okay and would do in a pinch. I remember liking OpenSUSE, but went back to Mint for some reason that I don’t remember (probably driver- or repo-related).
I’ll likely never try it myself, but I’ve known new users who did ok with Zorin.
I’m currently on Neon on the desktop (and macOS on the mac). On the servers it nearly all debian and a couple of BSDs
Over the last almost 25 years i’ve almost exclusively ran KDE when not being stuck with windows (for various reasons). Ive heard good things about Arch, but I’m getting far too old to be bothered with a semi-complex install (yes I have run Gentoo for several years, so I think it is an age thing).
Mint 21.3 as my main Desktop OS - almost zero complaints after over a year. Everything just works.
Ubuntu using Linux-Surface on my old Surface Pro. Breathed new life into a device I had abandoned (after all 8gb of ram isn’t enough for Windows malware these days). Gnome works really nice on a touchscreen two-in-one. Kudos to the Linux-Surface folks. They took one of the few positive developments from Microsoft (Surface hardware) and made it possible to remove the worst part (windows). Not that I’ll ever buy a Surface again. It also allowed me to retire my iPad.
Fedora Linux on a cheap Dell laptop as my media client. Fedora is nice and runs well, haven’t done too much with it other than Firefox and Calibre. Nice to see a different ‘branch’ in action.
I’m pretty basic and generally lazy so I don’t delve into some of the smaller distros or distro hop. Maybe later I’ll do it with VMs, but eh not sure it’s my kind of hobby. Too many other things to do.
Best of luck and let us know how it goes.
Seconding this experience with Mint 21.3, although on a laptop here. I just wanted something that works without much fucking about, and it delivers.
Yes! Linux Mint is such a great project - it made me excited to get on my desktop again.
I have a Surface Notebook 2 and for the life of me can’t get Ubuntu (or Xubuntu in my case) to work with it. No matter which installation style I use, either it crashes during the installation or never boots into the bootloader. Eventually I installed some custom Arch, but I hate it.
If it’s any comfort, it took me a few tries to get it to work. It was over a year ago so the details are a bit rusty. I started out trying to install Debian, and it also crashed during installation, so I went back and tried some of the bug fixes. (One was something to do with the MOK). Debian didn’t work after that but Ubuntu did. It was a strange experience, and there’s nothing that would motivate me to switch after I finally got it to work.
Perhaps you can give it another shot sometime and it’ll work. If you hate the custom arch that’s on it, and you don’t use it, you might as well try.
Yeah I’ll try eventually, but I got another Laptop running Xubuntu just fine, so I just don’t really use the Surface at all. It’s more of a last resort for the time being, and for that, any OS will do.
Happily running EndeavourOS with KDE for like 3 years without reinstall.
Kubuntu
Started with Mint, next tried Ubuntu and I just stuck with it for now. It’s a polished experience although sometimes snaps issues show up, so I’ve been considering switching to either PopOS 24.04 when it comes out or trying out Nix.
I am using CentOS 9 in WSL. I don’t particularly care what distribution I use because I mostly using a bash shell as a software development environment. I prefer apt to flat packs and use ubuntu 20 on an embedded system that I write code for at work. I keep wanting to get more experience with KDE and gnome, but I haven’t been good about using my free time to mess with OS. As long as I have vim and a prompt that uses vi input, I am pretty content. (Does this make me sound old? The kids at work have trouble following what I am doing when we pair program.)
Bazzite Linux running KDE Plasma 6. It’s a wonderful distro based on Fedora 40 (I think, still kinda new) and it’s made for gaming.
Arch KDE and SteamOS.
Currently running Garuda for gaming and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for everything else. Very much look forward to combining them in my own Arch/Void install when I get my new laptop.
Dumb question, why don’t you use Garuda for everything?
As somebody who rarely PC games at the moment, I feel it’s pretty bloated for what it is. But my Nvidia GPU worked out of the box so
slackware
I’m on MX Linux
I run Fedora on my gaming PC (KDE) and my ThinkPad (GNOME/Hyprland). It’s a rock-solid distro. Some may think the release cycle is too fast, but then just don’t upgrade right away.
Distrohopping is an addiction for me. As soon as I get settled, I’m ready to bounce. I want my gaming PC to stay where it is, but I might hop my ThinkPad around. Maybe. Fedora on it is fantastic.
I’m currently using Kubuntu, although I’m planning on switching to Debian or maybe NixOS at some point. Kubuntu works, but I don’t like snaps, and even though I’ve removed them I’d rather just not ever have to deal with them.
I first started with Mint, but didn’t like gnome/cinnamon which is why I switched to Kubuntu, but other than that it was fine.
