I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I’m learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?
RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.
Void. Minimal, all the programs I need are in the repos, which is a first for me. Very fast.
Debian just works.
Gentoo, because if it exists - compile it.
I am using Bluefin, based on Fedora Silverblue. I realized that I was already exclusively using flatpaks for everything except one random app, so I thought why not go all-in?
Haven’t had to worry about updates or system breakages since, and it’s been great so far.
I used to use Debian Stable, but since doing SysAdmin work I’ve just become used to the way Fedora / RHEL does things.
For me it’s openSUSE Tumbleweed on my Desktops/Laptops and openSuse Leap on my Servers. The killing Feature for me was the propper BTRFS integration with Snapper for seamless rollbacks in case I borked the system in some way.
One “downside” for me is the mix of Gnome Settings and Yast on my Desktop. But I like yast on my servers for managing everything (enabling ports in firewall, network config, enable autoamtic isntall of security updates, etc.). Also openSuse is not that common, so sometimes it is hard to find a solution if you have a distribution specific question.
Personally never looked to closely into openSuse Build Services (OBS). But I know some people who really like it.
I use Debian and Mint. As others have said, it’s because it just works and I don’t have to screw with it.
Debian. Truly the universal operating system. Runs on all of my laptops, desktops, servers, and NAS with no fuss and no need to keep track of distro-specific differences. If something has a Linux version, it probably works on Debian.
Granted, I am a bit biased. All of my hardware is at least 5 years old. Also came from Windows, where I kept only the OS and browser up to date, couldn’t be bothered with shiny new features. A package manager is already a huge luxury.
I know. Stop worrying about your computer and install Debian! It just works. It updates without a problem.
Fedora Atomic because I don’t fucking care what package manager and whatnot sits underneath.
I just wanna relax in my free time and not worry about all this fucking nerd stuff.
Touching grass > Troubleshooting a broken system
Arch users here, just touched grass for the first time. Felt like bloat, had my lawn paved.
Fuck lawns!
Have you considered native pollinator meadows, moss gardens or clover? They have an actual use for nature too, are pretty much zero maintenance and are not just eye candy 😉
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The fricking AUR
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Nothing I don’t _actually_ need
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Pacman
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Everything is the latest version available–ALWAYS.
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ArchWiki
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Arch is the best, the arch wiki is massive, pacman is just amazing, no nvidia drivers bullshitting, and rolling release has only broken one thing once, life under the arch is pretty great
Arch wiki is the best! I reference often, even though I’m generally applying the information to other distros
Also PKGBUILD’s are the superior packaging format. Back in the day people use to talk about preferring debian or redhat based distros based on how much they liked debs or rpms. Building packages on Arch is easier than pretty much any distro I have ever tried to build packages on.
I recently needed to build newer versions of some packages for Debian. Now, they’re go based so the official packaging is super complicated and eventually I decided to try and make my own from scratch. After a few more hours of messing with the official tooling I start thinking “there must be a better way.”
And sure enough, after a bit of searching I found makedeb which allows you to make debs from (almost) regular PKGFILEs. Made the task a million times simpler.
I really like CachyOS:
- Arch based a. Pacman package manager b. AUR c. Rolling release distro
- Graphical installer
- Extensive software repo. Things that I used to only be able to get as a flatpak are available in the repo, such as SurfShark VPN as an example
- Super fast.
- Updates are tested before they are made available and the delay is only a few days.
I wanted to try it but its installer kept hanging when it saw my LUKS on LVM setup :(
I (maybe) ended distrohopping last year when I gave NixOS a shot. I can’t recommend it for beginners but once you understand generally how things work on Linux (and have an interest in programming) it’s a superpower to be able to define your entire setup as a single git repository. If something ever breaks, I can reboot into an older commit and keep using my computer, or branch off in a different direction… I’ve only scratched the surface of NixOS and yet I can already make a live USB containing my setup with a single command, or deploy it (“infect”) to another machine and manage e.g my work desktop and my personal laptop sharing most settings. Also it taught me about Nix (the package manager, which also runs on any distro and macOS independent of NixOS) which I now use to set up perfect development environments for each of my projects… if I set up dependencies once (as a flake.nix shell), it’ll work forever and anywhere.
Some more points about Nix:
- It’s a fast way to get to a specific setup, like a particular DE or Vulkan gaming support, thanks to abstraction that NixOS modules provide
- There are tons of packages
- Because packages are installed by adding a config entry you don’t accumulate random software you forgot you installed
- Immutable updates and rollbacks - this is similar to benefits of atomic ostree distros, but the nix solutions are more general, so you have one system that does more things with a consistent interface
- in addition to updating the base system, rollbacks also roll back user-installed packages, and configurations if those are managed via Nix
- devshells provide per-directory packages and configuration using the same package repos as the host system, without needing to manage docker images
- Nix is portable - much of what it does on NixOS can also be used in other distros, or even on Macos or Windows with the Linux subsystem
- Configurations often combine NixOS and Home Manager parts. The Home Manager part can be used à la carte on other OSes is a way that is fully isolated from the host OS package management. For example on Macos this is a much nicer alternative to Homebrew.
- devshells also work on other OSes
- similar to Guix - but NixOS uses systemd, and is (from what I understand) more tolerant of non-free software (whether these are pros or cons is up to individual interpretation)
Same for me. I distro-hopped for about 20 years with OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Fedora being the most memorable desktop setups for me. While all that was a valuable experience, NixOS feels like graduation.
For the Nix-curious: I wish someone would have told me not to bother with the classic config and build a flake-based system immediately. They’re “experimental” in name only, very stable and super useful in practice.
Same for me, I stopped distro-hoping 2 years ago when I moved to NixOS.
It was tough at first, setting it up took a while and i genuinely felt stupid like i haven’t felt for a while; but now I love having the same config on my two laptops. I have one that stays at work and another one for traveling. With one word/line added into my config I can as a software, configure the VPN, change the wallpaper on both my laptop, or not. Some stuff like gaming goes only on the traveling laptop.
Also, another big thing for me is the feeling of having a cleanly built system all the time. I haven’t felt the urge to do a clean reinstall since I started with NixOS.
Absolutely +1 for flakes. It’s got some annoying UX sometimes (make sure you
git addany new files before building!) but absolutely makes up for it by its features.
Nixos Is my first distro I use on desktop. I’m not sure why but I guess the fact that it won’t build till it checks Is a huge plus for me. I love to f up things to learn from them but I don’t like broken things and oh boy. Nix keeps me in the clean, safe. Don’t get me wrong im doing stupid stuff all the time but just cus i have a few configs written down i can learn a lot. Or a little that amazes me lol
NixOS is indeed probably the safest way to run an “unstable” distro. No matter what you do or mess up you can always reboot back.
Mint. Takes half an hour to install and set up. Doesn’t get in the way after that.
Debian (testing) is most suitable for me. If there were a universally best distro, all the others would cease to exist…
It isn’t made by a for-profit company and thus doesn’t have “features” I don’t want.
It pays attention to software freedom, though it isn’t so restrictive about it that it doesn’t work with my hardware.
It was very easy to install only the things I wanted and needed.
OpenSUSE tumbleweed: Up-to-date, unbreakable due to Btrfs+snapper, very secure defaults (firewall), based in Germany. It works perfectly on my Thinkpad, so I couldn’t ask for better.
