Which one(s) and why?
Which one(s)
Arch.
why?
- The Arch-Wiki
- I like pacman
- The Arch-Wiki
- I wanted a rolling-release distribution.
- The Arch-Wiki
- It just works. I had only one more serious problem in ~8 years of running Arch
- Did I mention the Arch-Wiki?
Edit:
Having said that, I have an eye on immutable distros. Maybe one day I’ll try one out.
The Arch wiki really is amazing. It’s also still very useful for Linux stuff in general. The qemu page has come in handy more than a dozen times.
Is Manjaro good if I want in on this Arch goodness but don’t want to spend hours configuring stuff? Coming from Fedora
@SubArcticTundra @Haven5341 I personally think Manjaro is a false good idea.
You’ll have an “out of date” system (i.e., one-month-old) but packages from the AUR which are made for the up-to-date system.
Quite a nightmare to use IMO (and that’s not talking about Manjaro leadership and certificates problems)
I’ve been using manjaro for around a year. It broke on me once, probably my fault, idk. I enjoy it! I’ve distro hopped many places and a year is a long time for me, so much about it is right for me. You’ll certainly get a worthy experience of what arch is capable of, I believe.
That being said, I plan on swapping to arch really soon.
I’ve been daily driving Manjaro for 4 years without any issues. Generally speaking I’d recommend seeing if there is a flatpak for an app before using AUR. I don’t update as soon as updates are out though, so usually any issues there may have been have been shmoothed over before I get to it.
Debian. Seemed like the most generic “Linux” there is. Nothing special, nothing weird. Just Linux. Gray, boring, system defaults Linux.
It’s funny cause it started out as one of the most opinionated Linux distros.
I went from years of using Arch to Debian. I’ve been tired of the rolling release system and their massive updates. Maybe I was using it wrong but after years my OS was a giant blob with gigabytes of updates every week. I choose Debian for the same reason as you and also because of the stability. If I want the latest version of a package I use Flatpak.
It just works! Unless there something with Nvidia. Yeah fuck them!
I miss AUR though
I settled on openSUSE Tumbleweed because it’s rolling and reliable. I chose KDE Plasma long before I chose my distro.
Using this right now. It’s been a little less stable then I’ve heard other people claim, I had about a day and half where I was consistently freezing up 5 minutes after login. After that was patched it has been fine.
The real test for me is if I can walk away from it for 3 weeks and update the system without the world exploding. That was what always broke Arch for me.
I am now at NixOS. I like the reproducibility and immutability of the distro, but the documentation is far from great and configuring the OS you want is not that straightforward. I also don’t like that even though it has a great number of packages, they tend to be slightly outdated.
I am not sure if I will stick with it, but I really like that I can create very specialised configurations that are also portable. I am currently using KDE but I am thinking of switching to Hyprland once I get more comfortable around NixOS and home manager/flakes, as nothing beats tiling managers in my opinion.
After trying out a few distros over the last 20 years or so (openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Fedora and Silverblue were the ones I actively used for a stretch of time on desktop, Debian and CentOS on server), I also landed on NixOS.
Who knows what the future brings, but things feel more settled to me than they ever have. Maybe that’s because there’s a (declarative) solution for every custom setup, it’s just a function of time and profiency in Nix. Or maybe it’s because I invested quite a bit of work into a trivially reproducible setup for most of my machines and workflows (all in one glorious version-controlled flake), that the sunk costs are too high to switch elsewhere.
I’m still willing to experiment with DEs/WMs, currently running Gnome on my main and Sway on weaker machines. Hyprland is a bit out there for my taste, but I’m really looking forward to giving Cosmic DE a try once it’s ready.
Nixpkgs is actually one of the most up to date software repositories. (~90% according to repology)
You may be using a release channel which will only be updated for important security updates.
Did you have to learn the Nix language? I like the idea but I found all the different commands you have to use confusing…
You can get pretty far with copy-pasting. If you want to try it out, you should first realize that there’s always 10+ different ways to do the same thing. Stick with what works and with what seems the most intuitive to you.
Personally, I suggest going straight for a flake-based setup. Flakes are somehow still labeled experimental, but they’re actually mature and broadly adopted.
Fedora.
(Specifically Workstation - i.e. the Gnome variant, but I’ve used other spins and they’re also great)
Pretty up to date, reliable, spearheads new developments that go on to benefit the Linux desktop as a whole, they don’t make a bunch of crazy alterations to the DEs they ship.
And to think I was reluctant to try it for ages because the name sounds like it’d be some neckbeardy distro.
And to think I was reluctant to try it for ages because the name sounds like it’d be some neckbeardy distro.
When Linus Tech Tips did their month-long Linux challenge, they vetoed a viewer suggestion to use Fedora because they thought it was a “meme distro”.
I use Fedora btw
Why would you ever think it was a meme distro? Red Hat has been around forever.
