What distro do you use and why?
What distro do you use and why?
yes i did a os one but i am wondering what distros do you guys use and why,for me cachyos its fast,flexible,has aur(I loved how easy installing apps was) without tinkering.
I use Bazzite so that it matches with my Steam Deck since SteamOS still isn't an actual distro to play with yet...
I use Debian on my server and Arch on my gaming PC and laptop. Both distros offer minimal installs so I can just add the packages I need and avoid the ones I don't. Debian offers a nice stable base for running my services with minimal downtime and Arch has the most up to date packages for all the cutting edge features I want on desktop.
My preference as well.
What distro do you use
I daily drive secureblue.
and why?
Long story short; I love me some security. Unfortunately, My device is far from ideal for running Qubes OS. From within the remaining options, secureblue comes out on top for me.
Fedora with GNOME.
I've been using it for over than 10 years in my main computer.
It simply works, it's nice, fresh packages, stable, GNOME is productivity champion (at least I know all the shortcuts, and how to tweak it to my daily use). I also know how to build and manipulate RPM packages, so it's pretty convenient.
Tuxedo OS. Before that, I was very happy with Fedora, and then I got a tuxedo laptop and tried their distro. Now, I keep using that because I started to enjoy KDE, and I really like their hardware support and how they test and maintain the distro.
Mint, because it seems like the easiest OS for someone who doesn't know wtf a flatpak is
The other hard drive has Windows, because Fusion360 doesn't work on Linux. Hey Autodesk, can you hear me? Make it happen please
I remember autodesk said that "fusion is too windows dependent"
For devices I need to be productive on, I have LMDE 6. It is rock solid being based on stable Debian, but with the niceties you expect from Mint.
For my gaming PC, I've got Bazzite on it and so far so good. Just used it for entertainment and gaming but if I were doing coding or app development I'd either have to adjust how I do that to suit an atomic distro, or I'd just use LMDE as I feel I have easier control of what I'm doing on there
Debian and Linux Mint.
Debian for mission critical stuff like servers or things I don't want to futz with, like HTPCs, work machines, etc.
Mint for my gaming desktop because it's a bit newer on kernels and such.
openSUSE Tumbleweed. I've tried switching to Aurora and Bazzite, but ended up using openSUSE again and now I love it even more.
EDIT: Typos.
EDIT 2: I also love tinkering with Void and Alpine on VMs.
Interesting. Have you also tried openSUSE Aeon(/Kalpa)? Though I assume you're a KDE user and thus waiting for Kalpa to become mature before a test ride.
Could you elaborate on what you didn't like about Aurora and Bazzite; especially about how that experience made you more appreciative of openSUSE?
Thank you in advance!
from the comments, there's a split between
- linux as a tool: debian, mint, fedora, opensuse, etc.
- linux as a toy: arch, gentoo, nixos, etc.
i wish this split was made more explicit, because more often than not someone comes looking for recommendations for linux as a tool, but someone else responds expecting they want linux as a toy. then the person will try out linux and will leave because it's not what they want, not knowing that there is a kind of linux that is what they want
Yes! Great way of putting it. It's hard to explain how just using an OS can be a fun hobby in itself.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed does it all for me. I work and play games on it and stuff, but my laptop is less mission critical, so I run EndeavourOS on it and experiment with fun layouts and everything is all "frutiger-aero-esque". It feels like how I nostalgicallyremember those WinXP-7 days!
Snapper rollbacks with BTRFS are incredible for letting you play around with an OS you actually use, and still giving you a cushion to fall back on. :D
My little media streamer / guest PC has Mint. Nice, maybe a little boring, predictable, reliable. Ahhh simplicity. :)
Debian Testing. It isn't "recommended" but it works fine.
Obviously if you want AUR you need an Arch variant, in which case just pick Arch.
Edit: I needed the why, it's up to date enough for me and I know apt well.
Fedora Kinoite. I like KDE, atomic distros and the fact that Fedora is the only (at least that I know of) distro that has proper SELinux implementation.
I also play games on this system, so having newer kernel and Mesa versions help.
the fact that Fedora is the only (at the least that I know of) distro that has proper SELinux implementation.
AFAIK, openSUSE Aeon(/Kalpa) does as well*.
NixOS & OpenWRT are my two. NixOS’s Nix language as declarative config is such a great tool for setting up & maintaining a machines for the long-term that despite the initial learning curve has paid off in the long run (Guix or a Nix successor should also be in the same category). OpenWRT is the purpose-built tool it is for having an OS for a router with low overhead & a UI that can be easier to understand the config when networking isn’t something you do on the regular.
Bazzite, I want my PC to just work and not require me to maintain it, on top of that I need it to be game-ready and have good color management for work related stuff.
Plain old Fedora.
I know the hurdles, i know what to expect, and I've never been surprised by it.
Immutable sounds nice, AUR sounds nice, NixOS sounds nice, but i am utterly confident in my current choice's reliability and comfortable with its idiosyncracies. Everything i want to do works very well.
If i had less time/energy or had to switch, Kubuntu would be my second choice. Less frequent updates and fewer creature comforts, but also very reliable.
I'm in the same boat. I was a kde neon person for a very long time, but I eventually got tired of some weird issues I was having that I couldn't find a fix for. tried fedora on a bit of a whim and everything just worked. Nvidia drivers were a breeze to set up, gnome is very nice out of the box and doesn't take the configuring I'm used to on kde, and even just having gnome boxes pre installed is super useful and I get to skip the virtualboxes setup. very impressed with it overall. never going back
EndeavourOS. It's just easy to install and I basically use it like Arch
Mint pleb on desktop because it's stable and just works, bazzite on steam deck for installing my own games.
NixOS because it's the only usable stab at sustainable system configuration.
I just installed Pop!_OS 22.04, after finally ditching Windows 11 entirely. I picked it because it seemed easy to use, well suited for gaming, and popular with good support.
So far, everything has been great!
Windows 10? That's still supported ig.
I recently installed OpenSuse, I have been using FreeBSD mostly, but have used linux through the years. I decided to go with an rpm based distro and I've always likes the chameleon mascot of Suse. I'm used to Debian based linux, so it's been a slight adjustment but it's been nice and smooth. I'm running Tumbleweed right now and all my Steam games work, as well as my 3d Windows applications via wine. It just works* I am too old and tired to spend time tweaking anymore.
At work a mix of red hat, fedora, centos, and red hawk. At home mint debian spin. It just works and games run great. I don't have time to deal with the red hat crap if i'm not getting paid.
Stock Fedora Silverblue. It does what I need so I can get on with my life.
No Void here?
Oh well... I surely don't use it because it's popular...
- Runit
- Pkg manager
- KISS
- Up to date / rolling distro
- But stable
I was thinking the same thing, but I don't like void because it doesn't have every package I want And they only offer old or extremely specific ones.
I went into void as my first DIY distro, mainly because I wanted to mess around with window managers and it was a very good experience. Runit made my underpowered laptop boot into linux in like 4 seconds, crazy fast. XBPS package manager was always really really fast too. I like the fact that nearly everything you need is in the official repo, instead of having to delve into the depths of something like the AUR. I also managed to make a contribution to the repos with the help of the community on the IRC chat rooms which were very noob friendly. Overall just a solid experience.
- Debian stable (w/ XFCE). No-nonsense, excellent community support, well-documented, low-maintenance, and runs on anything so I can expect things to work the same way across all of my machines, old, new(ish), or virtual
- Just flexible enough that I can customize it to my taste but not so open-ended that I have to agonize over every last config
- It's been around for many years and will be around for many more
- I often entertain the idea of moving to Alpine or even BSD, but I can't resist the software selection available on Debian
I use Arch with Hyprland because it's great.
I heard hyprland is buggy.
Ubuntu because I'm old, uncool, and tired
PopOS. It was the easiest to get my Nvidia GPU set up and plays all the games that I wanna play without too much pain. I've been meaning to try something like Arch with KDE, something like what my SteamDeck is using... but I don't wanna fuck around setting up Arch.
If you wanna try Arch + KDE without hassle, well Arch has an easier installer now, but I use EndeavourOS. It's a lovely smooth Arch experience!
Very easy installer with lots of options to choose from. :)
Arch based distros if that's fine?
Linux Mint, because I don't like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).
Yk what I LOVE THAT, Why i liked linux mint when i was new.
Well technically Mint has one terrible default nowadays that is hidden unverified Flatpaks.
I do agree cinnamon,mate and xfce us not enough but I found cinnamon the least buggy option.
Fedora Silverblue
- I like Gnome
- I like that Fedora adopts new technology quickly
- I like how it makes updates more reliable
- I like flatpak
What do people use for command line utilities? The selection on flatpak is a bit sparse
Options include:
- Installing them through
brew; this is setup, enabled and configured correctly by default on uBlue projects like Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin. - Installing them within a container; be it though Toolbx or Distrobox. This is what Fedora Atomic initially intended (and probably still does).
- Some users got a lot of mileage from utilizing
nixto this effect. - If all else fails (or if you outright prefer it this way), you can always layer it through
rpm-ostree.
- Installing them through
I use the Bluefin flavor of Silverblue. I like not having to tinker with my laptop to keep it working, everything happens in the background.
Same here, I use Silverblue as host OS on all of my workstations now, and Arch for nearly all of my containers.
Flatpak for just about everything in the userspace.
NixOS because it’s easy to understand—I can pop open any .nix file in my config and see exactly what is being set up, so I don’t have to mentally keep track of innumerable imperative changes I would otherwise make to the system, and thus lose track of the entropy over time.
After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn't want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it's based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that's a two-edged sword.
Right now I'm content with Tumbleweed, but I'm keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.
I wish it was not hard getting nvidia drivers on opensuse.
Previously arch now NixOS, just love the reproducibility.
Debian on most my machines. Can’t trust commercially backed distros any more. I’m tired of chacing cutting edge stuff. Like things to just work.
I can agree, my goal now is to find a distro that keeps some stuff updated not everything like kernel etc.
Kubuntu, because when I got my Vega 56 GPU on release day (August 14, 2017), I had to download the proprietary driver straight from AMD to get it working, and Ubuntu was the only distro supported by both it and Steam at the time. (Otherwise, I would've picked Debian or Mint.)
I don't love Ubuntu (especially how they push Snap), but I can't be bothered with the hassle of reinstalling my OS.
How difficult was it to run games?
In 2017? Well, that's an interesting question. On one hand, it definitely wasn't as easy as it is now. On the other hand, I was motivated to ditch Windows and willing to make the gaming sacrifices necessary to make that happen. The last version of Windows I used was 7, and I was determined that 10 would never touch this machine -- or any computer of mine going forward, for that matter. I also was done putting up with 7, given that Microsoft was starting to backport 10's spyware and forced-upgrade BS to it by then.
It's been a while, so I'm fuzzy on the details of what I was playing between 2017 and 2018 (when Proton came out). I think I just limited myself to the subset of my Steam games that had native Linux versions (e.g. TF2 and other Valve first-party games, Don't Starve, Cities Skylines, etc.), supplemented with PlayOnLinux for Star Trek Online, which, being an MMO I was already committed to, was pretty much the only exception I made. Otherwise, my attitude became "if the developer can't be bothered to support my OS, that's their loss, not mine, and I don't need their shitty Windows-only game anyway."
After Proton came out and I flipped that switch to "enable Steam Play for all other titles", I think the majority of my Steam games "Just Worked" -- yes, even back at that initial release -- and the ones that didn't became compatible pretty rapidly over the next couple of years. With one exception, I don't think I've had trouble getting a game working since the start of the pandemic, if not earlier. At this point, I've softened my "I won't buy a new game if it doesn't natively support Linux stance" and instead simply expect every game I buy to work. And they have!
(That one exception was Star Trek Online, which I had continued running via PlayOnLinux because (a) why mess with a working config, and (b) the Steam version of STO wants to permanently link your STO account to your Steam account, which I didn't want to do. One day, though, they updated the launcher or something and it quit working. I eventually gave up trying to fix it in PlayOnLinux and decided to use Proton for it instead. But I still didn't want to link my accounts, so I had to jump through these weird hoops where I installed the Steam version, but didn't log in or play it, and instead re-imported it as a non-Steam game pointing at the executable for the Steam version and then fiddled with the compatibility settings to find a version of Proton that worked. That's still the configuration I'm using for it to this day.)
- Debian + Xfce on the desktop, because it (mostly, see below) just works, it's snappy, reliable, and I don't need my apps being constantly updated (I have very simple needs and use cases)
- Mint + Cinnamon on the laptop, because it's still debian-based and because unlike Debian, Mint was able to connect my AirPods out of the box and I use them a lot when on the laptop... I also quickly learned to appreciate Cinnamon, I must say.
edit: typos
I wonder what you will think of lmde its linux mint with a debian base instead of ubuntu (It keeps some stuff for eg the desktop updated).
Arch because it helped me understand the os better and i like tinkering. Also pacman and the aur
Also pacman and the aur
Another reason why am using cachyos
Arch. I had some tinkering with other distros in the past but wanted to configure pretty much everything. Running it with Cinnamon. I love pacman and AUR and have been able to not break it so far after a year of being installed which is a new record for me 😂
Ubuntu for my servers, and Linux Mint for my Workstation.
I grew up using Debian-based distros, so it's what I'm comfortable with. I like how Mint seems to "just work" most of the time, especially with samba shares and usb peripherals.
Ubuntu server is primarily because it's incredibly easy to get support when you need it.
yeah i love linux mint just works
Debian and derived is my go up generally, stable and I like apt, great out of the box on every machine I've used and personally found pretty much everything I want to use or run has debian and Ubuntu explicitly called out in their setup documentation. I use Ubuntu server a lot for work, I'm comfortable with it and it's supported in every cloud environment I've touched. Debian on my laptop, bench machine, armbian on my 3d printers, Ubuntu server on my home server (though I kinda want to move that to debian too, just lazy and it works)
I've got arch on my desktop, could have probably gone for debian unstable, but figured I'd go for it. I use aura for package management. Linux is linux though, be real that I personally don't find much of a difference beyond package management.
Is aura like nix?
I have Bazzite on a laptop for the ease of use and general resistance to breakage, and Spiral Linux in a VM. The latter works flawlessly that way, like it was always meant to be in a VM.
Gentoo because I like it.
And portage.
I use NixOS, Gentoo, and Debian:
- NixOS because I like declarative configuration files.
- Gentoo because I enjoy compiling from source.
- Debian because the other two are more difficult to use.
Technically NixOS is all compiled from source too (if you disable the binary caches). It has since taken away Gentoo’s raison d’être a bit in my head. Debian still holds a special place in my heart too, for its simplicity and stability!
I do this with my kernel & a couple of applications that either compile super fast anyhow or at runtime benefit from further compiler optimizations.
It has since taken away Gentoo’s raison d’être a bit in my head.
I wouldn't say so. We currently don't hold a candle to USE-flags. Many packages are already configurable but there's no standard on anything w.r.t. that.
There's no technical reason we couldn't have such a standard but it hasn't happened yet.
Devuan because I don't like systemd
NixOS for most things, Debian on some servers as a docker host
Interesting. I’ve using NixOS many years on servers but recently also started using it as a base for docker hosts. Before that I used Ubuntu or Debian for docker hosts, but I figured out I still like the declarative approach even for simple servers like docker hosts. There’s your basic security config, ssh keys and monitoring setup that I used to do imperatively, but I much rather have declaratively now, no matter how small. And enabling docker on NixOS is just a
virtualisation.docker.enable = true;anyway.Oh I know it's better, problem is I host some stuff my friend group relies on so I don't want downtime while I figure things out. Also, it's a bit of a pain in the ass to get NixOS set up on a VPS without native support (I'm on Hetzner and I know it's possible, it's just a bit of a hassle). It's one of those projects that I'll get to eventually, when I got time. Or so I tell myself
I recently started using compose2nix, and I'm enjoying it.
Fedora, it has KDE spin and quite recent packages.
Linux sub, post with 40 comments under 1 hour
Is this the year...
Damn, not a single pop-os enjoyer here?!
I tried PopOS on my laptop but found it fucky so I tried Fedora KDE and it works. Too many steps Debian -> Ubuntu -> PopOS.
maybe bcs its posted at 11pm in my timezone (gmt +3)
I use EndeavourOS Xfce because it's Arch with pacman and not Flathub or Snap. Plus, I love the simplicity and the performance boost you get with Xfce (even if it's a small boost with a modern gaming PC).
yo finally someone who loves native packages more then flatpack.
Flatpak has its benefits, but there are tradeoffs as well. I think it makes a lot of sense for proprietary software.
For everything else I do prefer native packages since they have fewer issues with interop. The space efficiency isn't even that important to me; even if space issues should arise, those are relatively easy to work around. But if your password manager can't talk to your browser because the security model has no solution for safe arbitrary IPC, you're SOL.
PopOS but I'd like to switch to NixOS
Try it! Here’s a proof of concept that I’ve made that shows NixOS could even be used as a base for a very simple OS that abstracts the Nix away almost completely. Maybe the source code is of interest to you.
CachyOS. I use it because I am a fan of Arch based systems, rolling releases etc, but CachyOS is optimised for my generation of hardware, and has lots of good default configurations for various apps. They have a customised proton version, a good default fish profile etc.
tl;dr It's Arch, but optimised, and slightly more pre-configured out of the box.
Garuda for me. The reasons are similar; just replace some optimization with some convenience. It's a bit garish by default but pleasant to use.
Same thing.
Pop. I just need ubuntu without snap, distro's default look doesnt matter since I'll just use sway/i3wm.
Though the fact that they're building their own tiling DE could make me stick with it fully when it comes out.
Cosmic?
mint cinnamon because on my system it has no major issues and everything is easy to configure. i don't have a lot of spare time so i can't spend hours or even days troubleshooting why something won't install or run. most other distros have been annoyingly buggy or too difficult to set up.
I started with mint cinnamon and then tried out bazzite and nobara but they both gave me issues so I'm back to mint because it really does "just work"
My server is running mint currently, but I'm going to switch to fedora at some point soon. Mostly because I have to deal with RHEL at work and I'd like to better familiarize myself with it.
Kubuntu 24.04 because it's a solid desktop and I have nothing against Snap. If it works then I don't care if it's a deb flat or snap. p PPAs were fun and exciting but I broke my system more than once with them back 10 years.
Fedora.
Most of the others either booted to a black screen after install, or the track pad was somewhat uncontrollable when scrolling. Older Asus laptop with separate GPU.
OMG I use cachyOS too, for the same reasons, plus I love how much I can tinker with it.
Yeah i kinda like it lets you install desktops that is in arch repos, well because its arch based.
I started using linux seriously with Manjaro, but since I didn't know what AUR really was I fucked my system up (thank NVIDIA drivers for that). Then I switched to arch, learned everything I should have known on the arch wiki. So yeah, I use arch btw.
For me i started linux seriously with fedora,Some packages was hard to get so i went with cachyos.
Xubuntu. Convenience of ubuntu, less cluttered UI.
I've hopped distros alot and then just felt most comfortable with arch linux. I try other distros and then just go back to arch linux everytime. I just love the AUR and the utilities that are available to arch linux. The wiki is also very good.
Best wiki and aur fr.
Fedora because I like this out of the box look more than Ubuntu and it runs my games well with my nvidia card
I have one Ubuntu and one fedora server. Honestly they’re both fine.
I like Manjaro
- I like it
- Its user friendly if you don't want to spend a month fiddling with it
- Feels comfy and relatively lightweight
- If you are living on the edge of latest and greatest versions, it can be a pain to wait for official repos to be updated. Though I only noticed this problem with Discord desktop app, however since I realised that it spies on every process that runs and you cannot turn that feature off. Uninstalled. Problem gone. Happy me.