[Solved] Suggestions for my next distro

Debian and a BSD (FreeBSD is nice) can run for years without a reboot.

Certain activities will often push a machine to crash. 3D gaming, network drive mounts on an unstable network, and some drivers.

No distro is going to fix a true hardware problem.

Debian... but also to clarify it's not "old" at all. I'm using Debian on my servers, yes, but also on my desktop that use daily, to work and to play video games on, including VR. So... don't think because it's "old" and "stable" it means it's outdated.

When maximizing uptime, Debian is the no-fuss way to go.

Vanilla Debian is very stable, it can keep running for years without a reboot, I can't say if it fixes your USB problem tho

If I were you I would definitely use Debian 12.

As such, this distribution would need to be able to handle running for weeks on end without a reboot.

So, it has to be something stable (i.e. receive little to no updates) that's capable of updating without requiring a reboot. That makes any stable distro a candidate. As such, choose either:

• Debian or something based on it
• Gentoo (stable branch)
• Nixos (stable channel)
• openSUSE Leap
• Ubuntu or something based on it

LFS is the only true distro

I mean, if you are already on openSUSE, why not just use Leap? You won't need to update it a lot hence you won't need to reboot.

If youre coming on Nixos, I have a lot of resources in the bookmarks section here: https://codeberg.org/BlastboomStrice/LinuxPlan/src/branch/main/LinuxPlan.md#nixos-bookmarks

(This was a guide I made for myself in the span of ~4months to transition to linux and I still update it some times.)

I've been using Linux since 1998 on and off, and in the last few years, exclusively. I like Debian-Testing, and Linux Mint. Nothing else seems to work as I want it, it seems.

I think almost any distro would be good at uptimes for days or weeks on end, but personally:

If you have newer harder, Fedora will have newer packages and drivers for that hardware.

If you have anything older than 2 years, Debian should be fine as long as you don't mind older editions of your favorite desktop environment.

I think something to consider is that most distros don't care when you update, as long as you update properly.

Arch for example doesn't care of you update daily, weekly, or monthly. They just want you to update all packages at once instead of partial upgrades to help solve errors and ensure everyone is on the same page when needing help.

My personal vote would be Debian, as that can stay up for months without issue, but I get distracted by new bells and whistles on KDE releases so I use Fedora.

My debian machines usually only have their uptime interrupted by power outages or the like. They’re not my daily drivers, but very stable and reliable.

I have Linux mint on my “daily driver” (used for work and gaming) desktop and I’m also very pleased with it - most updates can be installed without rebooting and it’s over-all a pretty trouble-free experience!

Hope this helps!

Just installed Pop! OS and am very happy with it, very stable, no problems so far! In the past I've tested Mint, Manjaro and openSUSE I think. Switched back from windows as I don't need remote access anymore and there's nothing that makes me want to go back

Just settle with Gentoo, like I have since 2004. No need for switching. 😇

Gentoo! Of course!

When I turn it on, it bootloops unless it's connected to power when I press the button.

Have you tried updating your BIOS?

i will add a question to theirs: Why is Fedora not in the suggestions?

i'm only interested in negative criticism, if you please. What made you avoid or stop using Fedora?

this distribution would need to be able to handle running for weeks on end without a reboot.

Any decent distro then.
Slackware ftw

Put Aurora on it - an improved version of Kinoite.

https://getaurora.dev/

If you can boot from USB, I'd look at Ventoy, which will let you put multiple distro ISOs on a single USB stick and then pick one of them to boot from when you boot up. I linked to a tutorial rather than the project page for a quick review.

It could be that OpenSUSE is contributing to your boot issues, and that one of the other distros may have a kernel and configuration that plays more nicely; Ventoy will help you determine this. It'll also let you play with several distros without having to install all of them, and see if you like one more than another.

If your boot problem is hardware related - either an issue with the hardware itself, or just Linux compatability, then you should stay away from rolling release distros like Arch; while you can configure them to minimize reboots, they're managed in such a way as to expect people to upgrade frequently, including the kernel, which requires reboots. For example, I run Arch and I love it, but I also tend to not upgrade it very often and the longer between upgrades, the greater the chance of something going wrong during an update. It's absolutely the least dependency-hellish distro I've used if you update frequently, but something like Debian is better if you're looking for long uptimes.

TL;DR: use Ventoy and try several distros. If you find that your boot problems persist through several distros, ignore rolling-release distros like Arch, Alpine, and Void, and focus on Debian-derived distros like Debian, Ubuntu, or Mint. Or you can try a Redhat derivative, but I hate RPM with the fire of a thousand suns so I'd recommend that last - still, some obviously insane people like it, and it's an option.