What distros would you recommend for use on a (non-gaming) Laptop?
What distros would you recommend for use on a (non-gaming) Laptop?
I would prefer something based on Debian, like Ubuntu or PopOS, but I'm open for other suggestions as well, as I'm looking for a distro to daily-drive on my new Framework laptop.
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I know you said you want something Debian-based, but Fedora is my go-to distro for daily driver workstations. Rock solid, has up to date software, and the release upgrade process has never failed me.
this, fedora has been very straightforward with me and just works, (except when I tried to sign kernels and crazy stuff to get virtual machines working, however that was all on me lol)
Fedora is so wonderful! It also proved to be quite useful for me to use Fedora on my home desktop, as a lot of my work lately has involved working with a RHEL server. It's awesome to already know 99% of what that computing environment is like just from using my desktop.
Agreed on Fedora, it’s an awesome distro.
So, I know I could just look this up and get answers off google, but for the sake of conversation, why do you prefer Fedora over something like say, Mint?
I have bounced around through several distros (Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Pop, a bit of Slack), and have always found something in each that could draw me in. What does it for you in Fedora?
Fedora is pretty cutting edge (updating package versions every 6 months), while still being rock solid. The release upgrade is also the most reliable one I've had to deal with - I successfully upgraded an ancient install by 10 versions once.
Gotcha. For those that are happy with the upgrade process and stability of what they are on though, is there anything that makes it more enticing?
I may end up giving it a go just to round out my experience with the various flavors and get some real experience with RPM.
Honestly, Linux is Linux. Once you're comfortable enough, that's really all that differentiates distros between each other. (Minus weird shit like glibc vs musl, nixOS, etc) It's just been the closest experience I've had to "it just works" when it comes to Linux desktop.
I should also shout out that Fedora tends to embrace existing standards rather than make their own (cough Cannonical cough Snap). I'm also a big fan of some Fedora projects, particularly Fedora Silverblue
Here are my two eurocents:
- Fedora Workstation, the main spin of Fedora which uses Gnome, is a very polished experience. I’d use it, if I were a fan of Gnome.
- Fedora Silverblue is an “immutable desktop”, i.e. the operating system is read-only while all user applications isolated from it via flatpaks. It is supposed to make the system more secure, stable, easier to update etc. It’s a cool idea, but I haven’t tried it myself.
Other than that? Not much. As you probably know, most distributions feel pretty much the same, Fedora included.