More like Alpine or something else without systemd. I mean no shade (well, a bit of shade) since I've got Fedora myself. Alpine doesn't even have glibc IIRC.
I think it is breaking the Unix philosophy, it is an enormous piece of code that does so many different things. My ideal is smaller components with smaller dependencies. When distros or software becomes inextricably dependent on systemd they are then beholden to whichever direction the maintainers take it.
My take on it is somewhat based on "what if." Other people have some pragmatic discussions on security aspects if you search around.
I'm not a systemd guru, but I do find it relatively easy to work with.
I've noticed that a lot of it is actually made up of separate binaries and daemons. Is it wrong or misleading to think of systemd as a collection of utilities that share a common DSL as opposed to a strict monolith?
I highly recommend avoiding manjaro like the plague, their team is incredibly incompetent (see: https://manjarno.pages.dev/ ), I say this as someone who has given people manjaro for years and regretted it, I was also their it person, manjaro regularly broke every few months and gave people a very bad taste of linux
for example, why are kernels given version numbers in packages? This caused 3 separate peoples computers to break multiple times. Everything good about manjaro comes from arch, everything bad about manjaro comes from the manjaro team.
Y’know how it’s not rolling release because they delay packages by 2 weeks? They actually do no testing in this time. How do I know this? They pushed an update that caused steam to uninstall your desktop environment. Famously covered by linus tech tips… this is something that should have easily been caught, and yet the two week window did absolutely nothing.
the truth is for manjaro there is no real usecase, there’s no set of desires that align with manjaro being the best choice for you. I am not asking you to switch away from manjaro, but I do not think we should ever recommend it to anyone, and on your next machine, I recommend trying the arch installer.
But if what you’re looking for is an easy pre-setup arch, use endeavoros
If you want something simple and up to date, use fedora kinoite
If you’re a power user and want to configure every little thing about their system, use arch or nixos
If you don’t care at all about updates and want the most rock solid system possible, debian.
SUSE's Open Build Service absolutely rules, too. I use Fedora personally, but would switch to Tumbleweed any day. I've gone back and forth, eventually settling on Fedora only because of familiarity with Red Hat.
There are things I miss, big one being Zypper. It's slow as balls but it's usability and ability to dig through packages is unmatched, in my opinion.
I hear you. I was looking more for Arch with less of a hassle. Something similar to my Steamdeck. I guess I should just wipe this weekend for something else. I really want something for playing my steam and GOG games that works with my Nvidia 3080.
Luckily for me I keep every game installed on different Steam Libraries so wiping my install drive to put something else in isn't difficult.
Steam Deck is weird. I mean, I love it, but coming from vanilla Arch it can be frustrating at times. Discover is terrible. Luckily, Distrobox is a thing.
I putz with Discover sometimes. Though I have no idea how it resolves package updates under the hood, as it often will produce a different manifest than running dnf itself.
I usually can't find what I'm looking for, so a larger catalogue would go a long way. I also had problems with some software versions. The one that comes to mind is that Firefox had behavior with the save dialogue that I don't like. It's a minor issue, but one that I don't have with the build in the Arch repo. I have a vague memory of something just not working, but I couldn't tell you what at this point.
Ah, I see! Yeah, a bigger catalog would be nice. You can add more repositories to it, enable Flathub, which provide more options, but something about it does feel hamstrung.
The Firefox thing is something I know about! You can set a config option in the about:config page to tell Firefox to use your desktop's standard dialogue. It has to do with XDG Desktop specifications, I think
It uses the system dialogue, but it starts from the same directory each time. If I'm saving files it's usually multiple files in succession, so I want the dialogue to start off pointed at the last directory I saved to. The Arch build does that.
For as much as Linux nerds (myself absolutely included) complain about distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro, I'd still take either one over Windows or MacOS any day.
Its sins are just of a different sort - e.g. you don't need to repair or upgrade those machines so often, bc they work so well for so long as it is, plus other than for gaming, who even upgrades machines these days to begin with?
For non-gaming, Macs are great machines. So too are Linux. While Windows sux ass no matter what. Thus that's the dividing line, imho.
I mean... a Mac machine will run non-Mac OSX software. Pretty much everything can run linux, with a little effort put into it:-) (unless somehow these M chips have prevented that? even if so, surely it's only a matter of time before someone cracks that barrier)
But yeah, it's definitely a choice. e.g., Apple does not even sell cheap Macs, whereas machines intended to run Windows can be bought all up and down the scale - though I recall at various points in time, comparing equivalently-equipped machines, Apple ones were pound-for-pound actually cheaper than their Windows equivalents. This is ofc b/c of the monopolistic practices: when you rigidly control the hardware, you are able to order in bulk, and when you order in bulk, you are able to get large discounts from the supplier!
Though surely nobody was arguing to purchase a Mac, not knowing who or what Apple is or is about? Installing Arch Linux is also known to be somewhat ah... "tricky", so if we are comparing things like ease-of-use, the question gets back to OP's "which distro?" And it's all a matter of choice - what you want to get out of it, and which constraints you want to live underneath.
But anyway, we were talking about "Mac OSX", which yeah, very much is limited to specific sets of hardware, and cannot be installed willy-nilly on any old machine, this is very much a true statement, to be paid very much attention to by anyone wanting to learn more, or use that in their purchasing / installation decisions:-). I was just saying that while Apple (& iOS) may be evil these days, Mac OSX itself kinda is great, caveat: if you can live with its restrictions, and moreover, those are MUCH less than Microsoft's set of restrictions these days (whereas Linux has its own set of difficulties).
I was only illustrating how Mac hardware is not identically the same as Mac software. They are tied together, yet distinct entities.
Your lack of recollection neither proves nor disproves anything at all. If you doubt me, look it up? (since surely if I did so for you, you would distrust that as well? 🤪)
You can use UTM on an M1 or up Macbook and iOS/iPadOS: https://getutm.app/
It is not VirtualBox yet, but it is moving fast. And thank $deity it’s not Oracle… like VirtualBox
It's worth noting that Apple has (for example) gone so far as to replace bash with zsh just because the GPL v3 was too copyleft for them to handle. In other words, fuck Apple.
I hoped for that at my previous job, and they said it could happen... but it was never going to, and it was a false hope offered. Why do that to me man...? 😭
Then I come to my current job, and they have a super old Mac laptop that was barely holding on that nobody else wanted, and I'm like "yes please"!
Bc if its Windows vs. Mac, and especially if "nothing" isn't even an option, then a million times out of a million I will choose super old, barely holding on Mac that nobody else wants.:-)
It's a single SSH command away from my work Linux, and it has MacVim, tons of other open source software available, plus a bunch of stuff that only Mac OSX has, like Preview and other fairly nice tools, which have open source equivalents like ImageMagick and gimp, but aren't nearly as easy to use.
I don't need a nice car, and I went without one entirely until I moved to the Midwest where it becomes absolutely necessary, but it's essential to have a good computer for me:-).
Privacy and data collection-wise MacOS is fine. It's their main selling point. Doesn't even force updates on you. I know it's a low bar, but damn Windows bar is at the floor at this point.
I didn't say it's perfect, but it's not terrible. And I think that page is mostly about Apple services, like iCloud and stuff, not MacOS specifically. It's not necessary to use the services.
Even so, as the other reply mentioned, it's still leagues away from Windows at this point. But yeah, fair then that both Windows and Mac OSX are doing it, while Linux is not.
Still, if you had to pick a machine for your grandma to use, or like either Windows or Mac at work (but not Linux, though lets say that there is a terminal SSH option to Linux available from either), I would pick Mac OSX. It's fine if others would pick Linux for the former, but I don't think Mac OSX is a bad choice there.
While Windows... urg, is basically synonymous with being a cuss word nowadays. Witch: "a pox be upon thee - nay, moresooth, may you be cursed to only use Windows for the rest of your days!" (Onlookers: "gasp! what could anyone have done to be cursed with that bad of a punishment!? I would not wish that upon even my worst enemy!?") hehe:-P
That Apple blocks you from running every program you put onto it until/unless it can be properly certified, and that "Big Sur can bypass any firewall restrictions the end-user attempts to create"? It's true that it's not nearly as bad as it may sound at first, and they even released a statement that:
We do not use data from these checks to learn what individual users are launching or running on their devices.
Notarization checks if the app contains known malware using an encrypted connection that is resilient to server failures.
These security checks have never included the user’s Apple ID or the identity of their device. To further protect privacy, we have stopped logging IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we will ensure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs.
Though I also understand that if someone wants the ultimate in privacy, it's difficult to trust such a corporate promise, especially one like Apple known to hide or lie about such things. (Edit: also... "developer ID certificate checks", so if you don't register with Apple as a known developer then...?)
I still use Mac OSX myself, but if someone wants to avoid that and use Linux for this reason, I'm not going to argue with them - whereas I would push back a little bit if a friend were to tell me they planned to put Windows (as the primary OS) onto a machine.
Ah, for gaming, yes Macs are not fantastic gaming machines that's for sure.
Then again, Linux has long been known to have issues with gaming as well, especially with an Nvidia card...
Unless you use Steam, and then both work, kinda?
Still it seems like it's Linux and Mac OSX on one side, and Microsoft left behind thousands of years in the past, except maybe for gaming where literally an old Windows running on a VM may run the widest selection of games?
But I still don't see the logic of grouping Macs together with Windows, even for gaming.
For VMs, I expected more someone to bring up the switch to the M1 chipset, a huge setback for VMs definitely even if temporary, though I'm old enough to remember that Linux and Macs both running Intel were often easier to get things running on than Linux on Intel vs. Linux on AMD. But things definitely change over time, as to what is easiest at any given moment.
Microsoft sucks tho - now THAT'S universal. Can't we all just get together, united in our hate for it?! (/s, or, well, actually... not!)
Edit: hey, anyone want to start like an anti-Windows or I-fucking-hate-fucking-Windows community? I'll join it today if you do!? :-)
couldn't you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
The obvious downside is that Linux is no longer the host OS. MacOS or Windows would be closed source code managing your hardware. And any VM could only be as fast as the host OS allows it to be.
The host OS is likewise limited, but more by hardware, so it might be a small performance tradeoff, depending on whether, as you brought up, you need Linux to be ultimately in control rather than to simply run some software.
So that would not always work, ofc... but it sometimes would!:-)
TL:DR: Repeated dumb mistakes that a (relatively) big distro like Manjaro should not be making. Haven't heard any drama in the past year or so though, so maybe they've finally gotten their act together. Time will tell.
Just setup Mint last night and have been troubleshooting how to get everything to work. So far I'm liking it. Last thing I setup was Lutris for gaming so that's nice.
I'm pretty sure the question was more about linux mint (ubuntu/default) vs. linux mint debian edition, as those can confidently be called different distros. Don't worry about it though, the issues with ubuntu are actually very small, they're just infinitely magnified on the internet by people who care a lot about the smallest things. There are also many advantages to using ubuntu or an ubuntu derivative.
Also this question can be interpreted very humorously, so maybe do that if you like.
If you just went with the most prominent and easily accessible download button it'll probably be ubuntu, but as i said, despite what some might say that's not necessarily a bad thing
If he got the cinnamon version, that is indeed the default Ubuntu based one. I use the same thing.
One of the biggest draws of regular Mint IMO is that it leverages the advantages and resources of Ubuntu but it removes the parts that many people don’t like.
PS anyone have any favorite resources for absolute tech illiterate noobs? I'm trying, but without a baseline understanding of the subject, it's hard to find the right guides
I love Mint, it has become my workhorse distro. I use LMDE on my personal business laptop. I switched my parents from Windows 10 to Mint earlier this year, and it's been great on their very old and low power desktop.
Cinnamon is not the prettiest or slickest DE, but damn if it ain't the most stable DE I've used.
I'm a KDE fanboi myself, but when I spin up a machine that I need to just work in a super dependable way and is no muss, no fuss, I usually choose Mint with Cinnamon.
Nah, Fedora is a valid choice, just like Ubuntu is. Both are great if you don't care that much about personalization and just want a solid distro to get work done.
Fedora is pretty much the new Ubuntu more or less. Ubuntu has gone so far downhill that I can't recommend it to anyone and that's been the case for quite a while.
For a lot of people Ubuntu is the linux. Canonical is just good at marketing.
For all it worth, Ubuntu is not the bad choice for average user who's not into ricing and not bothered by bloat.
Manjaro: haven’t you managed to kill it yet?
I've been using Arch and Manjaro for couple years each and in my experience they both break regularly. But, for some weird reason, Arch Linux is praised, when Manjaro is shamed upon.
Linux mint: ex windows guy?
I take offence, I’m an ex-SuSE 4.2, ex-macOS, windows only at work guy.
(My cinnamon is themed to have macOS ish appearance btw.)
[and I lied, not ex-mac as such, I have a few macs round the house, and built my Linux machine to run games on steam/lutris, around a spare gfx card that came out of my classic Mac pro5,1]
I’ve been using Arch and Manjaro for couple years each and in my experience they both break regularly. But, for some weird reason, Arch Linux is praised, when Manjaro is shamed upon.
No, there is not some weird reason but actual very good ones.
Things can break on a bleeding edge update scheme. That's to be expected from time to time. But the questions are "why did it break" and "what is done to fix it".
If something breaks on Archlinux it's because of some new package with a issue that escaped testing. Then the fix come out as fast as possible (often within minutes even, but let's assume hours as those things need to move through mirrors first...).
If something breaks on Manjaro it's either because of the exact same reason as above, but 2 weeks later. Because Manjaro keeps back updates for two weeks "for stability reasons", yet doesn't do anything in those 2 weeks. So they just add the same problem later, completely defeating the argumant about stability. Oh, and fixes are of course kept back for 2 weeks, too, because... reasons.
Or it breaks because they fucked up their internal QA. For example by letting their certificates expire again and again and again and again... of by screwing up their very own pacman-wrapper and then ddos'ing the AUR for all users, not only Manjaro ones.
Or -speaking about the AUR- it breaks because they give their users full access to the Arch User Repository (without any warnings about user content being less reliable and used at your own risk) pre-installed. Also they do it on a system generally out-of-date because it lags 2 weeks behind. Which is not what AUR packages are build for (they assume up-to-date systems) and is a straight path to dependency hell and breakings... not because something went wrong but because the whole concept of an out-of-date system not running their own also 2-weeks behind version onf the AUR is idiotic. On the "plus" side they have an easy fix: blame the user, because he should obviously know that an pre-installed part of Manjaro is conceptionally flawed and shouldn't be trusted.
The main problem with Manjaro is they hold updates to the repos back for to weeks, which in itself isn’t a problem but they don’t do the same for the AUR, meaning you’re almost guaranteed to have dependencie issues at some point. And a, very minor, issue is that in the past they have broken their forum site, but that hasn’t happened for a while now.
Ubuntu: was the first distro that came up… hated it and went back to windows
Manjaro: tried it after Ubuntu, was great for 2 months until it broke and I swapped to arch
Mint: never used it
Debian: used it once for a VM because it wasn’t canonical, but it was meh
Endeavour: never used it
Arch: it was great and I still use it for my cheap side laptop, but I forgot to update it for a month and it broke on my main laptop and I wasn’t good enough with Linux to fix it at the time so that computer runs Nix
Nix: used it after arch broke and I was paranoid with having to fix stuff… still use it on my primary computer but am frustrated with how hard it is to develop in rust on
I think my problem comes from trying to compile for MUSL so I can use the binary in an alpine docker container… I’m working on setting up a docket development environment though, so here’s hoping it works
Why would you want that on Linux? We already have qemu KVM which can be used via libvirt. Just install virtual manager and be done with it.
Slow down. VMware can be one click and done. All these alternatives and extras and configurations are the reason windows people don't try Linux. Don't over complicate a simple thing. If they want new or more they can figure that out at a later date.
Exactly. That's way more complicated and requires loading external software not packaged by distros. Meanwhile virt manager is very easy to install and it is in the repos pretty much everywhere. You also could use gnome boxes as it doesn't even need root. It is just a flatpak
10 years security updates, plus security patches for community packages (instead of waiting on community patches). It's basically the corporate support plan provided for free for up to 5 machines per account.
Exactly. In Debian, the community implements security patches. In Ubuntu, Canonical implements security patches for a part of the repo (main), the community implements them for the remainder (universe). This has been the standard since Ubuntu's inception. With Ubuntu Pro, Canonical implements security patches for the whole repo (main and universe).
Yeah, it's fine. Haven't had too much trouble in a good 10 odd years, once the WiFi drivers settled. Mind you I'm not fucking upgrading to 24.04 for another couple of weeks.
Spent a ton of time trying to install GrapheneOS because web USB doesn't work in snap version of chrome. How about letting me install the normal deb version? Nope, can't let the user choose
Pretty much. Canonical made a few questionable choices in the past but overall they've done a lot for the Linux community. And their distro is very good. There is a reason why distros choose it as their base.
Yes, I use SteamOS on my steamdeck. Aside from my nuc which is running ProxMox with several Debian based VMs, that’s sadly currently the only thing that’s running Linux in my house.
Still quietly asking myself why tf that is important. I need an OS to do a task, and I need it to be as easily configurable and as unobtrusive as possible. If I was into nursing an OS I'd have stayed with Windows.
Ty. Didn't want to add "I'm using Debian, btw.". Debian ticks all my boxes for ease of install, usage, updates, software availabiliy and - most important - stability.
I don't get the Gnome desktop. The vanilla one is unusable without adding a ton of extensions. But I do appreciate the simplicity in the settings.
I love KDE in the way that it keeps the traditional desktop paradigm that we're all used to, but their configs are way too complex. There's too much in one place.
In fact I've been thinking of trying out LXQT for simplicity's sake.
Ubuntu and derivatives suck because of Canonical and their practices
Fedora sucks because of Red Hat
OpenSUSE sucks because RPM (why?!) and still SUSE (but they're the best of the three)
Rest is exotic and obscure
So we end up with Arch and Debian. Debian 12 is good enough as is, and runs on a work laptop where I don't care about anything but stability. Arch is respectable and great, but requires excessive maintenance to work properly. Among its derivatives, Endeavour is just a nicer archinstall (so, why?), Garuda is cool but unstable and too gamer'y, Manjaro is a bit problematic at times but generally the safest bet when it comes to Arch. So, when it comes to my main PC doubling as a gaming rig, this is a no-brainer.
Been running Bazzite for a month and having a great experience with it! My nvidea cards work with no hassle, and with the extended proton I have had issues with only 1 game so far, and even that was fixed by just switching to a different version. Only downside so far is that Wayland doesn't work as well as X11 on my DE, but with the rest working great, I have no complaints :)
I have zorin and mint dual booting on my surface book.
really liking zorin, very pleasing to look at, simple, haven't run into any software I had on windows that I can't run here. I don't game on, could still be a slight negative, but so far I love it.
What kinda issues are you having? Most of my problems with Nix are solved with overlays or creating a module. Admittedly, in order to do that you still have to know how to fix your issue the usual linux way. Afterall, Nix is more of an abstraction tool IMO; good for replicating something across a ton if devices. If you don't need that, there's other distros that work much better out of the box.
The one that does what I need it to do on the device I'm running it on. I've currently got four different Linux distros on x86 PCs around my house at this moment.
Put any distro in front of me and provided I don't need to master it, I'm good. Ubuntu is fine. Debian is fine. RedHat is fine. Fedora is fine. I even have a tiny low-end system that is using Bohdi. Whatever. We're all using mostly the same kernel anyway.
90% of what I do is in a container anyway so it almost doesn't matter; half the time that means Alpine, but not really. That includes both consuming products from upstream as well as software development. I also practically live in the terminal, so I couldn't care less what GUI subsystem is in play, even while I'm using it.
I'm on Tumbleweed right now. Used to be on Arch flavors, Garuda then Cachy OS.
Tumbleweed is almost as fast for gaming performance, I just don't have it in me to do all the tinkering anymore. Just want something up to date that works.
Arch was... great and pretty reliable, just got tired of the tinkering.
I don't miss AUR. Well, I do but opensuse has OBS. Technically OBS is better as packages can be rebuilt automatically when dependencies are updated, but there are a lot more users on the AUR than OBS so AUR has more stuff on it.
OBS packages are less likely to break your system in an update, but the AUR is just flat out bigger.
There hasn't been anything I've needed that I haven't been able to find either on OBS or as a flatpak. When something isn't in the disro repos, I look for a flatpak first, then check OBS. Mostly cause flatpaks are easier to search.
Is updating the software an issue? I always try to keep my stuff up to date. Sometimes I can be a little lazy, but I do care to keep the latest stuff going. Doesn't the software have notifications that a newer version is available?
Yes, there are notifications. Be aware that, unless you use Flatpaks again, you'll not have many functional updates - mostly just security. That's just the way of Debian - keeping you on the same software for 2+ years in the name of stability. Unless you use Debian Testing, that is.
Even as a first-time user, you'll figure it our rather quickly, no worries. It's not rocket science, just an option to toggle that allows you to install more modern versions of apps in an isolated mode.
But if we only look at regular installs, your software will stay at the same version until Debian 13 is rolled out, likely in summer 2025. Do not expect any large updates at all until then.
I've been using Pop for years, I just feel like its always worked so well for me and never given me any major gripes. Web browsing, playing a few basic games, editing documents and even recently setting up another home server with it for media streaming with Jellyfin.
I'm a big advocate for any OS which works well out the box and is mostly hands off once configured!
If PopOS isn't your thing you'll find it eventually 🙂
I've gone with PopOs. Ubuntu based so well supported. They've been around for a while now so they won't disappear over night. Gaming just works.
I was on Nobara for a while and really liked it. but while glorious eggroll is the goat, I don't want to put my DE in the hands of a single person.
Since swapping the I've experienced one game crashing freeze (which I hope was a one off), and when screen sharing BG3 over discord it slows the game down to a crawl. But I blame discord for this one, as its fine when streaming from OBS.
This is dumb because it's making it out to seem like there are Super Distro Wars and not just folks calling out bad decision makers like Ubuntu and Manjaro, and non-free-as-in-beer distros like Zorin and Elementary
I'm pretty sure outside of those two categories nobody really cares
Distro wars, like the old vi vs emacs wars (showing my age, I know) is not entirely serious. I never understood sportsball fandom, but it's kind of like that. Debian is my home team; if you use Fedora, you're from out-of-town.
I've been a Windows... Let's say a power-user, no expert but I could install it, find a way to troubleshoot most problems. Then at high school a friend lent me a bit outdated Knoppix CD. I never managed to make ppp work on that so no internet, but I loved the old KDE. Somewhat later, when we had a normal DSL line with a proper router, I got Fedora. Then Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian for a while...
Finally I found Gentoo. And there I am, some 10 years later, still on that. After a bit of a bumpy road of the first install (no automation, but the handbook is very helpful if you know the basic Linux and HW terms) it was almost flawless. I remember two problems, and both of them were my own fault. The first one was some testing kernel version that had a bug where small files on ext3 filesystem would get randomly corrupted. The second was when I was trying to remove some hidden files, mangled the command and ran basically rm -rf /* (seriously, don't do that, it will delete everything on your system). I reinstalled the system (I had data on a different drive that either wasn't mounted atm or it didn't reach them before I Ctrl-c'd that command.) and all was well.
Finally I did last clean install when I bought new (used) Ryzen build to replace my old i5-2500k, I would've had to recompile world anyway and I had pretty much dependency hell of my own making at that point (I was testing tons of unstable stuff, new Plasma 5 from testing repo and so on).
Now I'm running mostly stable system with only bunch of packages unmasked from testing and there are no problems with that. I never had that with any other distro. No matter if Deb based, rpm based, sooner or later I inevitably ran into some variant of "I need a package that's not in basic repo, and the package I found requires a version of some library that's not available as well" or something like that. In Gentoo, the packages either compile against the version you have installed, or if not possible, you can have more versions installed at the same time in different slots. Also if you need something that's not available in repo, you can just write a text file that downloads and compiles the version you need and it integrates in the package manager automatically, no need to create whole Deb/rpm package.
Dual booting W11 and Linux Mint. I like linux, but can't get adobe premiere to work satisfactorily there. There are also some softwares like a viewer for 3DS games on my modded 3DS that I can't really use either
We should send all those people, pages and guides suggesting distros to hell.
And then instead we suggest update-schemes (fixed, rolling, slow-roll), package managers and Desktop environments. People with enough brain cells to start a computer are then absolutely able to chose a distro fitting them based on that. Everything else coming with a distro is just themeing/branding anyway...
(and just for the use statistic: Archlinux, Opensuse (Leap and Kalpa), Debian here...)
There’s a lot of advantages that simply come with using a more popular distribution. For one, having a larger pool of package maintainers (and therefore more packages) is pretty important. Have you ever tried using NixOS as a daily driver? I did a few years ago. Very annoying having to create my own packages for so many different (and relatively common) things I wanted to use.
Nobara! switched 2 days ago, deleted my Windows partition 3 hours ago because it's smooth sailing and quite the different experience compared to bashing my head against debian jessie ages ago.
Edit: the final nail in the coffin were the fking backported ads in the start menu. seriously, wtf.
After several years I have landed on Debian with plain old gnome for my whole family. Boring as f***, but it just works. Currently untraining myself from opening my terminal on fresh boot to do pacman -Syu. Flatpacks have solved my need for updated software.
Linux Mint. Cinnamon. With a Windows Vista theme. It confuses and/or irritates everyone who sees it.
I was going to go Mint/Cinnamon, but now I'm going to more.
I'm using the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper on my Fedora PC at work. I've had a few people ask about it haha. Most of the company uses Macs.
Tech support scammers HATE this trick!
What's it called?
Windon't
Linux does what Windont?
^ this ^
Not sure but it’s by B00merang-Project. Check their site.
LDME/Cinnamon
Nice! Not my thing but I'm glad that you can enjoy the Vista theme (I remember enjoying it when it came out)
Hannah Montana FTW
RebeccaBlackOS > Hannah Montana Linux
It's Saturday not Friday
Does that mean you don't have to get down to the bus stop?
So going off the chalice in the movie, the distro that will save you from judgment is the plainest one – the one with the least bloat? That tracks.
"the cup of a
carpentercoder"Is this going to be Arch or Debian?
That’s just what I was going to say - that will either be Arch or Debian…
More like Alpine or something else without systemd. I mean no shade (well, a bit of shade) since I've got Fedora myself. Alpine doesn't even have glibc IIRC.
In 2024, having systemd is less complicated than not having it.
Can you explain why everyone hates systemd
I started and still work in rhel
I think it is breaking the Unix philosophy, it is an enormous piece of code that does so many different things. My ideal is smaller components with smaller dependencies. When distros or software becomes inextricably dependent on systemd they are then beholden to whichever direction the maintainers take it.
My take on it is somewhat based on "what if." Other people have some pragmatic discussions on security aspects if you search around.
I'm not a systemd guru, but I do find it relatively easy to work with.
I've noticed that a lot of it is actually made up of separate binaries and daemons. Is it wrong or misleading to think of systemd as a collection of utilities that share a common DSL as opposed to a strict monolith?
Musl can be a bit annoying compilation target sometimes. Usually it works but I've debugged bugs a few times that were due to musl target.
I prefer my distro with glibc...
Debian.
So… Slackware?
Of course. No other distro existed when Jesus was alive.
BTW...
Also kudos to you for your modding last couple days.
Possibly a perfect use of this.
Is it really a choice?
TEMPLEOS
I recently installed Manjaro. It works for my games right now
I highly recommend avoiding manjaro like the plague, their team is incredibly incompetent (see: https://manjarno.pages.dev/ ), I say this as someone who has given people manjaro for years and regretted it, I was also their it person, manjaro regularly broke every few months and gave people a very bad taste of linux
for example, why are kernels given version numbers in packages? This caused 3 separate peoples computers to break multiple times. Everything good about manjaro comes from arch, everything bad about manjaro comes from the manjaro team.
Y’know how it’s not rolling release because they delay packages by 2 weeks? They actually do no testing in this time. How do I know this? They pushed an update that caused steam to uninstall your desktop environment. Famously covered by linus tech tips… this is something that should have easily been caught, and yet the two week window did absolutely nothing.
the truth is for manjaro there is no real usecase, there’s no set of desires that align with manjaro being the best choice for you. I am not asking you to switch away from manjaro, but I do not think we should ever recommend it to anyone, and on your next machine, I recommend trying the arch installer.
But if what you’re looking for is an easy pre-setup arch, use endeavoros
If you want something simple and up to date, use fedora kinoite
If you’re a power user and want to configure every little thing about their system, use arch or nixos
If you don’t care at all about updates and want the most rock solid system possible, debian.
If openSUSE Slowroll wasn't experimental I'd recommend it in place of Manjaro. It's a rolling release with monthly releases.
I really like Tumbleweed. Sure it updates a lot, but it doesn’t force updates so you can take it at your own pace.
SUSE's Open Build Service absolutely rules, too. I use Fedora personally, but would switch to Tumbleweed any day. I've gone back and forth, eventually settling on Fedora only because of familiarity with Red Hat.
There are things I miss, big one being Zypper. It's slow as balls but it's usability and ability to dig through packages is unmatched, in my opinion.
I hear you. I was looking more for Arch with less of a hassle. Something similar to my Steamdeck. I guess I should just wipe this weekend for something else. I really want something for playing my steam and GOG games that works with my Nvidia 3080.
Luckily for me I keep every game installed on different Steam Libraries so wiping my install drive to put something else in isn't difficult.
What about arch is it that you want?
I do a ton of distro research because I try to convert people to linux a lot so I might be able to help you with that.
https://bazzite.gg/ this is probably what you want, make sure to install the nvidia version.
I use arch, err nixos/nix on macOS btw. Do I win or have I made the Linux nerds angy?
This is why you just fucking lie and say "Arch btw"
Or just suck it up and learn Arch and never worry about the incredibly minor differences in distros
Screw that You're all great everybody from slackware to steam deck.
Slack where?
Slack there!
Slack where?
Slack here!
Slack there?
Slack here!
Slack there?
to SteamOS
Steam Deck is weird. I mean, I love it, but coming from vanilla Arch it can be frustrating at times. Discover is terrible. Luckily, Distrobox is a thing.
Portage Prefix is a thing too
I wasn't aware of it. It's certainly an option, but Gentoo isn't for me.
Yeah. You can run Prefix even on Android. And then there is project SharkBait.
I putz with Discover sometimes. Though I have no idea how it resolves package updates under the hood, as it often will produce a different manifest than running dnf itself.
What would you like to see improved?
I usually can't find what I'm looking for, so a larger catalogue would go a long way. I also had problems with some software versions. The one that comes to mind is that Firefox had behavior with the save dialogue that I don't like. It's a minor issue, but one that I don't have with the build in the Arch repo. I have a vague memory of something just not working, but I couldn't tell you what at this point.
Ah, I see! Yeah, a bigger catalog would be nice. You can add more repositories to it, enable Flathub, which provide more options, but something about it does feel hamstrung.
The Firefox thing is something I know about! You can set a config option in the
about:configpage to tell Firefox to use your desktop's standard dialogue. It has to do with XDG Desktop specifications, I thinkIt uses the system dialogue, but it starts from the same directory each time. If I'm saving files it's usually multiple files in succession, so I want the dialogue to start off pointed at the last directory I saved to. The Arch build does that.
Ooohh! Interesting. You've got me curious about that now. I'll have to look into it.
For as much as Linux nerds (myself absolutely included) complain about distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro, I'd still take either one over Windows or MacOS any day.
Mac OSX isn't bad... so long as you sell it your soul, and don't want freedom in return, it's great 👍.
I kid... mostly - it's iOS that is horrifying, but Mac OSX is still Unix (tho not GNU), so not anywhere within leagues of Microdick.
And - possibly dumb question - couldn't you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
Other than all that, yeah:-)
Still not comparable to Windows though, imho.
Its sins are just of a different sort - e.g. you don't need to repair or upgrade those machines so often, bc they work so well for so long as it is, plus other than for gaming, who even upgrades machines these days to begin with?
For non-gaming, Macs are great machines. So too are Linux. While Windows sux ass no matter what. Thus that's the dividing line, imho.
I mean... a Mac machine will run non-Mac OSX software. Pretty much everything can run linux, with a little effort put into it:-) (unless somehow these M chips have prevented that? even if so, surely it's only a matter of time before someone cracks that barrier)
But yeah, it's definitely a choice. e.g., Apple does not even sell cheap Macs, whereas machines intended to run Windows can be bought all up and down the scale - though I recall at various points in time, comparing equivalently-equipped machines, Apple ones were pound-for-pound actually cheaper than their Windows equivalents. This is ofc b/c of the monopolistic practices: when you rigidly control the hardware, you are able to order in bulk, and when you order in bulk, you are able to get large discounts from the supplier!
Though surely nobody was arguing to purchase a Mac, not knowing who or what Apple is or is about? Installing Arch Linux is also known to be somewhat ah... "tricky", so if we are comparing things like ease-of-use, the question gets back to OP's "which distro?" And it's all a matter of choice - what you want to get out of it, and which constraints you want to live underneath.
But anyway, we were talking about "Mac OSX", which yeah, very much is limited to specific sets of hardware, and cannot be installed willy-nilly on any old machine, this is very much a true statement, to be paid very much attention to by anyone wanting to learn more, or use that in their purchasing / installation decisions:-). I was just saying that while Apple (& iOS) may be evil these days, Mac OSX itself kinda is great, caveat: if you can live with its restrictions, and moreover, those are MUCH less than Microsoft's set of restrictions these days (whereas Linux has its own set of difficulties).
I was only illustrating how Mac hardware is not identically the same as Mac software. They are tied together, yet distinct entities.
Your lack of recollection neither proves nor disproves anything at all. If you doubt me, look it up? (since surely if I did so for you, you would distrust that as well? 🤪)
I did not downvote you btw.
You can use UTM on an M1 or up Macbook and iOS/iPadOS:
https://getutm.app/
It is not VirtualBox yet, but it is moving fast. And thank $deity it’s not Oracle… like VirtualBox
How does this work with containers?
I’d say iOS is still unix too, just rootless.
Mac is BSD, and the Darwin kernel is open source.
I forgot about the latter, thanks for the reminder:-).
It's worth noting that Apple has (for example) gone so far as to replace bash with zsh just because the GPL v3 was too copyleft for them to handle. In other words, fuck Apple.
Right decision but for the wrong reason.
Oh, I thought it was because zsh is better.
That's the point of the BSD license.
Exactly; fuck BSD too.
Unless you're a copyleft developer your opinion on the decisions of the creators is hilariously irrelevant.
The company that laid me off let me keep my Mac which was a nice parting gift. I don't think I'd ever buy one myself. They're just way to expensive.
I hoped for that at my previous job, and they said it could happen... but it was never going to, and it was a false hope offered. Why do that to me man...? 😭
Then I come to my current job, and they have a super old Mac laptop that was barely holding on that nobody else wanted, and I'm like "yes please"!
Bc if its Windows vs. Mac, and especially if "nothing" isn't even an option, then a million times out of a million I will choose super old, barely holding on Mac that nobody else wants.:-)
It's a single SSH command away from my work Linux, and it has MacVim, tons of other open source software available, plus a bunch of stuff that only Mac OSX has, like Preview and other fairly nice tools, which have open source equivalents like ImageMagick and gimp, but aren't nearly as easy to use.
I don't need a nice car, and I went without one entirely until I moved to the Midwest where it becomes absolutely necessary, but it's essential to have a good computer for me:-).
A VM doesn’t change the underlying OS collecting data from you
Privacy and data collection-wise MacOS is fine. It's their main selling point. Doesn't even force updates on you. I know it's a low bar, but damn Windows bar is at the floor at this point.
MacOS collects a large amount of data compared to Linux (although not even close to windows). Take a look at their tosdr page and this
I didn't say it's perfect, but it's not terrible. And I think that page is mostly about Apple services, like iCloud and stuff, not MacOS specifically. It's not necessary to use the services.
I mean, if you log in to Facebook at all, whatever MacOS collects is a drop in a bucket in comparison.
You have no point.
Yeah, that's what network-level blocking is for.
Zenarmor ftw.
damn had not heard of that and I have so many friends fucking with OPNsense. Thanks!
I had to look it up (e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/internet/317371-evaluating-apples-data-collection-in-macos-big-sur) and damn, I didn't know that they collected and sent THAT detailed of info!? (and perhaps they didn't, until Big Sur)
Even so, as the other reply mentioned, it's still leagues away from Windows at this point. But yeah, fair then that both Windows and Mac OSX are doing it, while Linux is not.
Still, if you had to pick a machine for your grandma to use, or like either Windows or Mac at work (but not Linux, though lets say that there is a terminal SSH option to Linux available from either), I would pick Mac OSX. It's fine if others would pick Linux for the former, but I don't think Mac OSX is a bad choice there.
While Windows... urg, is basically synonymous with being a cuss word nowadays. Witch: "a pox be upon thee - nay, moresooth, may you be cursed to only use Windows for the rest of your days!" (Onlookers: "gasp! what could anyone have done to be cursed with that bad of a punishment!? I would not wish that upon even my worst enemy!?") hehe:-P
That link doesn't say what you think it does.
That Apple blocks you from running every program you put onto it until/unless it can be properly certified, and that "Big Sur can bypass any firewall restrictions the end-user attempts to create"? It's true that it's not nearly as bad as it may sound at first, and they even released a statement that:
Though I also understand that if someone wants the ultimate in privacy, it's difficult to trust such a corporate promise, especially one like Apple known to hide or lie about such things. (Edit: also... "developer ID certificate checks", so if you don't register with Apple as a known developer then...?)
I still use Mac OSX myself, but if someone wants to avoid that and use Linux for this reason, I'm not going to argue with them - whereas I would push back a little bit if a friend were to tell me they planned to put Windows (as the primary OS) onto a machine.
"always" in this case is when you have two or more gpus in your system, which limits the ability to "just" run a vm considerably.
Ah, for gaming, yes Macs are not fantastic gaming machines that's for sure.
Then again, Linux has long been known to have issues with gaming as well, especially with an Nvidia card...
Unless you use Steam, and then both work, kinda?
Still it seems like it's Linux and Mac OSX on one side, and Microsoft left behind thousands of years in the past, except maybe for gaming where literally an old Windows running on a VM may run the widest selection of games?
But I still don't see the logic of grouping Macs together with Windows, even for gaming.
For VMs, I expected more someone to bring up the switch to the M1 chipset, a huge setback for VMs definitely even if temporary, though I'm old enough to remember that Linux and Macs both running Intel were often easier to get things running on than Linux on Intel vs. Linux on AMD. But things definitely change over time, as to what is easiest at any given moment.
Microsoft sucks tho - now THAT'S universal. Can't we all just get together, united in our hate for it?! (/s, or, well, actually... not!)
Edit: hey, anyone want to start like an anti-Windows or I-fucking-hate-fucking-Windows community? I'll join it today if you do!? :-)
The obvious downside is that Linux is no longer the host OS. MacOS or Windows would be closed source code managing your hardware. And any VM could only be as fast as the host OS allows it to be.
The host OS is likewise limited, but more by hardware, so it might be a small performance tradeoff, depending on whether, as you brought up, you need Linux to be ultimately in control rather than to simply run some software.
So that would not always work, ofc... but it sometimes would!:-)
new to Linux, my first distro was and is Manjaro. what do people complain about? i love it and am glad i left windows for it :)
This website has a decent summary: https://manjarno.pages.dev/
TL:DR: Repeated dumb mistakes that a (relatively) big distro like Manjaro should not be making. Haven't heard any drama in the past year or so though, so maybe they've finally gotten their act together. Time will tell.
679 days since the last incident.
I feel like this incident is over blown. The weird holding back for 2 weeks without testing is a valid complaint though.
Idk, it worked well for me. Been on fedora for a while now.
It's too "easy" for all the kiddos who tie their self-worth to their ability to follow installation instructions.
Ubuntu has Snap and ads and stuff, but I thought Manjaro was considered good. What's wrong with it? It's supposed to be Arch based.
Replied to a different comment about this: https://lemmy.world/comment/12365020
That's all well and good, but can we talk about proper use of this meme template?
Shouldn't it be "further"? farther is for physical distance, further is for figurative/metaphorical distance.
"I am altering the language, pray.. "
Yes
Eh it works just fine 🤷♂️
Ah yes, that's exactly what I said.
I’m shocked there wasn’t a single minion or cry-laugh emoji plastered on.
(Sorry in advance..)
Look, a meme Heimdall.
This is great. Just to let you know, whatever decision you make is wrong. Cheers!
I'm using debian btw
I've been rolling Debian more and more this year. If you've got solid Linux chops, it's really great.
I also really like LMDE, it's what I run on my Business laptop.
Fuck it, I'm switching to TempleOS
I'm not doing that unless it has its own compiler.
Has anybody tried to get TempleOS to run Doom?
A quick Google search says... Yes! they even implemented a basic sdl2 library in holyc to access the full potential of the video hardware.
Does it get any holier than practicing combat against the forces of hell? Lol
Just setup Mint last night and have been troubleshooting how to get everything to work. So far I'm liking it. Last thing I setup was Lutris for gaming so that's nice.
Which edition of Mint?
Nooooooo
Cinnamon
I'm pretty sure the question was more about linux mint (ubuntu/default) vs. linux mint debian edition, as those can confidently be called different distros. Don't worry about it though, the issues with ubuntu are actually very small, they're just infinitely magnified on the internet by people who care a lot about the smallest things. There are also many advantages to using ubuntu or an ubuntu derivative. Also this question can be interpreted very humorously, so maybe do that if you like.
Ah I assume Ubuntu based since I just downloaded the latest from the mint website. Still learning about Linux so not 100% sure.
If you just went with the most prominent and easily accessible download button it'll probably be ubuntu, but as i said, despite what some might say that's not necessarily a bad thing
If he got the cinnamon version, that is indeed the default Ubuntu based one. I use the same thing.
One of the biggest draws of regular Mint IMO is that it leverages the advantages and resources of Ubuntu but it removes the parts that many people don’t like.
Anakin no doubt uses Oracle Linux
The only wrong choice.
Mint, judge me
PS anyone have any favorite resources for absolute tech illiterate noobs? I'm trying, but without a baseline understanding of the subject, it's hard to find the right guides
Just a humble Arch Linux user here
It's wonderful how the expression "humble Arch Linux user" manages to pack a contradiction in a mere 4 words.
EndeavourOS
Same. I have zero clue how to use it but anything's better than windows.
I just open the Welcome app, and click the first 4 options to update like once every week or so.
The best one, of course
I run distro, btw
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 Distro
What? Why would you choose that over Baptist Church of Missouri SynodOS, you heretic?
Sick Emo Philips reference, bro.
Ah- then I have to dispute your theology on daemons.
I'm an unwashed Mint peasant. Tell me how inadequate I am.
There is nothing wrong with Mint EZ mode. I got a computer illiterate buddy with a 8 year old shittop running it like its new.
Mint is about as uncontroversial as its popularity allows lol
Except all the cool kids use Arch, of course.
You're completely adequate as you are my minty friend!
I love Mint, it has become my workhorse distro. I use LMDE on my personal business laptop. I switched my parents from Windows 10 to Mint earlier this year, and it's been great on their very old and low power desktop.
Cinnamon is not the prettiest or slickest DE, but damn if it ain't the most stable DE I've used.
I'm a KDE fanboi myself, but when I spin up a machine that I need to just work in a super dependable way and is no muss, no fuss, I usually choose Mint with Cinnamon.
Nah, Fedora is a valid choice, just like Ubuntu is. Both are great if you don't care that much about personalization and just want a solid distro to get work done.
Fedora is pretty much the new Ubuntu more or less. Ubuntu has gone so far downhill that I can't recommend it to anyone and that's been the case for quite a while.
Hannah Montana Linux
Reactions:
Ubuntu: 😮why?
Manjaro: haven’t you managed to kill it yet?
Mint: ex windows guy?
Debian: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?
Endeavour: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?
Arch: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?
Nix: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?
OpenSUSE: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?
…
For a lot of people Ubuntu is the linux. Canonical is just good at marketing. For all it worth, Ubuntu is not the bad choice for average user who's not into ricing and not bothered by bloat.
I've been using Arch and Manjaro for couple years each and in my experience they both break regularly. But, for some weird reason, Arch Linux is praised, when Manjaro is shamed upon.
Aren't we all?
Linux mint: ex windows guy? I take offence, I’m an ex-SuSE 4.2, ex-macOS, windows only at work guy. (My cinnamon is themed to have macOS ish appearance btw.) [and I lied, not ex-mac as such, I have a few macs round the house, and built my Linux machine to run games on steam/lutris, around a spare gfx card that came out of my classic Mac pro5,1]
No, there is not some weird reason but actual very good ones.
Things can break on a bleeding edge update scheme. That's to be expected from time to time. But the questions are "why did it break" and "what is done to fix it".
If something breaks on Archlinux it's because of some new package with a issue that escaped testing. Then the fix come out as fast as possible (often within minutes even, but let's assume hours as those things need to move through mirrors first...).
If something breaks on Manjaro it's either because of the exact same reason as above, but 2 weeks later. Because Manjaro keeps back updates for two weeks "for stability reasons", yet doesn't do anything in those 2 weeks. So they just add the same problem later, completely defeating the argumant about stability. Oh, and fixes are of course kept back for 2 weeks, too, because... reasons.
Or it breaks because they fucked up their internal QA. For example by letting their certificates expire again and again and again and again... of by screwing up their very own pacman-wrapper and then ddos'ing the AUR for all users, not only Manjaro ones.
Or -speaking about the AUR- it breaks because they give their users full access to the Arch User Repository (without any warnings about user content being less reliable and used at your own risk) pre-installed. Also they do it on a system generally out-of-date because it lags 2 weeks behind. Which is not what AUR packages are build for (they assume up-to-date systems) and is a straight path to dependency hell and breakings... not because something went wrong but because the whole concept of an out-of-date system not running their own also 2-weeks behind version onf the AUR is idiotic. On the "plus" side they have an easy fix: blame the user, because he should obviously know that an pre-installed part of Manjaro is conceptionally flawed and shouldn't be trusted.
Exactly that, AUR is mostly unusable in manjaro and manjaro is mostly unusable if you don’t have AUR packages, in my opinion.
The main problem with Manjaro is they hold updates to the repos back for to weeks, which in itself isn’t a problem but they don’t do the same for the AUR, meaning you’re almost guaranteed to have dependencie issues at some point. And a, very minor, issue is that in the past they have broken their forum site, but that hasn’t happened for a while now.
Ubuntu: was the first distro that came up… hated it and went back to windows Manjaro: tried it after Ubuntu, was great for 2 months until it broke and I swapped to arch Mint: never used it Debian: used it once for a VM because it wasn’t canonical, but it was meh Endeavour: never used it Arch: it was great and I still use it for my cheap side laptop, but I forgot to update it for a month and it broke on my main laptop and I wasn’t good enough with Linux to fix it at the time so that computer runs Nix Nix: used it after arch broke and I was paranoid with having to fix stuff… still use it on my primary computer but am frustrated with how hard it is to develop in rust on
In my experience, nix works exceptionally well with Rust. Python and JavaScript are nastier, especially if the libraries use C extensions.
I think my problem comes from trying to compile for MUSL so I can use the binary in an alpine docker container… I’m working on setting up a docket development environment though, so here’s hoping it works
... Fedora?
Lol, forgot that very important one 😂
Reaction: 😃good choice! I think it is a good well distro for people coming to linux✌🏻
Yeah honestly I like to know what drew people to that distro.
I've been on mint for a while. Here's a tip for anyone who needs some windows apps that won't work in Linux.
VM workstation 17 is free and is fast as balls. With plug and play pass through too.
Can you test. paint.net for me
Lol really? Edit: oh! My bad thought this was something else. Gimme a minute I'll run through it
Why would you want that on Linux? We already have qemu KVM which can be used via libvirt. Just install virtual manager and be done with it.
The speed you are seeing is the same as KVM
Slow down. VMware can be one click and done. All these alternatives and extras and configurations are the reason windows people don't try Linux. Don't over complicate a simple thing. If they want new or more they can figure that out at a later date.
VMware is much harder to setup as it requires additional setup
You just install virt-manager and reboot. That's it.
VMware requires you to click on the downloaded install and click yes a bunch of times before it's finished.
Exactly. That's way more complicated and requires loading external software not packaged by distros. Meanwhile virt manager is very easy to install and it is in the repos pretty much everywhere. You also could use gnome boxes as it doesn't even need root. It is just a flatpak
Any clue how it handles Illustrator?
Unfortunately not. But I'd imagine flawless. You know of a free way to test?
I'll give it a shot!
Ubuntu
I activate Ubuntu Pro
Greed is good.
💥 Free for up to 5 machines 💣
What are the benefits/features that this adds?
10 years security updates, plus security patches for community packages (instead of waiting on community patches). It's basically the corporate support plan provided for free for up to 5 machines per account.
I'm not sure I understand that part. Is Canonical implementing the patches instead of the open source project/package developers? I'm confused.
Exactly. In Debian, the community implements security patches. In Ubuntu, Canonical implements security patches for a part of the repo (main), the community implements them for the remainder (universe). This has been the standard since Ubuntu's inception. With Ubuntu Pro, Canonical implements security patches for the whole repo (main and universe).
So they're actively involved in the development of open source projects then?
Ubuntu is awesome Change my mind
Yeah, it's fine. Haven't had too much trouble in a good 10 odd years, once the WiFi drivers settled. Mind you I'm not fucking upgrading to 24.04 for another couple of weeks.
Spent a ton of time trying to install GrapheneOS because web USB doesn't work in snap version of chrome. How about letting me install the normal deb version? Nope, can't let the user choose
What's the hate with ubuntu? Or is it just elitism/gatekeeping?
Pretty much. Canonical made a few questionable choices in the past but overall they've done a lot for the Linux community. And their distro is very good. There is a reason why distros choose it as their base.
SteamOS.
That's Arch BTW
It's Arch-based, but if
distro = basethen
Mint = UbuntuUbuntu = DebianMint = DebianAll hail nix, praise be to thee
So true. But this is (usually) more like sibling rivalry instead of actual disrespect. It is kinda fun if you're in the mood to poke at your peers.
SteamOS, what else?
You use SteamOS btw?
Yes, I use SteamOS on my steamdeck. Aside from my nuc which is running ProxMox with several Debian based VMs, that’s sadly currently the only thing that’s running Linux in my house.
Red Star OS, commrad!
Tumbleweed!
OpenSUSE family 🤙
The most stable rolling distro.
Someone should do this meme with the Fediverse
What do you mean?
Well you know, the commie instances, the nazi instances, the cp instances
My favorite (not): The instances who find it more crucial to defederate from Threads than pedo and neonazi instances...
Which software
Which instance?
Still quietly asking myself why tf that is important. I need an OS to do a task, and I need it to be as easily configurable and as unobtrusive as possible. If I was into nursing an OS I'd have stayed with Windows.
Then do with Ubuntu or its variants. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.
Ty. Didn't want to add "I'm using Debian, btw.". Debian ticks all my boxes for ease of install, usage, updates, software availabiliy and - most important - stability.
Debian is great. The Ubuntus just add a few quality of life features that make it slightly better in my opinion.
I finally joined the Fedora nation after being on Arch for a long time. Both are great.
Whichever one you chose is the wrong one!
Ubuntu. I have nothing to prove.
I can't stand Gnome 3. That's why I go with Kubuntu.
Hey another Kubuntu user! Seems like a very overlooked distro, imo
I don't get the Gnome desktop. The vanilla one is unusable without adding a ton of extensions. But I do appreciate the simplicity in the settings.
I love KDE in the way that it keeps the traditional desktop paradigm that we're all used to, but their configs are way too complex. There's too much in one place.
In fact I've been thinking of trying out LXQT for simplicity's sake.
Ooookay, this will get controversial.
Proud Manjaro/Debian user!
So we end up with Arch and Debian. Debian 12 is good enough as is, and runs on a work laptop where I don't care about anything but stability. Arch is respectable and great, but requires excessive maintenance to work properly. Among its derivatives, Endeavour is just a nicer archinstall (so, why?), Garuda is cool but unstable and too gamer'y, Manjaro is a bit problematic at times but generally the safest bet when it comes to Arch. So, when it comes to my main PC doubling as a gaming rig, this is a no-brainer.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences
Been running Bazzite for a month and having a great experience with it! My nvidea cards work with no hassle, and with the extended proton I have had issues with only 1 game so far, and even that was fixed by just switching to a different version. Only downside so far is that Wayland doesn't work as well as X11 on my DE, but with the rest working great, I have no complaints :)
I have zorin and mint dual booting on my surface book.
really liking zorin, very pleasing to look at, simple, haven't run into any software I had on windows that I can't run here. I don't game on, could still be a slight negative, but so far I love it.
PopOS is fun. Mint is pretty good too.
I'm really looking forward to using their Cosmic DE once HDR support is in.
Is PopOs or mint getting support for HDR? I'm dual booting PopOs but the lack of HDR support is of the things holding me back.
Eventually yes, but no estimate on when that will be, I know there has been a statement by the PopOS team that they're working on it.
Right now if you want HDR you pretty much have to be running KDE for your DE.
Mint with KDE if it doesn't support it already it will the next major release.
No idea when Gnome HDR support will come.
Went with nix about a month ago and it started off great. Slowly learning to not really like it. A lot of problems that are really hard to fix
What kinda issues are you having? Most of my problems with Nix are solved with overlays or creating a module. Admittedly, in order to do that you still have to know how to fix your issue the usual linux way. Afterall, Nix is more of an abstraction tool IMO; good for replicating something across a ton if devices. If you don't need that, there's other distros that work much better out of the box.
Whatever it is it's the wrong Linux
You dropped this -> /s
They're deadly serious. Every Linux is the wrong Linux.
BSD is the only way.
(hears the rumble of the hurd in the distance)
The one that does what I need it to do on the device I'm running it on. I've currently got four different Linux distros on x86 PCs around my house at this moment.
mint.
Bazzite bro here
Find me a distro, that works with Nvidia 4070 / Intel CPU.
Can support a 3 monitor setup with weird sizes. 4k, 1440( in vertical), and a 1600-1200.
Play most games with out scaling issues.
That should do
P.s. very little CLI and tinkering needed.
NixOS
Sorry, I'm Plan 9 all the way
Did first 8 plans fail?Very interesting thing. Linux Namespaces were inspired by it.
It's from outer space
Debian for the Transbians (trans lesbians).
Alpine, mainly. It's not bad on desktop.
Openbsd
Put any distro in front of me and provided I don't need to master it, I'm good. Ubuntu is fine. Debian is fine. RedHat is fine. Fedora is fine. I even have a tiny low-end system that is using Bohdi. Whatever. We're all using mostly the same kernel anyway.
90% of what I do is in a container anyway so it almost doesn't matter; half the time that means Alpine, but not really. That includes both consuming products from upstream as well as software development. I also practically live in the terminal, so I couldn't care less what GUI subsystem is in play, even while I'm using it.
I'm on Tumbleweed right now. Used to be on Arch flavors, Garuda then Cachy OS.
Tumbleweed is almost as fast for gaming performance, I just don't have it in me to do all the tinkering anymore. Just want something up to date that works.
Arch was... great and pretty reliable, just got tired of the tinkering.
As someone mildly interested in OpenSUSE and currently on an Arch-based distro, how much do you miss AUR? Or do you use Distrobox?
I don't miss AUR. Well, I do but opensuse has OBS. Technically OBS is better as packages can be rebuilt automatically when dependencies are updated, but there are a lot more users on the AUR than OBS so AUR has more stuff on it.
OBS packages are less likely to break your system in an update, but the AUR is just flat out bigger.
There hasn't been anything I've needed that I haven't been able to find either on OBS or as a flatpak. When something isn't in the disro repos, I look for a flatpak first, then check OBS. Mostly cause flatpaks are easier to search.
I see, thanks for sharing!
Manjaro and Debian
Nixos 💀
Go on.....
Just curious does anyone actually care about what distro people use or more just a meme?
I have been talking and thinking about switching for a while. I want to go straight to Debian.
Good choice! Running it on my laptop.
Debian 12 is solid and much more user-friendly compared to previous editions.
Expect the software to age without updates, though, or rely on Flatpaks/Distrobox for what you need to be fresh.
Is updating the software an issue? I always try to keep my stuff up to date. Sometimes I can be a little lazy, but I do care to keep the latest stuff going. Doesn't the software have notifications that a newer version is available?
Yes, there are notifications. Be aware that, unless you use Flatpaks again, you'll not have many functional updates - mostly just security. That's just the way of Debian - keeping you on the same software for 2+ years in the name of stability. Unless you use Debian Testing, that is.
Unless I use flatpaks again? Remember I am going to be a first time Linux user. It'll be the first time I use anything!
Even as a first-time user, you'll figure it our rather quickly, no worries. It's not rocket science, just an option to toggle that allows you to install more modern versions of apps in an isolated mode.
But if we only look at regular installs, your software will stay at the same version until Debian 13 is rolled out, likely in summer 2025. Do not expect any large updates at all until then.
Currently, PopOS although I'm not really that enthusiastic about it.
I've been using Pop for years, I just feel like its always worked so well for me and never given me any major gripes. Web browsing, playing a few basic games, editing documents and even recently setting up another home server with it for media streaming with Jellyfin.
I'm a big advocate for any OS which works well out the box and is mostly hands off once configured!
If PopOS isn't your thing you'll find it eventually 🙂
Yeah, there's stuff to like, but.. but..
I just disable most of the Pop stuff and use vanilla gnome.
I've gone with PopOs. Ubuntu based so well supported. They've been around for a while now so they won't disappear over night. Gaming just works.
I was on Nobara for a while and really liked it. but while glorious eggroll is the goat, I don't want to put my DE in the hands of a single person.
Since swapping the I've experienced one game crashing freeze (which I hope was a one off), and when screen sharing BG3 over discord it slows the game down to a crawl. But I blame discord for this one, as its fine when streaming from OBS.
It lasted for a precious second.
Mint Cinnamon. Fight me.
This is dumb because it's making it out to seem like there are Super Distro Wars and not just folks calling out bad decision makers like Ubuntu and Manjaro, and non-free-as-in-beer distros like Zorin and Elementary
I'm pretty sure outside of those two categories nobody really cares
Distro wars, like the old vi vs emacs wars (showing my age, I know) is not entirely serious. I never understood sportsball fandom, but it's kind of like that. Debian is my home team; if you use Fedora, you're from out-of-town.
I've been a Windows... Let's say a power-user, no expert but I could install it, find a way to troubleshoot most problems. Then at high school a friend lent me a bit outdated Knoppix CD. I never managed to make ppp work on that so no internet, but I loved the old KDE. Somewhat later, when we had a normal DSL line with a proper router, I got Fedora. Then Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian for a while...
Finally I found Gentoo. And there I am, some 10 years later, still on that. After a bit of a bumpy road of the first install (no automation, but the handbook is very helpful if you know the basic Linux and HW terms) it was almost flawless. I remember two problems, and both of them were my own fault. The first one was some testing kernel version that had a bug where small files on ext3 filesystem would get randomly corrupted. The second was when I was trying to remove some hidden files, mangled the command and ran basically rm -rf /* (seriously, don't do that, it will delete everything on your system). I reinstalled the system (I had data on a different drive that either wasn't mounted atm or it didn't reach them before I Ctrl-c'd that command.) and all was well.
Finally I did last clean install when I bought new (used) Ryzen build to replace my old i5-2500k, I would've had to recompile world anyway and I had pretty much dependency hell of my own making at that point (I was testing tons of unstable stuff, new Plasma 5 from testing repo and so on).
Now I'm running mostly stable system with only bunch of packages unmasked from testing and there are no problems with that. I never had that with any other distro. No matter if Deb based, rpm based, sooner or later I inevitably ran into some variant of "I need a package that's not in basic repo, and the package I found requires a version of some library that's not available as well" or something like that. In Gentoo, the packages either compile against the version you have installed, or if not possible, you can have more versions installed at the same time in different slots. Also if you need something that's not available in repo, you can just write a text file that downloads and compiles the version you need and it integrates in the package manager automatically, no need to create whole Deb/rpm package.
Debian Testing.
Learning about the xz backdoor was a fun week.
last time I was messing around with Linux on a second machine I think I installed Mint. it was fine 🤷🏻♂️
Which Podman version are you running it on?
5.2 , slowly migrating all my homelab to quadlets.
Dual booting W11 and Linux Mint. I like linux, but can't get adobe premiere to work satisfactorily there. There are also some softwares like a viewer for 3DS games on my modded 3DS that I can't really use either
Home server: Proxmox (Debian). Redundant DNS: Raspbian (Debian). Parent's server: Debian (Debian).
Gonna be honest, I mostly live off my phone and a retroid pocket.
Linux is Linux.
We should send all those people, pages and guides suggesting distros to hell.
And then instead we suggest update-schemes (fixed, rolling, slow-roll), package managers and Desktop environments. People with enough brain cells to start a computer are then absolutely able to chose a distro fitting them based on that. Everything else coming with a distro is just themeing/branding anyway...
(and just for the use statistic: Archlinux, Opensuse (Leap and Kalpa), Debian here...)
I'm ready for the feature triangle
There’s a lot of advantages that simply come with using a more popular distribution. For one, having a larger pool of package maintainers (and therefore more packages) is pretty important. Have you ever tried using NixOS as a daily driver? I did a few years ago. Very annoying having to create my own packages for so many different (and relatively common) things I wanted to use.
I don't care in the slightest which package manager or UI or if releases are rolling or rocking.
What I care about is usability and ease if use, so I went with the best one, Linux Mint!
😁
WSL and Android, then?
Nobara! switched 2 days ago, deleted my Windows partition 3 hours ago because it's smooth sailing and quite the different experience compared to bashing my head against debian jessie ages ago.
Edit: the final nail in the coffin were the fking backported ads in the start menu. seriously, wtf.
WSLinux
I had to ditch my girlfriend because she became an arch elitist. Debian ftw.
"She is adopted" - Arch user
Smarch
After several years I have landed on Debian with plain old gnome for my whole family. Boring as f***, but it just works. Currently untraining myself from opening my terminal on fresh boot to do pacman -Syu. Flatpacks have solved my need for updated software.
Nobara :)
Arch.