What is your preferred daily driver distribution?
Considering switching away from Fedora and to another distribution. Does anyone have any suggestions for distributions I should consider?
View original on lemm.ee
Considering switching away from Fedora and to another distribution. Does anyone have any suggestions for distributions I should consider?
I'm using debian.
Seconded
I live on the more unstable side, I like Debian Unstable/Sid. I also recommend Siduction as it's based on Debian Unstable.
I've been actually trying Debian Testing for past few weeks.
Debian not recommends testing for everyday using. You definetely have to look at the site. Afaik it is basically a bad version of unstable that gets slow updates and it is only for testing purposes.
Can unstable be used as a daily driver?
Packages from debian unstable trickle down to testing in 8-10 days usually if all the other criteria are met. But I have also heard that important security updates go straight from unstable to stable and then come to testing at a later time. When is that later date I have no idea.
Mint, because it works with a minimum of effort.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, because it's more up to date than Mint, it's a rolling distro, it works, and in the rare event of a problem it's easy to roll back to a snapshot.
Arch Linux
Reasons:
The wiki is what makes it really hard for me to move out. This masterpiece is where I learned 70% of what I know about linux systems 🤷
My steam deck uses arch btw, and the main reason I didn't choose arch for my laptop was because I haven't had good experience with pacman. But I'll be honest that I haven't given it much of a chance, so I'd like to learn more. What is it that you like about pacman?
What bad experience have you had with pacman? My favourite thing about it is that it is pretty much the only package manager that has never failed me.
Well on the steam deck, updates will always fail until I reboot the device then try to update again. I also really don't like the syntax. It isn't intuitive, and I can't memorize it because of that. For example, I'm not sure why
-Smeansinstall. I remember install because that's the one I have used the most, but I can't remember what is equivalent toapt updateorapt upgrade, and I'm not sure why they can't just use those terms. Why do I need to memorize arbitrary letters with captialization?I have no expierence with the steam deck, so dunno what's up with that. Never expierenced something like that on my PCs tho.
Yes, the flags can be unintuitive for beginners,
Sstands for sync, which will sync the package(s) specified thereafter with the remote repositories. If the packages aren"t installed it means installing them, if they are already installed it means updating them to the version that is the latest version in the remote repository. Full system update is done bypacman -Syu, whereytells pacman to synchronize the package lists first anduselects all packages that are older than the ones in these package lists for theS.You can easily learn all that by using
fish(orzshwith a sufficient config) instead of bash. Then, you can enterpacman -and hit TAB to get a list of allowed flags and a brief description. Choose one, hit TAB again and get a list of flags that go with the one you selected before, again with a description right out of the man-page. BTW, that works with a lot of command line programs and is imo almost necessary to get in touch with the shell.Arch.
People think it's really challenging and brittle, but everything seems to always work no matter how often I update (or don't) and the wiki is top notch.
I actually chose arch initially because when you go to forums to troubleshoot problems there is always an ubuntu answer and an arch answer, and the arch answer is almost always shorter.
Bang on
I only use Arch, it's really stable and easy to fix if something goes wrong thanks to the excellent arch wiki.
But I recommend PopOS for anyone who just wants something good looking and stable and who doesn't need the latest packages all the time.
Depends on what you're looking for.
I cannot recommend NixOS enough, it's such a good distribution but on the other hand it's quite tough to learn as it deviates a lot on how distributions do things. It still uses a standard stack (glibc, systemd, GNU tools and all) but the nix tools which include the package manager are totally different from what other distributions offer. It's very solid, yet flexible. It offers a lot of packages by default. I've switched my machines to it because of the advantages.
Arch is great as a rolling release distribution with solid repositories (lots of packages and quite up to date) and it's very close to upstream with a more traditional approach to the distribution tools. In fact there aren't really any apart from the package manager by default. I feel this is one of the most comfortable distributions if you want to learn how a classic Linux system is structured. I ran Arch for about 15 years and didn't really have anything to complain about and I learned more about Linux there than with Ubuntu and Debian.
Please note that neither of these are what one would consider beginner-friendly distributions.
Linux Mint: Debian Edition. After watching a YouTube review I decided to take a break from Arch and give it a try, I'd always like Cinnamon, and I really like this.
Cinnamon, last I tried it, has a bug which causes it to run games with compositing enabled. The setting that's supposed to disable it for games, only works until the next boot.
I recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed without hesitation.
This is the best answer. It’s the most comparable to Fedora with it’s semi-rolling releases.
Tried it for the first time last week. I was hesitant because I'm forced into SLES for work, and I fucking hate it. But thats because all of the default configs for all packages are overly secure. Like, installing apache required a ton of extra steps to allow HTTP traffic. But I needed to test both HTTP and HTTPS for the feature I was working on, so I needed HTTP.
But overall I have been very happy with Tumbleweed. I like that the packages are more up to date than Ubuntu LTS (what I was using previously), and I haven't had as many driver issues either. Oh, and snapshots are amazing. It already saved me once when I accidentally deleted the wrong config file, I just cp'd it from my last snapshot.
Debian only household here ..
Void Linux user here with Qtile - Wayland as my WM.
Unpopular choice here but Ubuntu LTS with ubuntu-debullshit (vanilla gnome, replace snap with flatpak).
My main factors:
I’ve had my fun distro hopping in the past but I just want a low maintenance system nowadays.
Ohhh, I'll have to check this out. I've been gradually moving away from Ubuntu toward Debian (w/ GNOME) for a while because Snap is hot garbage and I don't want to have anything to do with it. Were it not for Snap, I still really like Ubuntu.
Drivers are the weak spot of Ubuntu LTS, even with HWE the kernel and Mesa are outdated compared to Fedora.
Debian + GNOME.
Historically I've been a huge fan of Ubuntu, but I just can't tolerate Snap any more and started moving away from Ubuntu in general.
Debian + I3 when working and Debian + KDE when slacking off. 🙃
I've been a long time Debian user. Debian 12 has been almost a perfect release so far. Highly recommended.
So were Woody and Potato (memories...).
I try so dang hard not to use Linux Mint because I have been using off and on since 2008 but always come crawling back to it when I run into some esoteric issue on another distro. It just hits the sweet spot of what I understand computing to be. I have desperately tried to use various forms of arch. OpenSUSE, fedora, debian, and a whole host of others and eventually get frustrated for some probably solvable reason and go back to my sweet, my love, my wart covered X11 using, 5.15 running, stale boring life mate Mint.
Mint. It just works.
My journey roughly went like:
Right now I'm using Debian + i3. It's pretty lit
My main reason is that Debian is a very stable, very popular distro, that isn't a fork of another distro. The fact that it's stable means issues are more rare; the fact that it's popular means when issues do pop up, there are much higher odds that I'll find others who ran into them before; and the fact that it isn't a fork means that I can just prefix "debian" to any search, rather than say having to contend with it being potentially a "debian" issue, or an "ubuntu" issue, or a "mint" issue. In fact, debian is popular enough that most of the time I could just prefix "linux" to a search, rather than "debian".
While there are distros that market themselves on other merits, it seems to me that the main goal of an operating system is to be a stable foundation. I wanted to pick something that would let me have a good time with i3; Debian seems one of the most straightforward choices. I considered arch, but in the end Debian seems like the lower-effort option.
agree. you mention debian and arch. I have also tried both of them. the problem with arch (rolling distribution) is that you are forever updating and you never know what exactly has changed in the system and you have to look. You can still have so much experience and solve problems, but they always cost time. all this from a daily user perspective is crap.
from a security point of view, new software can contain security loopholes just like old software. i'd rather have a stable base where i can easily keep an eye on changes than daily updates.
I have been running OpenSUSE Leap on my home server for 3 years, and I moved from Fedora after many years to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on both my work and home (gaming) PC. I am super happy!
I'm the wrong one to ask because every time I try something else, I end up returning to Fedora.
But what you switch to depends on why you want to switch:
I've done most of these and more, and I'm happy to recommend something more specific, but I can't without knowing what you're looking for.
If you don't know what you're looking for, and just want to do something different, then do what I do when the distrohopping bug strikes: check out several distros' websites, pick a couple that appeal to you, then research those a little deeper, maybe rum them on a virtual machine for a bit. If you find one you like, back up your critical data and go for it!
I'm the same, tried lots of distros but always end up back with Fedora. Running it now on my 3 desktops and 2 Laptops.
I'm currently trying out Garuda on my gaming Desktop, and a already kind of want to ho back to my safe space after two weeks. Don't get me wrong, I totally see why folks like it, but it's not for me.
What's void?
here
Pop!_OS. Sensible defaults and it's based off of Ubuntu, which is the distro I'm most familiar with.
I'm considering to switch from Fedora to Debian stable with Flatpaks for the available apps (more up-to-date and more isolated).
But I'm also considering NixOS atm
that arrangement on debian has worked well for me.
I was going to say Arch but I typically install EndeveavourOS these days ( lazy man’s Arch ).
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for now, with Garuda for gaming. Still working up the courage to combine all the best features of both into my first Arch install.
Everyone immediately want you to use their distribution of choice. However no-one can really answer this unless you include more information about yourself and your Linux experience, objectives, what kind of tinkering you're comfortable with, what you expectations are, etc.
The best answer IMO is always Linux Mint when people ask these kind of questions.
EndeavourOS, it just works really well and never breaks. The only time I had an issue was when I was using the Zen kernel and it locked up installing league of legends and watching a YouTube video at the same time. Using the mainline kernel though gives me no issues.
Ubuntu. It Debian without the driver issues.
btwOS.
I can't tell you if it's *your* cup of coffee. You should decide it by yourself.
- Pacman(!)
- Minimalistic approach
- ArchWiki
- AUR
- Rolling-release model
- Bleeding-edge softwares
- Community that would call me out if I didn't read the wiki (yes, IMO it's a positive)
Guix. I like Nix and Scheme so it just makes sense.
I wanted to like Guix very much, but eventually found it extremely inflexible. You will miss a lot of packages that are not trivial to create in Scheme yourself. Also a lot of packages have issues that no one wants to fix, or it takes half a year (e.g. being able to use NetworkManager for an eduroam/university wifi connection).
It's also not possible to just compile a package yourself because the directory structure is totally different.
I don't think Guix will ever become more flexible, I've given up on it
10 years of Arch and counting.
You know where to go, BTW
Nobara on my desktop, Pop_os! on my laptop. As soon as the new COSMIC DE is ready I will switch to Pop on my desktop as well.
Fedora Silverblue. I want a Linux system that just works.
I need to settle on one for a bit. I like Fedora for it’s edge stability and embracing newer secure technology. But, I will be shifting to Debian 12 or Ubuntu LTS because I need to get real work done. I like Pop and Mint, but they don’t have secure boot which I desire.
I’ll probably enjoy arch when I get the time to play with it more.
What do you mean you need to do real work done that cannot be done on Fedora?
You can have secureboot on mint. On mobile but I'll search up a link when at desk. It's not terribly hard given Mint is derived from Ubuntu. Should come up in a search if you're impatient
The biggest selling point for Fedora IMO is the way it handles UEFI and Secure Boot. I haven't found anything comparable. Securing the proprietary garbage running on your main board is critical regardless of your OS.
Can you elaborate or point me to some resources? I'd like to hear more about this because I've wondered for a while what to do about Secure Boot on my machine.
Debian support it too. The kernel is secure boot ready and it's very easy to sign nvidia kernel module with the default shipped key via mok.
Linux Mint Cinnamon. Seriously, it's the best. Fast, light, Ubuntu based, stable, good looking, full featured. All the power of Ubuntu without the downsides (snaps, heavy, slow etc)
i like fedora a lot, but its updates got a little too far ahead for me. So i recently switched to debian 12, and with flatpaks and their more-current mesa components, everything is working on my desktop as well as it was before, especially games on steam (flatpak) and in bottles.
Isnt pop primarily an extension for gnome? Beyond that and some drivers do they add anything else to ubuntu?
Pop doesnt have snap installed in my recent install.
I don't like gnome in particular but I am too lazy to setup a proper WM on my work laptop for fear of braeking and losing work.
Have tried fedora gnome with their pop-shell it worked fine otker than a few differences. Some odd behaviors like move next workspace would move it to first or last.
Nvidia is a pita. It prevents my machine from waking from sleep and I can't even close the lid because I cant turn off sleep on lid close.
I too prefer to have just iGPU which the recent ones are more than sufficient for most of my needs. But wanting to try some ML and that most configs with 16+ RAM offerings are mostly gaming laptops with nvidia.
Although I've had some display issues without nvidia too. Previous laptop had issues connecting external monitor. Only some distros had that issue so possibly a misconfiguration or incorrect library was used.
Is NixOS the new Arch?
No, the two aren't alike at all. The only parallel is maybe in terms of growth and popularity. I've noticed that NixOS is quickly gaining popularity among a lot of long-time Linux users, maybe in a similar fashion to how Arch did, but for completely different reasons. They aren't alike at all.
No
I read somewhere that NixOS users are really loud and act eerily similar to arch users.
(
I use nix btw)EndeavourOS is good, I was frequently using arch wiki on other distros so it's handy to have it actually apply accurately to my distro. AUR is super handy as well.
I could use regular Arch, but I appreciate the simplified installation.
Also easy to install with auto btrfs snapshots so that updates can never really break anything.
I use btrfs actually as well, but mainly just for compression/deduplication. I've been meaning to get snapshots set up but haven't gotten around to it yet.
You really should. It can save your butt, and it's only a few shell commands.
Here's an incomplete list of my daily drivers since...well, I'm old.
I'm sure I've missed the odd one or two (and I regularly jumped back and forth with Debian/Ubuntu/Mint for years and years).
I used to distro hop a lot, so if I only used it for less than a month, I haven't bothered to list it.
Love that list. I am also old. I used SLS, Slackware, and stuff with the .99.x release numbers I switched to Red Hat around 4.1 I think and went to Mandrake from there. And then…
You never used Arch? Not even for Asahi?
I built Arch (twice I think) but only ever in a VM to have a look around, never made it my daily driver. Used Manjaro for a couple of weeks, but I wouldn't say it was a daily driver either.
I used Feren OS for a long time, but now i prefer Cachy OS and Vanilla Arch on my laptop, both with KDE Plasma
Do you mean vanilla Arch or Vanilla ( with Arch )?
Just Arch linux as in I got it from the official Arch website
I've been switching between Arch and Debian for the past 5ish years. I don't really notice much of a difference, other than Arch has updates much more often than Debian Testing usually does. I like how meta-packages in Arch are more minimal than the ones in Debian, but that's a very minor thing.
Arch updates much more often and to vastly newer versions. Not saying which is better but those two distros differ quite a lot in this respect.
I'll only mention it because I haven't seen it yet, I just installed endeavor os and it's been pretty Great
Is it good for gayming?
Yes.
Modified Ubuntu, Snap-less...
For now, it's Debian 12 with KDE Plasma. But I'm really interested in Immutable Systems. I like OpenSuse Kapla, but the KDE Integration is still in alpha. There are still a few shortcomings with the only flatpak approach, like the fact that the Steam Flatpak can't provide smooth wireless controller support because of lacking permissions.
I've found success installing Steam and other stuff using distrobox on openSUSE Kalpa. The initial setup isn't as easy as installing a flatpak, but after a quick distrobox-export it's totally seamless.
Vanilla ass Ubuntu. I spent 25 years finding the right distro, this is good enough. My first love was Mandrake.
Arch, btw. With GNOME.
Seconded
OpenSuse leap
I've been having a good time with Arch for the last 6 months or so and don't plan on switching. My luck with updating frequently has been excellent and everything runs smoothly.
Arch btw
For me it's tumbleweed at the moment it's defaults like btrfs and snapper are how I used to setup fedora. Then there's the tools like OBS and yast that are super useful it's rolling but well tested before it gets to you
Linux Mint. Seriously, seriously good. Very fast, very light, looks amazing, has full access to all Ubuntu apps, runs Flatpak, is stable and solid. Sane defaults across the system.
Highly recommend it.
Bad for performance and gaming right?
LOL. old man.
mint mate is good for performance..
what do you use for gaming?
Every time I try something different I always come back to arch + swaywm
Fedora Workstation. It's fast and stable.
Everything I use is available either as a Flatpak or a RPM.
I'm also on Fedora and love it, but I'm thinking of switching to OpenMandriva ROME. OpenSUSE's Tumbleweed is another option.
Switched from Ubuntu to fedora recently.. I'm pretty happy with it and it's package manager
Zorin OS for me (Ubuntu derivative). It's familiar coming from Windows, it looks good, and it just works. I can't ask for more.
Used Arch for over 5 years. I don't know if having a child changed me but I realised I'd lost a lot of time I had that I spent just fiddling with configs to get stufftpo my liking so went from Arch xmonad to PopOs and Gnome.
It has been stable and doesn't have the snap bullshit that comes with Ubuntu.
You wouldn't need too much config for arch and gnome.
PoP_OS MX Linux LMDE
I wanna move to nix but my monkey brain can't understand it. Might just take the plunge anyways
Tried it, did not understand it (and had no use for immutable packages). Went back to Arch, never looked back.
Documentation is not enough good for me to care and I hate when there are multiple ways to do things, I still did not understand how I should install programs on NixOS
Honestly, I just can't get past the absolutely horrible logo. Right up there with TempleOS IMO...
Manjaro with KDE. I've only been running Linux for a month, and found Arch a bit intimidating, so to me Manjaro was the closest I dare fly to the sun. Really liking it so far.
I used to love Manjaro. It seems great when you use it. Word of warning though, it will break on you at some point. When it does, instead of abandoning Arch distros completely, consider giving EndeavourOS a shot.
Thanks for the tips, and the heads up. EndeavourOS was on my list when I tried to figure out what to go for, so I'll definitely try that when Manjaro breaks.
Trisquel GNU+Linux on my Librebooted ThinkPad X200
Zorin OS. No muss, no fuss. I've been wanting to hop to Endeavor or Pop! just to do something different.
I mainly play games and watch movies.
Kde neon, latest Plasma on a stable ubuntu.
That's the best combination ever known to humanity
If you are a KDE user or are interested in it, I've been running KDE Neon for a few months and don't plan on changing any time soon. Stable release, Ubuntu LTS based without the forced snaps (though snaps are in the repos if you want them), comes with the standard Ubuntu LTS repos and flatpak installed out of the box, with the one difference there being that it will update to the latest stable version of KDE software as it's released. Basically a de-snapped Kubuntu LTS with all the latest KDE stuff. Works great for me.
KDE Neon.
I've been running the same install for about four years. The same install has been in four different PC's now (I just rip the drives out of the old PC and install them in the new PC), and it's never once missed a beat.
I use Debian with kde and its been great. Went from debian 11 to debian 12 without reinstall and then use void and devuan on my other computers and arch mobile on pinephone.
blendOS because it gives you access to all the good stuff, including the AUR and even Android apps.
I have been meaning to give a BlendOS a try. VanillaOS as well ( though I kind of want to wait until they rebase on Debian ).
I'm pretty happy on Ultramarine. Its like Fedora but with more repos by default, media drivers, more DE options, and a bunch of more reasonable defaults for daily all-purpose use.
Nixos. Can't even fathom going back to anything after getting to grips with it
Arch on my main pc, and Ubuntu on my server, only reason it's Ubuntu is I needed 6.2 kernel for my Intel arc encoding card and debian based for the arrs
TW
I use Manjaro but I might switch when CosmicDE launches on Pop!, especially if they get graphics switching working nicely on Wayland.
Neon right now i will try pop os when the new cosmic desktop drops
Has a release date been announced for cosmic?
Nah, it's more of a "when it's ready" type thing. You can see updates on their blog but by the looks, it'll be another 6 months or so before a real release candidate is ready.
I use Arch (btw)
Arch on everything with a screen. NixOS on everything without.
Whats a good way to start with nixos? Are there default configs to start from?
Everytime I go to the site to try I postpone for some reason, but mainly apprehension of deviating too mudh from debian base which has been my most used distros.
And how recommended is it to have nix package manager in popos or any debian based?
You could run a VM and plan to setup one service on it as an exercise. NixOS wiki is pretty ok in general, but it is a useful skill to read the code of the modules you use. Flakes are poorly documented and also controversial. So I wouldn't hop on that yet.
I recently Switched to Fedora Gnome and have been liking it.
Lot more user friendly than Mint imo.
Artix
Fedora (with Plasma) and I don't plan on moving to another distro until something tangible happens. Switching my distro based on hypothetical situations would keep me from ever staying on any distro for very long.
That being said if I had to use another distro, I feel like I'd try out Debian stable, while using Flatpaks and Distrobox to get up-to-date software. That feels like it would be a good approximation of the excellent middleground that Fedora has.
Linux Mint because it just works.
@bbsm3678 You should try TROMjaro, and all linux distros should take example from it.
Elementary It’s just like Mint but I had way less issues than with any other distros.