OpenSUSE got me onto Linux and was such a great option for a first distro. I still think about changing back sometimes. I'm surprised if doesnt get recommended more often.
openSUSE Tumbleweed is my daily driver. I recommend it to most people. It's a nice balance of leading edge and stability. Plus, snapper makes it easy to rollback if an update borks something.
oh come on. I don't ever say it outside of meme contexts. I just personally enjoy rolling releases and don't really like the corporate feeling of Fedora, so i'm left with only really Arch as a good option.
Debian is where greybeards go to retire things just work once you configured them and you don't need the helping hand of the AUR as you can just build your own packages with aptbuild.
As a youngblood I have heard of the iron stability of Debian, but simply find it difficult to adopt for gaming-related reasons (both hosting and as a game client).
I do wish to one day study the greybeards' work for a future project box, however. That knowledge needs to be part of my generation as well, for at least a few of us.
Shit. I've been on Debian for decades now. Maybe I'm just an old soul... Or I'm just lazy. I don't even configure my DE anymore. The OS install of today will be wiped in no time, so it's not worth being too attached.
Same started on OG Suse from a boxed copy I bought in a store that came with a thick manual but then a year later found Debian and have there ever since.
Hate is perhaps too strong of a word, but personally, I just don't care for their default desktop environment. If I had to, I could still use it but as I have lots of choices I'm going with something else.
On the other hand, I find Ubuntu to be a fine server OS, especially if you want something in the Debian family but want something a bit more up to date than what's currently in Debian stable but still widely supported.
GNOME (by default), Snaps forced on you OOB rather than being an optional thing during setup or in any of the GUI settings, locking newer security updates behind a subscription, and Cannonical just being a bad captain of the ship.
There's a reason why Mint is hailed as the new "casual (non-gaming) user favorite", since it's literally just Ubuntu sans GNOME and the hostile update design decisions.
Desktop design decisions. A lot of folks hated Unity. I know I did - they turned something familiar into something Apple like and I couldn't stand it. I'm genuinely not a fan of the unified menus and such. It didn't help that users were basically forced out of Gnome 2 into it when Unity became the default.
Within Unity they Integrated Amazon results into the Desktop Search. That was likened to spyware since your queries were being shared with Amazon, much like MS integrating web results into their own search. Ubuntu fucked up harder because, absent any filtering, their search occasionally produced adult products in the results - ie sex toys and such. Imagine telling your kid Fluffy needs a new knotted rope chew toy. They start searching "dog knot toy" just to have the results filled with BadDragon knockoffs.
They've leaned heavier into enterprise over the years and that has alienated a lot of the Desktop audience which helped bring attention to OS in the first place. They went from "Linux for Human Beings," making desktop computing more accessible throughout the world, to becoming essentially the Microsoft of the Linux world.
Their snap backend is proprietary. You can't just host your own snap repository. Even if you host your own local snap cache, it ultimately must point to and retrieve from their repository to populate that cache.
I'm sure there's other stuff worth pointing out that I've forgotten.
The only reason I have ubuntu on my home server is because apparently Pterodactyl Panel is reliant on some aspects of it vs. Mint. It's frustrating that way.
For me, the main thing i don't like is how the app store defaults to snaps, when the system package you want is hidden behind a drop down.
But i like a lot about it, namely the look and feel of the settings applications, hardware drivers, community support, trouble free updates, so for me it is my favorite.
haha nah, I use Sawfish WM and a few fbpanel instances, without any compositor. It looks like this for me right now. I've used that basic setup (with various themes) for well over a decade.
KDE and Xfce are what most people use on it, I think...
Well, maybe i'm not your average Arch user then.. Don't see the appeal in Nix, honestly, and i'm too lazy to learn. What is GNU Guix? Never heard of it.
It's strange to see someone move from Ubuntu to Arch, like it, and have aspirations of Debian. Ubuntu to Debian is fairly straightforward, didn't you have to do a bunch of shit to get on and learn arch?
I mean I see the appeal of both. I used arch for a bit then went back to Ubuntu-based actually. Arch is cool and all, but I had some major functionality break a few times. I got tired of tinkering with it. Ubuntu "just works" most of the time. Interested to see what op writes about it too...
I've been a Debian guy for many years and it's unlikely I'll move away in the foreseeable future.
Nix is a package manager and nix-os is an OS built around that package management system.
You can install nix the package manager in debian. I don't use it for installing desktop apps like a browser or office suite, I prefer AppImages for those. However, it's absolutely fantastic for CLI stuff, especially the things you might want as a once off. You can just nix-shell -p <obscure cli tool> and it's just magically there in a new temporary shell, and then cleaned up once you quit that shell. No more adding weird repos to apt, or downloading from github and building, or piping scripts to bash.
There's also home-manager which allows you to define packages and their configurations, and just roll out that state on any machine.
These fancy package management tools (flatpak, AppImage, and nix) have dramatically changed the Debian experience. I used to be forever struggling with the trade off between stability and old versions of things. That's really not the case any more because you don't have to interfere with Debian's conservative methodical ideology around stability in order to install and use all the shiny new things.
I've messed around with Dragonfly BSD a bit... it mostly felt familiar to me, and I can potentially see myself using a BSD in the future if I ever needed to jump ship. The multiprocessing and the HAMMER2 filesystem on that one in particular seemed neat. Though obviously I didn't have good GPU support on that particular BSD since I have an nvidia card XD
I did a tour with OpenBSD about 2000-2004. It works just fine, with a much reduced ecosystem of pre built packages, just because of the quantity of devs around.
I saw Dragonfly when it started and I'm glad to hear it's still going. The idea held a lot of promise.
Favorite distro: NixOS
First distro used: Ubuntu
Distro you want to use in the future: SixOS, Asahi
Honorable mention: Fedora Server
Distro you liked the least: Ubuntu
Distro you currently use: Arch, NixOS
The distro you used for the longest time: Arch
I started with Slackware in 96 then was on a friend's Debian server in like 98. I lost the friend account so I switched to Ubuntu in like... 08 mainly because that's what Digital Ocean offered in its prebuilt stacks, I didn't really have an opinion. Switched to Linux on the desktop only last year, went with Mint since I'd gotten used to Ubuntu. I'm happy, don't feel the need to do anything else really. I have a Steam Deck so obviously I've used SteamOS, not really a fan of the immutable thing.
Tbf, I believe CachyOS has taken the reigns of "Arch based gaming distro that doesn't have immutable OS restrictions", so that'd probably the easiest solution for that.
On the slackware note though, my uncle still uses it (I think it was Puppy last I checked). He was a former chip designer at IBM and Intel, and got on the linux for privacy bandwagon long enough ago to show me the ropes of linux as I was growing up.
61 replies
OpenSUSE got me onto Linux and was such a great option for a first distro. I still think about changing back sometimes. I'm surprised if doesnt get recommended more often.
openSUSE Tumbleweed is my daily driver. I recommend it to most people. It's a nice balance of leading edge and stability. Plus, snapper makes it easy to rollback if an update borks something.
I've never seen an infographic for "I use arch, btw." until now.
oh come on. I don't ever say it outside of meme contexts. I just personally enjoy rolling releases and don't really like the corporate feeling of Fedora, so i'm left with only really Arch as a good option.
Fedora is corporate? I nearly spat my coffee ;-)
I'm flashing back to working with suse on unitedlinux and the challenges we had. If you want a very Corporate distro, it's right there.
Never again.
I mean.. fedora is RHEL, which is very corporate
Just lighthearted poking, I don't have anything bad to say about anyone's choices. I didn't mean any offense. Sorry if that was its tone.
No, no don't worry, no offense taken 😅 I should have expected it lol
Debian is where greybeards go to retire things just work once you configured them and you don't need the helping hand of the AUR as you can just build your own packages with aptbuild.
As a youngblood I have heard of the iron stability of Debian, but simply find it difficult to adopt for gaming-related reasons (both hosting and as a game client).
I do wish to one day study the greybeards' work for a future project box, however. That knowledge needs to be part of my generation as well, for at least a few of us.
Hey! My beard isn’t that… oh, fuck, I guess it is. Where does the time go?
I hear you brother 1998 was just yesterday right?
Shit. I've been on Debian for decades now. Maybe I'm just an old soul... Or I'm just lazy. I don't even configure my DE anymore. The OS install of today will be wiped in no time, so it's not worth being too attached.
Same, on the XFCE/LXQt/MATE desktops
Same started on OG Suse from a boxed copy I bought in a store that came with a thick manual but then a year later found Debian and have there ever since.
I use linux by the way.
Ubuntu seems universally hated. Why?
Widely and loudly hated, but not universal. The fans just aren't that loud ;)
Hate is perhaps too strong of a word, but personally, I just don't care for their default desktop environment. If I had to, I could still use it but as I have lots of choices I'm going with something else.
On the other hand, I find Ubuntu to be a fine server OS, especially if you want something in the Debian family but want something a bit more up to date than what's currently in Debian stable but still widely supported.
GNOME (by default), Snaps forced on you OOB rather than being an optional thing during setup or in any of the GUI settings, locking newer security updates behind a subscription, and Cannonical just being a bad captain of the ship.
There's a reason why Mint is hailed as the new "casual (non-gaming) user favorite", since it's literally just Ubuntu sans GNOME and the hostile update design decisions.
Desktop design decisions. A lot of folks hated Unity. I know I did - they turned something familiar into something Apple like and I couldn't stand it. I'm genuinely not a fan of the unified menus and such. It didn't help that users were basically forced out of Gnome 2 into it when Unity became the default.
Within Unity they Integrated Amazon results into the Desktop Search. That was likened to spyware since your queries were being shared with Amazon, much like MS integrating web results into their own search. Ubuntu fucked up harder because, absent any filtering, their search occasionally produced adult products in the results - ie sex toys and such. Imagine telling your kid Fluffy needs a new knotted rope chew toy. They start searching "dog knot toy" just to have the results filled with BadDragon knockoffs.
They've leaned heavier into enterprise over the years and that has alienated a lot of the Desktop audience which helped bring attention to OS in the first place. They went from "Linux for Human Beings," making desktop computing more accessible throughout the world, to becoming essentially the Microsoft of the Linux world.
Their snap backend is proprietary. You can't just host your own snap repository. Even if you host your own local snap cache, it ultimately must point to and retrieve from their repository to populate that cache.
I'm sure there's other stuff worth pointing out that I've forgotten.
The only reason I have ubuntu on my home server is because apparently Pterodactyl Panel is reliant on some aspects of it vs. Mint. It's frustrating that way.
Their documentation says Debian is supported.
I don't hate it, it's just so far the worst one i've used. It's not necessarily bad, I have friends who use it.
What were the worst aspects for you?
For me, the main thing i don't like is how the app store defaults to snaps, when the system package you want is hidden behind a drop down.
But i like a lot about it, namely the look and feel of the settings applications, hardware drivers, community support, trouble free updates, so for me it is my favorite.
I think I may have a favorite.
wow... and what DE do you use with Slackware? I assume you just use pure CLI though
haha nah, I use Sawfish WM and a few fbpanel instances, without any compositor. It looks like this for me right now. I've used that basic setup (with various themes) for well over a decade.
KDE and Xfce are what most people use on it, I think...
That CLI music player looks nice, I can't find it though. Looks like you made it, did you share it somewhere?
Mayhaps this?
https://chiselapp.com/user/MistressRemilia/repository/benben/technote?name=55d45abe77896645681dce2de2dee3aeac349c17
It’s this https://fossil.cyberia9.org/aika/index
Slackware was my first distro
I ditched slackwate in 98 after the validation issue became starkly problematic.
SLSA.dev .
antiX mentioned
I think that most Arch users that want to move to something stable are considering NixOS or GNU Guix rather than Debian.
Been considering giving Guix a spin as an alternative to Debian, I'm use to freebsd but would like something non systemd linuxish
Well, maybe i'm not your average Arch user then.. Don't see the appeal in Nix, honestly, and i'm too lazy to learn. What is GNU Guix? Never heard of it.
I'm kinda tinkering with Debian Sid atm.
It's strange to see someone move from Ubuntu to Arch, like it, and have aspirations of Debian. Ubuntu to Debian is fairly straightforward, didn't you have to do a bunch of shit to get on and learn arch?
I mean I see the appeal of both. I used arch for a bit then went back to Ubuntu-based actually. Arch is cool and all, but I had some major functionality break a few times. I got tired of tinkering with it. Ubuntu "just works" most of the time. Interested to see what op writes about it too...
Have you thought about trying Mint, specifically LMDE?
Nah, not really. Pop_OS has been my favorite so far. Been on it about 5 years now.
Do you wanna hear the whole backstory?
I'm in Ur thread, reading Ur posts.
Yes I want free entertainment.
I've been a Debian guy for many years and it's unlikely I'll move away in the foreseeable future.
Nix is a package manager and nix-os is an OS built around that package management system.
You can install nix the package manager in debian. I don't use it for installing desktop apps like a browser or office suite, I prefer AppImages for those. However, it's absolutely fantastic for CLI stuff, especially the things you might want as a once off. You can just
nix-shell -p <obscure cli tool>and it's just magically there in a new temporary shell, and then cleaned up once you quit that shell. No more adding weird repos to apt, or downloading from github and building, or piping scripts to bash.There's also home-manager which allows you to define packages and their configurations, and just roll out that state on any machine.
These fancy package management tools (flatpak, AppImage, and nix) have dramatically changed the Debian experience. I used to be forever struggling with the trade off between stability and old versions of things. That's really not the case any more because you don't have to interfere with Debian's conservative methodical ideology around stability in order to install and use all the shiny new things.
🤯❤️
Yeah so "cleaned up" wasn't completely true.
Nix basically works by installing packages in a store or cache, and then soft linking to the binaries in the cache.
When you exit the temporary shell, the link will no longer exist but the cached package and its dependencies are still there.
You can easily clear that cache but it's not gone instantly when you exit the shell.
That sounds like a good compromise. I am really enjoying NixOs, but I miss the simplicity of Debian. I'll think about your method.
You just installed Nix from APT, I assume, but are you still rebuilding a config.nix every time you make a "permanent" change?
Agreed on nix-shell -p, that's extremely handy.
Guix (pronounced "geeks") is like Nix (declarative, functional, atomic) but more Emacs (niche, lispy, Free)
Either that or Void
NGL, I really wanna try either free or open bsd
same but the drivers though 😓😓
I worked at a company filled with BSD zealots. Their burning hatred for Linux was all-consuming, bad really put me off of the lot.
I've messed around with Dragonfly BSD a bit... it mostly felt familiar to me, and I can potentially see myself using a BSD in the future if I ever needed to jump ship. The multiprocessing and the HAMMER2 filesystem on that one in particular seemed neat. Though obviously I didn't have good GPU support on that particular BSD since I have an nvidia card XD
I did a tour with OpenBSD about 2000-2004. It works just fine, with a much reduced ecosystem of pre built packages, just because of the quantity of devs around.
I saw Dragonfly when it started and I'm glad to hear it's still going. The idea held a lot of promise.
Favorite distro: NixOS First distro used: Ubuntu Distro you want to use in the future: SixOS, Asahi Honorable mention: Fedora Server Distro you liked the least: Ubuntu Distro you currently use: Arch, NixOS The distro you used for the longest time: Arch
i use arch, btw
What, only one distro at a time? Arch on desktop is one thing, but Arch on servers is quite another ...
Currently triple booting Windows (very rarely for gaming)/Arch (Main system)/Debian (fun)
I started with Slackware in 96 then was on a friend's Debian server in like 98. I lost the friend account so I switched to Ubuntu in like... 08 mainly because that's what Digital Ocean offered in its prebuilt stacks, I didn't really have an opinion. Switched to Linux on the desktop only last year, went with Mint since I'd gotten used to Ubuntu. I'm happy, don't feel the need to do anything else really. I have a Steam Deck so obviously I've used SteamOS, not really a fan of the immutable thing.
Tbf, I believe CachyOS has taken the reigns of "Arch based gaming distro that doesn't have immutable OS restrictions", so that'd probably the easiest solution for that.
On the slackware note though, my uncle still uses it (I think it was Puppy last I checked). He was a former chip designer at IBM and Intel, and got on the linux for privacy bandwagon long enough ago to show me the ropes of linux as I was growing up.