Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Recently I bought cheap Surface-like x86 tablet on a rather recent hardware, and running Debian and its cousins required more tinkering than I was willing to do, so I decided to go with a more modern rolling release. Tried Arch for a few months, bricked it from mixing stable and testing branches, tried Fedora, and finally settled in Tumbleweed. I like it for being on the bleeding edge and exceptionally stable at the same time, perhaps thanks to robust OpenSUSE Build Service automated testing. And it is from a European company, that can’t hurt.
I recently moved to Fedora KDE Plasma after years on W10, simply because I don’t want to use W11 and its AI bullshit. So far, it’s been a great time, and I haven’t noticed any major performance issues, so I’m happy with it. Having to update everything every few days is pretty novel though, and ‘sudo dnf update -y’ makes me feel like Hackerman, king of all Hackers. I think I like the customization options most though. I get way more control over what happens on my PC than W10 ever gave me, and it’s all wrapped in a very user-friendly GUI. Overall 8.5-9/10.
Primarily Garuda these days. It’s basically Arch with some user-friendly additions. The major reason I tried it on a then-new gaming laptop was the actually really good IME hardware detection and minimal fuss NVIDIA setup using their latest drivers.
I was having enough headaches trying to get graphics actually working properly on the Debian-based distro I had been using, that I said fuck it and tried something that would hopefully get things working for me so that I could at least see that configuration to figure out where I’d been going wrong. Then I liked it enough that I have mostly just stayed there on this machine. (Did finally get things fixed on the other side, though.) But, I was already fine with Arch, which probably helps.
Debian, on servers and a desktop. I spent a long time using Ubuntu so I’m used to APT and Debian is suitably lightweight for my not amazing hardware. I also like the non rolling nature of it.
You’d love PopOS then, with its working nature and privacy-focus.
Linux Mint is a nice and easy distro that is quite good :D
I have been using Tuxedo OS for the past few months.
I just wanted to use something that was Ubuntu based with KDE.
KDE Neon sounded a bit too bleeding edge to be used safely as a daily driver. And Kubuntu is maybe a bit too conservative for me.
Tuxedo OS seems nicely balanced between that and so far it’s been great.
Arch. Why?
- Arch Wiki
- Pacman
- Community (therefore AUR)
i been linux only for over 30 years now.
I tend to use Debian stable. At least for the last 15 or so.
The reason is simple. I use it as my main PC and the stability is my main priority.
The only negative is software in the repos is often out of date.
But honestly while that was a pain in the past. Now for the vast majority of things I use. I find flat pack or appimage downloads work perfect ally.
The only exception is ham radio software. Here I tend to compile later versions if I need/want them.
Other negatives
I’m really not hugely into gaming. But use blender a lot. Due to this I use Nvidia cards as they are far better supported by blender.
Installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers is a bit of a pain on Debian for newbies. But once you know the process its simple enough. Just not obvious for beginners. The community drivers are still very limited thanks to Nvidia s weird ideas.
What was you 1st distro back in last millenium?
Same, I’ve been using Debian only for the last 15 or so years. I love the stability, and the old software isn’t hard to work around when newer versions are needed.
I hate the lack of support from Nvidia. I prefer AMD cards though, and they give zero trouble.
Yeah. Unfortunately blender is still noticably faster on Nvidia cards. Due to cuda and optic support.
I only have a 4060 though. Next time I upgrade, give. How bad the 50s release is. I will look again and compare higher end amd stuff. Likely a few years away though.
I use my GPU mostly for gaming and computer science. I will say that ROCm from AMD is seriously giving Cuda a run for its money, and it’s fully open source. AMD cards also tend to be better per dollar.
Agreed. As I say blender is less fast on amd. Atm
I don’t play games much. 0ad being the main exception.
But yeah I’d never advise a non blender user to go Nvidia.
trisquel and I love it
CachyOS! I was on Mint before this and had a bunch of issues running games. I think this was in part from going from NVIDIA to AMD (9070 XT).
Decided I had enough and instead of doing a simple Mint reinstall, I gave Cachy a go. I’ve had a little issue here and there but the experience has been beautifully smooth compared to Mint. It’s now set up better than I had it before and I’m over the moon with it haha.
Slackware: because I’m old and arch is too trendy.
👍🏻 Slackware was my 1st distro. It was before kernel 2.0. Now I use windowslike girly distros…
Geez, I haven’t heard of someone running Slackware in at least 15 years. I mean, I know it’s still around, I just haven’t heard anyone say they were running it.
It’s much more… manual than others, I’ll admit. For me anymore it’s a labor of love.
Yeah. I remember, lol
Cachyos, since I like archlinux and the things it comes with I would install on arch. There’s even a few things that would have to be compiled from aur that’s in their repository pre-compiled.
My gaming rig is on arch because i need the aur. I use my gaming rig for a bit of development too, dependencies are super easy on arch.
All my laptops, work and personal, run fedora kde because its rock solid and has the best “just works” features while still being a technical distro.
My servers are either alpine because its lightweight and easy to harden, debian for the stability and minimalism. I do have a few arch servers, but those are for testing and they get spun up, do the work they need and then killed.
DietPi for my raspberry because its debian based and has a plethora of automations to do what ever you like with your raspberry. Works on desktop too, well.
Lastly, mint, on my surface pro 5, because it is my obe device that is meant to just browse and be a portal into the internet or to play some movie or something while we are out for vacations or stuff like that.
There are many other distros that I like and use, but I use these the most. I love how each linux distro has its stregths and weaknesses, each their own usecase, you get to finetune what you need to make your life easier.
I was running only arch on my surface pro 7 and my amd desktop, then last week after an update it seemed gnome and Linux surface kernel weren’t playing nice and had bricked the install. I have switch the laptop to Debian but I tend to stick with arch, like op as I am used to it, I now run Debian as it is known to be stable.
I would love to find a new distro but for me its the sunk cost fallacy, I have put so much time into learning arch and to repeat all that - this new distro would need to offer something wildly different.
I installed Manjaro about six months ago because I’d never tried it. I like it so far and it has yet to get in my way enough to make me want to change.
