I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I’m learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?
RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.
Mint Cinnamon. All my hardware works, and it can do the few things I require my work PC to do. It even remembers things like my default audio device - something Ubuntu refused to do for years.
I wanted the awesomeness of pacman and like the way Gardua comes pre-configured as well as packages it installs from the get go. The only thing I hate about it is the “gamer” universal KDE theme it comes with.
Man, I wanted to try Garuda a couple of weeks ago and the thing would never even boot into the live environment. Went ahead and installed Cachy OS and it’s been great.
I dunno what to say. It 100% worked on install for my laptop, even the weird ASUS stuff that can be finicky.
EndeavorOS. It runs smooth, i dont get errors, all my games work, the taskbar and notifications work like I would expect them too. Switching from Windows 2 months ago, I cycled through a few distros but they all were giving something up until i found EoS.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for years and I like KDE, so I’m using Neon. Ubuntu is familiar, easy to fix, easy to find out how to fix, and neon doesn’t come with snaps.
My distro isn’t the best, but it’s at least a good starting point: Debian + XFCE.
Was using Ubuntu from about 12.04 through 20.04, but it is getting too snappy and support contract happy for me these days.
Mint Cinnamon.
It’s easy, stable and gets out of my way.
I haven’t seen the need to dostro hop for years.
I’ve discovered that I don’t much care which distro I’m using, it’s the DE that matters most. I have Fedora GNOME, Debian GNOME, and openSUSE GNOME running on different machines. I can’t really tell much difference until I enter the command line or package manager, and even then, it’s the front end of the command that changes while the backend stays mostly the same. Flatpak has made the difference between distros even fewer.
Because it uses the best desktop environment (GNOME) and im the most familiar with
(I wonder how many downvotes i will get)
IDGAF if it’s the best (mint), it was easy to install, easy to transition to from Windows, and in 6 months hasn’t given me any trouble. I just wanna use my computer.
Yeah I was gonna say, I dunno if my distro is the best (Arch BTW) but it’s the best for me. Doesn’t give me any nonsense and lets me tinker as much as I want. Other people just want their OS to get out of their way, which of course is equally valid. Whatever works for you!
NixOS makes me feel so safe making low-level changes to Linux and making sure that my work laptop, gaming desktop, and personal laptop all have the exact same shit on them and I’m gonna use them the exact same way.
I wish that nixlang was decoupled from the concept of a build system bc it’s such a great DAG config DSL and I can think of so many cooler uses for it but I just don’t have time to focus on it.
Debian. Truly the universal operating system. Runs on all of my laptops, desktops, servers, and NAS with no fuss and no need to keep track of distro-specific differences. If something has a Linux version, it probably works on Debian.
Granted, I am a bit biased. All of my hardware is at least 5 years old. Also came from Windows, where I kept only the OS and browser up to date, couldn’t be bothered with shiny new features. A package manager is already a huge luxury.
I know. Stop worrying about your computer and install Debian! It just works. It updates without a problem.
Fedora, because it just works, it’s familiar, and I’ve got things to do.
Debian stable.
Everybody think they are a special snowflake who needs bleeding edge, or a specific package manager or DE or whatever. Truth is 99.99% do not. They just like to believe they do, claim they do, try it, inflict self pain for longer than they need, convince themselves that truly they are, because of the pain, special.
Chill, just go with stable, it’s actually fine.
Edit: posted from Arch, not even sarcasm.
As someone who ran Debian Stable for a while, this is not a distro for “99.99%”.
First, Debian, while very stable in its core, commonly has same random issues within DE’s and even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along.
Second, a release cycle of 2 years is actually a giant and incredibly noticeable lag. You may love your system when it just releases, but over time, you will realize your system is old, like, very damn old. It will look old, it will act old, and the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date.
This isn’t just programs. It is your desktop environment. It is Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks like Bottles, which will feel like insane workaround you wouldn’t have to have with a better fitting distro).
It is the damn kernel, so you may not even be able to install Debian on newest hardware without unsupported and potentially unstable backporting tricks.
Don’t get me wrong, Debian is absolutely great in what it does, and that is providing a rock solid environment where nothing changes. But recommending it for everyone? Nope.
slackware the og linux distro. super stable, sane package management etc. i’ve wanted to try void/arch/gentoo/crux for a pretty long time but still haven’t because this just works perfectly
Ubuntu.
Why? - I guess I’m too lazy for distro hopping now :(
Besides, this was the 1st Linux distro I tried back in 2005. After usual ditro hopping phase, I settled on it; somehow (irrespective of snap and other controversies) I feel at home.
I agree. I tried Fedora first, then Pop!OS, and then settled on Kubuntu.
Kubuntu has been the most stable so far, no big issues. I chose it for that and its Wayland support. Snaps can be disabled or even have auto update turned off which is what I did and I had no real issues with Ubuntu past that so overall a good distro.
Widely supported, plenty of tutorials, has my favorite DE as a spin, it just does what I need it to.
For me its Linux Mint, I’m no longer in position really to do distro hopping, so long as Linux Mint keeps working I will keep using it, I see no reason to change right now. I’m glad and happy that you have settled on Ubuntu, have fun, enjoy and be happy huuuugs 😉
My experience with Mint: “Guess I should research a solution for that minor annoyance - oh, they fixed it in an update.”
NixOS.
- I have access to more packages than with any other package manager.
- everything to get my setup in the exact state I want is in my config, which is 90% useable on any other distro thanks to home manager
- My config is all in one place and easy to share
- If I ever break something, I can always roll back
- I don’t need Docker
