I’ve been using Debian (and formerly Ubuntu) for many years.

But I’ve been wanting to tell people that I use Arch.

I’ve been considering the following distros:

  • Arch
  • Cachy
  • Manjaro
  • Any others?

I’m leaning towards Arch or Cachy. This is for a mediocre laptop that I’m planning to use as a media center: Kodi, Retroarch, Steam, etc. Should I even be using Arch for this? Maybe Debian is more stable…

Sorry if this has been asked before. Thanks for any tips!

  • kixik@lemmy.ml
    1·
    24 minutes ago

    artix, and honorific mentions to parabola and hyperbola (hyperbola is moving towards becoming a gnu + kopenbsd thing, like there was an attempt for a debian gnu + kfreebsd effort though this one got dropped)

  • texture@lemmy.world
    1·
    34 minutes ago

    garuda is the easiest arch for new people, endeavour is pretty much just arch plus calamares and cachy is notable bc of its kernel.

  • mikael@lemmy.ml
    21·
    1 hour ago

    If you don’t want to spend your time larping sysadmin I’d recommend one of the uBlue images as Kodi, Retroarch and Steam are available from Flathub. If you want to spend your time keeping your media center alive (and possibly learn something about Linux in the process), go ahead with Arch or any of its derivatives. I use Aurora, btw.

  • ashenone@lemmy.ml
    17·
    4 hours ago

    EndeavorOS is my go to for arch based systems. But with the archinstall script I’d say just give vanilla a go

  • HexagonSun@lemmy.zipEnglish
    9·
    3 hours ago

    I was using Endeavour, btw. Needed almost zero tinkering and was good to go straight away.

    But I run Linux on an ancient 2012 MacBook Pro, so eventually swapped over to Debian, btw.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    2·
    2 hours ago

    Probably not a universal answer as you are optimizing for different things.

    I will say that EndeavourOS is essentially vanilla Arch once installed. If you really love configuring everything yourself, vanilla Arch is what you are looking for. If you like Arch but just want to fire up a system with sensible defaults, EndeavourOS adds a lot of value without corrupting the purity of the base system.

    So, my vote is for EndeavourOS.

    Cachy adds the most additional functionality but also changes the base system the most. If you have a T2 MacBook, this is the best option for sure.

    I would avoid Manjaro.

    Garuda has fans. A bit much for me.

    • Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      47 minutes ago

      Garuda has fans. A bit much for me.

      When you take away the garish KDE theme the gaming spin ships with it’s pretty much just an opinionated ready-to-go gaming Arch with a bunch of convenience tools. If that’s what you want then Garuda is pretty neat.

  • abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    4·
    3 hours ago

    I use plain Arch, but if you are just gonna use it as a media center, use Debian or something like it. A media center doesn’t need to be up to date if you’re just using it for TV and retro gaming. However, how mediocre are we talking? Are you intending to run full steam games or are you planning on streaming them from another computer?

    If the latter, I think Debian or even a healthy rPi running RetroPie might be up your alley because you can install Kodi and SteamLink on that.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
    71·
    4 hours ago

    Wait…so you’re looking for a solution with zero problems because of…clout or something? I don’t get it.

    If you like Debian, just stay with Debian. Especially if you’re not familiar with what running Arch really means in the deeper sense. Mostly that the guardrails are off, in a sense.

    CachyOS puts a ton of work into adding UX helpers that makes it pretty user friendly, but it’s still going to have a lot of manual intervention required, but that’s a feature to some.

    If you have an AMD laptop, maybe look into installing SteamOS and Kodi as a non-steam app. That could be your sweet spot.