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!
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.
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.