Why do you use the distro you use?
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Bazzite because I get an immutable install that won’t let me accidentally fuck it up. It just works. All necessary drivers for my dock and peripherals are already installed and configured. It’s the very first time in my decades long Linux excursion that I have a user experience that is similar to windows in that sense, but without the enshittifcation of windows.
I genuinely enjoy video editing, gaming, and surfing the web on my laptop when it’s running Bazzite.
Bazite and bluefin for me, too. been daily driving Linux since the mid-90s and this little cluster of distros is the best experience I've had. really feels like everything finally came together.
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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.
Arch. I'm addicted to updating packages and Arch helps me stay sane.
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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.
Pop OS
Lots of people were hyping it in 2019/2020 so I thought I'd give it a try as my first real Linux experience. It works great and has a Nvidia driver option when I need that. So I never really tried to switch.
Distro hoping never appealed to me, but I did try Fedora, Manjaro, Mint, Ubuntu, and Debian 12.
I use Kali for work and considered swapping to XFCE DE but pop is fine.
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I've found it can be easier to manage what you have installed, since you can just look at that list and go "oh, why do I still have xyz installed, idek what that does anymore"
While it sounds sexy and attractive... Not sure the amount of time needed to configure your NixOS is worthwhile. (Except if you have time to spare and want that learning experience !)
Just put everyhting In your personal notes and you have a similar "feature"?
Perhaps, but when I accidentally nuked my system by dd'ing to one of the hard drives, being able to install the exact same system back into it by pointing the installer to my git repository was an excellent experience.
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What does that mean? Like there is one calendar app?
Tinkering, really. I did a bunch of stuff with wine and virtualization and troubleshooted across versions. One time I manually updated the version of sqlite in python's std lib to be a newer version. I picked a non LTS kernel once. All these things compounded and bloated my system. And when I went to do clean up, I didnt have a record of exactly everything I installed, what I used and what I didnt. It was guesswork to clean up my disk or even remember the tools I used to get a project working.
This is solved with declarative configuration, which is the basis of NixOS. I believe VanillaOS 2 has something similar. Likewise, this is one the great benefits of docker, vagrant, ansible, etc.
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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.
Debian stable (ok, writing this on Debian Trixie which is not stable yet, but nonetheless works w/o trouble in a virtual machine).
I am using Debian for work and on my servers.
Why Debian? Because for my use cases there are no real alternatives at this moment.
- I need stable support for Aarch64 and AMD64, which already rules out nearly every other distribution
- For desktops I use a highly customized Gnome, which takes some work and my workflow depends on a few plugins, which rules out Fedora
- For work I need some 3rd party software repositories which again rule out fast moving distributions and other non mainstream distributions
- By now I think I run Debian and distributions based on Debian for nearly 3 decades, everything I need works stable and good enough at this moment and I accumulated a lot of knowledge about how things work in Debian
- Some of my hardware needs workarounds (not because it is too new), and again I know my way around Debian and how to patch/fix things for my hardware
- It is nice that I can use Debian for my desktops and my servers on all hardware I own, I would not want to have to learn different Linux systems for desktops and servers or have different versions of software (think Fedora vs. RHEL/CentOS/Alma etc.)
Every 6 month I'll boot Fedoras live cd and play around with the newest Gnome/KDE, but seriously, for at least the last 5 years I never feel like essential improvements are pushed in the newest iterations of Gnome/KDE and I can happily wait the maximum of 2 years until they are released with Debian.
Saying that, I also own a Steam Deck and as an entertainment/media station I totally love what Valve is doing there. I would also be totally happy to run a De-Googled ChromeOS if it would support all the platforms/software etc. I need. For containers I'll also happily use Alpine Linux, if it is possible, but again, I'll mostly default to Debian simply because I know my way around.
In the end, an operating system is just a necessary evil to allow me to do what I want to do with a computer. As long as I have a stable OS which I can tweak to my liking/needs automatically and central package management, I am good. (Unless it is your hobby to play around with your operating system ;-)).
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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.
I'm mainly on Linux for over 20 years (still have one Windows Box for VR and some games, hopefully I can migrate this to Linux with the next hardware iteration). I was on Suse, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, Ubuntu, QubesOS (which does not self-identify as Linux-distribution) with Fedora+Debian Qubes. I never had those installed on my main machine, but also worked a lot with kali, grml, knoppix, dsl, centos, Redhat and certainly a bunch of others.
The absolute best for me, as working in it security and with different customers, is QubesOS. Sadly my current laptop is so badly supported by QubesOS that it burns 6h battery in 25 minutes and sleep/suspent does not work at all, so I'm currently on Ubuntu (which I hate for their move to snap and being Ubuntu in general)
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with proton, pirating shit from windoes on linux is the best!
Yeaaaah !! I 100% agree on that ! However, this is a steep learning curve and sometimes a lot of tweaking/reading !
My pops just want to copy past a crack and execute... Yeah, I know...
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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.
Because despite all the people telling me I'm wrong, Kubuntu is still by far the best distro I've ever used. Rock solid, super fast, and continues to improve.
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I haven't tried Bazzite yet, but I feel the same about the other ublue flavours.
I'm the most productive I've ever been. Tweaking everything was fun for a few years, but now I just need a distro I can trust, that comes with the tools to do anything.
I see rebases to Bazzite DX are available now. I might give that a go today.
Not exactly a product from ublue but something in the same line:
Secureblue because of the reasons aforementioned for the ublue images where things are really darn rock solid out of the box AND because Linux is fundamentally behind in security and this project is trying to mitigate some of the big flaws.
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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.
Over the past few years I went from using Debian Stable, to Debian Testing-Unstable mix (this is a supported way of using Debian look it up), to Debian Unstable/Sid on my main PC.
I think they all can be used for different purposes, and because they all use basically the exact same tools and utilities I don't have to fiddle with figuring out the specific commands I need to run if I need to tweak a server.
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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.
I use PopOS on my desktop. I was looking to upgrade an old Chromebook and while researching my options came dangerously close to buying a MacBook Air. Decided to buy an android tablet instead for my portable computer and bought another SSD so I could dual-boot on my desktop.
It's clean, somewhat macOS like in appearance but I actually have freedom to do what I want. Just in time for Windows 10 sunsetting too.
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Because despite all the people telling me I'm wrong, Kubuntu is still by far the best distro I've ever used. Rock solid, super fast, and continues to improve.
I always unable to upgrade ubuntu based distros. I always need to reinstall
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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.
I've been using Arch since October 2019 and I've stuck with it because it has been a really comfortable experience. I really love the package manager. The packages are usually new enough to not cause me any major problems but are tested enough to not break anything. Regarding the latter point, mileage might vary. I have never had anything break on me that I haven't broken myself (and I don't update very frequently) though I know not everybody is sharing that experience.
1 year ago I also started using NixOS on my desktop and it's been a very interesting experience. Design wise it's pretty good but there are a number of things that really annoy me. Some days I'm really considering putting NixOS on my laptop and some days I'm leaning more to putting Arch back on my desktop.
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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.
EndeavourOS - I jumped around distros a lot but always found myself coming back to arch. Then I found Endeavour which is just arch with the same basic setup I would always end up doing, so out of convenience I stuck with it
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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.
My main reason to use arch is the exceptionnally complete and useful arch wiki. Though many pages are useful for other distros as well.
With the archlinux and package install guides, it's just a matter of time (and study!) until you know how to get around. -
Fedora just werks
Haven't used the command line since installing Kinoite, it's... weird.
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Yeaaaah !! I 100% agree on that ! However, this is a steep learning curve and sometimes a lot of tweaking/reading !
My pops just want to copy past a crack and execute... Yeah, I know...
he's pirating his stuff, he's already a cool guy in my book
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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.
Mine may be the funniest
I used to always recommend people use Linux Mint as their first distro, but then it hit me, how can I recommend something I only installed for five minutes? So I got myself Linux Mint, it was 21.3 Virginia at that time, now I have more important things to do in my system and it has stayed.
I used Arch in my old laptop for 2 and half years, learned alot of things from Arch, also got to know some people in the Arch unofficial Matrix Room. But I have a new laptop and this is the story.
Do I miss Arch? To be honest, not much, I did love Arch and like how alot of things were different in Arch, things like how services would not autostart just because you installed something unlike in Ubuntu, but is it something I wish in Ubuntu? No
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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.
Fedora. I've been using it since Fedora Core 1 and was mostly RedHat before that. I don't have time to muck around with my desktop and Fedora almost always just works. I've had too many problems with Ubuntu and Suse and friends. And while I like Arch and Debian and others, I just want my desktop to be point and click. My days off tinkering on my desktop are long gone. Kids, house, work, wife, grandkids, other hobbies keep me busy. I save tinkering for my selfhosting adventures.
