How to have a boring and low-maintenance system?
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Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
Debian stable + XFCE for me. Missing newer packages though. I'm interested in what problems you had with Fedora
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Ubuntu. Or, get a Mac - which is even more “boring”.
As someone who just had to bandaid an unexplained battery draw on his wife's MacBook - no, Mac OS no longer "just works". Apple buries some of the most basic settings inside a command line-only tool called
pmset, and even then those can be arbitrarily overridden by other processes.And even after a fresh reinstall and new battery, it still drains the battery faster in hibernation mode than my Thinkpad T14 G1 running Linux Mint does while sleeping. Yeah, that was a fun discovery.
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Debian stable + XFCE for me. Missing newer packages though. I'm interested in what problems you had with Fedora
This! Debian with Gnome or others is the answer. Take an afternoon to make it yours, then forget it.
You can use backported kernels on Debian, to supported newer hardware. Try this or upgrade to Debian 13 right now by changing the sourcefile to trixie instead of bookworm. -
Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
My desktop has been running debian for 5 years no problem including 2 major debian version upgrades, and a new(er) GPU.
I had an old laptop that ran the same debian install for 8 years. All upgrades in place, no reinstalls.
boring, and works. Stable + backports should cover the majority of people with new hardware support needs.
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Ubuntu. It's boring but it all works.
Ubuntu is literally just Debian unstable with a bunch of patches. Literally every time I've been forced to use it, it's been broken in at least a few obvious places.
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I don't understand that comment either. I've been using Debian for years on my server, and it just keeps up with the times (well with Debian times, not necessarily current times).
It's way easier than Kubuntu was for me, for example, which required reinstalling practically every time I wanted to upgrade. A few times the upgrade actually worked, but most of the time I had to reinstall.
Debian as a server is fine and probably the best ! However as a daily drive OS I don't think it's the best choice.
I have always seen Debian as server distro and that's probably what they meant ?
I have debian as my server distro since the beginning of my Linux journey (NEVER failed me !) However I can't see how Debian as daily drive is a good idea. Sure they try to catch up with testing repo for those who wan't a more up to date distro, but it's seems harder to keep up when something breaks along the way.
That's where Arch and derivatives shine, if something goes wrong it's fixed in a few days.
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Debian stable + XFCE for me. Missing newer packages though. I'm interested in what problems you had with Fedora
I had problems with waking from sleep/hibernate, audio issues (total dropouts as well as distortion in screen-recording apps), choppy video playback and refusal to enter fullscreen, wonky cursor scaling, apps not working as expected or not running at all. I've managed to fix most of these or find temporary workarounds (grateful for flatpaks for once!) or alternative applications. But the experience was not fun, particularly as there was only a 2 week return window for the laptop and I needed to be sure the problems weren't hardware design/choice related. And I'm finding it 50/50 whether an app actually works when I install it from the repo. There's a lot less documentation for manually installing things as well and DNF is slow compared to apt...
I don't want to say for certain that Fedora as a distro is to blame but I suspect that it is. I miss my Debian days.
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Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
If you like debian and just need a newer kernel you could just add backports to your debian install then install the kernel during the install process.
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Debian as a server is fine and probably the best ! However as a daily drive OS I don't think it's the best choice.
I have always seen Debian as server distro and that's probably what they meant ?
I have debian as my server distro since the beginning of my Linux journey (NEVER failed me !) However I can't see how Debian as daily drive is a good idea. Sure they try to catch up with testing repo for those who wan't a more up to date distro, but it's seems harder to keep up when something breaks along the way.
That's where Arch and derivatives shine, if something goes wrong it's fixed in a few days.
I've been daily driving it on my desktop and laptop for several months now, seems fine. But I don't need the bleeding edge either.
But that's not what the comment was about... The top level comment said Debian was hard to upgrade, and I have not had that experience.
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Ubuntu is literally just Debian unstable with a bunch of patches. Literally every time I've been forced to use it, it's been broken in at least a few obvious places.
So, you are saying Debian is the better choice, right?
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What makes Debian 12 a painful distro to upgrade?
The problem is when it comes time for a major version upgrade. Debian 12.10.0 to 12.11.0 probably won't be a big deal. But upgrading from Debian 11 to 12 was a pain. Debian 12 to 13 will probably be a pain as well.
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So, you are saying Debian is the better choice, right?
Absolutely. I've been running Debian for literally decades both personally & professionally (on servers) and it's rock-solid.
On the desktop, it's also very stable, but holy-fuck is it old. I'm happy to accept the occasionally bug in exchange for modern software though, so I use Arch (btw) on the desktop.
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Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
PopOS is very stable as a desktop. It also keeps up to date with packages better than base Ubuntu in my opinion.
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Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
I've been running Manjaro for the last 4 months and it's been incredibly reliable and smooth. I haven't done any serious tweaking beyond installing a realtime audio kernal. I run updates every few days and I haven't had a single issue so far.
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As someone who just had to bandaid an unexplained battery draw on his wife's MacBook - no, Mac OS no longer "just works". Apple buries some of the most basic settings inside a command line-only tool called
pmset, and even then those can be arbitrarily overridden by other processes.And even after a fresh reinstall and new battery, it still drains the battery faster in hibernation mode than my Thinkpad T14 G1 running Linux Mint does while sleeping. Yeah, that was a fun discovery.
If you have battery drain, make sure you’ve disabled the option to regularly wake up and do some background processing (check for emails, sync photos, etc.). Settings → Battery → Options… → Wake for network access. (Or search for “Power Nap” in the System Sertings dialog.)
No need to use
pmsetfor that. -
You're not going to believe this, but I've found Arch is it. My desktop install was in December 2018: Sway with Gnome apps. Save for Gnome rolling dice on every major update, it's been perfectly boring and dependable.
There are two camps of Arch users:
- Use it despite it breaking on every update, because of AUR and other benefits
- What? Arch breaks?
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So, you are saying Debian is the better choice, right?
Ubuntu comes with non-free drivers which can make it easier to set up and use. I use Debian on my server and Ubuntu on my laptops.
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Doesn't ucore also have to restart to apply updates?
Not super ideal for a server as far as maintenance and uptime to have unexpected, frequent restarts as opposed to in-place updates, unless one's startup is completely automated and drives are on-device keyfile decrypted, but that probably fits some threat models for security.
The desktop versions are great!
Run k3s on top and run your stateless services on a lightweight kubernetes, then you won’t care you have to reboot your hosts to apply updates?
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I had problems with waking from sleep/hibernate, audio issues (total dropouts as well as distortion in screen-recording apps), choppy video playback and refusal to enter fullscreen, wonky cursor scaling, apps not working as expected or not running at all. I've managed to fix most of these or find temporary workarounds (grateful for flatpaks for once!) or alternative applications. But the experience was not fun, particularly as there was only a 2 week return window for the laptop and I needed to be sure the problems weren't hardware design/choice related. And I'm finding it 50/50 whether an app actually works when I install it from the repo. There's a lot less documentation for manually installing things as well and DNF is slow compared to apt...
I don't want to say for certain that Fedora as a distro is to blame but I suspect that it is. I miss my Debian days.
(grateful for flatpaks for once!)
That's how I run my system right now. Fedora KDE + pretty much everything as Flatpak.
Gives me a recent enough kernel and KDE version so I don't have to worry when I get new hardware or new features drop but also restricts major updates to new Fedora versions so I can hold those back for a few weeks.
I made a similar switch as you but from Ubuntu to Fedora because of outdated firmware and kernel.
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Those who don't have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I've had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to touch anything for a couple of years. I don't need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
You simply don't do any maintenance whatsoever.
t. Got a arch linux install that I (rarely) perform "sudo pacman -Syu --noconfirm" and it works like a champ.
