Why do you use the distro you use?
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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.
Mint on my work PC, because my dear IT colleagues made the effort to provide standardized installations for us that are mostly carefree and can just be used; you can even get them preinstalled on a laptop or VM.
Debian on my work servers, because everyone is using it (we're a Debian shop mostly) and there's a standardized self service PXE boot installation for it. Also, Debian is boring, and boring is good. And another thing, Debian is the base image for at least half of the Docker images and alliances (e.g. Proxmox) out there, so common tools. The .deb package format is kinda sane, so it's easy to provide our own package, and Debian has a huge community, so it's going nowhere in the near future.
Ubuntu LTS latest on my home servers, because I wanted "Debian but more recent packages", and it has served me well.
Not yet, but maybe Fedora on my private PC and laptop soon, because I keep hearing good things re hardware support, package recency, gaming and just general suitability for desktop use. There's still the WAF to overcome, so we'll see.
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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.
TuxedoOS because my so-called "Linux-Laptop" turned out to not run mainline Linux very smoothly. But I hate that fact that it's Ubuntu-based.
I'd use Debian, Arch or dabble with Void if I could on my laptop, my servers run Debian or Alma.
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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.
Void linux. Both on wayland + labwc desktop and radpberrypi 4 server with multiple dockers, and a bootable usb for my work laptop. Why? Its lightweight, rolling, rock stable, and easily extendable. I love runit for its simplicity. Love xbps package manager for its speed, and good and clear documentation.
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NixOS, because:
- I can have my entire system be declaratively configured, and not as a yaml soup bolted onto a random distro.
- I can trivially separate the OS, and the data (thanks, impermanence)
- it has a buttload of packages and integration modules
- it is mostly reproducible
All of these combined means my backups are simple (just snapshot
/persist, with a few dirs excluded, and restic them to N places) and reliable. The systems all have that newly installed feel, because there is zero cruft accumulating.And with the declarative config being tangled out from a literate Org Roam garden, I have tremendous, and up to date documentation too. Declarative config + literate programmung work really well together, amg give me immense power.
Do you know about guix? Seems right up your alley.
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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.
PopOs! Familiarity, stability and the fact that it fulfils 95% of my needs perfectly.
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Bazzite because never breaks.
I actually had it break, it wouldn't go past the login after an update. Turns out it was a gnome issue. It was something like an accessibility feature I had enabled crashed gnome. So, technically it was gnome and it would've happened in any distro.
Other than that, bazzite, its perfect.
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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 because it's boring in the best ways. Curious about NixOS though.
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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 on my laptop and Ubuntu on my home 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.
Laptop is Linux Mint, because my wife also use it and i want my laptop to be as easy to handle as possible.
Servers are Debian, because it's very light on my hardware. Mostly used for containers.
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NixOS configuration is done entirely through code, so all of your packages are in a list (although that list can be spread across multiple files; it's a bit to explain)
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"
I appreciate the way things are configured a lot, but I would not recommend it unless you really like coding and you have time to tinker. It's not too hard to get simple config setup, but I spiraled down a deep rabbit hole really quickly.
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"?
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Variants and derivates of Debian on my servers and other headless devices because no reason except I know it, it is stable, it works.
Been trying linux for desktop every five-ten years for the last twenty odd years and went back to Windows every time because it was too bad experience despite I really tried to like it.
Except this time.
Fedora KDE on my laptop, soon on my stationary as well. No more Windows for me.
I can't stand seeing my father struggling with windows...I tried to make him switch, but he has old piracy blood in him and just want Windows things and pirated software, some which do not have any alternatives on Linux.
Also, he's getting old and he always talks about he don't want to relearn a whole system. But everytime we see each other and talk about computers he trash talks how bad windows is...
Maybe that's just something he needs... And boring distros are going to make him depressed? Dunno
Sorry for the story time, but you switching fully to linux made me think of my Dad in hope sometimes he will also take the steps to get out of there
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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 Gnome. I like it and it just works for my daily office use. I don't have the time nor the mental strength to fiddle with different distro's on a regular basis.
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Bazzite because never breaks.
I'm using it as my main gaming distro now but I still have it break sometimes. Mostly due to Bluetooth stuff, but I also need to shut down the pc completely whenever I leave it running on its own for a while because it just doesn't wake back up if it sleeps - and I always forget to look into that after turning it back on.
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Everything-in-my-life-as-code FTW
Besides everything else you said, I especially love how you can store entire bash scripts in the nix configs, and even populate pieces of said scripts with variables if you so desire.
Yeah, i'm realizing more and more how convenient those variables are. I recently started using gtklock for example, a screenlocker that also has separate modules for extra functionality, which are also in nixpkgs, but the problem is that you have to explicitly specify the path to those modules in the config. So i wrote the config inside of home manager, and pointed to the modules path with the pkgs.foo variables. Worked like a charm.
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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.
I'm loving bluefin and I really want to go all in on the immutable stuff, but I'm having a hard time being productive on it. The devcontainers experience has been miserable (probably because I refuse to use VSCode and every other editor having poor or no support for it); I also had SElinux fuck me up when trying to build some complex dockerfile from a project at work (something that was supposed to just work took me two whole days of debugging - and I even managed to break bluefin's boot process when I tried to mess with the SElinux configuration. This one was mostly due to my own inexperience with SElinux, combined with there being a lot less content on the internet about fixing stuff on immutable distros compared to traditional ones).
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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.
Gentoo for my workstation because I need flexibility, security and stability there and Debian stable for my Raspberries running all the services I need 24/7 access to.
I don't like all the spin-offs of the major distros. And no, Ubuntu is not a major distro it is based on Debian and they are known for some really bad decisions in past and present, eg: snap instead of flatpak.
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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. Started using it in high school. Never had a reason to switch. Now I'm just regularly frustrated by other distros trying to make things easier by abstracting simple configurations behind layers of custom scripts.
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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 is bestian
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LMDE because it's Mint and a recent Debian stable.
lmde is kinda the goat
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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 started off with ubuntu in 2009, switched to mint some years later, because of the cinnamon desktop environment which I liked better than the new ubuntu unity flavour.
This year I switched to manjaro with kde plasma. Just for fun honestly.
