Looking for a "set it and forget it" distro
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They are the opposite of "set it and forget it".
Probably the most maintenance-heavy distros out there.
They're like Arch, if the Arch maintainers didn't care about keeping the system working.Damn. Lol. Ok then, will let that go
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I've been wanting to try out NixOS for this very reason lately (although I don't break my system often). If everything works for me there, I'll switch to it.
I've thought about nix, but it looks like it has a somewhat steep learning curve, and I honestly don't even have the time for that
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Hi all,
Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives. Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues. It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me. I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system. I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back â and it's probably silly to some of youâ is the AUR. I love it. It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there. So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR. I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games). So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it. I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in. I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.A few paragraphs would do wonders for the legibility of your post.
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Ive been a long term windows user. Almost 80% of my life. Tried macos and linux but always went to windows. Last year, i decided to move away from big tech in general. Ive moved away from most of it except windows, which is windows 10 LTSC. I tried ubuntu, kubuntu, fedora gnome, fedora kde, kde neon, arch (failed hard), arctix, endeavour and lastly i settled with linux mint cinnamon. A couple of tweak and a few hours. It feels like home. Goodbye windows, you will not be missed. I do dualboot windows 10 whenever i need to use program that only support windows.
I'm now debating between mint and kalpa suse. I went KDE and mint doesn't have it
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Installing Plasma should be as simple as "apt install kde-plasma-desktop", then log out and select plasma from the login screen. I've tried other DEs but not Plasma, so I can't say for certain it will work.
You can always try distros in a VM almost completely risk free. It won't tell you everything, but it's an easy way to get first impressions without losing your main OS.
This sucks. I'm going to look into one of those immutable distros and use distrobox -
Basically every distro is based on either arch or debian (some exceptions). I've been perfectly happy with debian, even as a gamer.
Debian stable? You don't have issues since it has older packages? All of your hardware works just fine?
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I've thought about nix, but it looks like it has a somewhat steep learning curve, and I honestly don't even have the time for that
For run of the mill sys admin stuff, you don't need to dive too deep. Even my reasonably complex needs of containers and mixed workstations is, imo pretty parsable from an intuitive perspective. I was reluctant at first but once I saw how a general sys admin would use it, it made my life so much easier.
Highly recommended.
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I came from Arch to Fedora as well but using Universal Blue's images. In my case, Aurora (KDE), and daughter's Bluefin (Gnome). They update in the background and only install when you reboot. So far, most of the newer software releases such as web browsers or the desktop environment fall within a day or two for being installed which is a nice alternative. The big plus I see on these too is they are immutable so if something installs or breaks, you just boot into the previous version from Grub and go from there.
Additionally, OpenSuse MicroOS has options for whatever environment you are used to such as Gnome or KDE, this is immutable as well. I view all of these as "Set and Forget".
Do external devices work? Like Xbox controller, printers and stuff like that?
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First to answer your main question if I were you I would try NixOS, because it's declarative so it's essentially impossible to break, i.e. if it breaks for whatever reason a fresh reinstall will get you back to exactly where you were.
That being said, I know it's anecdotal but I have been using Arch for (holy crap) 15 years, and I've never experienced an update breaking my system. I find that most of the time people complain about Arch breaking with an update they're either not using Arch (but Manjaro, Endeavor, etc) and rely heavily on AUR which one should specifically not do, much less on Arch derivatives. The AUR is great, but there's a reason those packages are not on the main repos, don't use any system critical stuff from them and you should be golden. Also try to figure out why stuff broke when it did, you'll learn a lot about what you're doing wrong on your setup because most people would have just updated without any issues. Otherwise it really doesn't matter which distro you choose, mangling a distro with manual installations to the point where an upgrade breaks them can be done on most of them, and going for a fully immutable one will be very annoying if you're so interested in poking at the system.
I agree with this, the issue may be the packages installed rather than the distro. For a more reliable experience, I like to:
- Use Flatpak instead of the AUR where possible
- Use built-in filesystems and avoid DKMS
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Hi all,
Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives. Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues. It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me. I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system. I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back â and it's probably silly to some of youâ is the AUR. I love it. It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there. So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR. I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games). So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it. I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in. I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.Debian stable. That's it. It's been here for 30 years, it's the largest community OS, it'll likely be here in 30 years (or until we destroy ourselves).
If you're extra lazy, Ubuntu LTS with Ubuntu Pro (free) enabled. You could use that for 10 years (or until Canonical cancels it) before you need to upgrade.
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I'm now debating between mint and kalpa suse. I went KDE and mint doesn't have it
You can install KDE on Mint.
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Debian stable? You don't have issues since it has older packages? All of your hardware works just fine?
Stable yea. My PC is a bit older (7 years) and I've never had any issues with hardware, even with my nvidia card.
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Hi all,
Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives. Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues. It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me. I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system. I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back â and it's probably silly to some of youâ is the AUR. I love it. It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there. So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR. I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games). So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it. I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in. I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.distrobox will give you access to the AUR and should be installable on any distro but the immutable/atomic approach might be worth looking into. I've been running bazzite on my personal machine and bluefin on my work machine for about a year now and it's been great. the only snag is learning the order of operations for installing things without a reboot.
I am just one data point but both distros have been rock solid for me and half the time I don't even realize updates had been run unless I see a new feature or something like that.
good luck on your journey!
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Debian stable. That's it. It's been here for 30 years, it's the largest community OS, it'll likely be here in 30 years (or until we destroy ourselves).
If you're extra lazy, Ubuntu LTS with Ubuntu Pro (free) enabled. You could use that for 10 years (or until Canonical cancels it) before you need to upgrade.
I'm in complete agreement with this post. Debian is pretty meticulous with their releases and Ubuntu LTS has a predictable release cadence if that's more important than "when it's ready"
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I guess we can formulate a law:
- Stable
- Easy to use
- Up-to-date
Pick any two.
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distrobox will give you access to the AUR and should be installable on any distro but the immutable/atomic approach might be worth looking into. I've been running bazzite on my personal machine and bluefin on my work machine for about a year now and it's been great. the only snag is learning the order of operations for installing things without a reboot.
I am just one data point but both distros have been rock solid for me and half the time I don't even realize updates had been run unless I see a new feature or something like that.
good luck on your journey!
Thank you. I'm in the process of looking into Aurora DX. I've read their documentations and it seems to almost have everything I need. Illegal dig more into it and see. I currently am unable to access my PC. It never logs in. Lmao
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Opensuse is absolutely not a set it and forget it distro. I get recommending your favorite distro to other users, but telling them it's an easy to use distro is absolutely false. You have to download the codecs yourself if you want to do so much as watch a video on firefox, for which you have to add a new repo. I've tried for two days and I've already spent half of them fixing bugs or snapping back to a version that worked because it froze after sleeping before I even did anything with it other than log in.
I can't speak for you but I didn't have to do any of that, my installs worked out of the box...
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Opensuse is absolutely not a set it and forget it distro. I get recommending your favorite distro to other users, but telling them it's an easy to use distro is absolutely false. You have to download the codecs yourself if you want to do so much as watch a video on firefox, for which you have to add a new repo. I've tried for two days and I've already spent half of them fixing bugs or snapping back to a version that worked because it froze after sleeping before I even did anything with it other than log in.
Yeah, same, I've switched all my fiends & family (desktops) to Tumbleweed like 5 years ago bcs I don't have to do any maintenance ever (not customisation at the beginning). It has always been stable with exception that they only became "almost" out-of-the-box gaming friendly only in recent year or two.
Previously (15+ years, maybe 20 my parents) I had my family on Debians/Ubuntus which were stable but always very fiddly to distro update, I don't even remember what went wrong with old Fedora, but I changed it back in less than a year (almost 10 years ago, not relevant).
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Thank you. I'm in the process of looking into Aurora DX. I've read their documentations and it seems to almost have everything I need. Illegal dig more into it and see. I currently am unable to access my PC. It never logs in. Lmao
i am unfamiliar with osprober but if you're installing it from the AUR, it should be as easy as creating a distrobox container with arch as its base and running the installation command(s) from there, then a single line to export the command to your base system if you want to use it outside of that container.
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Hi all,
Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives. Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues. It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me. I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system. I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back â and it's probably silly to some of youâ is the AUR. I love it. It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there. So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR. I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games). So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it. I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in. I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.Pls format your posts it's so much easier to read
