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 — and it’s probably silly to some of you— 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.
I recommend void. It’s rock solid, “stable rolling release”, no systemd, amazing package manager. The installation is a bit more “advanced”, but I guess coming from Arch that should not be a problem for you.
Bazzite
I use Bluefin myself, and it’s honestly been game changing. Using an immutable distro has been the greatest quality of life upgrade in my 15 years of using Linux.
Also, if you use distrobox (automatically installed with Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite, etc.) you can even setup an Arch container and continue to use the AUR. I use Steam installed from within an Arch container and it doesn’t feel any different from a natively installed app. It also means I don’t have to use the Steam flatpak which I had a couple issues with.
Literally said they don’t want immutable.
Literally said they don’t want immutable.
At best, they might have implied it. (But I don’t think they do.) Here are the (relevant) snippets:
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 once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup “distrobox” on it if I wanted the AUR.
Removed by mod
Nowhere did they say that those statements mean immutable to them. Just that your claims that OP “literally said they didn’t want immutable” is not based in reality.
You’re literally incorrect and have problems reading words directly in front of you. They literally say in their post that they are looking at immutable distros.
Log off if you’re unable to provide anything of value to this thread.
You are confidentially incorrect. I suggest you actually take the time to read the post again.
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.
OP, another vote for this one.
It addresses your concerns in a wonderful way:
- Reliability; While it’s far from unique in this regard, I’d argue that the uBlue distros are one of if not the most reliable desktop Linux experience that’s currently out there. You know most of the drill already (read: built-in rollback functionality, clean base system). But, the uBlue project has some aces up on their sleeves that (to my knowledge) are pretty unique:
- “Ninety (90) days of image archives allowing for flexible rollback options.” The images are stored online, so they don’t even take space on your device.
- Shared community maintenance, i.e. even if upstream has a rare fuck-up, you can trust on uBlue’s maintainers to deal with it without you even noticing. For a recent example of this, we got this.
- Access to the AUR; while Distrobox can be installed on any distro, uBlue projects come with perks that make the whole experience better than it’s found elsewhere. From quadlets that have been properly setup from the get-go so that you don’t have to (additionally) maintain those distrobox containers, to even minor things like including Boxbuddy OOTB to make the transition as easy as they come.
- Setup for Gaming; It goes without saying that Bazzite is excellent for gaming. It’s gaming-ready OOTB and includes (almost[1]) all the performance tweaks you’d wish.
- Setup and forget; I (almost[2]) don’t know any other distro that better embodies this than Bazzite (and its other uBlue-relatives).
All in all, I think Bazzite is definitely worth a look. Consider installing it and setup to your heart’s content. If -at any time during or after that process- you come across an insurmountable[3] issue caused by its atomic/cloud-native/‘immutable’ nature, then you can check it off your list and look elsewhere.
- CachyOS is still superior in this regard by doing a better job at inching out (literally) every performance gain out there.
- Perhaps Endless OS does an even better job at this, but that would be a bad recommendation for all the other reasons.
- Before giving up, if you wouldn’t have done it by then, at least consider contacting the community through their Discord server. They’re very helpful. FWIW, Bazzite has pretty excellent documentation as well. (Even if it ain’t as exhaustive as the even more impressive ArchWiki. Granted, it doesn’t have to be as expansive.)
- Reliability; While it’s far from unique in this regard, I’d argue that the uBlue distros are one of if not the most reliable desktop Linux experience that’s currently out there. You know most of the drill already (read: built-in rollback functionality, clean base system). But, the uBlue project has some aces up on their sleeves that (to my knowledge) are pretty unique:
Seconded, I moved my gaming rig is on Bazzite and has been trouble free and maintenance free ever since.
I installed Bluefin on the laptop I gave my father, and it’s been happily running trouble-free every single day since August without a single intervention. And my father is the kind of man who can conjure up unknown bugs, weird failures and random crashes by simple hand contact.
I stopped using Arch a long time ago for this same reason. Either Fedora (or derivatives like Nobara) or an atomic/immutable distro (like Bazzite, Silverblue, Kinoite) is probably the way to go.
I used to feel like Ubuntu was a good option for this, but it no longer is: too often they try to push undesirable changes that need manual tweaking to fix after release upgrades. Debian Stable is generally good for low-maintenance use but doesn’t keep up as well with newer hardware or newer updates to video drivers and mesa, which makes it suboptimal for typical gaming use. Debian Testing can be prone to break things in updates (in my experience, worse than Arch does).
I saw another comment recommend Rocky/RHEL, but note that their kernel doesn’t support btrfs. Since you mentioned a root snapshot, I expect you probably use it.
I’ve been using Linux for more than a decade and distro hopped quite a bit. Mint used to be my happy place, but recently within the last 5 years or so I’ve been on Arch derivatives. Endeavour was never stable enough for my liking, but Manjaro has been great. I did have to go back to a snapshot once, fairly recently, but that was primary because I fecked it up and not due to an update.
You mentioned that you have tried several Arch-based distros, so I’m not sure if this includes Manjaro.
I have tried manjaro, but I didn’t like how slow it was and how slow its release cycle was, too.
Debian. Solid as a mountain.
How easy is it to get gaming on Debian (as OP mentioned occasional gaming)? I use Popos myself, so all nvidia drivers and gamemode and such works out the box.
For nvidia drivers it probably took me about 15 minutes and one page off of the Debian wiki.
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
You basically add some repositories, install the drivers, and then set and check some configurations depending on what other parts of your environment look like.
I used Fedora, and am now leaving for the exact reason you’re leaving Arch (plus IMO bad repos). Switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed a few months ago and am having a much better experience than with Fedora :D; I use the PC for programming, audio recording and mixing, document stuff, etc. (No gaming though).
Nobara is good but does break regularly, FYI… If you’re a “power-user” I wouldn’t recommend it as a daily driver.
There’s also Void Linux, which hasn’t ever broken on me due to an update, but is still a lot of work, due to its nature. It’s actually quite stable though, and you might enjoy it, since it’s quite similar to Arch and has very large repos.
I can’t say much about immutable distros, as the only one I’ve used is bazzite, which was kinda horrible (broke constantly).
Well, I hope that helped. Good luck!
I came here just for advertising Linux Mint once again. 👍
It’s now a very strong candidate. I’m just testing cschy os for now, but I’m still leaving heavily towards mint. Do you use it?
I have used it many years now. Couldn’t be happier. I still have Windows lying on somewhere in the hard drive, but I haven’t booted it for a year or so.
Awesome. Thank you. I’m getting the run around between distros now to see which one works the best. So far Cachy os isn’t as game ready as they claim. I had to install so much shit. Couldn’t even boot into any of the Garuda ISOs that I’ve burned on the flash drive. Was very confused with immutable distros. Tried mint, and it was cool, but didn’t try it for gaming. Man, this is a pain.
To be honest, I don’t really do much of playing with my computer. I only have dosbox for old games and then couple of other games from software center, which are made for Linux. So I’m not sure how Mint works with new games.
No worries. Thank you
Could some of the instability issues you have on arch could come from what you are installing from AUR?
I use AUR for a few things and it is a great resource but the packages are maintained by users and can cause issues.
I update those packages carefully, remove them if I am no longer using them and reconsider which ones i actually need installed in the first place.
While doing this I have only had a handful of issues pop up while updating and usually there is a recent thread describing the issue and how to fix it after a quick search.
I can count the apps I install from the AUR on fingers, and none of them are independencies or high level drivers. Just regular apps. The issue wasn’t the AUR, it’s always something with KDE that gets fucked
Debian. I’ve had installations which went trough several major version upgrades, I’ve worked with ‘set and forget’ setups where someone originally installed Debian and I get my hands on it 3-5 years later to upgrade it and it just works. Sure, it might not be as fancy as some alternatives and some things may need manual tweaking here and there, but the thing just works and even on rare occasion something breaks you’ll still have options to fix it assuming you’re comfortable with plain old terminal.
I can’t speak for the desktop side, but for my server it’s been running without interruption for years. About once per week I do something stupid and use all available memory, but it hasn’t crashed once. It just runs a bit slow until I free up some RAM, then Docker comes back to life once I free up some disk space. I definitely recommend it for anyone who wants a server OS that just works.
I was actually thinking of that. How’s testing and unstable, are they good, too?
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
They are excactly what the name implies. Testing is generally pretty good, but it’s still testing. And unstable is also what the name implies. People, myself included back in the day, run both as daily drivers, but if you want rock stable distribution installing unstable revision might not be the best choise.
I put Fedora on a laptop as a whim almost 2 years ago.
My main computers are arch, but. I had an iso handy and hadn’t used anything from based in years.
I am surprised at how quickly it gets updates. Gimp was at 3 before arch stable.
Anyways, I just keep updating the laptop and it just keeps working. I have yet to actually do anything for maintenance on it.
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?
Stable yea. My PC is a bit older (7 years) and I’ve never had any issues with hardware, even with my nvidia card.
If you want stability, Debian Stable is the way to go (Servers, mission critical tasks). Even Debian Sid works great on my Legion Go.
I recommend Testing or Sid for desktops.
OpenSuse Leap or even Tumbleweed. After getting the media codecs up and running, and remembering to set you firewall zone to “home”, you’re pretty golden.
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 and sets them up for disappointment. 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 it 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’m sorry you had a bad experience. I’ve used it as my daily driver with minimal effort post installation on multiple occasions, usually on work laptops where time spent tinkering is time wasted. I’ve found it to be a good choice in that context. I now own my own business, and OpenSuse has allowed me to repurpose older laptops as workstations for my employees with minimal effort.
The only actual pain point I’ve seen is setting up a wifi enabled printer … required that I change my firewall zone so the printer could be discovered. And that only required a few minutes to figure out. The fact that the firewall is set to a more secure default is probably a feature, not a bug.
I can’t speak for you but I didn’t have to do any of that, my installs worked out of the box…
… that is def not my case, openSUSE is saving me a lot of time.
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 even customisation at the beginning, beyond setting them accounts). It has always been stable with exception that they only became “almost” out-of-the-box gaming friendly only in recent year or two.
Tumbleweed is just there, always updated, and feels nice. Oh, it’s not the quickest boot maybe?
Previously (15+ years, maybe 20 my parents) I had my family on Debians/Ubuntus which were stable but always very fiddly to distro upgrade, 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).
Try blendOS. It’s basically Arch but immutable. And SteamOS also exists.
It has been some time since I gave this a proper look. Do you use this yourself? If so, would you be so kind to share some of your experiences?
I used Silverblue and tried HoloISO, but it’s the same thing.
Sorry, I was referring to BlendOS if that wasn’t clear*.
However, if you did understand my intentions right away, then I’d regard it an oversimplification to ‘equate’ their respective experiences. Regardless, I do appreciate your input! Thank you.
Use distrobox brother, it is really underrated, I use it on my fedora PC so I can have access to the AUR all the time, you could even use Debian with it and have access the the AUR on a 2 year out of date install, seriously, it is really worth the effort of checking out, changed my Linux experience forever.
I use distrobox on my steam deck and i use it for work 😂
I tried it and I was very confused. I was trying to build an app from source and it was complete cluster fuck. I gave up
Another Debian suggestion here, including for gaming and even VR. It basically just works.
