I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I’m learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?
RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.
Arch is the best, the arch wiki is massive, pacman is just amazing, no nvidia drivers bullshitting, and rolling release has only broken one thing once, life under the arch is pretty great
Also PKGBUILD’s are the superior packaging format. Back in the day people use to talk about preferring debian or redhat based distros based on how much they liked debs or rpms. Building packages on Arch is easier than pretty much any distro I have ever tried to build packages on.
I recently needed to build newer versions of some packages for Debian. Now, they’re go based so the official packaging is super complicated and eventually I decided to try and make my own from scratch. After a few more hours of messing with the official tooling I start thinking “there must be a better way.”
And sure enough, after a bit of searching I found makedeb which allows you to make debs from (almost) regular PKGFILEs. Made the task a million times simpler.
Arch wiki is the best! I reference often, even though I’m generally applying the information to other distros
Fedora Atomic because I don’t fucking care what package manager and whatnot sits underneath.
I just wanna relax in my free time and not worry about all this fucking nerd stuff.
Touching grass > Troubleshooting a broken system
Arch users here, just touched grass for the first time. Felt like bloat, had my lawn paved.
Fuck lawns!
Have you considered native pollinator meadows, moss gardens or clover? They have an actual use for nature too, are pretty much zero maintenance and are not just eye candy 😉
Debian. Truly the universal operating system. Runs on all of my laptops, desktops, servers, and NAS with no fuss and no need to keep track of distro-specific differences. If something has a Linux version, it probably works on Debian.
Granted, I am a bit biased. All of my hardware is at least 5 years old. Also came from Windows, where I kept only the OS and browser up to date, couldn’t be bothered with shiny new features. A package manager is already a huge luxury.
I know. Stop worrying about your computer and install Debian! It just works. It updates without a problem.
I (maybe) ended distrohopping last year when I gave NixOS a shot. I can’t recommend it for beginners but once you understand generally how things work on Linux (and have an interest in programming) it’s a superpower to be able to define your entire setup as a single git repository. If something ever breaks, I can reboot into an older commit and keep using my computer, or branch off in a different direction… I’ve only scratched the surface of NixOS and yet I can already make a live USB containing my setup with a single command, or deploy it (“infect”) to another machine and manage e.g my work desktop and my personal laptop sharing most settings. Also it taught me about Nix (the package manager, which also runs on any distro and macOS independent of NixOS) which I now use to set up perfect development environments for each of my projects… if I set up dependencies once (as a flake.nix shell), it’ll work forever and anywhere.
Same for me. I distro-hopped for about 20 years with OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Fedora being the most memorable desktop setups for me. While all that was a valuable experience, NixOS feels like graduation.
For the Nix-curious: I wish someone would have told me not to bother with the classic config and build a flake-based system immediately. They’re “experimental” in name only, very stable and super useful in practice.
Absolutely +1 for flakes. It’s got some annoying UX sometimes (make sure you
git addany new files before building!) but absolutely makes up for it by its features.Same for me, I stopped distro-hoping 2 years ago when I moved to NixOS.
It was tough at first, setting it up took a while and i genuinely felt stupid like i haven’t felt for a while; but now I love having the same config on my two laptops. I have one that stays at work and another one for traveling. With one word/line added into my config I can as a software, configure the VPN, change the wallpaper on both my laptop, or not. Some stuff like gaming goes only on the traveling laptop.
Also, another big thing for me is the feeling of having a cleanly built system all the time. I haven’t felt the urge to do a clean reinstall since I started with NixOS.
Some more points about Nix:
- It’s a fast way to get to a specific setup, like a particular DE or Vulkan gaming support, thanks to abstraction that NixOS modules provide
- There are tons of packages
- Because packages are installed by adding a config entry you don’t accumulate random software you forgot you installed
- Immutable updates and rollbacks - this is similar to benefits of atomic ostree distros, but the nix solutions are more general, so you have one system that does more things with a consistent interface
- in addition to updating the base system, rollbacks also roll back user-installed packages, and configurations if those are managed via Nix
- devshells provide per-directory packages and configuration using the same package repos as the host system, without needing to manage docker images
- Nix is portable - much of what it does on NixOS can also be used in other distros, or even on Macos or Windows with the Linux subsystem
- Configurations often combine NixOS and Home Manager parts. The Home Manager part can be used à la carte on other OSes is a way that is fully isolated from the host OS package management. For example on Macos this is a much nicer alternative to Homebrew.
- devshells also work on other OSes
- similar to Guix - but NixOS uses systemd, and is (from what I understand) more tolerant of non-free software (whether these are pros or cons is up to individual interpretation)
Nixos Is my first distro I use on desktop. I’m not sure why but I guess the fact that it won’t build till it checks Is a huge plus for me. I love to f up things to learn from them but I don’t like broken things and oh boy. Nix keeps me in the clean, safe. Don’t get me wrong im doing stupid stuff all the time but just cus i have a few configs written down i can learn a lot. Or a little that amazes me lol
NixOS is indeed probably the safest way to run an “unstable” distro. No matter what you do or mess up you can always reboot back.
EndeavourOS Bcause:
It’s Arch with an easy installer, with all of the most common administration tools already installed
With the Arch repo, AUR, and flatpak I have a wide breadth of software to choose from
I can easily install it without a desktop environment to install and set up Hyprland without the clutter of another DE
Not to mention it’s active and friendly community and excellent documentation
Is it possible to have both gnome and hyprland installed on EndeavourOS
Sorry, I misread your comment on my first reply. Yes, you can have gnome and hyprland installed side by side, you would just use SDDM to choose what session you’re starting at login.
But is it also possible to have the gnome login screen (so after startup) and then automatically login using Hyprland? Because I dislike any other login screen. (The gnome one is pretty asf)
Should be possible.
You can combine any desktop environments, really. Just choose which one you want when you’re on a login screen
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this. and incredibly sane defaults. for me, basically the perfect “traditional” distro and it ended my distrohopping.
Debian stable.
Everybody think they are a special snowflake who needs bleeding edge, or a specific package manager or DE or whatever. Truth is 99.99% do not. They just like to believe they do, claim they do, try it, inflict self pain for longer than they need, convince themselves that truly they are, because of the pain, special.
Chill, just go with stable, it’s actually fine.
Edit: posted from Arch, not even sarcasm.
As someone who ran Debian Stable for a while, this is not a distro for “99.99%”.
First, Debian, while very stable in its core, commonly has same random issues within DE’s and even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along.
Second, a release cycle of 2 years is actually a giant and incredibly noticeable lag. You may love your system when it just releases, but over time, you will realize your system is old, like, very damn old. It will look old, it will act old, and the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date.
This isn’t just programs. It is your desktop environment. It is Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks like Bottles, which will feel like insane workaround you wouldn’t have to have with a better fitting distro).
It is the damn kernel, so you may not even be able to install Debian on newest hardware without unsupported and potentially unstable backporting tricks.
Don’t get me wrong, Debian is absolutely great in what it does, and that is providing a rock solid environment where nothing changes. But recommending it for everyone? Nope.
I feel like a lot of your points were true at one point, but are becoming lest relevant.
For one, at least with XFCE, I found myself not really running into DE bugs.
Also, I don’t think two years is as obnoxious anymore. During the era of the GTK 4 transition a couple, it drove me nuts, but now that a lot of APIs like that have stabilized, I really don’t notice much of a difference between Debian Testing and Stable. I installed and daily drove Bookworm late in its lifecycle on my laptop, and in terms of DE and applications, I haven’t noticed anything. I get the feeling Debian’s gotten better at maintenance in the past few years - I especially see this with Firefox ESR. There was a time where the version was several months behind the latest major release of ESR, but usually it now only takes a month or two for a new ESR Firefox to come to Debian Stable, well within the support window of the older release.
Also, I don’t think Flatpaks are a huge dealbreaker anyway - no matter what distro you’re using, you’re probably going to end up with some of them at some point because there’s some application that is the best at what it does and is only distributed as a Flatpak.
Frankly, I probably am a terrible reference for gaming, as I’m a very casual gamer, but I’ve found Steam usually eliminates most of these issues, even on Debian.
Also, the official backports repository has gotten really easy. My laptop had an unsupported Wi-Fi chipset (it was brand new), so I just installed over ethernet, added the repo, and the install went smoothly. There were a few bugs, but none of these were specific to Debian. Stability has been great as ever.
In conclusion, I think right around Bookworm, Debian went from being the stable savant to just being an all-around good distro. I’ll elaborate more on why I actually like Debian in a comment directly replying to the main post.
I might disagree with 99.999% like you - maybe I’d put it in the 50-75% range.
As a KDE fan, I had some bugs on some devices (like on one of the laptops, wallpapers did not install correctly and the setting to always show battery charge didn’t work) even on Debian 12.
XFCE is well-known for stability, but seems to be increasingly irrelevant for the average/newbie user because the interface looks outdated and configuring is relatively complicated.
Interesting you mentioned Firefox ESR - iirc, even at release the version shipped with Debian 12 was considered very old, prompting many to install Firefox as a flatpak. Two years later, it’s two years older.
Flatpaks are good and suitable options for many tasks - no argument here! But some things are just better installed natively, and there Debian just…shows.
Steam is a godsend, but there are many non-Steam games and, importantly, programs out there, and launching them through Steam often feels like yet another bloated and slow workaround; besides, you cannot choose Wine over Proton, and sometimes (granted: rarely) you may want to use Wine specifically.
To conclude - it’s alright to choose Debian anyway, it is good! But I just feel like newbies and casual users could save a lot of trouble and frustration simply going with something that doesn’t require all that - say, Fedora (non-atomic), or OpenSUSE, and then go from there to whatever they like. There are plenty of distributions that are stable, reliable, but without the tradeoffs Debian sets.
If you feel like stability is your absolutely biggest priority ever, and you have experience managing Linux systems - by all means, go Debian. But by that point you’ll already know what you want.
Debian Stable actually updates Firefox ESR through the typically on by default security channel.
The current ESR version in there is 128, which is about a year old, which replaced the 115 that came with Debian 12 by default.
The newest ESR, 140 just came out 2 weeks ago. 128 still has 2 months of security updates, and 140 has already been packaged for sid. I have no doubts 140 will come before those 2 months are up.
Now the KDE thing actually sounds like it sucks.
Oh, didn’t know, thanks for sharing on the Firefox side!
even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along. … the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date. … Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks
I already posted on this a while ago but that’s is a recurring misconception. No distribution, literally 0, provides all software to the latest version or to the version one expects. Consequently IMHO it is perfectly acceptable to go beyond what the official package manager of the distribution offers. It can be flatpaks, am, build from source, etc but the point precisely is that the distribution is about a shared practical common ground to build on top of. A distribution is how to efficiently get to a good place. I also run Debian stable on my desktop and for gaming, I use Steam. It allows me to get Wine, yes, but also Proton and even ProtonFix so that I basically point and click to run games. I do NOT tinker to play Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, Clair Obscur, etc and my hardware is well supported.
So… sure if you consider a distribution as something you must accept as-is and NOT rely on any of the available tools to get the latest software you actually need, can be games but can be tools e.g. Blender, Cura, etc, then you WILL have a tough time but that’s the case for all distributions anyway.
TL;DR: a distribution is the base layer to build on. Its package manager, on Debian and elsewhere, is not the mandatory and sole way to get the software you need.
Fedora, because it just works, it’s familiar, and I’ve got things to do.
I really like CachyOS:
- Arch based a. Pacman package manager b. AUR c. Rolling release distro
- Graphical installer
- Extensive software repo. Things that I used to only be able to get as a flatpak are available in the repo, such as SurfShark VPN as an example
- Super fast.
- Updates are tested before they are made available and the delay is only a few days.
I wanted to try it but its installer kept hanging when it saw my LUKS on LVM setup :(
I use Fedora. I like that it’s very up to date and that it doesn’t change the GNOME defaults. It also has a big community and many resources to look into if anything goes wrong.
Fedora
Any RPM-based system has exemplary validation and, as long as we don’t throw it out with flatsnappimages, it presents a very clean and maintainable install.
Extra points for PCLinuxOS which has avoided lennart’s cancer.
No points for SuSE as they continue to exist as the over engineered bastard child of slackware and RPM, like slackware met 73deJeff on a trip and let the tequila do the talking. Mamma mia!
Mint. Takes half an hour to install and set up. Doesn’t get in the way after that.
Arch.
I’m vegan, german and into fitness. There really was no other choice. /s?
Also, it’s lightweight, you always get the most recent software, pacman is superb and it’s super stable. In about 10 years on multiple systems, I never had anything break. The worst of it are simple problems during updates, which are always explained on their website.
Lastly, there is the wiki. The single best source of Linux information out there. Might as well be using the distro that’s directly explained there, albeit a lot of information can be used on other ones as well.
With arch-install, you don’t even need to learn much, but learning is never a bad idea and will be great if something does break. Every system can break. Arch prepares you for that.
My distro is not the best, I would rather say it is the least bad for me, because I don’t like any.
Mint. It just works and Cinnamon is a good DE (ui design peaked in the Windows XP days). Plus you also get all the software built and tested for Ubuntu without the bullshit of using Ubuntu.
For my server I use NixOS, because having one unified configuration is so nice.
With Guix you have reproducibility, freedom, good docs and peace of mind, also when configuring things more deeply. You also have a powerful programming language (Scheme / Lisp) with which to define your system config as well as your dotfiles. This is my insight after years of GNU/Linux usage. I run Guix on laptops, desktops and servers, and I never have configuration drift, as well as the benefit that I have a self documenting system.
Isn’t GUIX based on Linux-libre?
This must complicate installing nonfree software, including nonfree drivers if your computer needs any.
By default it is, but there are many non-free channels you can use to add the OG Linux kernel to your Guix install as well as nonfree drivers. A famous one is nonguix, which i also use in my config. They also make custom ISOs with the Linux kernel, which helps some hardware indeed. So the libre only policy is a non issue if you read into it a little, but unfortunately most people stay at surface level
Thanks for this! I guess the point is, people don’t want to dig deep into the system built with different approach as a base.
But you made me interested
Debian.
With x11 gnome it can run the Rustdesk client and pass all the keys properly to the Windows host. And it doesn’t boot to a black screen like many other distros on my Asus laptop.
Was on Fedora with similar results but it started taking ages to boot looking for a non existent tpm chip.
