Yeah I installed that one you’re thinking of.

  • slothrop@lemmy.caEnglish
    77·
    2 days ago

    I dual boot Arch and Arch, and I run an Arch hypervisor as well as an Arch vm in each Arch instance.

  • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    2 days ago

    The one that makes you happy.

    ^Or at least overrides the desire to grab a sledgehammer when troubleshooting^

  • DFX4509B@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    16·
    2 days ago

    Mint is pretty much the de facto recommendation for absolute beginners freshly moving away from Windows right now, but LMDE especially will be subject to dealing with older software.

    Otoh, any of the Puppy distros are a great option for genuinely old hardware; think AM2+/775 or older, that a lot of heavier distros may or may not struggle on.

    • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      2 days ago

      Having Socket 775, Puppy Linux and genuinely old hardware in the sentence shook me.

      I still remember being in high school playing Minecraft on those Optiplexes, and even before that playing Poptropica and CoolMathGames…

      • DFX4509B@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        775 is old enough to drink and AM2, which AM2+ is an upfitted revision of, is 19 years old.

    • slothrop@lemmy.caEnglish
      18·
      2 days ago

      I started my first Gentoo install in 1998.
      It’s almost finished compiling.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      12·
      2 days ago

      “I like to rebuild my kit sports car every time I want to take it out for a drive. Anyone who does otherwise is a pleb.”

    • evol@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      I used this for a few months but I just don’t really see the upside in compiling my own code lol

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    9·
    2 days ago

    Good analogy by using cars. You can test drive a car. Since a lot (all?) distros have a way to run off a USB, so you can get the general “feel” of it. Then you can go from there. Or if you have room to work with, setting up dual boot isn’t that hard (outside of how Windows acts sometimes about it). Asking a lot of people what flavor ice cream they prefer isn’t going to help you decide your own.

  • evol@lemmy.todayEnglish
    81·
    2 days ago

    Unless its like arch or gentoo does the distro matter that much? Like its mostly just the default settings which you can tweak. I feel like 90% of distrohopping is just wanting to try a new UI which can you just install yourself.

    The main difference is package management so rolling release vs LTS vs 6 month cycle.

    In practice we really need to stop using dynamic dependencies/package managers for most applications, for desktop usecase its just not a good pattern anymore, honestly I feel its like 99% of the reason the linux desktop never took off, app dev is just a pain. Thankfully stuff like flatpak and appimage exist now

    • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      I can’t express how much I disagree with you and further I can not fucking stand flatpacks and the like. Unless I’m running a server, I don’t want that crap on my box at all.

      • evol@lemmy.todayEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Why would you want flatpak on a server, server feels like ideal for dynamic dependencies as you have some highly used, static build (Debian 13 or Ubuntu LTS) where problems can be easily tested and fixes distributed out. The dependencies don’t change too much aswell as the usecase for the server stays static. Security features can then be patched in when needed. Desktop usecase all people want is an up to date latest app that works, security rarely matters, and the dependency graph is highly volatile as people constantly update and add new software

        • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          So keep the different server processes somewhat isolated without going full VM. If I was admining production boxes for a company, I’d go with VMs. I’m talking about home servers running a couple services, and about desktops at home. Being retired, I haven’t had to really do real sysadmin work for years.

          I haven’t had any issues, that I can think of at least, updating my desktop install which is going on about 10 years now. I’ve not been stuck in some type of dependency hell for even longer than that. To each their own, if they work for you, great. I can’t stand the extra layer that flatpaks bring to me. Seems like back in the day they would have been really useful…but thinking about past hard drive space, processor speeds, and internet speeds, maybe not.

          • bus_factor@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 days ago

            Are you confusing flatpaks and other containerization solutions like docker? Flatpaks are specifically for UI applications, and that doesn’t make much sense on a server.

  • galaxy_nova@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    Fedora for sure, generally pretty up to date, lots of users so you can find articles pretty easily, and it’s a lot more stable than Arch BTW

  • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Debian for my workstation desktops, servers, etc, anything that’s stable.

    Arch for playing around with new toys/features.

  • SpaceCheeseWizard@lemmy.zip
    3·
    2 days ago

    I am a big fan of OpenSuse personally. You have a lot of different options between stable 2-year releases, a rolling release that pairs nicely with a Slowroll monthly snapshot release model if tumbleweed updates too quickly for you, and finally immutable options.