controversial opinion: distro/software wars are good, because they make people discuss about their software, which motivates the developers. you don’t see windows software wars, because they can’t choose their de
Pretty sure that for most things it’s simply that there’s one software that’s way above the rest or you simply have no interest in the fields where people debate what is best and on Linux you often are stuck with the one software that does the trick because there’s not enough demand for real competition that pushes devs to come up with something as good as what you’ll find on Windows.
@wzl my top distros are arch & gentoo, i use arch for desktop and gentoo for my server
i’ve a gentoo install for a raspberry when raspbian (now raspberry os) didn’t have support for aarch64 binaries in their repos, but beside that it is fun to customize your install using portage
I’ve got a feeling that I leave arch, just to come back to it… Almost a year without Arch.
Warning: Hot take
Who you are and what your needs are will affect which distro is best for you.
Ngl, I was expecting something spicier than your utterly reasonable comment.
Sacrilege! Burn the person bringing a reasonable perspective to the flame war!
What? Sacrilege. Of course my mum’s PC runs arch so does my server I would install arch on a hospital Server and have it auto update if they’d let me … /s
I would really like to thank the Arch community for maintaining such a wonderful wiki; it’s great that your nuts-and-bolts approach naturally generates the best documentation. That said, Debian will always be my distro of choice.
I really like Debian, it’s what I use at work and for servers at home. At least until a few weeks ago when I decided to try NixOS. I’m really liking it so far and am thinking of switching over my other home servers.
Debian my beloved
Mint for me, but the Arch wiki is just the best.
I’m officially off of arch now and back on debian, my first and true linux love. I used to love arch for the AUR, but I had a couple of AUR packages that took so long to upgrade, they were basically un-upgradeable. I switched from i3 on X to sway on Wayland at the same time, so I can’t say how much of my issues were that, but various small issues are no longer issues, like better Playstation controller support. And I don’t have to restart every time I update repositories because I’m not constantly upgrading the Linux kernel. And there are so many .deb packages! But sincerely, thank you arch community. I still use the arch wiki.
i run arch on my workstation because the flexibility of being able to install any given recent software is just too great. Compared to something like debian which i run on my server, it’s great, you just don’t things that are up to date very often. But it’s incredibly stable.
I truly am living the best of both worlds right now.
arch, debian and mint all belong in 1st place
Debian
As long as you’re not using the distro’s 5 year old version of 3D printer slicing software with ancient printer models in it and go for the newest appimage/flatpak instead (just dealt with this last night).
Yep. When it has the package I need,
flatpakelevatesDebianto the last distro I will ever need.And when
flatpakdoesn’t have the package I need, there’s alwaysFedora.(I know - I’m a meme for hating
snapsthat much. Lol.)
It’s amazing how much the combination of those 3 excell at covering almost any use case.
NixOS disagrees
The best way to trigger an Arch user is to use Ubuntu and love it.
I use Mint, by the way.
What’s wrong with Ubuntu? It’s a great distro in all honesty.
If you’re not registered (which is free for non-business use) the GUI softwate updater may tease you with extra security patches you won’t get.
it feels corporatey and it’s not exceptional at anything
It really isn’t.
My ubuntu server install gives me an ad for Canonical’s “enhanced security” and a Kubernetes ad every time I SSH into it :(
search for the text file used by MOTD and change it to whatever you want.
Or use a distro that doesn’t come with ads
Canonical is what’s wrong.
One word. Snaps
That’s fair, haha
Seven additional words: Apt installing snaps instead of Debian packages
I personally have no issues with it, but a lot of people really dislike things like snaps (seen as reinventing the wheel of flatpaks and using closed source backend to do it no less) and Canonical really sadly does have a history of making some really silly and thoughtless mistakes which were all bad for the Ubuntu community. I can see an understand those arguments’ validity, but I do think they’re just a little silly because there’s far worse companies doing far worse things out there than Canonical.
Anyway, I still like Ubuntu but I know it gets a lot of hate so I like to poke fun. Xubuntu is like my ride-or-die for old hardware.
so Canonical is the Mozilla of Linux…
If you think Mozilla is the canonical of browsers, you’ve been consuming too much of Google’s anti-mozilla propaganda after they announced v3 manifest.
As someone who’s in the process of moving to an almost fully Linux environment but only has experience using Ubuntu. Is there a lateral alternative or ‘step-up’ distro you would recommend I try given the downsides of Canonical/ubuntu?
Mint is generally the suggested new go-to for newbies, as I understand it, because it’s probably the closest to Ubuntu but has snaps disabled.
Debian if you’re going for something more pure, but they are a lot less current, albeit more stable due to that.
If you want start menu and taskbar, Linux Mint. It was based on Ubuntu so under the hood is very similar but the desktop is more Windows like.
If you want a similar experience to Ubuntu then Fedora, which uses the Gnome desktop environment like Ubuntu but without all the Ubuntu changes. Plus Fedora does some things in different ways under the hood so there is a learning experience that is a nice stepping stone rather than being thrown in the deep end.
I tried raw Gnome and hated it. Ubuntu’s changes made it actually usable. At the same time, I don’t really like all those DEs that just mimic XP.
Interesting. I love Vanilla Gnome over Ubuntu’s version. What do you prefer from Ubuntu that I might have overlooked?
The dock/taskbar. Gnome’s default one being hidden in a menu was unpleasant. I did try the dash-to-dock and dash-to-panel extensions, but I preferred Ubuntu’s implementation.
I was a primary Kubuntu user for a long time, but I just recently started using EndeavourOS and I’m really liking it so far. It is Arch-based, but a usable system immediately post-install.
Seconding the Mint suggestion. I started on Ubuntu ~15 years ago, nowadays I run Mint if I need a GUI, or Debian on anything headless
Heh, I have two laptops: one with Arch and one with Ubuntu. I like both systems. I guess i like triggering myself.
why did that last sentence sound so sexual 😭😭
“Oh yeah. I’m triggering myself aaaall night long!”
- Bog standard Fedora
All I need is a community repo, and a cfg edit to parallel download. That’s it, perfection.
You’re not wrong.
As my hatred for
snapshas removed Ubuntu from my install set, I’m finding myself quietly installingFedoraanywhere thatDebianwon’t do.My preferences change with the wind, but
Fedorais a fantastic default choice.It’s always been Debian on servers for me, any time I’ve strayed from that I’ve regretted it. And Fedora has become my home on the desktop, it’s just so hard to break. I like fixing things and learning, but it’s annoying to always have to do it on your main system.
The desktop environment and package manager has a greater effect on your user experience than the distro
I used to use Ubuntu and Mint now I use SteamOS.
Agree. KDE neon is my daily right now. Very good out of the box. I just had to nuke snaps on it. Plays very nicely on laptops in terms of battery life, noise and temperature. Sleep and hibernate also works very well.
Distro and package manager are tightly coupled.
you can choose your de, and with some distros (like arch) your packages don’t come preconfigured. which also makes a lot of difference.
How does SteamOS hold up as a daily driver compared to Mint? I always imagined its like a souped up version of steams big picture mode. Is it a good desktop enviroment that comes with ways to manage files and make web app shortcuts?
It ships with KDE so yeah. Pretty good.
It runs KDE Plasma 5. I personally prefer MATE but KDE works too.
-1. WSL.
If 3 is worse than 1, -1 is better. So I don’t agree with you. WSL is at +∞
Any distribution is better
Because everything to do with WSL is negative
arch, rhel, opensuse/fedora
Arrays start at 0, which leaves plenty of room for SCO Linux powered by UnitedLinux
Wait, I think there was an underflow error…
Is this a scaldera joke?
It’s ancient, but I couldn’t think of a worse distro
first place is tied with arch and debian, second might include RHEL.
everything else is non deterministic.
My top five Linux distros:
- Debian: It may not be exciting but its rock stability is what makes it good for the vast majority of people (aka what I would genuenly reccomend to people)
- Alpine: Not the easiest or most stable but very lightweight
- OpenSuse: Stable yet up to date, very good defaults and themeing is amazing (especially on Sway)
- Arch: Ignoring the community or documentation you get a distro with up to date packages and not much else to seperate it
- NixOS: Way too advanced for me but I love the way it works, seems amazing for a select type of people
Of course my opinion is objectively correct and if you disagree im going to burn your house down with combustible lemons (made by my team of scientists ofc) /s
based, alpine is really fun for running on obsolete hardware
antiX is a pretty user friendly and light distro. Plus it’s Debian based.
Honestly when it comes to Debian derivatives Devuan is the only one I would reccomend (still doesnt get in my top 5)
I’ve yet to try Devuan, but I quite like the fact antiX has a bunch of stuff setup, like the WM with Rox and a bunch of apps etc
Devuan is like Debian but without SystemD and much lighter. Like Debian however you set it up yourself so feel free to use whatever WM you want (I personally like Sway).
antiX doesn’t use SystemD, so that works for me. A nice balance between lightweight and being lazy and not having to set it up from scratch, but it doesn’t feel quite as janky as Puppy Linux.
Why wouldn’t you like systemD? It’s easier to learn than most distributions
I guess its commands are a bit long
Imo when it comes to lightweight distros theres a reason why you set it up manually, when 100mb is the difference between a usable system it makes sense for the user to customize it to their needs.
I get that. It depends what you’re after. I just wanted something that’d run on old hardware without too much effort.
Debian: It may not be exciting but its rock stability is what makes it good for the vast majority of people (aka what I would genuenly reccomend to people)
debian is what windows wishes it could be.
Yeah Windows is not stable at all :3
i have historically had more stability issues on windows, than on my bleeding edge archlinux workstation. Sure shit changes, sometimes things break, but i can fix them, or find alternatives/workarounds if i really need to.
Windows, uh. Good luck.
I’ve used Arch for years now but I recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed to a friend recently
I have a computer using Windows because it needed a windows store app and the drm on those thwarted my attempts on Linux
