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.
Gentoo works best for me because I’m a control freak. It lets me tune my system in any way I want, and I don’t mind leaving my computer on while I’m asleep so that it can compile its way through libreoffice, webkit, and a couple of browsers. Plus, based on complaints I hear from people using other distros, Portage beats other package managers in every way except speed.
This doesn’t mean that it’s best for everyone, mind you, just that it’s best for me.
Gentoo is the best, if you have a beefy CPU with enough RAM, it’s not even that slow. (Yes still slower, though dnf may be on par).
But it’s just the best thing for having control over your hardware and software.
USE flags are divine, I can’t imagine a life without them anymore.
OpenSUSE because rolling release and no IBM. Never used it though.
Currently I use Mint. It works but it’s not the best.
You should certainly try OpenSUSE, it’s as good as it says on the tin
It’s my plan. Not in the mood to distro-hop on my laptop right now, and I got to get through my Epic Games backlog (and also the Steam demos I can’t be bothered downloading again) before I swap over my Windows 10 desktop.
Endeavour OS is the best because you get all the benefits of Arch combined with a familiar and friendly installer, a good out of the box setup with the desktop of your choice. Not to mention the outstanding community that’s built up around it.
I just want to learn more about what are the differences between distros, so that they will be better or worse? Are all the distros having the same GNU/Linux kernel so that if I replace all the Arch userland files into Debian’s, the system will become Debian?
Are all the distros having the same GNU/Linux kernel
Yes. Different distros have different versions, patches and so on, but the underlying kernel is the same.
if I replace all the Arch userland files into Debian’s, the system will become Debian?
If by “userland” you mean files which your normal non-root user can touch, then no. There’s differences on how distributions build directory trees, file locations, binaries, versions and so on. You can of course replace all the files on the system and change distribution that way, a convenient way to do that is to use distros installer but technically speaking you can also replace them manually by hand (which I don’t recommend).
Arch. I tried other distros and always came back to Arch. Other distros are very bloated and honestly I can’t be bothered with removing them manually. I also love the AUR and the wiki.
Another interesting distro was NixOS, but that is a bit of a pain in the ass to learn.
For newbies, Fedora KDE Plasma edition or Mint Cinnamon is my recommendation. Kinoite is Fedora KDE Plasma edition but immutable for the ones that keep breaking the system because they keep following some absurd guide online for whatever.
Garuda - all the benefits of arch with an easy installer. And it’s prettier (in my opinion) than EndeavorOS. Gaming is pretty great.
There are dozens of us!
Debian (testing) is most suitable for me. If there were a universally best distro, all the others would cease to exist…
It isn’t made by a for-profit company and thus doesn’t have “features” I don’t want.
It pays attention to software freedom, though it isn’t so restrictive about it that it doesn’t work with my hardware.
It was very easy to install only the things I wanted and needed.
My way of thinking and working is incompatible with most premade automatism, it utterly confuses me when a system is doing something on its own without me configuring it that way.
That’s why I have issues with many of the “easy” distributions like Ubuntu. Those want to be to helpful for my taste. Don’t take me wrong, I am not against automatism or helper tools/functions, not at all. I just want to have full knowledge and full control of them.
I used Gentoo for years and it was heaven for me, the possibility to turn every knob exactly like I wanted them to be was so great, but in the end was the time spend compiling everything not worth it.
That’s why I changed to Arch Linux. The bare bone nature of the base install and the high flexibility of pacman and the AUR are ideal for me. I love that Arch by default is not easy, that it doesn’t try to anticipate what I want to do. If something happens automatically it is because I configured the system do behave that way.
Linux is so great, because there is a distribution for nearly everyone out there (unless you are blind, then things are not that great apparently, but it seems to get better).
My choice of distro is just a compromise and close enough to serving my needs. All distros have pros and cons, and I use different distros for different use cases.
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.
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!
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
MX Linux (Debian based), using it for almost 10 years now (before, it was Ubuntu). Based on Debian, very stable, always up to date for every kernel/apps, use native .deb no snap no flatpak no systemd. Also it is using Xfce by default, the best DE.
Xfce is ugly af
my desktop is absolutely beautiful :)
99% of screenshot is just wallpaper lol
But it’s a good one! Mind sharing original file?
does this work? it’s a 4K wallpaper
EDIT: link https://mega.nz/file/cpUnkLDC#6h8Jjv_3W-L5kOuBi3jZf3Cpm9vH-yv7LHtQEVFM5mw
Thanks!
Yep, works
For your info, it was a kind of “square” picture, I used https://yce.perfectcorp.com/ai-image-extender to extend it left and right, it created new clouds/flowers, not bad
So, sides were added by AI? Nice use!
It is insanely configurable though, as shown by Zorin OS Lite.
having tried many distros over the years, Arch (and most derivatives) is best for me
pacman is the best i’ve used, packages are very up to date, and it’s pretty easy to troubleshoot with the enormous amount of info on the wiki and elsewhereMine is the best for me because I like it the best. It does what I need with a minimum of configuration or customization. My needs and preferences are probably different from yours though, so Linux Mint Debian Edition with Cinnamon desktop environment might not be the best for you.
