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.
I use GNU Guix System and I really like how it works. Is it the best? There is no best really but to me those distros with 100% free software are the best. Like Trisquel, Parabola and GNU Guix System
Void. Minimal, all the programs I need are in the repos, which is a first for me. Very fast.
Debian just works.
Interestingly Debian was the distro that gave me the most greif out of the box.
I think linux distros are a coinflip on if they like your hardware or not, sometimes it feels like they just don’t like you individually as a person.
When I use fedora for example, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. It’s in theory not any more complicated than debian, but I’ve never had good luck keeping a fedora system healthy.
With Debian, usually the best troubleshooting tip I can give people is try installing testing instead of stable. Sometimes the kernel in stable is just too damn old for the hardware you want to install on.
For me it’s openSUSE Tumbleweed on my Desktops/Laptops and openSuse Leap on my Servers. The killing Feature for me was the propper BTRFS integration with Snapper for seamless rollbacks in case I borked the system in some way.
One “downside” for me is the mix of Gnome Settings and Yast on my Desktop. But I like yast on my servers for managing everything (enabling ports in firewall, network config, enable autoamtic isntall of security updates, etc.). Also openSuse is not that common, so sometimes it is hard to find a solution if you have a distribution specific question.
Personally never looked to closely into openSuse Build Services (OBS). But I know some people who really like it.
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The fricking AUR
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Nothing I don’t _actually_ need
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Pacman
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Everything is the latest version available–ALWAYS.
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ArchWiki
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Gentoo, because if it exists - compile it.
Since I mostly use computers for entertainment these days I keep coming back to Bazzite. It’s fast, stable, kept up to date, reliable, and “just works”. I’ve created custom rpm-ostree layers to faff around, but it’s not actually necessary for anything I need.
I used to keep a second Kubuntu Minimal partition around but I realized I just don’t need it. If I wasn’t so happy with Bazzite, I would probably go with openSUSE or Endeavor.
Gentoo because it is as stable as Debian, less bloated than Arch, has more packages than Ubuntu, is rolling release, can mix and match stable, testing and unstable on a whim.
Even its one downside, compile times, is now gone if you just choose to use binary packages.
And less stable than Arch, and more bloated than Ubuntu… If that is something you want for whatever reason! It is the most versatile distro in existance because it’s literally anything you want it to be - clean and nice, or total chaos. What is there not to love?
Gentoo <3
I use Debian and Mint. As others have said, it’s because it just works and I don’t have to screw with it.
I’ve been using (X)Ubuntu for ages. I just wanted something that “just works”. Tired of too much tinkering and there’s plenty of (non commercial) support. Mixing it with i3 as my window manager.
Roast me ;)
Since I was tired of distro hopping I just use MX Linux.
I am using Bluefin, based on Fedora Silverblue. I realized that I was already exclusively using flatpaks for everything except one random app, so I thought why not go all-in?
Haven’t had to worry about updates or system breakages since, and it’s been great so far.
I used to use Debian Stable, but since doing SysAdmin work I’ve just become used to the way Fedora / RHEL does things.
Tumbleweed. Rolling release with automated testing (openQA), snapper properly setup out of the box.
Honestly the entire openSUSE ecosystem. Tumbleweed on my main PC that often has some of the latest hardware, Slowroll on my (Framework) laptop because it’s rolling but slower (monthly feature updates, only fixes in-between), and Leap for servers where stability (as in version/compatibility stability, not “it doesn’t crash” stability) is appreciated.
openSUSE also comes in atomic flavors for those interested. And it’s European should you care.
With all that being said, I don’t really care much about what distro I’m using. What I do with it could be replicated with pretty much any distro. For me it’s mostly just a means to an end.
Ubuntu because they provide kernel live patching and they fix issues quickly and my system doesn’t go down if I procrastinate in doing system updates
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