Two years into full-time Linux and I’m finally burning the distro-hopping cycle. I fell for the Arch/AUR trap for a while, but I got tired of spending my weekends debugging file manager crashes instead of maintaining my home lab.
Switched back to Fedora, and it’s boring in exactly the way I need it to be. It’s a stable launchpad for my projects, not the project itself.
Beyond none of its branches actually satisfying my preferences, I feel like the way it handles major version upgrades is way too involved. I suppose it makes sense; it's paying back the accumulated debt of a couple years worth of bliss...
Having said that, my experience on Fedora Atomic is (almost) equally blissful without requiring any of that whenever a major version update strikes.
Don't get me wrong; I definitely do believe Debian has its uses on desktop Linux. But I can't shake off the feeling that they're definitely more niche compared to say Fedora.
I love Debian, I use it as a desktop and it's installed on all my machines, but it has some problems/quirks that make it hard to recommend it for desktop usage.
First one is that it doesn't have sensible defaults, the OS expects a user who is an admin, one who will configure things to their liking. I would consider this to be a feature, if it weren't for the second problem, the documentation. The documentation is wayy too dated, lots of pages in the wiki haven't been updated since Debian Buster days!
A better recommendation would be probably a Debian derivative like MX Linux. They are more opinionated, but as far as I know, they come with better defaults and offer newer guides, documentation, etc.
debian always seems to be forgotten outside of its server use
Nah, not even for servers. SLSA and ISO27002. Validation in the other distros is better, and that's night-and-day for server sector.
I worked Unix in 99-06 and there's a reason their Linux offering wasn't debian: that validation hole.
Yeah, I tried pure Arch first, fucked up by not installing the right drivers for my old Nvidia card, and was never able to really get it running properly. So I gave up and tried CachyOS instead, on the basis that it'd probably get the drivers right for me. And it did.
Bazzite is just right for my daily driver. I was hopping around different arch distros for a while, but I had some really weird encounters with btrfs and not being able to recover after kernel upgrades. Happened to me 3 times in the span of 2 years.
I have been on this Linux jam since 1996 with a CD copy of Red Hat that came with a magazine (Byte, maybe?). In 2018 I made the jump to Debian based distros specifically because I got tired of the surprises. Now my lab runs LMDE. The only thing more stable and boring is Debian Stable itself.
Like you said, I want to focus on my projects, not have the OS be my project.
it's kind of strange hearing about all this stability and everything on debian stable (and lmde by extension), when it was constantly broken for me and i had to do all kinds of weird fixes
i have a lenovo thinkpad t490s too so it's not like im running on brand new components or anything either
been running fedora kde for a few months and it's been running like a dream
it is!
i'm wondering if i have some special version of the t490s cus thinkpads are supposed to co-operate well with linux
fastfetch says the host is "20NYS0FU00 (ThinkPad T490s)" if that rings a bell to anyone
At the same time, Ubuntu is so dumbed down thst certain things are impossible via the UI. I spent a whole day and 5 reinstalls to be able to install an encrypted OS next to another partition. This used to be trivial though the infstaller.
Stable doesn't necessarily means there aren't any bugs, it just means it doesn't change or changes are minor. Of course most bugs shouldn't be a show stopper, though annoying they should have a way to bypass them or simply not have that great a impact.
I recall when using and regularly updating Arch, a library update borked a software dependent on it — a software required for a Uni class mind you — and while I managed to get it working afterwards, I had to stay awake through the night. That's the difference between stable and rolling release, that wouldn't happen as easily on Debian stable.
For most users a rolling release model is fine, for servers, it's not.
Depends on what value of most "users" we are talking. Most users rarely stray outside the browser and I'd say rolling release with the risk of breakage it entails would not suit your average user very well at all.
Power users that are trying to eek out every drop of performance sure.
It's a compromise. Of course you wouldn’t install a rolling release model OS on your grandma's PC, but it can be necessary to have the latest drivers and software, and you don’t need to be a power user when the only thing you want is either compatible hardware or software. I concur that Arch is mostly for power users, though its derivatives don’t have to be.
My first Linux distro was Red Hat 6 around 1996 I would suspect. It came with a Linux book that I bought.
I am pretty sure I started with either Halloween or Mother's Day because Red Hat Linux for Dummies came with Red Hat 2.1 which I am pretty sure came out in 96 or 97. I know Red Hat 6 was released in 1999, because I was neck deep in Y2K work at the time I installed it on my Compaq laptop.
I found the O'Reilly Red Hat 6 book online and it came out in August 1999. I would have pegged it earlier than that but I guess not.
Debian for servers and fedora for desktop for me.
Some people I will put on Mint for desktop use, if they are super non-technical.
What did you struggle with?
The live USB would boot, but the install would fail. It was my only computer at the time, so I needed it up and working and couldn't really troubleshoot. In fairness, ASUS is not known for it's Linux support.
Bazzite has lots of customizations built-in if you download the Asus spin.
Exactly what I do
Holy shit me three. Although I am currently running an experiment where my partner, who is less technically inclined, is using zorin instead of mint. Been about 2 weeks since I refreshed their laptop. They still haven't turned it on. Will report back.
Insert spongebob time meme.
For gaming, oh yes. And enable snapshots so you can rollback to a working version if the latest update shits the bed.
My partner isn't IT-literate but loves her CachyOS since it means not having to deal with Windows
Just switched my wife to EndevourOS because she wanted to ditch windows and it's what I daily drive. Maybe should have done cachy but I didn't think about it and didn't want to put her on something I also don't have direct experience with.
Went from OpenSUSE way back then, moved to Ubuntu for a while, then when I decided to finally switch totally to Linux, I went with Arch. Last December I migrated to CachyOS and I really like it. I remove a bunch of stuff on installation and I install no DE/WM as I prefer to bring my own config, but as a base, it's solid and has some stuff already configured that I don't have to do, like btrfs snapshots for example.
What is it with everyone going to Fedora? New Ubuntu apparently.
Fedora is solid these days, well the last few years. It's been so easy and everything is up to date, not lagging behind lke Ubuntu.
Ubuntu been awful since the beginning, always buggy always needing to be rinstalled at some point.
It lives on hype alone. I would choose anything over Ubuntu.
Fedora recently provided some exciting developments in the Linux world, and it's genuinely interesting to follow.
It's also reasonably new and reasonably stable, which is often so much of a pain point to balance.
Also, I mean, it is the distro Linus himself prefers.
Linus liking something doesn't mean anything. He has some other strange opinions too.
Sure, and it's not about liking. It's about being damn sure Fedora will keep up with Linux development.
Linus is not the one to distro-hop, and you can be sure that his workstation will be perfectly operational and up to date with Linux development. And therefore, yours can probably be too.
I don't get it, but I also haven't used Fedora since like 2007. I settled on Ubuntu for a while then jumped ship to Arch, and maybe for the first time I haven't been wondering where I'd go to next because something frustrated me with the os lol
You have commented this under every arch mention and are too stupid to know the difference between pacman (package manager) and AUR (Arch User Repository) even when every recent article states this.
I just swapped over yesterday to Fedora from Ubuntu. It’s been a good experience so far! Except for installing nvidia drivers, still working on that
Fedora doesn't ship proprietary NVIDIA drivers in its official repos and doesn't include 3rd party repos with proprietary software either. This is for licensing and I guess philosophical reasons. Arch has a different approach. That's why.
Yes, you can easily add 3rd party repos, they just aren't included in the Fedora distribution. I'm sure there are instructions on the RPM Fusion website for it.
Shouldn't be difficult. Add the rpmfusion repo and install drivers (with akmods that handles everything when the driver / kernel updates). Instructions on the rpmfusion web site. After that, setup dnf-automatic and you're done.
Ubuntu has (imo) always been incredibly difficult dogshit for no reason. The fact it used to be the defacto Linux recommend is probably one of the reasons adoption was so slow
Debian for server, NetBSD for tinkering
Then OpenSUSE for everything else
Nobara for fun, rocky for work.
I worked on United Linux, with suse. Never again.
btw
I also settled on fedora with kde but the fans in my laptop keep spinning up every few seconds, even when locked. It’s very annoying.
Is your computer Lenovo by chance? I experience the same with my Lenovo laptop. I could figure out some tweqks to calm it down a little bit, but it's still running quite often despite a minimal load.
It is; it’s a Lenovo Legion 5. Or something like that.
This issue seems symptomatic to Lenovo Legion laptops, as far as I know. Something seems to trigger the cooling effect. Mine also is a Lenovo Legion laptop.
That’s strange, I hadn’t heard that thanks. Time to do some research.
I sometimes dual boot into windows on the same laptop and it also hits the fans hard, especially after booting up, but it doesn’t suffer the periodic fan problem. Not that I’m shilling for windows. I hate windows and use Linux on my server.
Apparently I lied. My laptop is running windows with the lid closed and the fans are occasionally firing up for a second. Strange.
I like cinnamon. Haven't run desktop Linux since slackware, so it was a breath of fresh air on Nobara.
Right mouse click, it was an intermittent issue and never did get to the bottom of it as the only forum posts I could find were from 10 years ago. Yes I know I could of used the keyboard shortcuts but my muscle memory is more mouse orientated than keyboard lol
I could make any de do what I want, but gnome is closest to what I’d build out of the box. And that’s a very simple interface. I particularly like the finger gestures on my laptop touchpad. Once you train your brain, you zoom between desktops and programs on a single screen laptop equivalent to multiple monitors.
Additionally, I’ve found a few simple extensions that I’m sure have kde equivalents, but I’m a creature of habit. Grid is awesome, makes window tiling and snapping awesome. Caffeine for keeping things alive. And a few others. Mostly though it’s just speed of use - especially on the laptop.
One thing though I hate about gnome though is its high dpi monitor scaling support with Wayland when gaming. There’s four or five really dumb things it does. Sometimes it’s easiest to just change the resolution to what you want prior to launching the game.
same reasons as OP. I want my desktop OS to be simple, and I focus on my homelab
Back to Fedora myself.
My path so far: Manjaro -> Arch -> Mint -> Fedora -> EndeavourOS -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Bazzite -> Fedora.
All distros on the list are brilliant in their own right, they just failed on my hardware in all variety of odd ways, or were simply too limited for what I want to do. Of all of them, Fedora was the least problematic in the long run, and with the snapshot experience I gained from OpenSUSE, I think I can manage it well now.
P.S. Seems like the article author also got inspiration for btrfs after using OpenSUSE, and I don't think it's random. Folks there made a truly perfect integration. If you want to know what btrfs can truly offer, look no further, this is the best use of this filesystem anywhere on Linux.
Speaking of Fedora, my experience of installation was nothing similar. It was rough all the way. From the installer literally not launching, to borked nvidia drivers, it all caused me some pain. But after I've set everything up, it was a breeze.
This is the way.
Debian on my severs and workstation. My laptop is also Debian, though I have a Haiku partition that has been a lot of fun to play around with. It’s way, way better than the last time I tried it.
Luckily for me, I switched from Cachy to Fedora kde right before the AUR attacks started happening. Fedora honestly feels like home to me now. I customized it to have a very Gnome like workflow, and its working flawlessly for me.
Dude, if you documented your process for this, could you share the configuration with me, please? I've been trying (on and off) to do precisely that because of how walled GNOME has become between GNOME 39 and now, but my results have been "less than spectacular" to say the least. I think I just need a starting point, but the videos on YouTube about that are not really practical. I'm on GNOME because I just love the whole workflow, but would rather be on Plasma with the Gnome workflow if possible. That would be great. If not, well FUCK YOU! Just kidding, lol (about the fuck you, I still would love a starting point on this 🤣)
Gnome has slowly become like a DE made by Apple. Even trying to configure it to use a screen shot app other than the integrated one is a fucking chore, they want you to forcibly use theirs, which is great for basic screen shooting, but I'm more of a flames hot fan because of how seamless it is to annotate on any shot instead of taking the shot, having to use a second app to edit/annotate, and then, I don't know when it started, but every screenshot gets saved as a picture now, no way to just use it with the clipboard and let it disappear on the next SC or copy.
Then there's the mentality. In GNOME If a feature doesn’t fit the design language, no matter how popular, it's rejected. Dissenting opinions on design choices are almost always met with "trust the process."
Im actually curious...is there any other de that goes for kind of a gnome like workflow or design language but maybe a bit more customizable and open? I've honestly really only use Cinnamon and KDE so far (i came from windows originally) so I'm not quite accustomed to all the different de choices. Also, what do you use yourself?.
I'm in a similar situation as you. I've been a Gnome user since Gnome 2, but want the same as you, which is why I asked for the configuration in Plasma to have a starting point.
I just spun up a new Fedora KDE install to try again (for the 100th time) to achieve the same workflow I'm used to in GNOME (mostly it's having an app grid instead of an app menu, dynamic workspaces and 'dash-to-dock' functionality). There are some things that have been incredibly hard for me in KDE in terms of ease of access, like how 'Alt-tab' doesn't seem to work across workspaces, then Plasma in default is just too crowded when compared to Gnome. But I think KDE is far superior in terms of customization, and I can easily have various windows of the same app open and traverse across them with alt-tab, whereas in Gnome alt-tab will only work across apps, not separate windows of the same apps.
So, like you, I'm still trying to make my DE my own, but it is fun, and I am learning a lot doing it.
You can customize gnome pretty far. The code to have normal human minimize/maximize/close buttons is all still there, and the window bar is there as well. You just have to know which programs to pull from dnf that know what registry dconf settings to adjust. I have yet to find a use case for nautilus between Dolphin (KDE) and using a terminal.
Huh good to know. Will be honest I'm a pretty slow learner, but I do find it pretty fun to explore all the options I get on linux. Knowing me it will probably be years until I find a de (or maybe a tiling window manager) thats perfect for me. Been using linux for maaaaybe 1 1/2-2 years but I still feel like a beginner in a lot of ways.
Selinux
Rootless podman networking
These things are awful on their own to comprehends for those of us without comp-sci degrees, but fedora has me boxing with them more than I expected and fuck everyone involved with that!
I've stuck with Debian on my server and EndeavourOS (Arch, btw) on my PC. Both have been rock solid.
I've recently had some issues with Fedora (KDE). After I install any update it tells me to restart to finish installing. So I restart and it still tells me the same thing. Probably time I distrohop again.
With the usual restriction of "either upstream or Mint, otherwise you're doing it wrong". There are 6 options. Ubuntu is obviously out. Arch is not my cup of tea. Fedora is already ruled out. Debian/Mint aren't as secure as Fedora/OpenSUSE. That leaves me with going back to OpenSUSE Leap.
But the proprietary media codecs on OpenSUSE come from the AUR ... looks like I'm out of options.
This might not be your issue, but I remember for me there's this button in the tray that appears after all updates are downloaded. You click it and there's an option to restart and update. If you just go to the main menu to restart, it doesn't always show this "restart and update" option, and just restarts without installing the updates. Though even if you make this mistake you shouldn't need to re-download the updates. Just go to KDE Discover and check for updates again, and the button will appear in the tray again. I think.
Also maybe you'd like the Fedora atomic distros, like Bazzite or Aurora. Unlike installing the updates during reboot, they install them in a "disabled state" while the system is running. Then you reboot and it automatically boots to the new version, no need to wait for any installation. What's neat is that it's really hard to break. Even if you pull the power while it's installing updates, it will just use the previous version and try installing again. No risk of corruption.
Why distro-hop when you could jump in on the bug tracker or forge or the matrix channels and get involved with the community to find the root cause of the issue and make the distro you're on better?
What's the security issue with Debian and Mint? Debian is usually my goto but I don't want to expose myself to security issues
Linux in general is not secure for desktop users. There's basically never sandboxing, and when there is it's usually weak, antivirus is rarely used, and developers aren't vetted as stringently as with paid software. Apparently Fedora and OpenSUSE take these issues more seriously, and SE Linux does somewhat restrict what malicious things a piece of software can do.
It's a pretty widely held view that Fedora and OpenSUSE are more secure than Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch for desktop users but I'm not really an expert so I'm mostly retroactively justifying what I've heard second-hand.
You're mostly right, but I disagree about the bit about paid software and vetted developers. Open source like Linux is also mostly developed by programmers hired by companies, so there's no difference there. Proprietary software has also had problems with malicious developers and there's less transparency there.
Desktop Linux so far was meant to be a fun general purpose computing experience for geeks. Throwing extra security layers on it evidently spoils some of that fun, you can see how Linux nerds react to things like Polkit, SELinux, Wayland or Flatpak. But PCs in general suck at security, they're based on legacy tech from an era when cybersecurity wasn't even a concept.
The XZ Utils thing is a prime example of the risks Linux faces.
Mobile operating systems in general are far more secure than Desktop operating systems. ChromeOS seems to be the most secure desktop option, but given the privacy implications of a Google operating system and the lock-down of Google Play I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
There's also https://secureblue.dev/
Tried it. Firstly it wouldn't install. Secondly, the developer lead developer is a very private person and I don't trust a Linux distro made by someone who is so secretive.
NixOS for everything except my phones (one clean iPhone with Lockdown mode enabled and one Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS).
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@lemmy.ml
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
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Debian for everything.
save