Whats your favourite Linux Distro?

[Jarmer]

I'm running openSUSE Tumbleweed and have been extremely happy for several years now. Before this I was distrohopping around and just didn't feel at home. Tumbleweed is a rolling release but in my experience strikes the perfect balance of cutting edge up to date releases with stability and thorough testing.

One thing that was an absolute game changer for me was the btrfs file system. I had no idea updates / backups / rollbacks could ever be this wonderfully simple! It's been so dramatic for me I will never use another OS of any kind that doesn't have a similar system.

I really love doing all updates in the terminal with two simple commands and watching what's happening as it goes (instead of just a spinny wheel for instance). I also have made good use of the yast tool and love the power it provides.

I think the only complaint I could possibly have is that sometimes the packman repo (for codecs) gets out of sync with the official repos and causes lots of problems with updates. In these cases though the solution is simple: just wait a week or two. It always gets back in sync.

Overall it's an absolutely wonderful distro for those looking to be on a rolling release system.

 

[unwind-protect]

Howdy

Shame what happened with Anandtech

I thought the Anandtech forums will stay open.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

Why unstable branch though? Stable/current seems up to date enough (to me)?

Needed up to date hyprland packages...

Tried mixing stable and unstable... it invites all kinds of bugs which I couldnt find solutions / answers. Thats why I appreciate Gentoo since I can mix packages with no issues

 

[Timbaloo]

Needed up to date hyprland packages...

Tried mixing stable and unstable... it invites all kinds of bugs which I couldnt find solutions / answers. Thats why I appreciate Gentoo since I can mix packages with no issues

I could have guessed

Did you use the hyprland flake? Because that I guess is the way to go in such a case.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

I could have guessed

Did you use the hyprland flake? Because that I guess is the way to go in such a case.

yep I have

there are tiny details which I couldnt find answer on nixos.. Like I couldnt enable or no taskbar indicator on qemu-kvm. Its kinda big deal because I dont know if kvm still runing until I launch it again...

but sometimes also which I will have a systemd bug on an update.... or some bug pops up on some packages I use...

Its kinda annoying tbh....

 

[Timbaloo]

yep I have

there are tiny details which I couldnt find answer on nixos.. Like I couldnt enable or no taskbar indicator on qemu-kvm. Its kinda big deal because I dont know if kvm still runing until I launch it again...

but sometimes also which I will have a systemd bug on an update.... or some bug pops up on some packages I use...

Its kinda annoying tbh....

Hmmm, I'm still committed to go full Nixos in a while (not during summer that is ).

 

[Ja.KooLit]

Hmmm, I'm still committed to go full Nixos in a while (not during summer that is ).

just a piece of advice though, you need a bigger storage space compared to other distros.

on my experience, just a nixos-hyprland, 20gb is not enough.. but other distros, 10gb is more than enough

nixos is filling up its nix/store partition with shitload amount of packages

 

[P4-630]

Using Chrome OS.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

just a piece of advice though, you need a bigger storage space compared to other distros.

on my experience, just a nixos-hyprland, 20gb is not enough.. but other distros, 10gb is more than enough

nixos is filling up its nix/store partition with shitload amount of packages

Clear Linux requires 20 GB. You can't install it on drives smaller than 20 GB.
Regarding NixOS, it asks more storage space. And also extra time for applying all the updates if you use the up-to-date version of NixOS. (nixos-unstable)

This can make it unsuitable for slow hardware or people who value time-efficiency of their OS.
I would say this makes it unsuitable for (most) desktop setups. But it's a minor issue for very powerfull servers.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I am slow to change. In my heart, I think I love Slackware the best even though I haven't really used it in a solid 10-15 years. Maybe its just nostalgia. I learned everything with Slackware. Slackware was my teacher.

At home, I'm currently running Arch (old laptop) and Debian (gaming/htpc box). Im piecing together an old Zen 1 system for the wife to get her feet wet. She still prefers Windows, but I think she would be pretty comfortable in Mint...

I prefer BSD Style init over systemd, likely just my bias/what im used to from when I was much more obsessed. (but learning to get used to systemd)
I like Arch's up to date packages, and really am loving Pacman. Its worlds nicer than the old pkgtools that i used with Slackware.

Also greetings/hello folks. Decided to swim over from the Anandtech forums and find a new home.

Interesting. I use Arch just to have better gaming results with Steam/Proton. Welcome!

 

[Timbaloo]

just a piece of advice though, you need a bigger storage space compared to other distros.

on my experience, just a nixos-hyprland, 20gb is not enough.. but other distros, 10gb is more than enough

nixos is filling up its nix/store partition with shitload amount of packages

Thanks for the advice, but I got that on my watch. As a matter of fact, my / is plenty in size with 110GB already (pacman cache, virtual machine images, ...).

 

[Easy Rhino]

This can make it unsuitable for slow hardware or people who value time-efficiency of their OS.
I would say this makes it unsuitable for (most) desktop setups. But it's a minor issue for very powerfull servers.

Since when? NixOS is preferred since you can easily deploy it on thousands of desktops at once using the exact same config. In fact, that is its main use case. it is not a server OS.

 

[:D:D]

Fedora. While Nvidia on Linux has improved it would be nice to see a few of the Windows API's that are missing added.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Since when? NixOS is preferred since you can easily deploy it on thousands of desktops at once using the exact same config. In fact, that is its main use case. it is not a server OS.

In theory, NixOS is (very) suitable for deployment to large companies on the desktop. In practice, Linux is used by almost no large company on desktops. (Which big company do you know that uses NixOS on desktops?) Windows and macOS are very dominant on corporate desktops, I wouldn't be surprised if 'windows+macOS' have more than 98% market share on desktops used by large companies. It has to do with compatibility with MS Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Adobe Illustrator, Cortana, 3ds CATIA (+ spyware/adware) and a few specific windows CRM apps that do not have Linux versions.

You should interpret my comment that way. Companies are not going to suddenly jump over to NixOS because ‘it's better’. In essence, capitalism has nothing to do with what is safer, higher quality, cheaper, more efficient for administration, better reliability and privacy, etc.

I can see the individual switching to Linux sooner than a large company. Linux has for some time now offered almost everything a person needs and it is also user-friendly. NixOS is not exactly the most user-friendly for a novice, and on the hardware most individuals use, updating NixOS-unstable is going to take a lot of time and therefore not be a nice desktop experience.

For the above reasons, I think NixOS is mainly going to be used as a server OS in software/AI/website/biotech/DevOps/microservices/cloud/clothing/monitoring/blockchain companies.
Mozilla are adopting Nix in the release-engineering team to provide reproducible builds.
Some companies in the above domains use NixOS mainly as a server OS, not as a desktop OS.

NixOS is preferred since you can easily deploy it on thousands of desktops at once using the exact same config.

= NixOS is preferred since you can easily deploy it on thousands of servers at once using the exact same config.

 

[Easy Rhino]

In theory, NixOS is (very) suitable for deployment to large companies on the desktop. In practice, Linux is used by almost no large company on desktops. (Which big company do you know that uses NixOS on desktops?) Windows and macOS are very dominant on corporate desktops, I wouldn't be surprised if 'windows+macOS' have more than 98% market share on desktops used by large companies. It has to do with compatibility with MS Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Adobe Illustrator, Cortana, 3ds CATIA (+ spyware/adware) and a few specific windows CRM apps that do not have Linux versions.

You should interpret my comment that way. Companies are not going to suddenly jump over to NixOS because ‘it's better’. In essence, capitalism has nothing to do with what is safer, higher quality, cheaper, more efficient for administration, better reliability and privacy, etc.

I can see the individual switching to Linux sooner than a large company. Linux has for some time now offered almost everything a person needs and it is also user-friendly. NixOS is not exactly the most user-friendly for a novice, and on the hardware most individuals use, updating NixOS-unstable is going to take a lot of time and therefore not be a nice desktop experience.

For the above reasons, I think NixOS is mainly going to be used as a server OS in software/AI/website/biotech/DevOps/microservices/cloud/clothing/monitoring/blockchain companies.
Mozilla are adopting Nix in the release-engineering team to provide reproducible builds.
Some companies in the above domains use NixOS mainly as a server OS, not as a desktop OS.



= NixOS is preferred since you can easily deploy it on thousands of servers at once using the exact same config.

You said it was not suitable for desktop setups and I said that it is exactly its use case. Whether or not it is actually used for that is another matter entirely.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

You said it was not suitable for desktop setups and I said that it is exactly its use case. Whether or not it is actually used for that is another matter entirely.

I have since nuanced this so everyone knows what I meant.
NixOS is suitable for corporate desktops (it has some advantages for this use case), for personal desktops it is 'often not' an ideal tool.

I disagree with your view that it would be more suitable for desktop than server.
I believe it is more suitable (percentage-wise) for servers than desktops.

On its website, the developers of NixOS also say very clearly that the operating system is 'perfect' for certain (very popular) server tasks.

Explore | Nix & NixOS

Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Learn how to make reproducible, declarative and reliable systems.

nixos.org

Using one tool to develop, test and build Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, Azure, Virtualbox, KVM and other images in a declarative way is a DevOps dream.
Forget Dockerfiles and build docker images with Nix in a declarative and efficient way. Nix and Docker is a match made in heaven.

ZFS - NixOS Wiki

nixos.wiki

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/19fk7kv

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/17wqxzv

https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/1bl18j3

Do you really need to use windows? It's far from the optimal platform for ZFS.

Ubuntu is the most popular server OS in the world.
Can't we find basic elements that make NixOS more suitable than Ubuntu for a server?

NixOS Search

search.nixos.org

NixOS Search

search.nixos.org

NixOS Search

search.nixos.org

Future of ZFS on Ubuntu Doesn't Look Good

Things were looking promising for ZFS on Ubuntu. In 2019 Ubuntu was the first major Linux distro to offer a ZFS install option. Sadly, things have changed.

www.omgubuntu.co.uk

Docker - NixOS Wiki

nixos.wiki

 

[Rover4444]

Anything Arch-based. The AUR is just too good, I no longer have to mess around with debfiles or appimages or flatpaks or what-have-you 99% of the time.

 

[Dia01]

I've been running Arch for almost a year now on multiple machines as my daily. Can't remember the last time I dual booted into windows, it was at least 6 months ago

 

[Shihab]

Anything Arch-based. The AUR is just too good, I no longer have to mess around with debfiles or appimages or flatpaks or what-have-you 99% of the time.

Wish I had your faith in stuff put by randos with little to no pre-publishing vetting process.
One of the reasons I started reducing my dependancy on flatpaks. Most of the crap on Flathub is "unverified." If it isn't in Canonical's repos, or it's not critical enough that it's worth adding devs' ones, most likely I'm skipping it entirely.

 

[Rover4444]

Wish I had your faith in stuff put by randos with little to no pre-publishing vetting process.
One of the reasons I started reducing my dependancy on flatpaks. Most of the crap on Flathub is "unverified." If it isn't in Canonical's repos, or it's not critical enough that it's worth adding devs' ones, most likely I'm skipping it entirely.

A lot of times it's just prebuilt binaries, stable/unstable git packages, or stuff like what I mentioned being adapted for Arch's package manager. I'm not waiting weeks for Canonical to give me my packages and break everything every time I dist-upgrade, personally.

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

Switched from Kubuntu to CachyOS (an Arch-based distro) last year. Haven't looked back.

 

[SomeOne99h]

Switched from Kubuntu to CachyOS (an Arch-based distro) last year. Haven't looked back.

Daaarn dude
CachyOS is the best Arch-based I have tried. And it stays pure Arch. Top-notch performance and hardware support (Bazzite and POP_OS might be better than it with older hardware, not sure). Getting to use older nvidia cards don't need manual tinkering as I recall like some other rolling-release distros that claim to be convenient, friendly and easy to use. If it does now, I would think it would be trivial because the devs are keen to make the OS accessible to the users as much as possible.

 

[Timbaloo]

Not sure about CachyOS. I tried it a couple of weeks ago, and it would not let me install Hyprland and Plasma 6 at the same time. Introducing a completely unnecessary regression like this does not make it look good.

 

[Dia01]

Switched from Kubuntu to CachyOS (an Arch-based distro) last year. Haven't looked back.

I wasn't searching to try any other distro's other than vanilla Arch until I saw this comment. I've had issues with some minor hardware detection problems with Arch (attributed to my overall knowledge and skill tailoring the OS I admit), not big issues, but just annoying, niggling little issues, always ran well besides that. Then your post had me wondering and I decided to give it a go. I've been running CachyOS since and got to say, wow, very impressed. The hardware detection issues are now fixed, a little quicker booting etc I think, runs very well. Still feels very like Arch but just tweaked in all the right areas, I now have two laptops and my main system running CachyOS. I'm impressed.

 

[n9nu]

Without a doubt: Debian - Sid that is. It's one of the oldest & most distros are based off of it along with Red Hat [back in the day]. I then explored Mandrake then Mandriva.

When Mandriva was taken over by Russia, I bailed and found Mageia, however, after a handful of years decided on a rolling release distro which brought me to Debian.

The fact is, if your a hard core coder, any distro is okay with me.. even Slackware..lol.

I use the Plasma 6.x GUI and absolutely live coding in Python, C/C++, QT, QML, QTWidgets, BASH, etc., etc. Any scripting base language. Hell...I still remember BASIC, CP/M [COMMODORE 64/128/Amiga 500/3000] and Fortran. Wow...pathetic...Go Sub, If then else & For next loops. I still remember the C64/128 peek & poke codes 53281 & 53280 for background & border colors- 1-16.

Tim
N9NU