- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/42673820
Looking for suggestions besides Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Debian, Arch Linux, or Kali.
Would be on a modest Dell Latitude with i5, 14" 1080p display with intel graphics, and maybe 16gb ram. I have previous experience with XFCE, Ratpoison, Openbox, KDE Plasma. Recently started trying out LXQT.
You must log in or # to comment.
Guix
Nixos
Cool, I’ve tried Nix twice for a week at a time. Still have my configs. Struggling with lots of missing packages and the docs being frustrating, but love how it works once configured.
I want to set time aside to set it up but I’d rather go with a fresh drive
Exactly the sort of situation I am benefiting from, thanks to receiving a spare machine.
openSUSE. Either Tumbleweed (rolling) or Leap (stable). A few reasons for this:
- Their snapshot system is awesome (they develop snapper) and configured by default when you install it. It takes a snapshot of your system before and after updates and at other times as well. Uses minimal space because they use BTRFS and also have maintenance jobs by default. This is the main factor that made me settle on it. To me, it was the best of both worlds between the stability but restrictive nature of atomic/immutable distros and the freedom but potential for breaking your system of the traditional distros.
- They’re reputed to have one of the best KDE integrations of any distro. I’m not sure what this means in practice because I’m still a newbie, but I’ve seen this mentioned by others a few times. Other major DEs are also options at install time.
- They’re one of the traditional big distros. SUSE has been around since the early days of Linux. SUSE is also a commercial corporation, similar to Red Hat.
- The rolling distro, Tumbleweed has a reputation for being one of the most stable rolling ones because they apparently have an extensive automated testing system for updates.
- Their system configuration tool (YaST) is also supposed to be awesome and one of the best around, minimizing the need to resort to the command line, but I also haven’t used this too much.
- Their community is supposed to be really helpful as well. I haven’t experienced this myself, but have heard it.
Edit: it’s probably best to avoid their “SlowRoll” distro for now. It’s rolling but with less frequent updates than Tumbleweed, which many may thinks is a sweet spot. However, it’s still in beta and I’ve heard of people having issues with it occasionally.
Slowroll was recommended previously.
Yes, I’ve seen it recommended in the past, but just wanted to mention the caveats. Might as well go for Tumbleweed, which appears to be their main distro. In fact, if I recall correctly they had announced a couple of years ago that they were going to sunset Leap but then walked that back when the community protested.
hannah montana linux
The only issue with this is it is Kubuntu, which is exactly what I already use. The theme and icon pack can be added onto any other distro, so that works.
If you didn’t comment this first I would have
Fedora.
Its not new, its not special with some big changes or special kernels, it has sane settings.
It has releases every 6 months, and updates about as much as arch
This was the first thing recommended: Fedora with default Gnome. I’ve never even tried Yum, so would be interesting.
me and my homies are using fedora KDE, which we can greatly recommend. we use it not just for personal gaming, creative tools, and software development but also (especially) on our work machines.
I’ve been enjoying LMDE. Mint without Ubuntu.
same here
Any notable differences between Ubuntu and Debian base for you?
The big one is no Snaps. You can get them, but I prefer flatpaks which I use on LMDE.
Linux Mint uses the LTS version of Ubuntu so the “base” gets updates about every 2 years just like Debian. As such, both are going to be “about as new” as each other (emphasis on “about”).
Ubuntu LTS pushed a bad kernel update where the headers were not available for a while. This meant that anyone using additional drivers (like I was for my networking) would have the kernel fail to install and then the operating system kernel panic when you boot up the next time. That is surprisingly “not stable”…
Debian, which will update about the same amount, has not pushed a bad update like that as far as I recall. That being said, I have had less experience with Debian.
The Linux Mint team seems to publish packages to LMDE so that it will have similar features to Ubuntu (like codec support) so you won’t be missing that by using the Debian base. That being said, minor differences were present (such as guest mode missing compared with the Ubuntu base). Also, Ubuntu may have support for additional hardware in case you need that sort of stuff and will have HWE kernels that will support newer hardware than Debian.
Still, if LMDE works for you then it is more likely to keep working in a boring and predictable manner. If you are using the Ubuntu base, you may have a random update mess things up which will require you to do some troubleshooting. Ideally, you won’t notice much of a difference between the two though.
Added to list
NixOS and Guix System! I’m currently using Guix System + Nix (via home-manager, mostly) but you can also do it the other way around.
NixOS uses systemd, but Guix System does not. They are both awesome though. Absolutely my favourite distros. Incredibility flexible, and reproducibility and “declarativeness” are core concepts. The only negative is that they both have quite a steep learning curve, compared to other distros.
I wanna use Guix but I worry about hardware compatibility, when I tried to run it the installer said my hardware wasn’t 100% compatible and recommended me not to continue.
Yeah, “unfortunately” since Guix is a GNU project, they don’t package the upstream Linux kernel, just linux-libre, which removes a lot of binary blobs. Great if you want a fully free OS, not so great if you need drivers only available in the mainline kernel.
The practical solution to this is to use the channel nonguix, which packages mainline Linux for Guix. You can follow the instructions for nonguix to create a guix ISO with the regular Linux kernel, then make sure your installed system uses that same kernel.
It’s not hard to do, but if one doesn’t have the inclination I’d just recommended using NixOS. :-)
Right now and using NixOS and I’m pretty happy with it, it suffers from There’s More Than One Way To Do It and there are so many options that do the same and the documentation isn’t great.
When I finally made my base flake.nix, easy peasy! But the difficulty curve is pretty steep.
Cool, added Guix system to the list with Nix.
Someone else was saying to go for Flakes
If you’re new I suggest not using flakes. You can always switch to them when you learn how to maintain NixOS.
I’ve played with Nix twice over a week each time. I’m not afraid at all, but I suppose at this point I’ll decide which distro by dice roll.
Yeah, it’s been an ongoing debate whether the old Nix style or the newer Flakes are a better approach. I don’t really know that much about it, but thus far I definitely like using Flakes more
So Guix is the old stye?
No no, Nix has two ways of handling configurations, where Flakes are the new style, but still experimental. Guix just have one way of handling configurations.
I recently went back to fedora workstation (gnome) after using Arch (Manjaro) with kde and hyprland for the last 3 years.
Got tired of things breaking with hyprland and Manjaro every other month. Had a few issues with AUR packages too (I know I’m supposed to carefully read release notes to figure out what breaks, but how many people actually do that?)
With fedora at least, I won’t have to worry about packages breaking and not working together. Gnome isn’t my favorite but I’m sticking to it for a while to give it a fair chance.
Yeah, definitely super interested as someone who has tried neither Fedora, nor Gnome (since version 2).
I’ve been dipping my toe into CachyOS, decent so far. Running Bazzite on my main gaming PC and…yeah, is nice but does lack some freedoms by being locked down a bit. Works well enough for what I use it for 99% of the time.
Both are on the list
Qubes OS. Enjoy a taste of absolute security.
I know a developer of it, but have never tried. Will add to the list of options. Anything else to consider in Qubes software?
The install can be pretty tough with Qubes as the compatible hardware for it is quite narrow. But if this is what you go with, be sure to setup and play with Whonix!
Dell Latitude 5410. edit, seems this model is not listed under qubes…
I’ve just switched to Pop_OS and so far I’m really impressed. Very fast, and Cosmic desktop has a totally different design and aesthetic to any other DE
Added to list
Fedora.
I prefer the KDE spin over GNOME, but I hate GNOME.
Whatever DE you prefer, pick that one.
Curious about Gnome after avoiding it since version 3 dropped
Ubuntu server (headless)
Install pulse, x11, awesomewm.
Building the gui stack yourself on top of Ubuntu server gives you all of the debian/Ubuntu stability and issue searchability with none of the gnome/canonical cruft.
If you’re going to do that why not just install Debian ?
I like the stable, but newer packages that Ubuntu offers, plus the first-party support you get from a lot of projects. I wish debian was the standard dpkg assumption for first-party support but it unfortunately is not. Ubuntu makes it pretty easy to build automation on top of that is good for 5+ years without touching.
Have you tried this on base Debian? Works well!
Yes I have, admittedly it’s been about a decade but at the time I switched because getting hardware acceleration in chrome and Firefox was difficult on debian, trivial on Ubuntu. I like the stable, but newer packages that Ubuntu offers, plus the first-party support you get from a lot of projects. I wish debian was the standard dpkg assumption for first-party support but it unfortunately is not.
One I’m always interested in but never tried is Void Linux
it’s more like the oldest linux distro but slackware is good
Anything else to try in regards to Slackware?
there’s a stable release 15.0 released in 2022 and -current rolling release that’s up to date for everything. i recommend -current for desktop/laptops.
there’s not much automated tools like other distros, but the system itself is extremely simple and well documented. many tools in the system (package manager, init, etc) are all simple shell scripts.
there’s also distros that are based on slackware like salix, could be easier as it comes with apt-get afaik
Cool, so you are on the rolling release. Does it do everything you want as a daily driver?
yes, i prefer it over other distros mainly because of its low complexity. tried gentoo recently but the toolings felt too complex for me. the package repository is a bit small so you might have to compile some from source.
