What Distros do you want to shoutout and why you think they are doing well/are the best at what they do?
I am curious what is out there and have only had some experience with Linux Mint, SteamOS, and Pop!_OS
I do like Mint very much, but I think that they are neglecting to update their apps. A lot of apps are not up to date, and that’s just sad…
NixOS is amazing, but it’s also got a crazy learning curve. Once you grok it though, it really changes the way you configure your computer.
Fedora is always my favorite big name distro, they’re constantly pushing the envelope and adopting new features that need some stability and exposure to mature.
deleted by creator
I don’t know about the best but Debian has been going strong for 32 years and the backbone of many distros. Its MVP in my book.
You can even get a modern gaming distro based off of it (PikaOS).
I’m currently using Pop!_OS, which is a great desktop distro.
I was using MX Linux a lot which is amazing for both times when you need a portable distro with lots of features and when you need something that will still run well on older machines.
Fedora Silverblue – a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.
There’s also secureblue, which is a fedora atomic fork with nice security hardening
Why go immutable? You can’t install shit on immutable distros.
You can’t install shit on immutable distros.
Simply not true.
I use immutable distros for the stability, and the nixOS approach isn’t for me.
You can install whatever you like using a tool called distrobox, which allows you to run containers easily.
I have an arch Linux container, and I have access to the entire AUR if I so please. I use that container to run Steam, and performance was the same as on Bazzite using the natively installed Steam.
I do this too, being able to use Arch’s packages while having Kinoite’s stability is a really, really nice combo.
But because the apps are running in containers, the performance will take a hit. And also the customization.
the performance will take a hit
This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.
Ok, but it’s still less customizable.
Q: Would a normal system (read: I’m not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?
A: No. This is literally unsupported.
Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?
Tell me a situation that where will need 2 different versions of the same app then.
Distrobox isn’t the only way to install/run software on immutable.
If you leave alone the haters, Ubuntu is doing great. Mint LDME also fantastic if you wish to have a rock solid base.
It’s doing great unless you want to debug why chromium is not connecting to your USB devices
Hint: because they forced snap in you which doesn’t support USB access
Been using Ubuntu for about 4 years now without issue. Even upgraded LTS versions without problems!
I upgraded LTS versions and it failed and left my system in a broken state I couldn’t fix
events like these is how i learned to do back ups lol
Anything in particular I should be wary of switching from Mint to Mint DE?
LDME does not supports PPAs
What is in LMDE that isn’t in plain Debian out of the box beyond branding?
LMDE comes with some nice packages that just make your life easier. It is basically Debian but… with sane defaults
Do you know which packages and what defaults? I’ve tried to find the differences but I can’t really find what is different, except for wallpaper etc.
Tried Manjaro and Opensuse for a presentation machine lately: issues over issues, that just shouldn’t exist on new installation (problems with USB disks, input). Came back to Debian asap because Debian, weirdly, "just works ™ now.
I daily drive Fedora and I think it has the best Gnome desktop.
But in terms of “best at what they do” I’m blown away by Mint as an apporoachable easy to use “just works” OS. It instantly became my recommendation to new linux converts. Everything is easy to set up. It’s remarkably user friendlly. Good software store, flatpack support out of the box. Brilliant hardware support. I like the aesthetics as well.
I have an old Core 2 machine and I tried to get every potato grade distro running on it. I tried Puppy, and Linux Lite, and AntiX and all the “this will run on your toaster” type distros and had problems with every one of them. Mint XFCE installed no problem. It ran beautifully. I pressed my luck and installed a Quadro K620 and an old firewire card (trying to back up old Mini-DV videos). It handled ancient hardware perfectly. Butter smooth 1440p desktop computing and light video editing on an 18 year old machine.
gentoo! still kicking it
Whats the purpose of gentoo over arch and when do you draw the line of diminishing returns? It sounds like gentoo is a lot harder for not much more reward.
Hard to say without having used Arch. I just really like Portage. It does some really neat things.
i really love portage and i like compiling from source everytime i used Arch i got trapped in dependency hell
Gentoo is sooo insanely versatile. I just love it.
POPULAR != BETTER
Popular equals more money and more interest. In other words popularity and quality feed into each-other (not 1:1, but more than 1:0).
Yes but popularity subjects them to different pressures, many of which are not beneficial.
And this is how we get Systemd
Ton of comments, and I havent read them all, but I wanted to ask if you really meant popular or if you wanted something for a specific reason. Easy for new ppl to linux, good for desktops, etc etc.
I dont really use GUIs on linux, except for when I want to have a fancy pants riced network monitor type situation. I am a big fan of NixOS except for python Dev stuff. Big fan of being able to clone a machine or recover a machine with a single conf file.
In my opinion I love CachyOS.
Linux Mint DE and Arch, the ultimate duo of Stability/Freindlyness & Power/Control
Bazzite has been working so well that even the wife has converted over. It cured my distro hopping so I haven’t played much attention to how other distros have been doing.
A question - can I use Bazzite for uses other than gaming? I game on my laptop, but most of the time I’m writing code. Could I use it for that or should I go for something like Fedora, Debian or Arch?
I would say that development is the one thing that can get very annoying on immutable distros.
Flatpaks can only get you so far (as seen by the VS Code Flatpak’s limitations that have to be worked around). I don’t even use VS Code, so I can get around that pretty comfortably, but I have to use Distrobox for a lot of miscellaneous developer tools, and even then, I still run into problems and I can’t install container tools inside of the containers that I’m already working in.
Not to discourage you from trying. I can still get by with some dev work on Bazzite, but it’s waaay easier to do the same dev work on CachyOS (Arch-derivative) because I can just install shit normally and it will work.
You absolutely can. There’s a small learning curve for using immutable distros, but once you get a handle on it, it works great.
