The point is that the official arch repositories have most of the software one might need. Using AUR only for software which I can’t find in the official repos has meant that I have very few packages installed from the AUR and none of them have caused stability issues with my system as these packages are actively maintained
You might be interested in trying Gentoo, which is what I use. The package manager is definitely not fast, but it is very powerful. You get a lot of NixOS-like powers, but it integrates seamlessly into the unix eco-system without NixOS’ overhead or its unorthodox approach that causes trouble sometimes. It also has first class support for compiler optimizations and global management of compile flags for packages.
So yeah, updates will not be fast at all, but the rest I think you’ll enjoy.
fwiw I really like nixOS. I like its ambitious approach. But I think it’s unorthodox approach is bound to cause issues. Most software has FHS and a typical Linux system in mind, and while nix solves those problems for most of them, there will always be something weird there.
A laptop with 8 GB of ram and 6 cores. I have only one machine that I use for work. That’s the main issueI. Need to find a free weekend to compile and try out gentoo 😅
I’d say your laptop is an ideal candidate for gentoo, especially if it’s at most 5 or so years old (it must then have hyper threading, so 12 virtual cores). It has just enough resources to compile packages with decent speed, but enough restriction that gentoo’s performance boost and optimizations will make a noticeable difference.
I actually have a laptop with the same resources as yours. Your compile times will not be as bad as you expect. Just make sure to use binary packages for big stuff, like browsers, the kernel, office suite, etc.
Adding to other comments with a little example: A friend of mine wondered why xfce always crashed on login. Turns out it was an out of date AUR package that somehow messed the unrelated xfce up. Removing it solved the crashing problem.
This was relatively benign since it was easily fixed, but I definitely recommend keeping only as many AUR packages installed as necessary. And if something is wrong, it might just be one of those pacakges.
im using it now for my personal laptop. I have an alienware. Slackware was the easiest distro to get my NVIDIA cards working for steam. And these steam games run just as smooth as if they were on console. I also love that its pretty involved and have learned a lot between Slackware and Gentoo. I would definitely give it a try; i think it is very underrated today.
I don’t know how widely used it is, but it definitely has its fanbase - probably mostly by people who’ve used it since ages ago.
From what I’ve read, “supported” is a difficult term for Slackware. It’s development is mostly done privately and informal by Volkerding. There’s no public issue tracker etc. Releases are done when Volkerding wants to/manages to do them.
It’s not a distro for me and I won’t recommend it as a daily driver, but Slackware is definitely interesting.
PS: I can’t stop me from recommending NixOS/GUIX as another interesting advanced distro. Them being declarative, deterministic and immutable seems to me like the complete opposite to Slackware, which doesn’t even do dependencie management.
I still use Slackware and it’s a great distro. I very much enjoy its batteries-included approach (a full install comes with pretty much everything pre-installed) and I enjoy its simplicity and ease of configuration and use. There’s a learning curve to get there, but once you understand how everything works it’s a distro that gets completely out of your way. The bonus is that if you understand Slackware, generally, your knowledge of GNU/Linux broadly will mean you’re never lost on any other distro either. Most of my frustrations with other distros actually stem from them patching something/doing something weird with config defaults, whereas Slackware ships stuff as it is from vendors with vendor defaults which I find a lot more palatable and predictable.
Philosophically, I like how Slackware is independent and beholden to no corporate entity. Controversies that have hit other distros in the past as a result of that just aren’t a thing with Slackware.
Slackware is a very rewarding distro to use even in 2023. It’s not for everyone, but I imagine there’s a fair amount of people like me who’ve probably been using it for ages and have had absolutely no reason to ever consider using anything else. Once you’ve got everything you want and configured stuff to your liking, it’ll just work forever fantastically.
I also haven’t noticed a significant performance hit from using nixos on desktop coming from arch a few months ago. Nix definitely does a lot of stuff and that can chew through bandwidth at times, but overall I think the time saved from not compiling heaps of aur packages has outweighed the time lost to nix updating and maintaining the overall state of my system on every update.
I tend to run relatively lightweight systems these days and haven’t really noticed sluggishness compared to an equivalent system on arch. My desktop environment has been sway on both for a while and this may account for my experience of a leaner and more reliable system on both, but it’s hard to say.
I’d definitely want to investigate bandwidth optimization strats for nix if I was heavily constrained in that area, or possibly move to something where cpu and bandwidth constraints were given priority over reproducibility. For my current setup nixos has been a game changer on both desktop and server, but I only really have arch as a direct comparison.
( For context, my current desktop nixos systems are a 9 year old low-end cintiq, a 2017 dell optiplex 7050 minipc, and a steam deck. They all have ssds and at least 12gb of ram. All feel super snappy for everyday work with a web browser and a heap of open terminals and workspaces. )
Thank you that makes sense. When I get my hands on a more powerful machine and have less data constraints, I’ll try Nixos again. I do miss it sometimes 😆
As much as I Iike and respect Slackware and Patrick Volkerding, I would go with Arch if I were you. According to the change logs, the last commit was June 23rd of this year. Arch is more actively worked on and developed. I learned Linux on Slackware so I will always be partial to it, just like I learned Unix on OpenBSD and will be partial to it as well. But for me, Arch is the way to go for Linux. Arch’s wiki is fantastic.
That would be the stable distribution, the current distribution which is the basis for the next release (now 15.1) was last updated today. It is also highly stable relative to other distributions including Arch so for I would recommend it to anyone with some knowledge of Linux.
Arch is great of course, and the Arch Wiki is one of the best general resources for Linux out there.
Not sure which change logs you’re looking at, but both stable and current were updated yesterday. Current is most days, stable is usually a couple of security patches and bug fixes a week.
I’ve only barely gone beyond the more “backup + Docker appliance” style front end of Unraid, so I’m not sure. They make it extremely difficult for the untrained to get where you can break stuff. I am mostly an Arch/Debian guy.
I’m a guy who prefers community based distros. They don’t have business decisions get in the way of the needs of the community. It ain’t perfect, but it’s worth the tradeoffs for me. Debian for stuff I don’t want to constantly mess with. Arch for the express purpose of constantly messing with (and sometimes messing up).
Man, I might have to look into using Slackware again for the first time. No matter how much more comfortable I’ve become with systemd, I still hate it with a passion. If Slackware can handle at least XFCE well, preferably Cinnamon, it’s worth diving back into. Been 25 years though.
If you can manage a Linux server, you likely have no use for Unraid. If you want to put together a Synology type appliance out of PC hardware to run Docker containers and uses ZFS for backups, Unraid is a fairly user friendly option.
Honestly, it works as a way to cut your teeth with a type 1 hypervisor.
Fairly user friendly, and the community seems to offer a lot of support.
That being said, I mainly use it as a file server and a place to host containerized stuff that doesn’t need to bog down a gaming rig.
I got the hardware for free, so other than upgading the CPU to 10 cores (used, 50 dollars, not bad) and paying for electricity, it just churns along doing its thing.
The vendor’s choice of hardware licensing, software licensing, and effort to work with the mainline kernel plays big roles in this compatibility. You almost never hear about Linux having a problem with Intel graphics, but you do with Nvidia. You also almost never hear about issues with Intel 802.11 cards, but you do with Realtek.
It’s not Linux’s fault, really. If you have a bad neighbor distributing proprietary stuff that completely refuses to add support or work with you, the next worst step is having users that scapegoat Linux and blame it for not supporting said hardware.
Thankfully, there has been a big push for Linux compatibility lately, so things have gotten better, even with closed hardware and proprietary vendor blob drivers. But it is often a nightmare of licensing issues, often produces unstable or poor-performing drivers, and the effort to make it work better often lands on Linux, not the vendor.
Look at this post. Not once was the license of the Brother or HP drivers discussed. Do you know what they are? Are the sources available? Are you running blobs? Was the support reverse engineered by users, or offered by the vendors? Before your moment of appreciation, you should take two steps back and look at the big picture.
While Linux runs on approximately 2% of workstations as of this writing, it is the dominant platform that runs the Internet, and is often the operating system of choice for embedded platforms. A long time ago, Linux support was mostly fostered by volunteers, but we often see hardware support as something a responsible vendor would maintain now.
But that said, I really do appreciate the ease of Linux support. DKMS has helped this significantly, too. Most of the flow is to install a package and possibly reboot. The kind people of your operating system, the strong and persistent efforts of kernel maintainers, and possibility the work done by vendors has made Linux compatibility an act of grace when everything falls in place.
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