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Share Your Favorite Linux Distros and Why You Love Them

So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:

  • Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
  • Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.

For example:

  • Distro (first-level comment)
    • Reason (one answer)
    • Other reason (a different answer)

Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.

choroalp ,

NixOS. Reproducible, Wide Package selection, Hard to fuck up + Not yet another Arch based distro

kyub , (edited )
  • Arch
  • Debian
    • My favorite overall, they’re community-run, stable, well-maintained, have a rich history of being awesome, and they’re just top quality general-purpose distros. I tend to use Arch for more recent desktop systems and Debian for server systems or older desktops.
  • NixOS
    • What I’m dabbling with currently, the concepts here are amazing but it’s a bit of work at first to truly get value out of it. Still, seems to be a good option for my next notebook OS.
  • Fedora Silverblue (respectively the immutable variants)
    • Also cool, as is Fedora in general, although with the recent Red Hat fiasco and Fedora’s plan to introduce opt-out telemetry I’m more hesitant now. Some time ago I’d have listed Fedora at the top but now it’s slid down a bit.
  • Mint
  • Kubuntu
    • Easy recommendations for new users coming from Windows
  • VanillaOS
    • I like the idea of making it possible to install packages from all distros (they will then run in a distro-specific container). I wouldn’t use it, but it’s cool
  • Kali
  • Tails
  • Alpine
    • From the more specific distros
  • Slackware
    • Honorable mention, because it introduced me to Linux back in the day (yes, I liked starting the hard Unix way). I wouldn’t recommend it these days but it’s kind of like the granddaddy of all Linux distros, and it was awesome in its prime. I’m sure it can still be used today but it’s gotten quite niche.
Leora ,
@Leora@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Solus

Leora ,
@Leora@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Easily the best distro I’ve used for gaming. No set up was required from me, it just works.

Leora ,
@Leora@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Great user forum & support. Everyone I’ve talked with has been super helpful. Solus leads are easy to get a hold of.

jvrava9 ,
@jvrava9@lemmy.ml avatar

Just switched to Artix after using Mint for half a year

kelroy ,

Lubuntu with lxqt desktop environment and i3 window manager.

kafka_quixote ,

DietPi on my ARM devices

Paralda ,

CachyOS

Paralda ,

It’s not Manjaro

nychtelios ,
@nychtelios@rlyeh.icu avatar

NixOS, I have a fetish for configuration files

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m currently doing my second pass of Nix after diving deep into it last time and coming out unsatisfied. The same problems that I had before with it are problems I’m seeing again:

  • disjointed configs pulled from random source or build repos on the internet
  • unintuitive grammars with parameters that require you to download an autocompletion spec
  • flakes that aren’t immediately easy to grok

Contrast that with my last Guix experience:

  • Lisp form, super easy to understand grammar
  • Recipes are so trivial that I’ve written three on my first day
  • Source tree is included and you are expected to add branches to it

The only problem with Guix that I can see is that it’s not as popular

nychtelios ,
@nychtelios@rlyeh.icu avatar

Flakes are extremely simple (my whole system is a flake: github.com/cmargiotta/dotfiles ), but they are basically not documented.

The grammar is really really bad, I prefere a lot the Guix one too! I am using NixOS only because the last time I tried Guix I didn’t find a lot of packages for their extremist GNU policy (I agree, but I need some packages), is it still like that?

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

is it still like that?

Yes and no – there are now non-free repos (so you can install firefox for example), and even non-free binary repos too.

InternetPirate OP ,

dupe

Eke ,

zorin os

Eke ,

it looks good af

electromage ,

Ubuntu

electromage ,

It works, I can customize it if I want, and I don’t really care about the snap drama.

menturi ,

What is this snap drama? It has been many years since I looked into Ubuntu.

electromage ,

They’re pushing their packaging system, some apps install as a snap by default rather than deb. A lot of people are upset and would rather see them support Flatpak. Of course we can use whatever we want.

dartanjinn ,

Fedora KDE.

CosmoCrow ,

Fedora Workstation

CosmoCrow ,

Looks good with gnome and has been stable for my pc.

CosmoCrow ,

Has flatpacks for app security and has some other options for security like selinux.

jaykstah , (edited )

Arch Linux

jaykstah ,

Up to date packages

jaykstah ,

Pacman package manager works well and PKGBUILD files are simple enough to edit if you want to alter how a package builds

jaykstah ,

AUR offers a lot of resources for a straightforward way to install software that isn’t in the main repositories

jaykstah ,

Comments in the AUR can be a helpful troubleshooting source or indicate the quality of a package hosted there

jaykstah ,

Build the system from the ground up choosing how you want it to work

jaykstah ,

Extensive documentation with useful troubleshooting sections for many articles

jaykstah ,

Easy config with archinstall script if you want to choose options from a list when installing

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

Incredibly easy to hack with it’s no-security by default policy

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

AUR’s developer change hands faster than british prime ministers that it gets harder and to trust upstream devs

mrv0id ,

EndeavourOS

StantonVitales ,

I’m on it right now. Got a new Thinkpad a couple weeks ago and just wasn’t in the mood to install Arch the normal way when I finally had alone time at 11pm, gave Endeavour a shot and was like oh, this is convenient 🤩

BeardedBlaze ,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

It’s my first time with Arch based Linux, takes some adjustment, but I’ve been loving it.

arcrust ,

Also on endeavor. I like arch, but it’s too much work. Endeavor is good enough for me.

kafka_quixote ,

Does Endeavour get funky like Manjaro does wrt AUR and configs?

BrokenCanoe ,

Endeavour has been my default for a long while now, using Plasma KDE. It supports the flexibility needed to customise and make my own themes for as a low-vision user, and smooths a lot of the rough edges of pure Arch. I had Arch installed previously, but again, having that additional helping hand, coupled with a truly wonderful community, really made all the difference. I left Windows after the mess that was 8, I couldn’t go back…

rfy ,

Void Linux

It has it’s own package manager which is nice and performant, it has another script similar to the AUR to an extent, runit is simple and sensible.

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