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Distro for experienced Linux user

Hi, I’m looking for a distro for my laptop. My first distro was Pop!_OS, then I switched to Fedora, then Arch for a year and 2 months ago I switched to Fedora Silverblue, because I wanted to try immutable distro that relies on containers and flatpaks to be usefull. Silverblue is great but not so much for me, its not flexible enough.

I’m thinking of switching to Arch but maybe it’s time for something else. Maybe NixOS or Void, Gentoo probably not, I don’t have time for compiling everything. What do you recommend?

It must support full disk encryption, secure boot with signing with YOUR OWN KEYS, systemd (because of MullvadVPN), everything else I think can work on any distro (Gnome, podman, kvm, etc.).

cbarrick ,

I use Arch (btw) because of the ArchWiki, and I’m totally comfortable configuring my system how I like it.

But I do appreciate Debian a lot. You can customize things to almost the same extent, but packages come preconfigured with great defaults and designed to better work together, unlike Arch which uses the upstream defaults almost universally.

fraydabson ,

I love arch. I want to switch to NixOS for my home server but I think I’ll be sticking with arch for my main I see no further reason to switch.

sunred ,
@sunred@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I learned that using nix on arch for the home directory in addition to pacman and the aur is quite an unbeatable combo that I prefer to having everything managed by nix. The problem with nix and nixos I see for one is that it leaves some performance on the table for reproducibility and that many packages are or cannot be packaged for nix. Additionally arch already is quite reproducible albeit not as much as nixos. Writing your own meta package with a simple pkgbuild to manage the system base seemed like a good substitute for me.

PainInTheAES , (edited )

There’s an immutable Arch project out there called AstOS

astrsk ,
@astrsk@artemis.camp avatar

The one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the more experience you have with Linux, the less you rely on preconfigured distributions. Find a stable minimal install and build up your own set of base packages, DE, configs, etc.

Only you know your habits and needs and experience is how you narrow down the field.

For me personally, I have found my groove in a minimal Debian install with a first run setup script or two that is repeatable and automatable so I can start with a known quantity for any applicable need I have.

MrPhibb ,
@MrPhibb@reddthat.com avatar

Arch is a good choice, Endeavour was my flavor of choice, but these days I use Linux Mint: Debian Edition, which works mostly fine for me (got one minor piece of software I can’t get for it).

PanaX ,

Seconded LMDE. Super stable, polished, and intuitive.

blarp ,
@blarp@lemmy.ml avatar

Well, they say Nix is the new Arch, so there’s that. Redcore is Gentoo but without the compiling – you might like that. Void is out because it’s too similar to Arch and has no Systemd.

Instead of experimenting with distros maybe instead you could hop on a reliable distro and explore some other facet of Linux. For example, I lived in Emacs for 9 months as a challenge. Or you could mess around with a WMs instead, maybe try to work your way from i3 to Qtile to Xmonad?

nyl , (edited )

NixOS definitely. The disk encryption with keys you may need do that manually though.

gunpachi ,

There are a few options. Like many have mentioned, Nix OS is a wonderful distro with it’s own quirks.

If you are looking for something normal, consider Opensuse Tumbleweed and arch linux (or arch based distros like EndavourOS).

InverseParallax ,

I use debian as my absolute base and build lxc containers for everything above that with my own kernel, works for me.

I set my own complexity, but debian also doesn’t get in my way which works for me.

Ubuntu container for dev work (c++ mostly), arch container for some stuff, few vms for private data.

gigatexal ,
@gigatexal@mastodon.social avatar

@InverseParallax @chevy9294 whoa LXC / LXD since it uses virtualization means one can rock their own kernels? Hmmm

InverseParallax ,

Oh sorry that was badly written, I compile my own kernel and run lxc on top of that, with debian base userspace otherwise.

Then kvm on top for really different stuff.

For my server it’s debian on the bottom with zfs file serving raidz2, and on top of that 1 kvm for debian docker containers, and 1 kvm for freebsd jails which actually hosts most of the services I care about, docker is fallback if they’re a pain to set up.

nakal ,
@nakal@kbin.social avatar

Sooner or later everyone will find their way to Debian. It's boring and it works.

atomkarinca ,

if you want systemd then void is out of the question, void uses runit.

danileonis ,
@danileonis@lemmy.ml avatar

And that’s actually one of the reason to choose it, runit feels so smooth on old hardware!

atomkarinca ,

i know, i have it installed on two machines, i love it. op wanted a distro that supports systemd.

danileonis ,
@danileonis@lemmy.ml avatar

Yes, I was just remarking that for everyone interested, like an addendum to your post. :-D

atomkarinca ,

understantable have a great day :)

noddy ,

I’d recommend go back to arch. I use arch myself and have decided to stop distro hopping. I always end up regretting and come back to arch. The arch install script is quite good now, spares me hours of hunting down what packages to install for a working desktop and configuring of bootloader, etc, that I had to do before for installing arch.

Last time I tried something else was fedora. I liked the seamless experience, but I was annoyed by the very slow updates (why does it take soo long to refresh the repos?), and I missed the awesome wiki and package availability on arch.

hornedfiend ,

I’m a long time arch with plasma user and recently tried arch with gnome and couldn’t get into it, so decided to try something new so I switched to Fedora Kinoite and yes, updates are incredibly slow. I mean it’s ridiculous really when compared to arch, but the distro seems solid ( curious how long I’ll last before inevitably going back to arch).

cyclohexane ,

Gentoo probably not, I don’t have time for compiling everything

Just wanted to say I use gentoo and was going to recommend it. Compile times really shouldn’t impact you that much as they’re running in background and can be configured to not impact other processes. And compiles are very fast for most applications, it’s only the few heavy ones that aren’t.

ferox ,
@ferox@lemmy.ml avatar

Fedora 38

zelifcam ,
@zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

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    Shrexios ,

    @zelifcam @chevy9294 I’ve become a fan. I’m not a coder or anything, and I have been able to navigate its package management easily enough. The manual could be made a bit simpler/clearer, but the system itself is not hard to manage.

    I’ve been meaning to figure out if I can set up the system and then generate a new configuration file based on what I installed using nix-env

    starkzarn ,

    That sort of configuration after the fact would be a fantastic addition, if not already in place.

    biestander ,

    Linux mint

    yum13241 ,

    Arch supports all of those.

    NixOS does too, but I don’t believe Void does.

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