Let’s make this place more active!
So, title. Personally after trying out pretty much every major distro save gentoo, I’ve come back to Ubuntu because it just works and I can focus on my work. Did remove snap and install flatpak, but other than that it’s mostly stock ubuntu.
EndeavourOS :)
arch on my desktop and on my server
Gentoo.
Where my Mint peeps at?
Cinnamon gang!
I use Gentoo. We have what’s probably the most flexible and powerful package manager for Linux.
Adding new packages is trivial; an
ebuild
script is created which describes how to build the package, along with a little metadata. This is placed into an ebuild repository - I like to contribute to the Gentoo one, but any folder structure will do (however git is by for the most common method). It’s not uncommon for a Gentoo user to package software outside the official repos. These will have all of the features (like configurability via USE flags) that ebuilds in the official repo have.These repositories, for convenience, may be registered with Gentoo and linked on https://repos.gentoo.org/ where the
eselect repository
tool can be used to add them by name from the index. http://gpo.zugaina.org/ indexes known ebuild repos and can help you to identify whether or not something has already been packaged.Ubuntu Studio (XFCE desktop). It’s not the fanciest desktop, has one or two rough edges, and there are one or two tweaks I make right away on any new install, but I can get most things done without thinking about the OS at all now.
I like the UI eye candy of KDE, but I find it too weighty for an everyday use distro.
I used to use Debian plus XFCE, but it’s a bit too spartan for me these days.
I tried Ubuntu Studio for a bit for audio work, but it was really slow for some reason. Even the terminal would take 12 seconds to open up. Couldn’t find the problem so I switched to OpenSUSE Leap and now it’s super responsive.
Unfortunately, it looks like Wwise refuses to install with Wine or Bottles, so I might not be able to use Linux for work.
Hmm… interesting you mention terminal really slow to open up. I still experience this also - the first time I open a terminal (only), and only if I try to open it shortly after I boot the machine. I’ve tried several times to find out why this is, but without success (without a terminal it’s hard to find out what’s blocking the terminal…)
The other thing I dumped was the latest Ubuntu Studio Chromium install, because it installs a snap, which is laggy to fire up, which also drove me crazy. I use the Mint chromium build now, which is a real native build, not a snap, and works great.
Main machine thinkpad x60: Trisquel
iBook G4: Debian
thinkpad t450: Linux Mint
on all my other laptops: LXLE
on my old desktop: LXLE
on my main desktop Minisforum UM500: Manjaro (But only because I have no idea how it works and Manjaro came with the UM500 and I’m afraid I can’t install something else that will work with all the graphics.)
I’m on EndeavorOS. It’s essentially Arch Linux with very specific training wheels. I switched to it about a year ago and remain exceedingly happy with it.
EndeavourOS is Arch, nicely setup for a “Daily Driver” PC and for people who don’t need to flex about installing Arch. I’ve used Arch, I like EndeavourOS better :)
Another vouch for EndeavourOS being Arch but with less hassle, I have installed and maintained for years both Arch and Gentoo and while I think those two are the best way to experience and learn Linux, I don’t have as much time anymore, so I was trying out fedora for a while (left because some package lagged just a bit much for my preference; Emacs and some compilers/runtimes mainly) I wanted back into some cutting edge rolling-release distro.
I prefer Arch over debian testing and opensuse thumbleweed because of popularity and gaming, there is bigger chance that if a game has problems, these have been found out on arch especially with the steam deck technically increasing the user base of gamers on Arch.
EDIT: NixOS sound interesting because it might be even less time commitment to maintain I think(?), but the initial learning curve would be more time investment that EndeavourOS is since I’m very acquainted with how to upkeep and Arch system that I daily drive.
Laptop: NixOS, mostly to try it out. So far I’m really liking it. Fileserver: Open Media Vault (it’s Debian with a cool web UI) Container servers: Ubuntu, but I’m thinking of switching them out. Still contemplating between Rocky or Debian.
Artix with awesomewm and Linux Mint in case something doesn’t work on Artix.
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Ubuntu. I started with Mint when I first dropped Windows because it had a similar look. But I found it was harder to find answers to problems I had with Mint than with Ubuntu because more people use it. So I switched to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu / PopOS user here.
Someone here mentioned NixOS and it made me want to speak up. I’ve been thinking of moving to BlendOS or VanillaOS for a while now. I’ve been using them virtualized and I think I like blendOS more.
With that being said, I’m really intrigued by all those distros picking up the immutable atomic core update model. I want my system to always be up to date but I want it to be stable as well. I feel this is the true power of containers.
My question here is, does anyone use an immutable and atomic distro on their desktop PC like blendOS, VanillaOS, Fedora silver blue, or NixOS?
If so, what is it like?
Note: I know that steamOS, HoloISO, and ChimaeraOS are also immutable and atomic but I don’t count those as “desktop” distros. I have been testing ChimeraOS myself on an AMD 5600X3D based platform and aside from Bluetooth latency issues, it’s very very nice.
Thats a very complicated quesiton. I have 3 computers, of which 2 are ThinkPads, and one Asus Gaming Laptop. The Thinkpads are spread out over the places I usually do stuff, and I have an encrypted portable Sandisk 1TB ssd with Debian installed on it, that i take wherever my thinkpads are to do stuff. My asus gaming laptop runs Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS and i haven’t bothered to change it to Debian. I use that one mainly for stable diffusion, voice to text with AI and to play minecraft singleplayer, with shaders.
My thinkpads can work without my portable ssd, and they run unencrypted Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS with basic stuff like firefox and realistic documents and normie stuff, so that it doesn’t look suspicious :)
pretty cool :=)
Fedora 38 KDE Spin. Truly awesome experience!