Original question by @atmorous@lemmy.world
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
If someone I know has a machine with Nvidia GPU and wants to game, I always suggest Pop!_OS.
Bazzite or an immutable if you do gaming and don’t need a lot of special functionality (e.g. network scanning doesn’t work, document signing doesn’t work and will never work, managing gpg keys, embedded firmware development, Belgian EID, etc…)
Mint if you don’t have a brand new system and just want an easy experience.
Arch if you want all niche software to simply be available through the package manager and never have to find rpm/deb packages.
Debian for a server (or maybe opensuse MicroOS nowadays)
Opensuse if you really want an EU OS or something very integrated with a snapshot system.
And of course, Hannah Montana Linux if you are enlightened.
Debian is still the best at being Debian. I rate it the least likely to give me any unpleasant surprises.
I wanna give a shoutout to Manjaro, an arch based distro with a cascading testing cycle for better stability. That being said, I am using Arch and Manjaro for about a decade now and never really had any stability issues (in contrast to my tries with Ubuntu). The arch wiki stays one of the absolute best resources for Linux users on the internet, the rolling release ensures cutting edge Software, the AUR makes it very easy to provide community built packages. And then there’s Debian. Definitely my choice for servers.
Still like Linux Mint.
I can only speak to my own personal experience: Fedora and Suse are doing the best, especially with immutable distributions.
My only problem with Fedora (Workstation) is that it really likes upgrade though restart. And upgrades are daily. It
can’tcan be turned off (to not require restart) on KDE variant, but I didn’t find an option on Gnome one.Not positive but IIRC with Fedora you can change updates to weekly/monthly etc.
Uninstalling GNOME Software should do that if you just want to upgrade traditionally through dnf upgrade and you don’t need GNOME Software.
Debian exists. Ubuntu wants to go Pro. Mint is squished in the middle. Fedora is doing mad science, and OpenSuSE is in full “We have Fedora at home” mode. Arch arches, and Bazzite is in an existential crisis over the coming x86 32-bit apocalypse. Also Nix is nixing, I guess. All the inbetweeners are trying desperately to be relevant and up to date.
You forgot the one that is still compiling…
Gentoo and LFS exist as concepts. The users are compiling their project car linuxes from scratch themselves.
We’re simultaneously in a place where there are more options than ever, and yet it’s become increasingly clear there are really only 4-5 options.
I would have loved to see elementaryOS as a viable option, but the whole “reformat to install new release” hurdle is a mega huge downside.
Thankfully Fedora retracted the 32 bit proposal.
Out of the box?
Fedora Workstation for my VM desktops. For servers usually Ubuntu just because it just works, but for running containers on systems with limited resources? Alphine.
RHEL because it’s the stable distro, Arch for being best desktop distro, Fedora for building seamless experience and being arch-lite for people that don’t need arch.
RHEL because it’s the stable distro,
Debian Stable would like a word.
Debian for multiple reasons doesn’t even come close.
Arch seems so interesting because you install the system component by component in the command line but I’ve heard it has poor long term stability. Is there a distro that’s like Arch for installation but more stable?
I’ll mirror what others have said. Arch is the most stable distro I’ve ever used over the long term. Even with heavy AUR use, I’ve been rocking the same installation for over a decade on one of my computers.
Big thing that people don’t understand about Arch is that AUR is not part of distribution itself and package recipes there will break and mainteiners will go missing and arch won’t care about them breaking.
Arch is extremely stable if you can read (this is not a joke). As in before doing system upgrade visit news and check if there is a need for manual steps during upgrade, you’llneed ro do something once or twice a year. And you actually need to read wiki and manual pages before doing things you aren’t sure about.
As for manual step-by-step install, you can do it with almost any distro. For example you can partition disk, mount everything and install core packages using
dnf --installroot=...from fedora live, same idea with debian based distros.What do you mean by poor long term stability? It’s a rolling release. I run the same installation for basically forever, while fixed releases’ life-time is measured in just a few years before you lose support and need to do a full distro upgrade… which rarely seems to work without problems.
PS: I just looked it up. The first date in my pacman log in from 2014…
I’ve heard it has poor long term stability.
Relatively speaking, sure. But I’d argue this is by design. Basically, every ‘modern’ distro is trying to solve the problem that come with updates on an ‘open’/‘free’ operating system. The solution they come up with essentially dictates a huge part of the identity of the distro. As I’ve noted elsewhere, these include the following:
- Some choose to outright freeze packages and only come with security updates
- Others have (almost) excessive testing to prevent breakage
- Yet others employ rollbacks to ensure that the (eventual/inevitable) breakage can easily be deflected
- Finally, there are distros that fall on a spectrum in regards to their more radical state management in hopes of minimizing breakage
- (Though, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some other methods…)
- And, of course, we find combinations of the above employed on the very same distro/system
And, of course, we shouldn’t forget to mention Arch’s approach; lay the responsibility on the user 😅. So, Arch ‘breaking’/‘borking’ after an update is a user error. Which other distro can tout such an impressive entry in their documentation for system maintenance?
To be fair, this makes total sense. The user can basically build their system from scratch. So…, why wouldn’t they be capable to come up with their solution to the above problem? Besides, the ArchWiki continues to be a guiding light whatever solution they’d like to adopt: be it ‘freezing’ the kernel, or using better tested software, perhaps setting up Snapper for rollbacks etc…
Is there a distro that’s like Arch for installation but more stable?
Gentoo
EndeavorOS provides a GUI installer with what’s considered “sensible” add-ons included.
It’s where I am now. I started with Mint, played with Debian some, now “Arch”-ish.It’s been good to me.
Kinda same for me. I run EndeavourOS on my personal machine and Mint for work. Been pretty happy with that arrangement, though the Arch ecosystem took some adjusting to.
Still using a mix of Debian and Ubuntu.
I tried openSUSE but didn’t like it compared to Ubuntu desktop.
Doing the best for which use-case? The answers will be fundamentally different depending on the situation
It’s an open ended question, just speak from your perspective/use case/problems and solutions
At this point Void feels like Slackware for the 21st century. It’s comprehensive and less full of “modern linux” hairballs than some others, but they seem pretty good on package updates. I like it being non-systemd as a first class thing rather than trying to backport it on an uncooperative parent distro.
Void linux is great. But their packages are actually lacking behind. They also don’t want to include many new packages. And there is a huge backlog of PRs on the package repository.
