this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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wanting to hop into the world of linux on a dual boot method (one of my favorite games unfortunately cannot be run on linux at all, and it's a gacha. I don't want to gamble with my account being banned, so I'm keeping windows for it specifically.) this'll be my second go at it, I used Pop!_OS briefly but had some issues with wifi and didn't love the GNOME layout. I have a new distro picked out, but I just was curious what other people are using in this community. was also wondering what made you fall on your current one.

and maybe as some bonus questions, what are some distros you've tried but didn't like? what about a distro you want to try eventually? I've seen distrohopping is a thing, hahaha.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

one of my favorite games unfortunately cannot be run on linux at all, and it's a gacha. I don't want to gamble with my account being banned

Yeah, let's keep it to one kind of gambling. I like and use opensuse tumbleweed. Rolling release, never had stability problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I recently stumbled upon OpenSuse again and want to try it out but can't decide if I should use Tumbleweed or MicroOS. Did you ever try MicroOS?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Stick to Tumbleweed. MicroOS is the container version.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I thought MicroOS is like Fedora Silverblue and an atomic desktop?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They are very similar. It honestly comes down to what you're comfortable with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate? I think I didn't understand your point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I'm not the one you asked your question, but I think I understood what they meant.

First of all, technically MicroOS is the non-desktop version of openSUSE's take on an atomic/immutable distro. The desktop variants are referred to as Aeon (for GNOME) and Kalpa (for KDE).

Secondly, while Aeon/Kalpa definitely is to openSUSE what Silverblue/Kinoite is to Fedora, there's a clear difference in vision and maturity.

Vision

Fedora Atomic is a very ambitious project; everything points toward it being Fedora's take on NixOS. But, unlike NixOS, it couldn't start from scratch nor did they intend to. Instead, it's the process of evolving their existing products into something special. As such, it has been over two years since Fedora has even explicitly stated that they intend for Fedora Atomic to become the default eventually (without saying anything about sunsetting the old). While, AFAIK, openSUSE has yet to make similar statements regarding Aeon/Kalpa.

Maturity

Everything points towards Fedora Atomic being more mature than openSUSE MicroOS; work on the project has started earlier, Fedora Atomic is almost done with their transition (from image-based) to OCI while I don't recall openSUSE mention anything regarding their transition (from 'snapshots') to image-based since they mentioned it briefly last year. Furthermore, Bazzite (based on Fedora Atomic) has become the face of Gaming Linux while openSUSE' MicroOS fails to deliver on anything but Aeon. Which, to be fair, is absolutely fine. But not everyone is fan of GNOME.

So, use Tumbleweed if:

  • You prefer the traditional model
  • You like YaST
  • You like the rolling release model and not being tied to GNOME

Use Aeon if:

  • You like GNOME and an atomic distro on a rolling release distro
  • You prefer the opinionated, hands off, little to no customization path that openSUSE has currently chosen for its Aeon
  • You like a containerized future

Use Fedora Atomic if:

  • You want an atomic distro, but don't like any of the decisions made for Aeon; i.e.
    • prefer to use KDE, Budgie or Sway (or any other desktop environment through uBlue)
    • aren't that big of a fan of container workloads
    • prefer having the choice of installing native packages
  • Prefer atomic on top of a point release distro

Finally, regarding containers specifically; let's say you want to install package X.

  • On Tumbleweed, you just do sudo zypper install X and you're done with it.
  • On Aeon, if it's available as a Flatpak, you do flatpak install X. If there's no Flatpak of it, you install it within a container that you access through Distrobox. Within the container, use the package manager corresponding to the container. Technically, while inside the container, the environment is very similar to Tumbleweed. So, say you got a Tumbleweed container, then you can continue using sudo zypper install X.
  • On Fedora Atomic, you can layer onto the system through rpm-ostree install X; this is very close to how installing packages work on Tumbleweed. And, you can continue using both Flatpak and Distrobox; like how it's done on Aeon. Note that Tumbleweed also allows access to Flatpak and Distrobox. So, Aeon is most restricted as it can't install packages onto the base system. Btw, Fedora Atomic accomplishes this through layers that can also be peeled off later on (through uninstalling for example). With this, the base system actually isn't affected, but the end user doesn't notice it.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I started with PowerPPC back in the '90s (it did not even ship with a working X system). Then went to Debian a few years later, and it was great. I played around with Gentoo for a little while when it first came out, then ended up back on Debian after a couple months. Then I played around with Arch for a little when it showed up, then went back to Debian. After that I just said fuck it, and have stuck with Debian. I run testing/unstable unless it's some side server I have, in that case I just run stable. I hear good things about OpenSUSE and Fedora, but at this point I'm old and don't feel like trying something when I have no issues. Tiling WM and Vim. That's about all I seem to need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I've been using Xubuntu for half a decade, zero regrets.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Gentoo on my PC, Fedora Asahi on my MacBook

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Arch + riverwm on my desktop. I know barless tiling window managers look daunting, but simplicity is liberation.

I can't imagine doing that on my laptop though, so I've got arch + KDE Plasma and I love how it just works.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Hannah Montana Linux

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Q4OS, it's Debian based with KDE, it's beginner friendly. It even has a Windows installer for easy dual boot

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

endeavourOS

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I've tried a couple different KDE distros and settled on Fedora 40 KDE spin. It seems to be the most complete KDE experience without all of the Canonical/snap bloat. It works great on my Thinkpad. Also runs decent on my gaming desktop using the latest Nvidia beta driver - I used to get stutters and artifacts in games/steam/plex and now with the beta driver those apps run fine

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

If you like or need the latest software, use a rolling distro. I use Manjaro (boo, hiss) and really like it. But if you don't want the Arch users to beat you up and pants you, I hear Endeavour OS is pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wanted this, but it wouldnt boot for me. :( my hardware was pretty new at the time though, so maybe works now?I'll have to try it again some time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Hmm, yeah my PC is about 2-3 years old now and it booted just fine. If normal Arch can boot (EFI ideally), then Garuda should be good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Ditto. Super easy setup, most stuff just works right off the bat. Super active community on the forum and high participation from the devs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I use EndeavourOS because I like having access to the AUR but didn't want to risk messing up my Windows installation by trying to manually set up Arch for dual booting (this was before archinstall was made). I like it, and I like using KDE. My only complaint with it would be that pacman kinda shits itself if you go too long without updating.

The first distro I ever used was ZorinOS back in like 2017.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

PopOS for me. I have played around with Linux in the past, but never seriously dived into it. The whole Windows 11 Recall fracas changed that. I went with Pop because it's an out-of-the-box distro. Everything just works, and it has Nvidia and AMD graphics support baked in. I used to not like Gnome, but it's kinda growing on me now. Then again, that's the beauty of this OS: Don't like the desktop environment? Download a new one from a bunch of alternatives. Current distro not floating your boat? Make some bootable USB drives of different distros and take them for a test run.

It's a beautiful thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I'm running Pop!_OS. I tried Mint and EndeavorOS. I found that I don't like vanilla gnome, and while I appreciate KDE, it's too Windows-like. Which is contrary to what I'm trying to do by switching to Linux in the first place. So Pop is perfect for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

EndeavourOS on my desktop and laptop. Works like a charm. By far the happiest I've been with a desktop distro.

On my server VMs I'm running Ubuntu Pro because it's absolutely impeccably stable, Pro is free and I like the idea of having the option of not upgrading them for 10 years.

All running on Proxmox. I have a few appliance type VMs like opnsense and 3CX and they're nice and stable too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Bazzite Linux running KDE Plasma 6. It's a wonderful distro based on Fedora 40 (I think, still kinda new) and it's made for gaming.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Debian testing on my desktop

Endeavour on my laptop

Gonna switch desky to endeavour soon. Debian stable is great but testing is not a good experience but I need the more recent packages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Give Debian Sid an opportunity.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Manjaro

Easy to use and you can still legally say "I use Arch btw"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Bonus points for making Arch users seeth because you call Manjaro, Arch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

EndeavourOS on my desktop, Arch Linux on my laptop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Linux Mint. Yes, it's not that interesting, but as many others point out, it just works. Both on my laptop and desktop pc. No issues for over two years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Agreed. I'm using Linux Mint XFCE edition. Works great. Mint is still based on Ubuntu 22.04 (Ubuntu Jammy), which is the only down side for me as a developer. Since all packages are very outdated in general.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Open Media Vault (based on Debian)

I'm thinking of just using Debian on most of my machines in the future, just have to go through the effort to switch.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Debian stable on Thinkpad 1 and Debian testing on Thinkpad 2. Testing is nice because Gnome is a slightly better version. Stable is nice because it doesn't bother me about updates.

What don't you like about gnome?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I didn't particularly like the layout styling in Pop!_OS and being so new to linux, I didn't know how much I could change aesthetics wise. KDE looks more appealing to me, I don't know if it's because it looks like windows, but that might be a factor? it's the default on the distro I wanna give a try (Bazzite) which also has nudged me in that direction.

I wasn't expecting so many people to have used Debian for things other than servers. I have it on a server myself, but I decided I needed something more set up for gaming already on my desktop. what led you to Debian specifically? the stability?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Pretty much. I used mint for a while, then Ubuntu, upgrading every October and April. Then I tried Debian on a laptop I didn't want to update often, and realized it's not really missing anything that Ubuntu has.

Although I think the main thing that lead me to Debian was some issue with snap that I was having

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