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
I don’t know about the best but Debian has been going strong for 32 years and the backbone of many distros. Its MVP in my book.
POPULAR != BETTER
Popular equals more money and more interest. In other words popularity and quality feed into each-other (not 1:1, but more than 1:0).
Yes but popularity subjects them to different pressures, many of which are not beneficial.
And this is how we get Systemd
NixOS by far has the most momentum right now.
Just check the non-unique package counts:
https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/nonunique
More than 80K packages that exist in other distros, more than all of packages in AUR combined with 90%+ being the newest version in unstable
And you can run unstable without an issue since you can downgrade individual packages whenever
All those packages, but terrible/lacking documentation and LSP support 😭 And, yes, I’ve tried
nixdandnil, and they’re not even close.I’ve tried to learn Nix multiple times, and even got by okay running NixOS for a year or so, but doing almost anything that isn’t just adding a package to a list in a nix file or flake was like pulling teeth because everything is documented so poorly (or not at all). It would take me hours to do what I could have done in seconds with any other package management tool or configuration management because I’d have to scour hundreds of search results to find someone that did the thing I’m trying to do because there was little-to-no documentation for it.
Nix is a tool with amazing promise that could solve so many problems if they could get their documentation and LSP support up to the standard of something like Rust.
I discovered they have a Matrix server where people will literally debug your config for you and help you solve issues. But you are right, if you try doing it yourself without help you’ll be pulling your hair out
We don’t know and, let us be frank, due to the nature of the community, it is impossible to know… Distros could report the downloads but if it became a KPI, it will be abused right away.
Fedora is well funded and probably the best overall. Now, its ties to US and IBM/Red Hat will keep it constrain in growth.
OpenSUSE is a second contender in funding and best overall, but German branding has taken a deep these last years… I know the government actions should be separate but, in reality, is that SUSE as a company will be constrained in growth too, therefore OpenSUSE. Its community need to be more global too.
Debian is king still. Much of development depends on the previous 2. However, in spite of huge progress lately, still not the best for new Linux users. That is why Linux Mint, Ubuntus, TuxedoOS still exist, but their growth won’t be much as Debian gets better and better, but always a step behind the corporate funded ones. For today
The Chinese Linux offerings are becoming well funded are very interesting… but there is a bridge to cross that most of the world still not ready to cross… partly, because there are reasons to be skeptical since the community developing it is highly regional, partly is just plain racism. It is a pity, because these would have the biggest potential for a mayor breakthrough with all that money and human capital pouring from different companies, but I don’t see it capable of breaching that regional aspect.
Finally we have Arch. I see it better positioned for future than Debian TBH, but we are talking 5 years down the line. It won’t be Arch though, it will be some new variant like CachyOS is doing today that brings Arch to the public… maybe KDE’s new bet?!
Can I get a summary of what’s going on in Chinese Linux land? That seems pretty interesting; I always wonder what programs the East uses vs the West
I haven’t play much with them but this is my take:
Deepin. (Just released v25) Based on Debian. Community distro. Very well done and very modern look. It is heavy though and the beta I tried had glitches. Being primarily developed in Chinese though one can tell English was added later. If they only dedicated a bit more effort on languages it would be amazing. It is as much different from Linux Mint as it gets… for better or for worse, but I like their take.
Ubuntu Kylin. Institutional cooperation with Canonical. Haven’t tried it. It is just Ubuntu catering their offer to the Chinese market. If you like Ubuntu’s or Mint and you language is Chinese, this is for you.
OpenKylin. Fully Independent (No Debian, Arch…). Community distro. Its usage for now seems to be more for institutions though.
There are others but for niches.
China, of course, it want to get independent from MS and Apple so in the next years is going to push heavily for alternative OS so it will be interesting to see what, and for sure, our FOSS community will benefit from that as DeepSeek benefited the AI.
gentoo! still kicking it
Gentoo is sooo insanely versatile. I just love it.
Whats the purpose of gentoo over arch and when do you draw the line of diminishing returns? It sounds like gentoo is a lot harder for not much more reward.
i really love portage and i like compiling from source everytime i used Arch i got trapped in dependency hell
Hard to say without having used Arch. I just really like Portage. It does some really neat things.
Fedora has gotten much more stable and reliable in the past decade. 15+ years ago it was generally regarded as nice but unstable. I’d say nowadays for a moderately technical user it offers a better experience overall than Ubuntu or Mint. There are still unfortunately some pitfalls for new users (media codecs come to mind). In fact, the only issues i’ve had in most of those 10 years have been related to GNOME plugins or the Plasma 6 transition, problems that also occured on Ubuntu.
I have 2 computers: one running Ubuntu, one Fedora. This has been my setup for over a decade. I have lately been finding Ubuntu more and more cumbersome to use, with less of the “just works” experience i remember having in the past. Perhaps the focus on cloud computing has caused the desktop to languish a bit.
I would like to try Pop!_OS, but i haven’t had a free evening for a while to do a backup and reinstall on one of my computers. It’s also been a while since i used Mint, so my impression could be out of date.
The nice thing about Linux overall (compared to macOS and Windows) is that each update generally improves on the experience. On commercial platforms the experience gets worse as often as it gets better, usually both at the same time. GNOME and Plasma are both overall much better than they were a decade ago (despite a few regressions) while macOS and Windows are both worse in general.
I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then switched to Linux Mint for a while and dabbled with Manjaro for a hot minute, and ultimately found my home on Fedora Workstation for the past several years. Once set up with rpmfusion and 3rd party codecs it’s a very solid and reliable distribution. The new atomic projects (and derivatives) look very interesting too.
If you leave alone the haters, Ubuntu is doing great. Mint LDME also fantastic if you wish to have a rock solid base.
It’s doing great unless you want to debug why chromium is not connecting to your USB devices
Hint: because they forced snap in you which doesn’t support USB access
Garuda absolutely nails it with their helper app that sets you up with a choice of popular software, handles updates, and gives you easy access to common settings.
It makes it very approachable for people new to Linux.
EndeavourOS, it’s Arch with a familiar installer, several useful helper scripts, and a friendly community.
Same, endeavorOS has been my default install for years now.
Fedora Silverblue – a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.
There’s also secureblue, which is a fedora atomic fork with nice security hardening
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You can’t install shit on immutable distros.
Simply not true.
Linux Mint DE and Arch, the ultimate duo of Stability/Freindlyness & Power/Control
MX Linux. Best at what it does.
I do like Mint very much, but I think that they are neglecting to update their apps. A lot of apps are not up to date, and that’s just sad…
The whole of Fedora atomic distros are interesting in an exercise in getting good with layering and distrobox. Pop_os 24.04 just to see if a third pillar of Linux frontends with GTK and Qt is viable. People are always pissy about Manjaro but they seem to have an interesting present being pre installed on the Orange Pi Neo handheld
Linux Mint DE and Arch, the ultimate duo of Stability/Freindlyness & Power/Control
