I’d like to settle on a distro, but none of them seem to click for me. I want stability more than anything, but I also value having the latest updates (I know, kind of incompatible).

I have tested Pop!_Os, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu. Arch and Pop being the two that I enjoyed the most and seemed the most stable all along… I am somewhat interested in testing NixOS although the learning curve seems a bit steep and it’s holding me back a bit.

What are you using as your daily drive? Would you recommend it to another user? Why? Why not?

  • Jo Miran
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    12 years ago

    I have been a Linux user since the Red Hat Halloween release (back in the twentieth century) and have run SUSE, Slackware, Red Hat, Arch, Debian and countless of their forks. Currently I’m settled on Pop!_OS 22.04 NVIDIA for my daily driver laptop with a built-in Nvidia GPU. It is rock solid and can run my three displays, each with a different resolution and refresh rate, without ever missing a beat. For everything else I use Debian and most of my clients run either RHEL or Oracle SEL on their production servers.

    TL;DR: Pop!_OS daily driver and Debian for everything else.

    • Red Army Dog Cooper
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      22 years ago

      I mean you are allowed to, I just will have lots of questions, starting with Why, and moving on to no really why.

  • @grumpyrico@lemmy.world
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    12 years ago

    mint for my laptop running awesomewm and lightened it up a bit - To have a no-thrills always works never complaints machine.

    fedora server edition plus awesomewm for my desktop

  • @phrogpilot73@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I use Pop!_OS on my desktop and laptop. Prior to that, I would distro-hop like it was my job. I bought a system76 laptop and figured, why not. So, I had Pop preloaded on it instead of Ubuntu. Here’s the reason I ended up settling on Pop as my one-and-only distro.

    • Based off Ubuntu/Debian, which I am most familiar/comfortable with
    • No Snaps
    • Flatpak supported out of the box
    • Relatively rapid deployment of updated kernels (currently on 6.2.6), so no need to worry about hardware support
    • Tiling windows that are well implemented
    • Backed by a company, but one that shares the same values as me
    • Stable, even with semi-rolling release nature of it

    The downsides are that their choice of colors are god-awful. I get it, it’s their company’s colors, but I don’t think it looks really all that good on an operating system. I’ve gotten used to it, and don’t care as much anymore.

    • @xohshoo@lemmy.world
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      12 years ago

      I’ve been on Pop for a couple of years now (?3), I just keep upgrading, and nothing breaks. It has all the applications I need, no snaps, I’m very familiar with ubuntu/debian systems, and it just keeps ticking along. Usually I’d distrohop when whatever I was using would crap out, but Pop just keeps trucking along

  • @SapienSRC@lemmy.world
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    32 years ago

    Not to long ago I would of said Fedora but recently I’ve switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and I’m really enjoying it. Still learning the ins and outs though.

  • @sLLiK@lemmy.ml
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    52 years ago

    I distro hopped a lot in the 2006-2011 era, and eventually settled on Arch. I like the initial simplicity, the wiki was and still is the best resource to this day, and anything I needed from the kitchen sink was accessible via the AUR. I’ve ended up using it on my workstations, work laptops, and personal machines ever since.

    • @chockblock@lemmy.world
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      02 years ago

      Does Arch have built in disk encryption?

      I’m on Manjaro but I’m sick of having to unlock the LUKS drive encryption every time I start the computer

      • @yourdogsnipples@lemmy.world
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        22 years ago

        Isn’t that the point of full disk encryption, to make sure you’re authorised to boot? That at least is the behaviour on a Mac if you enable full disk encryption. Or do you mean every time you wake it from sleep?

        • @chockblock@lemmy.world
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          12 years ago

          Basically on Mac, your login password decrypts the drive which is what I’m hoping for with a Linux distro, rather than having to decrypt the drive and then log in

  • @DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
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    32 years ago

    Personally, I’ve been running Debian everywhere (both on my servers and for desktop use) for a few years and I’ve found it much more reliable than Ubuntu. Sure, the repos tend to be somewhat out-of-date (unless you’re on testing, which I’ve started using more and more and have yet to experience any actual problems with), but most of the time it makes no difference and if I really need the latest version of something I can just spin up a Docker container.

  • @fly_paper_love_maker@lemmy.ml
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    42 years ago

    I’m running NixOS on my laptop and I really like it though I haven’t been able to get Resilio going. It’s challenging sometimes but when I have things the way I want them I have a great sense of order. So it’s the most satisfying Linux I’ve tried.

  • @s20@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    It used to be Fedora, and I still want it to be Fedora. It was solid, stable, cutting edge, and easy to work with both on the command line and in the super-up-to-date Gnome desktop. DNF is great once you make a few tweaks, I don’t care about systemd, and it supports all of my hardware with basically no tweaking right out of the box. And the Anaconda Installer isn’t all that bad once you get used to its idiosyncrasies. I’ve been a distrohopper for like 15 years now, but I always end up hopping back to Fedora. Or I did, anyway, but with IBM-RedHat’s shenanigans as of late, I’m looking for a new home. Current thoughts:

    • I used to run Arch (btw), and could go back to it, but I’d prefer something more brainless to maintain (Arch isn’t hard to maintain - check updates before you install, be careful with the AUR, it’s golden - but I just don’t have the spoons anymore). It’s actually what I’m running on the laptop I’m using to post this.

    • I’m not going to use Ubuntu or anything else involving Snap because I hate dealing with Snap (YMMV - I know it has its fans, but I don’t like the way Canonical is handling it’s stuff there, and I only have room in my depression-addled brain for one universal package format).

    • I love the new Debian, but the Gnome desktop is already out of date, and it’s just going to get farther behind. I have to decide if I want to give up cutting edge Gnome in favor of holy-Mary-Mother-of-God stability.

    • Some up and coming immutables look very interesting; blendOS and Vanilla OS in particular, but also OpenSuse Aeon. Just not sure I’m ready to go immutable, old grognard that I am.

    But seriously, RHEL - just re-open the source code, thanks, you asshats.

    Edit: I really need to learn how to proofread before I post.

    • @Professorozone@lemmy.world
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      12 years ago

      Maybe you can help me. I have a computer hooked to my TV. The usage is 99% displaying YouTube and 1% displaying other internet content. It is running Mint. Getting YouTube to come up takes an eternity. I’m wondering if a different distro would fix this. If so, which one would be best? I need it to run Firefox well because I want to use the ad blocker. Ideas?

  • @cow@lemmy.world
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    12 years ago

    Alpine Linux, repositories contain most software for a desktop and server, minimal base system, fast package manager. I would only recommend it to an advanced user that does not use proprietary software as most of it will not run because it is linked against glibc but alpine linux uses musl libc.

  • Cosmonaut_Collin
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    12 years ago

    I love Kubuntu. Plasma reminds me of windows 10 layout which I prefer over the windows 11/ Mac drawer layout.

  • dinckel
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    42 years ago

    I’ve tried basically every reasonably maintained distribution, and keep coming back to Arch. It just feels right. And it just works right too. The package manager is excellent, and that is one of the things that makes or breaks any distribution for me. I also love that it comes with nothing, so you know what you get, and it’ll be setup how you want it. With other major distributions, I spend a considerable amount of time removing things first, which is something I just don’t want to do.

    I’ve been trying out NixOS recently. I really appreciate what it is trying to do, but the complexity of nix-command is quite overwhelming