• The_Lurker@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 days ago

    Assuming you want a distrowar, leftacenter said it best, whatever you use is best. Assuming you want a recommendation, Fedora or Mint.

    I run OpenSuse Tumbleweed on my gaming desktop and Fedora (KDE spin) on everything else, including my 88 year old mother’s mini computer plugged into her TV. My friend, who just jumped ship from Windows due to multiple install fails of Win11, runs Mint and loves it.

    I’ve done enough to just want things to work. Not touching Arch, but love their wiki. No more kernel configs for me.

    Bona fides (early on I distro hopped like crazy). I’ve used: Slackware (my very first distro in 1998) Red Hat (after I gave up fighting X on Slack) SuSE, OpenSuSE Fedora Ubuntu and derivatives (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Hanna Montana Linux, Christian Linux, Satanic Linux (had to install it over Christian Linux)) MX Linux Mepis Linux Mint (both Ubuntu derived and Debian derived) Debian Gentoo Sorceror and Lunar AntiX Damn Small Linux Tiny Linux Puppy Linux Knoppix Mandriva Scientific Linux Gecko PCLinuxOS CrunchBang Source Mage OpenWRT Raspberry Pi OS System Rescue Kanotix SLAX SteamOS

    Plus: Android & Lineage FreeBSD OpenBSD QNX OpenSolaris

    And: Free DOS DOS Windows 3.11 - 10, NT, and 2000 (Win 2000 was the most reliable version of Windows, Win 7 was the best) Apple DOS Macintosh System Software 4 - 10.1 Atari DOS Atari GEM Desktop (loved the ST)

    Finally: Haiku

  • crankyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    23·
    1 year ago

    I use Arch, btw, but I don’t consider it the best (yes I do.) I could easily transition to Fedora, for example (I would never do that,) and be completely happy (I would rather continually hit my head with the metal stapler gun on my desk.)

  • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
    7·
    1 year ago

    NixOS. My entire config is source-controlled and I can easily roll back to a previous boot image if something breaks like cough Nvidia drivers. I also use it for my home router and all self-hosted services.

      • dwt@feddit.orgDeutsch
        2·
        1 year ago

        Out of all the ways that I have tried in the past, to reproduce not just the initial state, but also the ongoing changes of a disto (ansible, saltstack, chef, bunch of Shell scripts) — nix is by far the shortest. With all of these technologies I would never have dreamed to do this for a single Maschine. But now it’s not only possible, but actually gasp enjoyable!

        Mind you, if that is not the problem you want to solve, maybe install just the nix package manager in addition to your distribution, and learn to enjoy it without having to run your whole distribution this way.

        • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
          2·
          1 year ago

          You misunderstand! It has also turned into basically a hobby (and recently, a job, lol) to manage nix configs.

          Those 19k lines are clean, well-structured and DRY, and do describe every little thing about ca. 30 machines.

  • UNY0N@linux.communityEnglish
    62·
    1 year ago

    Bazzite just works, it runs every game I have with zero fuss, it’s easy to run Windows programs / emulators / local LLMs, AND it’s basically unbreakable.

        • OnfireNFS@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          Bazzite has a KDE version too. I think it is more popular then the GNOME version of bazzite actually. At least according to the results of the latest steam survey

          • PolarKraken@programming.devEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Yep I use KDE-flavored Bazzite and actually forgot GNOME was even offered! It works deliciously. Came over from Windows last winter finally and boy, the UI alone is just so much nicer.

            • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
              4·
              1 year ago

              I had avoided KDE for years due to some multi-screen resolution issues back in the day.

              I’d be running gnome, and install a half dozen plugins to make it look and feel closer to Windows It was just a personal preference. Every other update some plugin I was using would be broken. I’d replace it with another plug-in or uninstall it and wait for a fix. Fight fight fight fight fight fight. Some number of years later I tried KDE again, and I realized that it did exactly what I was trying to do in Gnome but it did it out of the box.

              I don’t have anything against Gnome. The same way I don’t have anything against OS X’s “window manager” or even Windows 11’s “window manager” they’re just not my preference.

              Bottom left navigation, thin, stacked app indicators, bottom right tray. Fractional scaling, widgets.

  • bold_omi@lemmy.today
    4·
    16 hours ago

    I do not consider Arch the best. Artix is better because is is systemd-free. I have not switched yet.

    Edit: I switched in July. I use Artix now, and prefer it.

  • peterg🇺🇦@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    5 months ago

    CachyOS with NiriWM. Cachy is Arch with none of the install drama. The performance tuning makes it blazing fast on older hardware. Installs with no bloat.

    Niri is superior to Hyprland in my opinion because it’s a scrolling tiling WM that is super intuitive and fast.

    For server workloads, however, not much beats pure Debian. It’s stable, well supported, and has a huge package library.

    • determinist@kbin.earth
      1·
      3 months ago

      I run CachyOS on my PC and Debian (12/13) on my servers. Everything you say is dead on.

      Perfect set up for me.

  • dhampirdamsel@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been enjoying EndeavourOS over the past three years. It works wonderfully out of the box at default settings, and was really easy for me to use and set up to my liking with minimal know-how needed.

    It also works really well on the variety of machines I have in my home. My desktop, modded Chromebook, and my husband’s laptop.

    It’s allowed me to get more familiar and confident with the command line, and enough so that I’ve switched to Sway from XFCE (and previously KDE).

    • aging_horse@programming.dev
      1·
      5 days ago

      I’ve installed it on my Pi 5 with KDE Plasma Bigscreen. I have RetroArch, FEX, Jellyfin, and VaccumTube on it.

      Yes, there are easier ways to do what I wanted to, but I wanted to see if I can push it to this extent and now it’s so stable that I don’t have to bother.

  • jakeCubes@lemmy.zip
    3·
    1 year ago

    Can’t say it’s the best, but I love Alpine. It’s light, fast, versatile and easy to use, runs on anything, and despite it being used mostly in containers and VMs, it makes for a great desktop distro aswell. :)

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
    3·
    4 months ago

    Using Linux is not a dick measuring contest (and man I hate these threads asking “why is your distro the best?” - it feels like trolling and sowing division and grief to me. A bit like asking a mother “What is your favorite child?”.)

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      Ah, so you think your distro’s not the best. (jk).

      As a recovering/relapsing distroholic, I feel like these threads are great for discovery. (And whimsical fun. Because you’re right, that it’s not a contest. So knowing this, can engage with the question playfully.)

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Tried CalculateLinux or any of the other Gentoo respins?

      Toorox was the best Gentoo respin. Nothing more than a pure straight gentoo respin. Sabayon was superb before they started to try too hard. Redcore started to try too hard too. Calculate did a little bit of try-hard, but managed to retain enough modest sanity to remain good (at least, still true of the last few times I saw it). Even Funtoo started to go a little wonky.

      But if you ever start to think Gentoo’s too easy and not taking up enough of your time, you can always go the other way, and jump ship to Exherbo.

        • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          I’ve tried Exherbo more times than I can count, but never managed to make it my daily driver. It really needs that kind of commitment to make the best of it. With Exherbo, you’ve really got to go from 0 to >9000, with nothing between, becoming a developer of it straight away.

          And yeah, +1 Gentoo+binhost. Though I do miss the USE=“-*” approach to gentoo (like I did in 2011(ish)), adding things only as needed, per package. Great education. And keeps the system very tight to just meet needs, and no more.

        • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Oh, and also…

          Would I leave Debian behind for it?

          No need to leave. There’s BedrockLinux, or just distrobox.

          ~ for the latter of which I was shown this article (titled “I stopped distro-hopping because this tool lets me run everything at once”) earlier today on libera.chat from someone who know’s Bedrock’s been my daily driver for over a decade, with Bedrock being how I ended my distro-hopping, and DistroBox being another way to end distro-hopping. ~ We’re now ((at least) two ways) past the days of having to pick just one distro. ;D

            • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              Hrmm. While I’ve never bothered with containers, I don’t see why bedrock wouldn’t work in a container. Could be easy to test… set up a container with whichever distro, and try run the BedrockLinux hijack installer script on it… Don’t blame me if somehow it escapes the containment and eats your whole system … (~ I don’t see why/how it would ~ should be safe ~ but like I say, I don’t have experience with containers.)