I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I’m learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?
RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.
Debian just works.
Interestingly Debian was the distro that gave me the most greif out of the box.
I think linux distros are a coinflip on if they like your hardware or not, sometimes it feels like they just don’t like you individually as a person.
When I use fedora for example, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. It’s in theory not any more complicated than debian, but I’ve never had good luck keeping a fedora system healthy.
With Debian, usually the best troubleshooting tip I can give people is try installing testing instead of stable. Sometimes the kernel in stable is just too damn old for the hardware you want to install on.
I use Debian and Mint. As others have said, it’s because it just works and I don’t have to screw with it.
For me it’s openSUSE Tumbleweed on my Desktops/Laptops and openSuse Leap on my Servers. The killing Feature for me was the propper BTRFS integration with Snapper for seamless rollbacks in case I borked the system in some way.
One “downside” for me is the mix of Gnome Settings and Yast on my Desktop. But I like yast on my servers for managing everything (enabling ports in firewall, network config, enable autoamtic isntall of security updates, etc.). Also openSuse is not that common, so sometimes it is hard to find a solution if you have a distribution specific question.
Personally never looked to closely into openSuse Build Services (OBS). But I know some people who really like it.
I am using Bluefin, based on Fedora Silverblue. I realized that I was already exclusively using flatpaks for everything except one random app, so I thought why not go all-in?
Haven’t had to worry about updates or system breakages since, and it’s been great so far.
I used to use Debian Stable, but since doing SysAdmin work I’ve just become used to the way Fedora / RHEL does things.
Gentoo, because if it exists - compile it.
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The fricking AUR
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Nothing I don’t _actually_ need
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Pacman
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Everything is the latest version available–ALWAYS.
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ArchWiki
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Arch is the best, the arch wiki is massive, pacman is just amazing, no nvidia drivers bullshitting, and rolling release has only broken one thing once, life under the arch is pretty great
Also PKGBUILD’s are the superior packaging format. Back in the day people use to talk about preferring debian or redhat based distros based on how much they liked debs or rpms. Building packages on Arch is easier than pretty much any distro I have ever tried to build packages on.
I recently needed to build newer versions of some packages for Debian. Now, they’re go based so the official packaging is super complicated and eventually I decided to try and make my own from scratch. After a few more hours of messing with the official tooling I start thinking “there must be a better way.”
And sure enough, after a bit of searching I found makedeb which allows you to make debs from (almost) regular PKGFILEs. Made the task a million times simpler.
Arch wiki is the best! I reference often, even though I’m generally applying the information to other distros
I’ve been using (X)Ubuntu for ages. I just wanted something that “just works”. Tired of too much tinkering and there’s plenty of (non commercial) support. Mixing it with i3 as my window manager.
Roast me ;)
Since I was tired of distro hopping I just use MX Linux.
Since I mostly use computers for entertainment these days I keep coming back to Bazzite. It’s fast, stable, kept up to date, reliable, and “just works”. I’ve created custom rpm-ostree layers to faff around, but it’s not actually necessary for anything I need.
I used to keep a second Kubuntu Minimal partition around but I realized I just don’t need it. If I wasn’t so happy with Bazzite, I would probably go with openSUSE or Endeavor.
Debian. Truly the universal operating system. Runs on all of my laptops, desktops, servers, and NAS with no fuss and no need to keep track of distro-specific differences. If something has a Linux version, it probably works on Debian.
Granted, I am a bit biased. All of my hardware is at least 5 years old. Also came from Windows, where I kept only the OS and browser up to date, couldn’t be bothered with shiny new features. A package manager is already a huge luxury.
I know. Stop worrying about your computer and install Debian! It just works. It updates without a problem.
EndeavourOS is the best because.
It’s currently on my system and said system hasn’t burst into flames yet, so I’m too lazy to change it.
Also, its space themed which makes it automatically the coolest.
Fedora Atomic because I don’t fucking care what package manager and whatnot sits underneath.
I just wanna relax in my free time and not worry about all this fucking nerd stuff.
Touching grass > Troubleshooting a broken system
Arch users here, just touched grass for the first time. Felt like bloat, had my lawn paved.
Fuck lawns!
Have you considered native pollinator meadows, moss gardens or clover? They have an actual use for nature too, are pretty much zero maintenance and are not just eye candy 😉
I use debian cause it just works.
I was a Nix user (more specifically, nix-darwin user) but after being away from the computer for like one year (to study for the university entrance exam), I completely forgot how to use it and resulted in erasing the computer. Nix/NixOS is fun, but it was too complicated for me.
ubuntu for similar reasons
Debian stable.
Everybody think they are a special snowflake who needs bleeding edge, or a specific package manager or DE or whatever. Truth is 99.99% do not. They just like to believe they do, claim they do, try it, inflict self pain for longer than they need, convince themselves that truly they are, because of the pain, special.
Chill, just go with stable, it’s actually fine.
Edit: posted from Arch, not even sarcasm.
As someone who ran Debian Stable for a while, this is not a distro for “99.99%”.
First, Debian, while very stable in its core, commonly has same random issues within DE’s and even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along.
Second, a release cycle of 2 years is actually a giant and incredibly noticeable lag. You may love your system when it just releases, but over time, you will realize your system is old, like, very damn old. It will look old, it will act old, and the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date.
This isn’t just programs. It is your desktop environment. It is Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks like Bottles, which will feel like insane workaround you wouldn’t have to have with a better fitting distro).
It is the damn kernel, so you may not even be able to install Debian on newest hardware without unsupported and potentially unstable backporting tricks.
Don’t get me wrong, Debian is absolutely great in what it does, and that is providing a rock solid environment where nothing changes. But recommending it for everyone? Nope.
I feel like a lot of your points were true at one point, but are becoming lest relevant.
For one, at least with XFCE, I found myself not really running into DE bugs.
Also, I don’t think two years is as obnoxious anymore. During the era of the GTK 4 transition a couple, it drove me nuts, but now that a lot of APIs like that have stabilized, I really don’t notice much of a difference between Debian Testing and Stable. I installed and daily drove Bookworm late in its lifecycle on my laptop, and in terms of DE and applications, I haven’t noticed anything. I get the feeling Debian’s gotten better at maintenance in the past few years - I especially see this with Firefox ESR. There was a time where the version was several months behind the latest major release of ESR, but usually it now only takes a month or two for a new ESR Firefox to come to Debian Stable, well within the support window of the older release.
Also, I don’t think Flatpaks are a huge dealbreaker anyway - no matter what distro you’re using, you’re probably going to end up with some of them at some point because there’s some application that is the best at what it does and is only distributed as a Flatpak.
Frankly, I probably am a terrible reference for gaming, as I’m a very casual gamer, but I’ve found Steam usually eliminates most of these issues, even on Debian.
Also, the official backports repository has gotten really easy. My laptop had an unsupported Wi-Fi chipset (it was brand new), so I just installed over ethernet, added the repo, and the install went smoothly. There were a few bugs, but none of these were specific to Debian. Stability has been great as ever.
In conclusion, I think right around Bookworm, Debian went from being the stable savant to just being an all-around good distro. I’ll elaborate more on why I actually like Debian in a comment directly replying to the main post.
I might disagree with 99.999% like you - maybe I’d put it in the 50-75% range.
As a KDE fan, I had some bugs on some devices (like on one of the laptops, wallpapers did not install correctly and the setting to always show battery charge didn’t work) even on Debian 12.
XFCE is well-known for stability, but seems to be increasingly irrelevant for the average/newbie user because the interface looks outdated and configuring is relatively complicated.
Interesting you mentioned Firefox ESR - iirc, even at release the version shipped with Debian 12 was considered very old, prompting many to install Firefox as a flatpak. Two years later, it’s two years older.
Flatpaks are good and suitable options for many tasks - no argument here! But some things are just better installed natively, and there Debian just…shows.
Steam is a godsend, but there are many non-Steam games and, importantly, programs out there, and launching them through Steam often feels like yet another bloated and slow workaround; besides, you cannot choose Wine over Proton, and sometimes (granted: rarely) you may want to use Wine specifically.
To conclude - it’s alright to choose Debian anyway, it is good! But I just feel like newbies and casual users could save a lot of trouble and frustration simply going with something that doesn’t require all that - say, Fedora (non-atomic), or OpenSUSE, and then go from there to whatever they like. There are plenty of distributions that are stable, reliable, but without the tradeoffs Debian sets.
If you feel like stability is your absolutely biggest priority ever, and you have experience managing Linux systems - by all means, go Debian. But by that point you’ll already know what you want.
Debian Stable actually updates Firefox ESR through the typically on by default security channel.
The current ESR version in there is 128, which is about a year old, which replaced the 115 that came with Debian 12 by default.
The newest ESR, 140 just came out 2 weeks ago. 128 still has 2 months of security updates, and 140 has already been packaged for sid. I have no doubts 140 will come before those 2 months are up.
Now the KDE thing actually sounds like it sucks.
Oh, didn’t know, thanks for sharing on the Firefox side!
even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along. … the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date. … Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks
I already posted on this a while ago but that’s is a recurring misconception. No distribution, literally 0, provides all software to the latest version or to the version one expects. Consequently IMHO it is perfectly acceptable to go beyond what the official package manager of the distribution offers. It can be flatpaks, am, build from source, etc but the point precisely is that the distribution is about a shared practical common ground to build on top of. A distribution is how to efficiently get to a good place. I also run Debian stable on my desktop and for gaming, I use Steam. It allows me to get Wine, yes, but also Proton and even ProtonFix so that I basically point and click to run games. I do NOT tinker to play Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, Clair Obscur, etc and my hardware is well supported.
So… sure if you consider a distribution as something you must accept as-is and NOT rely on any of the available tools to get the latest software you actually need, can be games but can be tools e.g. Blender, Cura, etc, then you WILL have a tough time but that’s the case for all distributions anyway.
TL;DR: a distribution is the base layer to build on. Its package manager, on Debian and elsewhere, is not the mandatory and sole way to get the software you need.
