Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.
Finally time to bust this out again.
Debian for everything since it’s one of the few distros that has always been there. It’s one of the second distros to come after after SLS. Distros come and go, but Debian marches on.
Most big distros are old enough to drink though. Ubuntu is 20yo, Fedora 21yo, openSUSE 18yo, Arch 23yo, Gentoo 23yo. (I got curious and a bit carried away…)
But sure, Debian does have them beat by roughly 10 years (31yo).
Yepp. Started using Debian around the Ham/Slink releases, haven’t found any reason to change yet.
Oh wow yeah I started around the same time. 1998 was a magical time. I stated with a boxed copy of OG Suse but switched to Debian like 6 months later then never switched again. I learned a lot from the thick manual that came with Suse but once I tried Debian everything just clicked. It’s like you learn the Debian rules and philosophy and any package you work with makes sense.
Arch. Purely because of the Arch Wiki. I honestly think it’s the easiest OS to troubleshoot as long as you are willing and able to read every now and again.
I use NixOS, it appealed to me because i got to a point where i liked minimal distros like arch and void and i could build them up exactly the way i like them to be, however i didn’t like how i would have to go through that whole process again if i wanted to do a reinstall. With NixOS i can still craft my OS the way i like it, with the benefit of it being saved as a config, and easy to restore. I did make my own post-install script for void but NixOS is a more solid solution compared to my own janky script. I’m hoping to finally settle down on this distro. I guess the upside to the huge learning curve with nix is that it’s a good motivator to not abandon it because it would feel like my efforts to learn it would go to waste lol.
Everything-in-my-life-as-code FTW
Besides everything else you said, I especially love how you can store entire bash scripts in the nix configs, and even populate pieces of said scripts with variables if you so desire.
Also, if you run
nixops, it’s much easier to work with if your dev system is also running NixOS.Yeah, i’m realizing more and more how convenient those variables are. I recently started using gtklock for example, a screenlocker that also has separate modules for extra functionality, which are also in nixpkgs, but the problem is that you have to explicitly specify the path to those modules in the config. So i wrote the config inside of home manager, and pointed to the modules path with the pkgs.foo variables. Worked like a charm.
What do you use nixops for?
It’s for deployments and managing many environments/machines from a single CLI interface. You can do all sorts of things like push configs based on labels/groups, gather real-time data/logs, scale up/down. It’s great when you have a lot of VPS/VDS/VMs to manage and you’re not using a platform’s specific management tools.
I mainly use NixOS as a barebones backend, keep it as minimal and hardened as I can, then most of the projects/apps that run are done through something like Docker or k8s. So for me, it’s all about managing the underlying servers that provide the tools needed for a project to operate.
The tool itself is undergoing a pretty big redesign at the moment, but you can get the gist of it from the overview in the manual of the commands.
https://hydra.nixos.org/build/115931128/download/1/manual/manual.html#chap-overview
That’s fair enough, I also host some applications on a k8s cluster, but for the underlying OS I picked talos instead.
I use NixOS and Home Manager to keep my configuration as code and shared between my PC and laptop.
The only VM I have running NixOS isn’t actually doing all that much, and I don’t mind ssh-ing into it to apply new configs from time to time.
NixOS. My primary reason for switching was wanting a single list of programs that I had installed. After using ubuntu for 5 years I just lost track of all the tools and versions of software that I had installed…and that didnt even count my laptop. Now all my machines have a single list of applications, and they are all in sync.
Bazzite because I get an immutable install that won’t let me accidentally fuck it up. It just works. All necessary drivers for my dock and peripherals are already installed and configured. It’s the very first time in my decades long Linux excursion that I have a user experience that is similar to windows in that sense, but without the enshittifcation of windows.
I genuinely enjoy video editing, gaming, and surfing the web on my laptop when it’s running Bazzite.
I haven’t tried Bazzite yet, but I feel the same about the other ublue flavours.
I’m the most productive I’ve ever been. Tweaking everything was fun for a few years, but now I just need a distro I can trust, that comes with the tools to do anything.
I see rebases to Bazzite DX are available now. I might give that a go today.
Not exactly a product from ublue but something in the same line:
Secureblue because of the reasons aforementioned for the ublue images where things are really darn rock solid out of the box AND because Linux is fundamentally behind in security and this project is trying to mitigate some of the big flaws.
Fedora strikes a good balance for me. I come from arch and opensuse. I like the stability of fedora, but I like that it also gets updates faster than Debian. Most software I have found has Fedora considerations.
However, I have been using Ubuntu LTS for my self hosted media server.
Fedora because it’s boring in the best ways. Curious about NixOS though.
I run SteamOS on desktop hardware because I hate windows and it solves almost every Linux gaming problem out of the box…
Is there an official build for general release, or are you running a steam image built for a handheld?
Yep! It’s the SteamOS 3 beta… It’s got some bugs and some weirdness to it, but it’s not terrible at all
debian is bestian
I use Mint. I had a phase with different distros, but when I had my son, and he turned 3, I installed Linux Mint for him. Little by little, I started using it myself. Today my son is in the military service and I still use Mint.
I use popos because I own a system 76 and it’s what I’m used to.
Slackware: because I’m old and arch is too trendy.
Geez, I haven’t heard of someone running Slackware in at least 15 years. I mean, I know it’s still around, I just haven’t heard anyone say they were running it.
It’s much more… manual than others, I’ll admit. For me anymore it’s a labor of love.
Yeah. I remember, lol
👍🏻 Slackware was my 1st distro. It was before kernel 2.0. Now I use windowslike girly distros…
Let’s be honest: nearly all of them now are windowslike girly distros…
Fedora. Reason is probably that im used to it now. But if I have to make some points why then there they are:
- nice balance between being up-to-date and not bleeding edge
- new technologies. Fedora always pushes new technologies first such as wayland, pipewire, systemd… I like it. I dont have to wait 2 years until x distro rolls it. I get it now, sometimes with some problems but nothing that i couldnt manage.
- When im trying out some software or building from source the documentation often includes specific steps for fedora (among debian, ubuntu and arch). Its really nice to not be a niche distro and get instructions tailored for fedora. Also some pre build packages are often in deb and rpm. -im used to dnf and its few handy commands like dnf history etc. Im sure that other package managers offer similar solutions but i know dnf and it feels like home
Guix because I love the idea behind Nix but Nixlang is the most painful language I’ve ever had to type out.
How long have you used it and how is it?
I’m pretty curious about those kinds of distros, and don’t really like how nixos is completely hosted on github (and all the drama that constantly comes from the community, and the bad documentation for many things, …).
However, guix seems such a niche project that I feel like it can’t really be used.
About a year and a half.
To be honest it’s not “easy” to use. The guiding principle behind mainline packages is that everything has to be built from source, so most somewhat unpopular things are missing from the mainline channels.
To use it like any other distro you’re going to need to learn how to write packages fairly quickly. Luckily the main draw of guix is the entire OS being based on guile so once you get a little under your belt you can just read the specs from other channels to see how a package is written.
Took me maybe a week to start writing guix packages.
There’s also The toybox
Some additional nice things about guix:
Everything is guile. The system definition, the service definitions for shepherd, everything.
Shepherd is hands down the best init program I’ve ever used. It’s just incredibly simplistic but because it just runs the guile definition you give it, you can do some incredibly complex things that systemd etc. can do as well.
The OS documentation is built into the distro, with “info guix” you get reams of configuration information for the distro without ever needing to look it up online.
