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.
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Devuan + Trinity Desktop
Moved over there since Debian switched to Sytemd. It is boring, dusty… but it works and stays out of my way.
Bazzite.
Super easy install and setup. Ready to start installing games at first boot. Just a wonderful OS to use.
Mint Cinnamon. All my hardware works, and it can do the few things I require my work PC to do. It even remembers things like my default audio device - something Ubuntu refused to do for years.
I like the way Pop!_OS looks. Not gonna pretend it’s the best. But as far as default UIs, it clicked with the most. Default gnome seemed too spartan and all of the Windows-like DEs remind me too much of Windows. Which I don’t like. If that makes sense.
I wanted the awesomeness of pacman and like the way Gardua comes pre-configured as well as packages it installs from the get go. The only thing I hate about it is the “gamer” universal KDE theme it comes with.
Man, I wanted to try Garuda a couple of weeks ago and the thing would never even boot into the live environment. Went ahead and installed Cachy OS and it’s been great.
I dunno what to say. It 100% worked on install for my laptop, even the weird ASUS stuff that can be finicky.
Mint Cinnamon.
It’s easy, stable and gets out of my way.
I haven’t seen the need to dostro hop for years.
EndeavorOS. It runs smooth, i dont get errors, all my games work, the taskbar and notifications work like I would expect them too. Switching from Windows 2 months ago, I cycled through a few distros but they all were giving something up until i found EoS.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for years and I like KDE, so I’m using Neon. Ubuntu is familiar, easy to fix, easy to find out how to fix, and neon doesn’t come with snaps.
My distro isn’t the best, but it’s at least a good starting point: Debian + XFCE.
Was using Ubuntu from about 12.04 through 20.04, but it is getting too snappy and support contract happy for me these days.
I’ve discovered that I don’t much care which distro I’m using, it’s the DE that matters most. I have Fedora GNOME, Debian GNOME, and openSUSE GNOME running on different machines. I can’t really tell much difference until I enter the command line or package manager, and even then, it’s the front end of the command that changes while the backend stays mostly the same. Flatpak has made the difference between distros even fewer.
IDGAF if it’s the best (mint), it was easy to install, easy to transition to from Windows, and in 6 months hasn’t given me any trouble. I just wanna use my computer.
Yeah I was gonna say, I dunno if my distro is the best (Arch BTW) but it’s the best for me. Doesn’t give me any nonsense and lets me tinker as much as I want. Other people just want their OS to get out of their way, which of course is equally valid. Whatever works for you!
Fedora, because it just works, it’s familiar, and I’ve got things to do.
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.
Because it uses the best desktop environment (GNOME) and im the most familiar with
(I wonder how many downvotes i will get)
Hopefully none, why do you like Gnome? I thought it was okay, but I really love KDE more. I don’t hate Gnome. It seems really good for anyone who uses a touchpad or touchscreen.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I can tell you what I personally love about Gnome.
I like that it’s Spartan. I like that it looks good without me having to customize a thousand different settings.
I like that It has client side decorations, so every window doesn’t have to have an obscene, chunky, mostly useless title bar.
I don’t miss every single application having 100 different options packed into a menu bar. Once you get used to it, you realize that it was mostly getting in the way the whole time.
It’s just a really streamlined workflow for 98% of what you do. The problem is that 2% where it’s too spartan and God do you wish you had some options.
But I also think KDE is a great desktop environment. If I were more of a gamer I’d be using KDE. I think XFCE is an excellent desktop environment for aging hardware and Windows converts. It is very much a matter of taste, Use cases, and your preferred workflow.
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.
