What Distro is everyone using and why do you like it?

ElQuintron

I'll start this one, and may have a few more comments later, I'm using Garuda Linux mostly because it's based on Arch Linux, which I like, but am too lazy for Mainline Arch, and has very good Wine and Proton implementation. Installing proprietary Nvidia drivers was fairly painless too.

I'd also like to start a Linux Desktop thread as well, like we had in the old place.

sempergoofy

I need to upgrade my work desktop which is currently CentOS 7 (now out of support). I will likely go to Rocky next. Not sure if Rocky 9 will run on my current processor or not given the architectural level set done by RedHat 9 whose sources Rocky uses. I know my travel laptop won't run 9 (the laptop is old) and would have to go to Rocky 8 on it for the short remaining life of 8.

I suffer RedHat 9 at work on servers, and gawd it awful.

ElQuintron

Before I returned to finance as my main career I started reading through the Red Hat Certification book, but I didn't get very far.

sempergoofy

It was tempted to reply with a big RedHat bashing post. But that would be thread jacking.

I was formerly an openSuSE fan, until they started that Tumbleweed b.s.

ElQuintron

I don't feel like that would be thread hijacking. Now... if people were dumping on other people's distros that wouldn't be cool.

GadgetsRme

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a System 76 Galago Pro laptop. Its pretty simple and easy to maintain, which suits me being retired. Every upgrade has been trouble free. I do have Live patch enabled.

dfrandin

Started with Slackware circa 1995.. Then, over the years, have tried Debian, Redhat, RHEL, and a few oddball
distros. Up till 2010, when I retired from a 20+ year sysadmin career, these had been just putzing around with at home, as my day-job was 98% Windows based. Since Ubuntu 7.04, I've been a fan of Ubuntu, and despite my
hatred of their trying to stuff those infernal snaps down our throats, I still like and use Ubuntu, currently KUbuntu 24.04..

Heat84

Linux Mint. I don't use my PC much, so I can't remember why I like it.😂

cypherstream

Pop OS on an older Latitude laptop from 2018 ish. Though any of my server type stuff in Proxmox are Ubuntu 24.04 LTS based. I always liked a debian based distro and the apt package manager.

My main tower is Windows 11. I have an Dell XPS15 running Mac OS Sonoma (don't know the legalese of discussing that here, but see r/hackintosh on reddit).

Then the little latitude that could... its about 14 inch, but makes a great console / admin to my proxmox and networking stuff.

Thank goodness for Firefox sync so they can all browse the web the same way.

ElQuintron

cypherstream Does your Latitude have gpu? I have an Older XPS that I kept Windows on, mostly because of the Intel/Nvidia GPU combo.

cypherstream

ElQuintron No its just Intel. Its an old Buisness laptop we got rid of at work. It doesn't even have USB-C. It still uses the big round Dell power adapter. It DOES have a built in RJ-45 port though!

My XPS15 is using Intel graphics too, and that one has a 4k screen. It has a smaller round dell power adapter but it also has a USB-C port and it will run and charge off that, or I can run it through my Dell Dock and get external monitors and peripherals working on it,

Somewhat-Reticent

I tried Live ISOs for a while and learned a little about Life with Linux.
("Desktop Environments", "packages", etc.)
Eventually found one that best serves my "use case" - so far. Which doesn't need much.
( The one that forced Mint & Ubuntu to step up their service game. )

GeekGirl1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I use my PC to test software before it's installed on a server I help manage. The OS needs to match.

I'm less than thrilled with the graphics drivers. I have an NVidia graphics card. The proprietary NVidia drivers crash - but that's due to NVidia and not the OS' fault. From what I've read, NVidia drivers crash on several Linux distros.

The generic Ubuntu nouveau drivers don't scale correctly and look soft on a desktop display.

I also have a laptop running Linux Mint.

Heat84

GeekGirl1 I have an Nvidia GPU and I run Linux Mint and I've never had any problems. But the GPU is a 9800 GT, which is 20 years old.

ElQuintron

GeekGirl1 I'm less than thrilled with the graphics drivers. I have an NVidia graphics card. The proprietary NVidia drivers crash - but that's due to NVidia and not the OS' fault. From what I've read, NVidia drivers crash on several Linux distros.

I find Nvidia drivers have to be advertised as a feature of the OS in order for them to work properly. I have no idea whether or not Nvidia's own Open source drivers will perform better in this regard. Garuda/Nobara/PopOS seem to have this down, but they all advertise as being friction free with Nvidia GPUs.

GeekGirl1

ElQuintron My concern is the CUDA driver support. My folding@home project - (the focus of the effort in Team Helix is powered by the CUDA driver in my GPU.

It works fine in Windows 10 or 11. The Ubuntu generic driver is not supported by the folding@home tool. It needs the real driver to work.

ElQuintron

GeekGirl1 It works fine in Windows 10 or 11. The Ubuntu generic driver is not supported by the folding@home tool. It needs the real driver to work.

Understood, I haven't used Ubuntu in a long time, but would installing Nvidia's proprietary driver on Ubuntu resolve this? (last time I did it, it was a huge PITA so I don't know if that's a good solution for you)

taraf

ElQuintron Depends which system you're asking about 😉 My laptop's on Arch, my wife's laptop is on Tuxedo, my gaming rig is on Arch, my homelab is on CentOS Stream (running freeipa as a canary build, because one of the systems I manage at work is a rhel idm host, but also because having freeipa+radius in home is surprisingly handy), and my lab jumpbox is on Fedora. We don't count the Steam Deck, but that's in the mix too

I have not a lot of love for RedHat, but we use them at work so I don't get a choice in the matter. But I don't like Canonical any more than RedHat, so you takes your poison

GeekGirl1

ElQuintron That's what I did. Installing any version of the proprietary driver crashes Ubuntu. By crashing, I mean the X11 windows manager hangs with a blank screen.

I then have to boot into a terminal (GRUB recovery mode). Once in, I replace the NVidia driver with the generic one and reboot.

ElQuintron

taraf I have not a lot of love for RedHat, but we use them at work so I don't get a choice in the matter. But I don't like Canonical any more than RedHat, so you takes your poison

I spent a long time with Manjaro (Arch derivative) before moving to Garuda, (another Arch derivative) so I'm all in on Arch related stuff for home PC and Gaming. I tried Nobara (Fedora) and MX Linux (Debian/Mint) but the longer I use Linux the more I prefer Arch... but I don't know what others' situations are so I'm not going to ask anyone to dump their current distro if they have a working setup.