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

ElQuintron · 2025-01-23T15:39:38+00:00

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.

antdude

In the beginning, Red Hat. After v7, Debian. All because of my friends who use Linux. 😉

real_aurgathor

dfrandin

dfrandin Started with Slackware circa 1995..

Mostly the same, except I probably started a couple of years earlier. Back then I was using a ST-01 SCSI card, so I had to build my own kernel to include the driver for that.

Not much linux after that, but recently I started to install various distros under VMWare -- Slackware 15 and Ubuntu 24 are among the few that installs and runs fine -- well over half that I tried either would not install, or had some issues later.

Since Windows seems to be going to be a "control OS" that seem to know what's best for users, how things should look and work, I would like to ditch it. However, I have yet to find a Linux distro that I fully like. Too much eye candy instead of a simple but functional UI, for one. I was using X on some unix variant in the early to mid 90's and that was a very simple yet very usable GUI without any excess eye candy.

Somewhat-Reticent

real_aurgathor Too much eye candy instead of a simple but functional UI

( Gnome from RedHat maybe? Depends on your version of "simple", of course. )
Just don't conflate a Desktop Environment with an OS, like distro promoters often do.
( Some even promoted images whose only different was the desktop background. )

There are many OS images ( some with multiple DE options ) available for live testing.
A few even carry modifications during testing into installation - or new image generation.

taraf

real_aurgathor I was using X on some unix variant in the early to mid 90's and that was a very simple yet very usable GUI without any excess eye candy.

Most likely CDE. The closest you can get to that these days is XFCE, which considers itself a spiritual successor to CDE.

Like you, I cut my teeth on Slackware back when SLS was still a viable option. As I said upthread, I'm on Arch now - but as I also said upthread, they can all work pretty much however you want them to and it really boils down to which package manager you like. XFCE, if you want to try it, is available in all of the mainstream releases as far as I know.

ElQuintron

taraf XFCE, if you want to try it, is available in all of the mainstream releases as far as I know.

I used Manjaro when XFCE was the only supported DE on it, I don't mind it, but these days most machines ship with enough processing power for something a little more hungry.

real_aurgathor

taraf

taraf Most likely CDE. The closest you can get to that these days is XFCE, which considers itself a spiritual successor to CDE.

I installed a few distros recently under VMWare, including some versions of slackware with different window managers, and I think the one I've used during the early to mid 90's was TWM, and the modern version of that is now Fvwm.

I'm not sure why, but I'm having some issues under the latest version of VMWare:

certain distros will not install
certain distros will install but won't run
with Slackware releases, certain window managers other than xfce and kde will install, but may not run.

taraf

real_aurgathor I'm not sure why, but I'm having some issues under the latest version of VMWare:

Have you tried a different virtualization platform? My homelab's built on top of QEMU/KVM, with virt-manager as a front end, and it works really well with everything I've tried. I have thought of going with Openstack, since that's what we use at work, but haven't made that change yet. Haven't run into a distro that simply won't work, but have run into issues trying to convince some of them to use UEFI instead of legacy BIOS in a VM.

Somewhat-Reticent

real_aurgathor Booting a live image avoids "virtual" complication.
( Keep It Short + Simple )

real_aurgathor

taraf Have you tried a different virtualization platform?

I've tried Virtual Box, and got nearly identical results. For some reason, some OSs have issues running their GUI under VMs.

For example, couldn't get the latest version of Solaris to work (could not get beyond commandline), but a couple of older releases that had to be obtained via archive,org worked fine. Go figure....

no_strings

Was a diehard Slacker for a couple of decades but switched to Ubuntu Server on my home server and Linux Mint with XFCE for laptop and desktop. A couple of Raspberry Pis. FreeBSD underpins the OPNsense firewall. Helped out with the Southern California Linux Expo for many years. Life got in the way for a couple, then I made it back for 2023. 50% I'll make it this year.

david3

Debian, with i3 window manager. My raspberry pi also uses Debian/Raspbian, so it's a similar environment. I used to use CentOS on my servers years ago, but I switched those to Debian, too, to make it standard.

HooRU

Mint Cinnamon GNU/Linux.

I've stuck with it for years now.

I'm open to trying others, but why bother? Serious question.

Somewhat-Reticent

HooRU I'm open to trying others, but why bother? Serious question.

Since you asked, MX_Linux has an unusually effective toolset and good support.
It's what forced Mint to up their game. ( Due in part to AntiX involvement, but why quibble? )

WalterDnes

I recently switched from Gentoo to Devuan (Daedalus 5.0). Devuan is a fork of Debian without systemd. “apt” works just like in Debian. Gentoo was becoming a pain. Chromium took 18 bleeping hours to build!!! Also, I was spending lots of time building the tools to build the apps. gcc is one thing. But now every man and his dog has their own personal build tools (llvm, clang, meson, yada, yada, yada) and I need to build them all to have the apps I want.

Donoreo

WalterDnes Gentoo was becoming a pain. Chromium took 18 bleeping hours to build!!!

I ran Gentoo in the old days when you booted from CD/DVD and then had to build everything, there was no prebuilt option at all. I had the system compiling for 5 or 6 days.

TheAnalyzer

As my daily driver I use Manjaro + KDE. The Desktop in my office is running Tuxedo OS.
Other laptops use Arch + KDE

Basically I use everything arch /arch based. Mainly because of the WIKI and the aur.

Reason why I use Tuxedo OS is because it came with the machine 😛 and it handles the multi monitors well.

schettj

Ubuntu (cli/server 24.04 LTS) mostly because a million years ago I left Centos and at that time Ubuntu was shiny and new, while now I know how to configure and run basic servers with Ubuntu without much thought. Yay? Anyway, have it running on two mini PCs (one expensive at the time intel NUC and one cheap $120 one from Amazon) that are home automation servers, and a vps in the internets somewhere hosting my email/web/blog/whatever.

I’m retired, I don’t want to work too hard on this crap nowadays, so inertia is setting in.

brydry

I have Pop-os on my main pc for about 5 years now and Opensuse Leap for a long time before that. I switched to Pop because Opensuse wouldn’t always do the simple things like, install a printer, without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. Switching to Pop has made my Linux life much easier as a daily driver. I can boot to Win11 but rarely ever do.

My “server” has Proxmox for a VM playground. I’ve been trying out a bunch of other distros. I also have an older laptop (4th gen i7-4720) that dual boots Win11Pro and KDE-Neon. Neon works well here has been really smooth.

Donoreo

I just installed ChromeOS Flex on an older laptop (one I could force Win11 onto). I need to play around with it more. I know ChromeOS is sort of a grey area, but I did install the Linux extensions (Brave installs the Linux version of the browser for example).

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