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.

KurtLandis

For my daily driver Ubuntu with some extensions. It seems to install and run with no gymnastics. I have Kubuntu running on a laptop that is pretty stationary, I wanted to get a little familiar with KDE. I was watching a YouTube video and it said CachyOS was supposed to be really easy Arch derivative to install and use. I did not find it so. For one thing it requires Secure Boot to be disabled. The machine I was experimenting with is BIOS locked with Secure Boot enabled. It seems like most Linux Distros will boot with Secure Boot enabled, they have the shim. CachyOS will not. I think most Desktops and some laptops can have the BIOS lock disabled physically. This Thinkpad (T560) cannot. The maintenance manual addresses BIOS lock with unknown password. Solution: replace the motherboard. Everything works as expected so far except trying to boot an OS without Secure Boot.

KurtLandis

geek Older SODIMMS are not that bad. I was looking at DDR3L 1600, 16 GB was like $44. If I were looking for DDR5 DIMMS, hoo boy. What I did find interesting was looking at AMD bundles at Microcenter, they have a Ryzen 5 7300X3D, Asrock AM5 motherboard and 16 GB (2 sticks) G.skill Flare X5 memory for $299.95. One piece of G.Skill single channel memory by itself is $249.99, marked down from $599.99(!) AMD CPU with onboard graphics & new motherboard for $50? Something seems funky. Memory makers - Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix are posting record profits.

ilikeme1

I have been messing around with Debian at home for my Plex server lately. Use Ubuntu at work for a few things too.

Somewhat-Reticent

Some use a USB flash drive and boot into RAM for live testing.
A bit slow to start, but then testing may proceed at speed.
Some tools facilitate generating a custom image. Refinement iterations.
Maybe even carry a toolbox or clone(s) while mobile. Demo or Fix.
Community support comes in a variety of personalities.

toolman1990

I am now currently using Zorin OS 18.1 which I like better than Linux Mint. Zorin OS takes full advantage of UEFI/Secure boot on computers that support this technology where most Linux distributions distributions do not even bother to fully implement acting like those technologies do not exist. On my Dell laptop it shows the Zorin OS Icon in the bios screen during boot up. It is a very nice polished Linux operating system with multiple customization options along with having automatic light/dark theme along with a night light to reduce blue light.

Hydraglass

I’m on Rocky Linux 10.2 on most of my systems that regularly get updated, I have a few other things running of course - Raspberry Pi OS on some RPis, Ubuntu with Docker for my Plex server, but for my regular home desktop, my fileserver PC, and my home laptop it’s all RockyLinux 10 - I “grew up” in the Red Hat/Fedora linux environment for the better part of 15 years and then moved to the CentOS version of RHEL around 2010 and of course when it got “corrupted” by RedHat I then moved to Rocky Linux builds of RHEL - so essentially I’ve been in the RedHat “ecosystem” for now close to 30 years, and I’m generally comfortable with it. I have run Mint on a laptop with no major issues and with having used Ubuntu and RPi OS which are also Deb based I’m comfortable with the Debian way of doing things as well.

Caveat - I’ve never gamed on Linux - I’m a console gamer. I also do very little in the way of multimedia on Linux - we have a Win 11 desktop with Adobe Creative Suite and After Effects that is primarily my wife’s desktop that I use for multimedia type things - video editing, etc. (I do regularly use Gimp on my Rocky machine for photo editing).

ElQuintron

Still on Garuda Linux, still happy. 😉

GoRaptors

I’m on Bazzite there are some weird things if playing overlong in a game,
where Discord starts acting funny…and of course I’m on NoVideo so not getting as much FPS as I could either.

But I’m def part of the cult now, no turning back! Fuck Windows!

Somewhat-Reticent

GoRaptors part of the ~~cult~~ anarchy now

( Just 😈 sayin’. As much unity as you get 😼 herding cats. )

Donut417

As I stated earlier in the thread I use Ubuntu on my Plex server. At the end of last year, beginning of this year I moved my PC to Linux. Started with Ubutnu but had issues due to Nvidia drivers. Moved to Mint, thus far really liking it. Am considering looking for a GPU, probably of the AMD variety. As the issue I had with Ubuntu were related to WAYLAND and it seems most distros are moving to WAYLAND.

toolman1990

Donut417

Donut417 As I stated earlier in the thread I use Ubuntu on my Plex server. At the end of last year, beginning of this year I moved my PC to Linux. Started with Ubutnu but had issues due to Nvidia drivers. Moved to Mint, thus far really liking it. Am considering looking for a GPU, probably of the AMD variety. As the issue I had with Ubuntu were related to WAYLAND and it seems most distros are moving to WAYLAND.

Linux Mint and Pop OS seems to be the top two recommended Linux distros for people who have NVIDIA graphics cards since they seem to be very temperamental on Linux.

Donut417

toolman1990 In my case I have a 20 series card, and from the light reading I did, I think its specific issues with those cards. I think newer cards probably work better. Of course AMD likely works the best, but my RX5700 was feeling a bit long in the tooth, and while the 2070 super isnt much faster it has DLSS, which is something I wanted to play with.

KurtLandis

I’m using bog standard Ubuntu with a handful of extensions. I do have MX running on an old ThinkPad (T410). MX seems like a reasonable choice for older machines.

urbanriot

I’ve been on Linux Mint XFCE on my Linux PC for about a year and it’s been a really good experience, synchronizing my Edge bookmarks with my Windows PC, adding little system resource widget to the taskbar, and all sorts of customizations that have it feeling almost like Windows 7/10/11.

My only issue is a recent update caused some video issues where things aren’t scaling properly but I haven’t had time to dig into that.

My opinion with running Linux full time is you have to be ready for peculiar issues that might arise once in a while that have complicated or difficult fixes, issues beyond what you’d ever see in Windows.

On my pen-testing laptop I run BlackArch since it also defaults to XFCE and I have the same GUI workflow as I get on Linux Mint so it’s efficient for me.

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