what's your current linux distro?

wanting to hop into the world of linux on a dual boot method (one of my favorite games unfortunately cannot be run on linux at all, and it’s a gacha. I don’t want to gamble with my account being banned, so I’m keeping windows for it specifically.) this’ll be my second go at it, I used Pop!_OS briefly but had some issues with wifi and didn’t love the GNOME layout. I have a new distro picked out, but I just was curious what other people are using in this community. was also wondering what made you fall on your current one.

and maybe as some bonus questions, what are some distros you’ve tried but didn’t like? what about a distro you want to try eventually? I’ve seen distrohopping is a thing, hahaha.

JoMiran,

My first choice is Pop!_OS because my graphics cards are NVidia, but you said that you don’t like their DE. My second choice is LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). It is boring and stable and gets out of your way.

ArcticAmphibian,

Try Debian + KDE. It’s a good combo imo - both stability and modernity.

Successful_Try543,

Seconded. I use Debian with KDE btw ;-)

heygooberman,
@heygooberman@lemmy.today avatar

I’m currently on Arch, but my first distro was Linux Mint. Linux Mint eased my transition into the Linux world, as it looked and behaved almost the same as Windows. You can avoid terminal commands completely thanks to the GUI apps that the Mint team includes for updating, installing, and removing packages.

I switched to Arch because one of the benefits of Arch is that it forces you to become familiar with the various different components that make up a Linux distro. When you install Mint, pretty much everything is included out of the box. You may have to install a few proprietary drivers here and there, depending on your HW config, but overall, you get everything you need to start using your computer. You don’t have to concern yourself with a lot of things. Arch is different. Even with the archinstall command that you can use to simplify the installation process, you still have much to do post-install. Audio drivers, package manager, Bluetooth, productivity apps, customization options, WiFi drivers, to name a few. And even after that, when you start daily driving Arch, you still may encounter issues that would require you to do some troubleshooting via reading the Arch Wiki or looking for similar problems on Arch forums. It can be a headache at times, but I personally feel it’s worth it.

Gamers_Mate,

I use Linux mint I also tried Lubuntu but it felt slow and clunky and when I tested Puppy linux it seemed okay but I like being able to boot up my laptop without using a usb every time.

mlaga97,

Used Ubuntu for ~15 years, switched to NixOS a couple months ago and haven’t looked back.

I’ve made a habit of clean installing all of the desktops/laptops/servers in my life on the first point release of each LTS (i.e. 22.04.1). That would mean there was time for the dust to settle and for me to tweak my install/customization scripts from the previous LTS.

So since I knew I was gonna have to modify my Ubuntu install scripts to work with 24.04 anyways, I fiigured it was a decent time to try and see if I could get the install scripts converted to a nix config instead, and it ended up working a treat.

Strayce,

Opensuse because I like green.

FatLegTed,
@FatLegTed@piefed.social avatar

Endeavour and KDE.
Like the look of it. Easy to update, no bloatware or games reinstalled.
If I do swap again it'd probably be back to Mint. I had some issues a while ago and moved to MX. That worked well but there was so much guff. Tried Endeavour about a year ago and have been here ever since.

CaptObvious,

Mint on a couple of old laptops. Debian command line on a hobby server. Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi.

Didn’t love Arch (too complicated for my skills at the time). Fedora was okay and would do in a pinch. I remember liking OpenSUSE, but went back to Mint for some reason that I don’t remember (probably driver- or repo-related).

I’ll likely never try it myself, but I’ve known new users who did ok with Zorin.

arran4,

Gentoo, after a 15 year break where I used Ubuntu / Arch. Might try NixOS or something similar.

KDE for desktop env.

Lumelore,
@Lumelore@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’m currently using Kubuntu, although I’m planning on switching to Debian or maybe NixOS at some point. Kubuntu works, but I don’t like snaps, and even though I’ve removed them I’d rather just not ever have to deal with them.

I first started with Mint, but didn’t like gnome/cinnamon which is why I switched to Kubuntu, but other than that it was fine.

neidu2,

Debian on my servers, LMDE on my laptops.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Debian

I’ve tried different distros and liked them, but tend to come back to Debian.

mustbe3to20signs,

Happily running EndeavourOS with KDE for like 3 years without reinstall.

BlueEther,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

I’m currently on Neon on the desktop (and macOS on the mac). On the servers it nearly all debian and a couple of BSDs

Over the last almost 25 years i’ve almost exclusively ran KDE when not being stuck with windows (for various reasons). Ive heard good things about Arch, but I’m getting far too old to be bothered with a semi-complex install (yes I have run Gentoo for several years, so I think it is an age thing).

hellfire103,

I have a few machines, which run:

  • Raspbian Bookworm (arm64) with IceWM - Raspbian is the only desktop RPi distro that works out-of-the-box. I chose IceWM because it’s fast, light, customisable, and I can make it look like it’s 2004.
  • openSUSE Tumbleweed with Xfce+Bspwm - I keep going back to openSUSE. It just works. As for the desktop, I wanted Xfce but with tiling.
  • Mageia 9 with LXQt - I just needed something lighter than Fedora Xfce, as this machine only has 4GB of RAM.
  • FreeBSD with i3 - Thought I’d give BSD a try. I was pleasantly surprised.
  • Gentoo (WIP) - I’m just throwing random distros at my MacBook until something sticks. Gentoo is fast and can control the fan without me having to git clone and compile the drivers (ironically).
  • crunchbang++ (i386) with Openbox - This is a mid-2000s MacBook, running one of the few Linux distros that actually boots on it.

Some distros I tried but did not like were Pop!_OS, Slackware, Zenwalk, Freespire, Redcore, Fedora Atomic, ArchBang, and antiX.

Sone distros I’d like to try are Qubes OS, Clear Linux, CRUX, Kwort, Paldo, Exherbo, NuTyX, T2, Chimera, Adélie, Frugalware (no new ISOs since 2016, but the packages are still updated), Dragora, Parabola, Hyperbola, PLD, KANOTIX, Calculate, ALT, ROSA, and AUSTRUMI.

The reasons I have not yet tried these are mostly down to my limited hardware and the complexity of some of the distros. With others, it’s often down to WiFi drivers not existing for my proprietary cards. And then there are also a couple of distros from Russia, which I feel I can’t trust at the moment.

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