What are people daily driving these days?
What are people daily driving these days?
I'm between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?
I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)
OpenSuse tumbleweed + kde plasma for a peace of mind đ
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
I am amongst you scholars and noblemen.
Indeed there are my dude!
For laptops, I've been using EndeavourOS lately. All of the Arch goodness, but with an easy installer that handles the DE too. It's as close to "just works" as you can get while still having pacman + AUR at the end.
I still love raw Arch, but I leave that for server installs.
Same, EOS is awesome and cured my distro-hopping.
archinstall let's you choose a DE too
Not saying anything bad about EndeavourOS, because it's great, but:
All of the Arch goodness, but with an easy installer that handles the DE too.
Arch has a guided TUI installer included in it's ISO that does this too.
It does, but it's done me wrong a few times so I never recommend it. For all I know it's fine these days, but old grudges are hard do shake.
OpenSUSE TW for me. Used to be Arch but it's just too much faff for me.
Same, I've used Linux since the late nineties and know my way around but I have other things to do. TW with Plasma/Wayland is great.
NixOS user here! Fedora is a very good contender as well
+1 on NixOS. On all devices except Android phones since 2014 for me.
NixOS too. I really like having a "fresh" install every time I restart.
Arch for many, many years. Absolutely zero reasons to switch. I used to distro hop alot back in the day but I donât bother with that anymore. I need a system that works and Arch gives me exactly that.
Why distro hop from arch if you can make any distro out of it anyway lol I use arch btw
Fedora Silverblue. But when switching I had to wrap my head around the differences in the workflow of doing things. Once youre past that it's rock solid and had no issues so far.
when switching I had to wrap my head around the differences in the workflow of doing things. Once youre past that itâs rock solid and had no issues so far.
This is the case with every distro nowadays.
Opensuse Tumbleweed. A rock solid rolling release.
I'm surprised by how many people are rocking opensuse in this thread. What made you go with opensuse?
The only downside is that they don't support zfs properly, and the package selection is more limited. The community repos aren't always maintained.
Debian with KDE works great for my needs.
Fedora Workstation. Couldn't be happier.
Same, it's a "it just works" distro.
I've been using EndeavourOS with KDE for a bit under 2 years now (I think) on both my desktop and laptop. It is Arch based and easy to install. And for my home servers I run Proxmox
Out-of-the-box, Proxmox runs on Debian. That and PiHole are the two Debian instances I run.
Popos on the Framework laptop. Itâs pretty good so far.
Never omit the space
I use Arch BTW....
Joking aside I use Arch on my desktop, Raspbian on RPi1, Debian on homeserver and VMs.
I have 2 PCs running Arch currently. My SBC is running Ubuntu but that is just a print service for my 3d printer. I have a few Ubuntu & Fedora vns for testing and self study
Gentoo on desktop, gentoo on Rock64, gentoo on Allwinner A10 device, gentoo on Powerbook G4(don't ask why I have it). Ah, and OpenWRT on router.
PopOS on gaming PC Fedora Silverblue on daily PC Ubuntu Server LTS for small servers Ubuntu Desktop LTS for digital signage
What's fedora like to use? I dont see it mentioned as much as Debian or Arch.
I've been running Fedora Silverblue on nearly all of my PCs for about a year now and overall it's been great.
- Automatic and unobtrusive updates for the core OS and user apps (everything happens in the background without interaction; flatpak updates are applied immediately, and OS updates are applied at next boot)
- I can choose to apply many core updates immediately, but rarely do
- Atomic OS updates means that everything must be installed successfully or none of the OS updates are applied, which prevents a partially updated system
- Being an image-based distro, I can and do easily rebase to Fedora's test/beta/remix releases, and just as easily rollback, or run both stable and beta releases side by side for testing purposes
- Being image-based means there's no chance of orphaned packages or library files being left behind after an update, resulting in a cleaner system over time
- In the event that anything does go sideways after a system update (hasn't happened yet), I can easily rollback to the previous version at boot
Some elements not unique to Silverblue but part of its common workflow:
- Distrobox/toolbox allow you to run any other distro as a container, and then use that distro's apps as if they were native to your host system; this includes systemd services, locally installed RPMs, debs, etc.; I use distrobox to keep most of my dev workflow within my preferred Archlinux environment
- Flatpaks are the FOSS community's answer to Ubuntu's Snaps, providing universal 1-click installation of sandboxed user apps (mostly GUI based); Firefox, Steam, VLC, and thousands of other apps are available to users, all without the need for root access
My only complaints about Silverblue are more to do with how Flatpaks work right now, such as:
- Drag & drop doesn't work between apps, at least not for the apps I've attempted to use; for example, dragging a pic into a chat window for sharing; instead, I have to browse to and select the image from within the chat app
- Firefox won't open a link clicked within Thunderbird unless the browser is already open, otherwise it just opens a blank tab
- Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn't always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer
That said, I'm confident that these issues will be addressed over time. The platform has already come a long way these past couple of years and now that the KDE and GNOME teams are collaborating for it, things will only get better.
Like I said though, overall Silverblue has been a really great user experience, and as a nearly 20-year Linux veteran it has really changed the way I view computing.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's been great having a rolling release distro that I don't have to worry about breaking with updates
Manjaro kde on 3 computers in the ham shack, manjaro KDE on the media center, and guess what's on the two lap tops..you got it...manjaro KDE. Most have windows 10 dual boot on a separate drive. I haven't spent the time to figure out radio control and antenna switching on Linux so windows is still needed for radio contesting.
I have tried many and keep going back to manjaro, everything just works. The Arch wiki is awesome, and the aur has multiviewer to F1, ready to go.
Give EndeavourOS a go one of these days and compare it head-to-head with Manjaro. I bet you never look back.
Already tried it a few times. Back to manjaro.
I like Debian with GNOME
Debian Sid, mostly for ideological reasons.
I assume you mean Debian for ideology, not Sid, unless you have strong feelings about breaking toys
but is that because of the community nature of Debian, or because default it's free software only? Guessing the former, since there are other options for the latter
Yes, it's the community nature. I just love how there is no corporation behind it.
Some people also like super stable
Until a couple of weeks ago I used Fedora Silverblue.
Then, after mostly using GNOME Shell for about a decade, I (reluctantly) tried KDE Plasma 5.27 on my desktop due to its support for variable refresh rate and since then I have fallen in love with KDE Plasma for the first time (retrospectively I couldn't stand it from version 4 until around 5.20).
Now I am using Fedora 39 Kinoite on two of my three devices and Fedora 39 KDE on a 2-in-1 laptop that requires custom DKMS modules (not possible on atomic Fedora spins) for the speakers.
Personally I try to use containers (Flatpaks on the desktop and OCI images on my homeserver) whenever possible. I love that I can easily restrict or expand permissions (e. g. I have a global
nosocket=x11override) and that my documentation is valid with most distributions, since Flatpak always behaves the same.I like using Fedora, since it isn't a rolling release, but its software is still up-to-date and it has always (first version I used is Fedora 15) given me a clean, stable and relatively bug-free experience.
In my opinion Ubuntu actually has the perfect release cycle, but Canonical lost me with their flawed-by-design snap packages and their new installers with incredibly limited manual partitioning options (encryption without LVM, etc.).
Nixos for me! But my dark secret is that I also have an Ubuntu partition those things that I can't get working.
Check out distrobox. It's a way to have a Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro) container and allows you to install Ubuntu packages, even desktop applications.
It works great for when you need to install a random .deb file or follow a very Ubuntu specific step by step procedure. I use it exactly for this kind of stuff.
No rebooting needed, integrates fully with the host system, no virtual machine either.
i'm on manjaro kde, will switch soon to nixos if i understand how it all works :)
otherwise arch
Arch with Wayland and Pipewire. Running SwayWM and have never been happier with my setup.
Iâve never tried NixOS, but it looks really promising.
I usually use Fedora or OpenSUSE, which have good software availability (unfortunately not as good as the AUR). Fedora provides selinux by default, and has profiles for basically everything. SUSE uses AppArmor, but Arch doesnât provide convenient configuration for either, and only supports x86_64 (which is why I switched away from it).
EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop side of things.
Oh god so many notifications. My inbox is flooded. I only expected like 20 replies Lol
You asked a distro question on linux@lemmy.ml .
This is to be expected.
Iâve been running Fedora for years. I tried out Arch and OpenSUSE a bit this year just to see if I was missing anything, and went right back to Fedora afterward.
Not as fussy as Arch and better package availability than SUSE (for my needs at least). Also dnf is my favorite package manager despite being relatively slow.
Ubuntu. It's working and I don't have the time to try out other distros.
Why is everyone saying "daily drive" all of a sudden?
Where is that a new thing? I've been using Linux since early 2010s and people were using that term back then (and it wasn't a new term then either)
After using NixOS, I donât think I could go back to a regular distro. At the very least, maybe debian with the nix package manager
As someone who uses it as well:
Yes it is. Especially if you use Gnome. Because you can set dconf settings right in your Config.
It takes a while to remember to configure your User Account not in the normal Settings App but instead in the Config, but once you do it's amazing.
I reinstalled on my Laptop and i was back on my old Desktop with all my Programs, Extensions, Settings etc within 20 Minutes
When i change a Setting on my Laptop, i use Git to synch the Config to my Desktop and all the changes i made to my Laptop are also on my Desktop.
Also: no more accidentally breaking your system. I don't have to type random Commands in my Terminal to try and fix something and then try ans revert them. I just add the Config. If it doesn't work, i remove the Config again and it automatically reverts everything back as if nothing ever happened.
It is trily amazing
Now if only SELinux or Apparmor finally were supported.
Hannah Montana Linux, the one and only original!
Rebecca Black here, though now that Wayland is everywhere, should switch
Arch + Hyprland on my Notebook, Endeavor OS + Gnome PC (11years old PC), 2x Khadas VIM3L + Kodi (Coreelec), home server Odroid + Armbian.
<3 Hyprland
I've been using OpenSuse Slowroll basically since it released and so far am very happy with it.
Nobara these days. It's based on Fedora 38.
Install Gentoo
Never needed flatpack for last 5 years
Why not move to NixOS?
Pop!_OS on my desktop and laptop since 2020.
When it comes to distros, I am a boring man with a boring POV: I just want the thing to work with as little fuss as possible. Consequently, I'm on Kubuntu. KDE is rock solid, and Ubuntu is what I'm used to.
If/when my OS ever breaks down hard enough to reinstall, I'll probably install Fedora Workstation.
After years of Manjaro (and I still use it on most of my computers), I'm trying out Nobara KDE to see how it keeps up for gaming. It has a number of optimizations that Glorious Eggroll has compiled and seems pretty fast compared to Manjaro on the same hardware. I imagine I could do all the changes on Manjaro, but I also wanted to see how Fedora runs these days, it's been a long time since I used it on the daily.
So far, so good.
I'm using Mint, but I've avoided using flatpaks (generally downloading DEB packages directly, or adding ppa sources). It's worked pretty well so far.
I do have a handful of AppImages, but they're a bit easier to work with.
Why avoid using Flatpaks if you don't mind me asking
Two reasons: they're big, and they're sandboxed.
I was on a 5Mbit connection until recently, so a lot of flatpaks being 1GB+ was frustrating (especially when their native packages were <100MB). And I was using a 250GB SSD, which filled up rather quickly.
And it turns out I wasn't a fan of the sandboxing aspect. In theory it should be a good thing, but turned out to be frustrating.
NixOS and Debian. Probably just NixOS in the near future.
Acura MDX
Artix (Basically Arch without Systemd)
Does artix only boot without systemd or is it completely systemd-less? If it is systemd-less, how do services like docker work with that?
Most services just need the init system to start, stop and monitor them. There's no special integration needed for each of them beyond running a command, monitoring the PID, and killing the PID when it's time to stop.
If you mean the special integration of docker and podman with systemd, first of all that's only required in rootless mode and not everybody runs rootless (most users probably run root docker). In rootless mode you have to manage each container individually as if it were a standalone service instead of just managing docker. Basically you have to integrate each container into the init system, whatever that is. There are some tools that make it easier to with podman+systemd because they write the systemd units for you but you can do it with any init system. The distro mostly doesn't care because you have to do the work not them.
Endeavouros on Laptop and main PC. Loving it.
Arch + XFCE on my desktop. Have been for a while now, and everytime i try something else, I always come back to it. For my laptop, I've been using Gnome + extensions (Arch as well. That way I don't gotta switch gears and remember two different sets of commands) before i had to take it in for repairs. Was pretty good because of the mousepad gestures IMO.
Laptop and Workstation run Fedora. Servers run Proxmox.
Can't say that there is anything new and exciting. Big change for me has been that I have accepted flatpacks. I've gotten to the point where I don't care about being a purist, don't care about customizing and theming everything. I just want to use my computer.
Fedora immutable (ublue kinoite) has been so bulletproof. Moved from Arch, which is now on distrobox, so painless. Now ~ 1 year... 2 laptops + desktop, other is destined for NixOS...
I daily drive Fedora because RHEL is what my industry uses and it's good to stay on top of the technology.
Desktop: Arch KDE Laptop: MX Linux KDE
Fedora. I've been looking into fedora silverblue and vanilla os as well but I'm chilling with regular fedora for now
Arch Linux with i3wm
Fish, Alacritty, Rofi (dmenu replacement)
Garuda Linux. In just love arch, but I'm too lazy to do it myself. One day maybe
Currently driving Fedora 39
Pretty happy with Debian Testing. Frequent updates but still very stable and rock solid.
Arch + gnome but it doesn't matter at this point
Arch on my "desktop PC", Armbian on my rpi 4, Dietpi soon (tm) on my Orange pi zero 3.
I've been using Mint Cinnamon for a while now. It runs beautifully with fewer firmware issues than Ubuntu on my XPS. Even though it shipped with Ubuntu.
Debian testing. Seriously. That is reasonably easy to install and configure unlike Arch or Gentoo, but doesn't come with "user friendly" corporate crap like Ubuntu and its derivatives.
Despite the memes, Arch isn't that hard to install nowadays. The Wiki is stellar and archinstall is a thing (as well as EndeavourOS).
But Debian testing is a fine choice as well, of course.
I used Debian testing on my production servers for a long time. They say not to use it in production, but even as a "testing" release it's still more stable than some other distros.
I use Debian stable on all my servers now, though (except for my home server which runs Unraid). I don't have time to keep a rolling build up-to-date like I used to.
void linux (glibc) + swayfx + waybar + foot terminal + nushell
I was using Fedora for about a year and it was great. Nice and stable, almost everything worked out of the box. Then I goofed up an update and had to install something new, and I chose Arch. Arch is working mostly fine, of course I had to learn a thing or two about how some subsystems worked but the Arch wiki is a wonderful resource. Weâll see how long this install lasts, itâs been smooth sailing for about a month now.
If you want the cool new thing, it's Nix
I tried nix actually. Personally, I think it would make a great server os, but I do not enjoy it as a daily driver. I didn't like the fact that I was forced to install everything through nix and couldn't compile software from source.
Debian for a while, now Mint (I'm a Cinnamon freak)
I've been using OpenSuse Slowroll basically since it was released and have so far been very happy with it.
For my main computers, I've moved them all to Arch from Manjaro & EndeavorOS within the past 4 years. Though been meaning to try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed eventually. Haven't used OpenSUSE in over 10 years.
I have a laptop running Proxmox for my servers, which is debian-based but uses a modified Ubuntu LTS kernel. Great to use to try out other distros in VMs as well.
Debian Testing and Arch with KDE on the PC/Workstation.
Debian Stable on the server.
Gentoo, running pure Wayland and Pipewire, no X11.
which de?
River WM
Devuan (Debian without systemd), stable (Daedalus) with backports. Been running Debian since 2000, Devuan since 2018. I am at a point where I just want consistency and familiarity in my setup.
Edit: as far as cool new things, I have moved to pipewire for audio and leveraging a selfhosted nextcloud for web based file storage. For a personal setup (limited users) I just installed Nextcloud office which is basically Libreoffice in a browser like Google docs. I am also using mythtv with an hdhomerun for broadcast tv. None of this is really "new" but new to me. The setup of these functions has been fairly straightforward for me and I appreciate all the work these projects have put to make the setup and maintenance fairly painless.
Manjaro Gnome. It just works ;)
until your system randomly breaks in classic manjaro fashion
@0x2d @estebanlm I use Manjaro GNOME on all four of my laptops and my iMac. I have never had a random break on any of them.
well, I has been already years using Manjaro and never happened to me.
Not that it can't, but never happened to me and I hope it wont :)
Void
OS/2
Dude.
Fun fact, it took os2 5 years to implement a tcpip stack. It was like 1993 before it could do internet things
To be fair, Winsock was a kludgy mess for the better part of a decade itself.
Debian with awesome at home. Fedora with cinnamon at work.
awesome?
Garuda on my gaming desktop, fedora bazzite on my gaming laptop. Loving both to be honest.
kubuntu
kde connect wasn't working on endeavouros with sway and i wanted something easy and debian based
Nobara because I am a beginner that uses his PC primaryly for gaming
Fedora but Iâm not loving it. Due to my hardware I think Iâm limited to that, arch and openSuse.
? If you're hardware runs Fedora, it should run anything
- Laptop: Opensuse slowroll with Sway
- Home PC: Arch with KDE
- Home server: Debian 12 (headless)
Q4OS, for five years
Gentoo desktop but I have to use it over SSH a lot of the time since I'm stuck on my work macbook
I'm a Mint Cinnamon guy.
I'm about ready to hop back in and daily drive Linux again after the nightmare that was attempting debian w/KDE plasma and Wayland. I have a Nvidia GPU on my laptop and for some reason I did not have luck at all after moderate success daily driving opensuse tumbleweed and kubuntu for a while.
I'm admittedly looking to onboard myself to the gnome workflow and leave the comfort of the windows style desktop environment experience. Gnome seems a bit more polished and stable than KDE plasma but it's interface isn't intuitive to me yet.
Ideally I'll be using Debian or Arch when the time comes for me to dive back into desktop Linux.
KDE fixed a lot of Wayland bugs over the last months and especially with the upcoming launch of Plasma 6.0, so I'd give it a try again now or in half a year.
Nvidia also constantly fixes the problems with their Wayland support so it's only getting better. Debian doesn't have recent enough packages to have a good KDE Wayland experience.
Gnome Wayland doesn't support features like vrr/adaptive sync or tearing, so it isn't a good gaming experience. Otherwise it's great.
This is good information.
Yeah I imagine the struggles I had with Debian had something to do with enabling proprietary drivers and firmware and leveraging those. Before getting those drivers, the default nouveau drivers were awful, the performance was comically bad.
I'm also not a Linux power user though, so for sure any or all of the above could be meatware issues.
Manjaro KDE
cachyos
I recently switched my laptop to Garuda, it's an Arch based gaming distro. It seems to mostly work right out of the box, but I did have to tweak a few steam games to force them to use my dedicated graphics.
I guess I could go in and force steam itself to use the graphics card via env... But I only have a handful of large games at the moment. It's just as easy to set the requirement per game right now.
I usw Garuda with KDE and like it lot, even though I do not game.
Mint on my desktop, decided to try out Tumbleweed on a cheap laptop. KDE wasn't for me / wasn't reliable enough, but I'm happy with Gnome. I haven't needed to use Flatpacks though.
Might try MicroOS on the servers, I like the idea of an immutable distro so less can go wrong during updates, and I run all services as containers anyway.
Threads like this are exactly what keeps a good few of us from ever getting started. Lol. Good fun to read through though. One day I'll pick a distro and give it a whirl. Till then, thanks for the entertainment.
Not sure why people are downvoting this person. They aren't wrong that Linux enthusiast threads can make it scary for new users to try Linux out. Unfortunately, I did want to see what Linux enthusiasts are running and why they picked it, which is why I made this thread.
If you are a new user trying to get into Linux, I wouldn't recommend some suggestions in this thread as advice for picking a distro. When I was getting into Linux, I attempted to go straight into DWM/arch because another Linux enthusiast thread said it was great. Needless to say, I had a terrible time.
It doesn't actually matter distro what you pick, so long as you have fun with it and it is useable! :)
I hurt them in their safe space. I don't know why. My comment was made lightly. I read all the threads. This one read just like the last "where do I start" thread, and that was all I was saying at the time. It got me in a fight with one guy. Whatever. I'm just trying not to have a rough time when I finally pull the trigger so I read. My mistake was chiming in. Lesson learned. I'll come back when I blow up my machine i guess and let everyone tell me how stupid I was to try whatever it is I finally try. All I want is something that works and software that does what I want. I'm afraid I may be asking too much.
nixos + xmonad + xfce-no-desktop here. Its not for noobs perhaps but so stable and confidence inspiring.
I daily Windows 11... though I use Ubuntu for servers and Mint for my linux desktops (older hardware that doesn't W11).
@blotz trying out kubantu for now just swapped from gnome manjaro.
Mint for my daily driver, PopOS for my gaming machine. Happy with both.
Another one for the endevour os team. Not looking to distro hop anytime soon.
I run Guix System on my personal laptop and Project Bluefin on my work machine.
Guix is even easier to get started with now thanks to the Guix Packager , a web UI for writing Guix package definitions.
Project Bluefin auto-updates thanks to its use of container images deliver system updates. It's also just a great platform to get started writing containerized apps, since it ships with rootless Podman by default and you can easily add new developer tools using
justcommands.Linux Mint with a secondary partition running EndeavourOS
Neon is my daily driver. Planing on pop os after their new de
Qubes OS
I dual boot Qubes and Linux Mint (kinda two ends of a spectrum, I know).
Nobara on my gaming desktop, Fedora Kinoite on one laptop, Debian 12 on the other.
Neon and Arch in a distrobox container. I've found the holy grail of Linux setups. Latest KDE and AUR on a stable ubuntu base.
Fedora is what keep getting back to every time I get distro hopping fever. Either gnome or KDE It's wonderful!
The answer's always Debian. I use guix for packages, though it doesn't have as much stuff on it as nix.
Had been on pop for a while. But lately gnome shell was using a ton of ram and performance was trash, so I moved to fedora with KDE. Been great so far.
Accidentally wipes out Mint last week, but have been meaning to try out Fedora 39 Plasma. So far, I love it. I have been really busy recently, but it has been a great system so far. My SteamDeck really made me fall in love with Plasma.
I'm rocking two dailys right now. Tumbleweed and Nixos. I jabe tumbleweed on my work laptop as well as one laptop at home. Rock solid go to that I trust for all the things. I started using nix on a number of other machines at home a few months back, and I'm really really enjoying it!!
Zorin OS for now. Old kernel and stuff, but it's stable, and I like the looks more than I did PopOS!. Maybe PopOS! is cooler now with their Cosmic thingy.