If you had to pick one distro to use for the next five years, what would it be? Bleeding edge / stable? Rolling / periodic?
What would you prioritise and why?
Debian. The answer is always Debian.
Arch. Been 13 years on it. Aur and Wiki are the best resources any Linux distro have.
I’d go with Ubuntu LTS - it receives updates for 5 years and security updates only for another 5 years. In other words, it is explicitly for your use case. Additionally, it offers kernel live patching as a free managed service, which nobody else offers afaik.
Fedora. It’s so easy to use and so stable. Unfortunately my bleeding-edge NVIDIA graphics card does not play nice with it, so I have been stuck with arch.
Mint. It just works.
Want to live on the wild side? Use the Debian based version.
Debian is kind of too big to fail. Maybe NixOS if you want something that will almost certainly gain popularity in the future.
Don’t think though that distros are the layer which you want to look at. Lots of stuff happens at the level of DEs, drivers and individual apps, which sure is preconditioned by the distro you choose but at the same time not that strict of a thing. You can get anything working provided you have the time.
x11 is still in its last round before retirement it seems, using Wayland is going to future proof what you’ve got majorly.
My 2c. Feel free to critique.
No Tumbleweed fans? :/
They (openSUSE) make a lot of default decisions for you, but it’s really close to 0 maintenance if you lack the time (or just cannot even for months at a time) & still a rolling release, zypper, etc.
(°▽°)/
🙋
Arch and I love socks
Also Arch, but barefoot
Reproducibility. If I’m spending months configuring my setup then I want it to stay exactly the same and easily rebuildable even if I switch/upgrade my computer. NixOS is the only answer.
I would 'free but folks need to learn some Nix basics before the jump in headlong into bad community recommendations like starting with flakes. It’s hard to just drop into Nix without some commitment.
This! I’ve got 7 machines running NixOS already and using Linux on so many machines is only manageable with the reproducibility NixOS provides. Whenever I lay my hands on a new server, PC, laptop, tablet or phone, I just add a few lines for it in my config, run a single nixos-anywhere command and it’s good to go. Syncing changes is also just two commands: git pull && nh os switch. Been using NixOS for a year and a half and it still can’st stop to amaze me
After 20 years of Gentoo, I don’t see myself switching in the next five. Comfortable, capable, flexible.
18 years here (started 2008, god, has it really been that long?). And I only had to reinstall once in that time (my own fault). Even new systems are just installed from snapshots of my existing systems.
It’s really low maintenance once it’s set up. It almost never breaks, and for breaking changes you get news through the package manager months in advance, and if you actually need to fix something it’s always possible (easy downgrades, deploying of patches, etc.). I’m also using some Arch and Ubuntu on the side and stability doesn’t even compare.
Spending time thinking about which distro to use is time that could have been spent learning how Linux works as a whole.
idk bro I’ve been running the same arch install for the last 6 years and I will run it for the next 5 as well.
I’m a newbie, just put Mint on an old laptop and I’m blown away; it really does just work!
I have been thinking about trying Arch next because it’s so well documented. I don’t know maybe put together a little home server or something.
Do you think it’s appropriate for a relative newcomer? I’m excited by the documentation but also a little intimidated by it! I suspect I’ll need to ask for help but would worry about not having read everything there is to read first.
Try it on something that you’re not relying on for your daily activities. It takes some time to learn and you’ll make mistakes. But it’s a great exercise for learning and as a hobby.
Lovely! The hobby aspect definitely appeals, though so does the idea of getting everything running well! Have you heard anything about Manjaro as a user-friendly version of arch? I guess it may cut against the arch ethos of “precisely what you choose to install and nothing more,” but I feel like if it’s any good I could get the sort of ease-of-use that I have with mint while having the option to dabble and experiment more with the guidance of the arch wiki available?
Arch was definitely tricky to get right for me at yhe beginning.
You often have a choise between multiple similar tools for each job and you only know the pros and cons or what works and what doesn’t after trying.
I did 3-4 fresh installs before getting it right for my needs and hardware. (for example, btrfs with buttermanager requires a completely different fs layout than btrfs with snapper, I picked buttermanager first, didn’t like it after 2 weeks and had to do a fresh install)
For that it’s handy to have a good backup of your important data, ideally outside of your pc, just so there is no risk of fucking it up somehow.
I definitely recommend using btrfs and using it’s snapsotting feature through snapper or timeshift or something else, again, multiple tools for the same job, different pros and cons.
That way you can roll back after fucking something up. But make sure to try it out a couple of times before the case comes where you have to rely on it, so you’re sure that it does work and you know how to properly do it.
I prefer arch cause I was able to customize it more and I love the up to date packages and the AUR. But there is some additional maintenance you have to do like once or twice a year and you have to pay attention to news for manual interventions when there is a breaking update. So it is way more involved than other distros. Yet it has been rock solid for me and should be very reliable once you know your way around.
But tbh. as long as you are completely happy with mint, there is no reason to change anything.
I am very happy with mint. I can imagine making arch more of a project and having a lot of fun with it, and as I said, the wiki really seems like a big draw! I probably wouldn’t swap my daily driver from mint for a while, but I’m gonna put together a desktop to maybe run 24/7 and run a little plex server or whatever. I am interested in the possibility of even running it headless…maybe even streaming games from it to a laptop (I don’t have a very good space for a desktop set up in my home right now…too snug!).
Anyway thanks for your thoughts. Arch does seem really cool but maybe I should stick with something a bit more beginner friendly for a little longer, and come to arch when I’m more “ready,” or when my new little obsession with linux has solidified into a habit or whatever!
e: anyone have experience with manjaro as a user-friendly version of arch?
Been using Debian stable since Hans reiser got locked up.
It’s fine and it will continue to be fine.
Kubuntu. It just works for me. It might not have the latest plasma , but i really like kubuntu.
NixOS. I came a long way and it combines the best of modular, customizable and immutable.
