Hello everyone!
A few weeks ago I've created a blog post and asked if you use Linux and why. Following this one, I would like to use you which is the Linux distro that you use and why you've chosen it. Also, feel free to share your experience and what other distros you've used along the way before choosing your current distro.
For me, it was Linux Mint for my work PC. This was my first Linux experience. I've bought a laptop that came with OpenSUSE and I've used it for some time, but then I've upgraded to a dual boot setup with Ubuntu 16.04. Now I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 with KDE and CentOS 7 for my servers.
I'm curious to hear what you're using and what was your journey as well!
Oldest comments (100)
I'm using Pop!_OS because it "just works" with my notebook's NVidia VGA (Dell XPS 9570 with Geforce 1050ti), but I'm a big fan of Elementary OS, it's really simple and very clean out of the box. Unfortunately, I tried eOS and it was really hard to set up the VGA and it was draining the battery like crazy, so I've moved to Pop and it's working great.
Another thing I noticed on Pop is that it handles things like changing to external monitors and plugging in a headset a little better, it displays an overlay on the screen to select which kind of headset you plugged in, and it's really nice.
I've always wanted to try Pop_OS and Elementary OS. Thanks for the extra info on the external monitors, because with my Ubuntu it sometimes requires a reboot in order the monitors to be detected (I'm using a docking station as wel)
I'm using a docking station too. I didn't have any problems with monitors not detecting, but I've noticed that when I boot up neither eOS nor Pop_OS remembers the setup, so I always have to hit Ctrl + P to change to the external monitor, but it's not something big for me.
Yes this does not sound like a big issue, as long as it can detect the monitors :D
Checkout deepin it is awesome
deepin is indeed awesome!
Linux Mint, it "just works" and I'm fine with it.
Yes, it is a really simple and good choice for Windows users as their first Linux distro.
I'm using Fedora, because I'm already used to it.
Back in the time I started using Linux, I was testing many distros, but they all looked almost the same (GNOME 2 with different themes). Then GNOME 3 came out and it looked really good, very different from what I've seen before. I tested it with Fedora 15 Alpha. Being an Alpha version, I expected some issues, but I was surprised because it was very stable.
Since then, I only use Fedora as my desktop (currently with XFCE). For me, at least, it "just works" most of the time and, in the few cases that I experience some problems, I know exactly where to look for solutions.
Do you often seek advice in the community or some other forum?
I usually find the answers already in Ask Fedora. But it depends on the package. For NVIDIA drivers, for example, the RPM Fusion wiki is the place to go when looking for common problems.
Thanks for sharing this!
I tried to avoid GNOME 3 / Unity, though. I found it less customizable. MATE is OK-ish, but currently on XFCE.
That's my reason to get away from Ubuntu.
At the moment I've tried KDE on Ubuntu that was my choice instead of the GNOME
I've been using Debian for about 15 years.
Pros: The projects management has been consistent for decades, the releases are about as frequent as the LTS releases of Ubuntu (roughly every two years), there's a lot of documentation both from the project and available on sites like stack overflow, and they're conservative in changes without being a retrocomputing project. The number one pro in my book however is the maintainability through upgrades, and the security that this project will not get abandoned (there are a lot of people using and contributing to the debian project, and the available and tested package set grows every time they release). The
build-depfeature of apt is amazing (if you wanted to build a program from source, there are a lot of libraries and tools you'll need, and you could discover this by running./configureuntil it stops failing,apt-get build-dep somepackagewill install for you all the tools the system required to build the package, saving a ton of trial and error and frustration).Cons: You probably won't have built in support for things you want, like laptop wifi or newer video cards (and for a lot of users that can be a total blocker). The debian project sticks to its position and doesn't include (by default) non-free binary drivers for these items, and many of the laptop wifi and newer video cards either don't have a linux driver at all or only work with a vendor supplied binary driver blob. Also, while it's certainly not intentionally ugly, they don't invest a lot of time window-dressing the UI (so you probably won't have the fanciest desktop theme when you login).
I used Fedora at work for about 7 or 8 years (Fedora 18 through 33), it worked well and tended to have much newer versions of software (releases about every 6 months, on par with Ubuntu's release cadence), but the downside was less documentation/mindshare, and a feeling like you were beta-testing RedHat's next product line for them. As a linux user, rather than a linux developer, I'm totally happy letting the next generation of improvements get debugged on someone else's machine.
My experience with Linux has been that once you find something you understand how to control yourself, you will no longer need to go distro-hopping. Early on linux users tend to install a lot of different distributions and window managers to see what's possible and experience a curated set of defaults. Feel free to experiment, but focus on developing the skill and knowledge to see something you want, and find out how they did it, then do it for yourself. You'll save a lot of time installing new OS's if you configure the one you have installed already.
Thank you for the detailed response. I also agree with you that if you find the right distro and you can control the flow, there is no need to use another one in case you just want to try it out I guess.
Totally agree. I use Fedora since version 15. Before that, I tried many other distros (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Slax, and others). Once I decided to stay on Fedora and learned it, it just feels easier to configure it the way I like. I feel I'm in control of my OS when using Fedora, and I think that is the main reason to use Linux first of all.
I've never used Fedora on my laptops or PC, but I've used it for work-related projects and I liked it because of the latest packages.
lol, I was distro hopping from about 10 years ago; and then macOS user for some time.
Now, I am back to Linux and want something that "just works", and I can spend time on, rather than just hopping.
I had got best impression on Ubuntu and Xfce, and decided to settle with it, Xubuntu actually. (I did use Elementary OS and Ubuntu with GNOME / Mate as well, but did not settle.)
Lack of official desktop env support, and bad Wifi driver anyway, I am now on Manjaro with official Xfce. (And now Wifi driver works.)
I've spent most of my time using Ubuntu 18.04 and Kubuntu 18.04/20.04, I've also tested few Linux flavours on my Raspberries which were fun and interesting to configure at the same time.
I’m exploring various distros with Oracle VB . As of now , I’ve used Ubuntu and Ubuntu Mate and Linux Mint .
Which one do you like the most?
Between Ubuntu Mate and Linux Mint , both are great but I would use ubuntu mate over Linux Mint .
Have you tried other distros?
I’m planning on trying out , PoP OS , Elementary OS and Zorin OS . I’m exploring the software and am not using them for any specific use as you’ve mentioned that you used KED and CentOS for your servers
It's fun to experiment with different Linux distros, plus you can always interact with different flavours of it in your day to day job. It's up to you which suits your needs for your personal machines.
I moved away from Linux to FreeBSD a few years back, because FreeBSD offers a greater degree of freedom. :) There isn't fights over licensing restrictions as you get in the GPL world. As such, things like ZFS and Dtrace from Sun Microsystems is the norm and default included as part of the base operating system. Jails are also a more secure and more powerful form of containerization compared to Linux cgroups, as they work more like full virtualization but still use a shared kernel and set of resources. FreeBSD also has the Linuxulator for running Linux binaries natively. The Ports Collection with FreeBSD is by far and away the easiest way to compile and package 3rd party software. All around, for the work I do, it has cut down administrative time considerably while offering better performance and reliability compared to Linux.
I've used FreeBSD but only on job-related servers and not on my personal servers that I use. FreeBSD indeed offers more freedom and people can take advantage of a lot of features.
Please elaborate. I'd like to learn, and choose my next distro. (Maybe between Fedora, Arch, FreeBSD.)
It basically depends on what you're planning to do. I'll be quite happy to try out Arch and see how it will go with the time. Fedora is considered as the bleeding edge, however a lot of people say it is stable enough so this might be a suitable option as well.
Feel free to ask anything you'd like to know.
FreeBSD isn't Linux based at all, but most userland utilities are the same. One major thing is FreeBSD doesn't use Docker or Linux based containers, instead using its own Jails system. I personally use iocage as my Jails manager, which makes things easier.
Jails on FreeBSD act more like a traditional virtual machine, where they get their own "filesystem" (a dataset from ZFS on the host), and optionally their own complete independent network stack via VNET. This means you can do things like DHCP client within a Jail to get its IP address, SSH into the jail, install any networking or other utilities, and they all "just work" without fussing around. With changing some security flags, you can even install VPN clients inside a Jail too.
For things like databases, Jails are nearly perfect! With persistent and direct access to the storage system, these high performance applications run at native speed, and act exactly as you'd expect them to if they were running on bare metal (because they essentially are, but within a security isolated environment)
I've been using the stable branch of Debian for about 9 months now, it's been a nice experience. Having relatively old packages is not as bad as some people say. Most of the tools I use for web development work just fine with the version in the official repositories. That said, there are some "non-essential" cli tools that I like to have on their latest version, and for that I use homebrew for linux.
I've never used homebrew for Linux, just on macOS. I'll check it out and see if there are some cool and useful features
At first I installed linux mint,
Then I started distro hop to ubuntu, opensuse, popos, manjaro, later I heard about Vanilla Arch
and installed it, Finally a distro that impressed me a lot, and I've never thought about hopping anymore.
But I still hop desktop managers and window managers, but I use i3wm as my daily driver.
I also tried several desktop managers on Ubuntu, but the KDE seems to suit my needs pretty well.
Yeah kde is good, it gives good alternative to windows desktop
Yes, indeed!
Xfce desktop is simple and fast. Next preferred Cinammom
Never really tried KDE for at least 5 years. What was your impression, especially of customization and bloatlessness?
The customization is pretty cool and you do a lot of things, but I find that it can be quite resource consuming compared to GNOME. The KDE Plasma looks really good compared to GNOME and there are a lot of themes that offer different features and widgets as well.
Kde will become more hungry when you start it customize a lot, I don't know about recent updates,
That is true, I'e only tried KDE on machines with a lot of resources.
What was your impression of Arch? I have never tried it at all. I am currently on Manjaro, though.
Vanilla Arch is know for its simplicity and extremely lightweight distro, basically you are building you own system,
Installation will be fun, people often say they reinstalled many times, but i have installed it only once still using it,
You can customize it however you want, this is the only distro welcomes you with an terminal
The only thing I hate is it leaves back the config files and folders after you remove the package 😑
If you wanna give it try, then these steps might help you,
Iso will be somewhere around 700mb, and installation will be like 1gb or so.
But, is it really different from Ubuntu mini / server? Is it more stable / updated?
Thanks for sharing it, Krishna! I will check this out.
Yes it is different from ubuntu mini,
I've never used any servers, bcz it's an bleeding edge, but people won't suggest Arch Linux on server, bcz the libraries very much often refresh and update almost a day, so sometimes some projects might get issues, so they often stick with centOs or ubuntuLTS or etc,
But arch is stable until unless we mess it up by downloading whatever stuff from unauthorised sites.
It has an awesome package manager yay or pacman. Install any software from terminal.
Hmm not much of data will be consumed, except vanilla arch rest all I have used comes with pre installed stuff, so the iso will be around 1.9 to 2.6 or higher, they will be heavy bloated,
Vanilla arch iso is like 700mb or so, but this thing only greets you with terminal, after booting into the iso you have to download the stuff which will be around 700 - 800 mb, later it depends on the desktop or window managers size, somewhere from 25mb - 400mb
So vanilla arch will comes around less than 2gb,
But it's an extremely lightweight distro, you can also make it bloated like others or more, bcz there are tons of support from pacman and aur repos
But the time taken will be depended on your network speed and SSD or hard drive speed, if you have a good wifi or network speed it won't take more than 10 min or less to configure, hard drive takes longer time to configure or open few packages, SSD makes it quick
No I haven't seen any crash till now, it completely depends on the packages you install, if you install from an unauthorised repos it will crash on new update,
I am currently on Manjaro.
And, I don't get why non-Debian, like Fedora, BSD?
I haven't used Manjaro yet. Are there any specific features that you find useful and also absent from other distros?
Rolling release?
After hopping around a lot, I have found my happy place in Manjaro KDE, using it for almost 4 years now. <3
KDE is really cool on Ubuntu, I guess it is pretty nice on Manjaro as well.
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