Pop/cosmic let’s go!
As someone who builds a computer, installs whatever seems like the most stable LTS distro at the time with the longest support period, and only switches to a new one when the current LTS expires, I’d like to thank all of you for being my beta testers. Your support means the world.
I use Arch BTW full-time for work and personal for about 3 years now and haven’t had any issues at all.
Around 10 years here. Some issues, but much less time wasted in total than if I had done “dist-upgrade”s the whole time.
Yeah, people like to think that bleeding edge means “untested”. As if your OS was directly receiving the dev’s
git push…I wonder if there’s a package manager that does just that, I want the real bleeding edge!
The only issue I ever had was Arch ARM changing the naming convention for network devices and making me have to plug the first Raspberry Pi that I upgraded into a monitor to debug what was going on.
This was annoying for sure, but less annoying than using a 6 year old Python version like the Red Hat Enterprise Linux at work…
I see your 6 year old python version and raise you RHEL5 running python 2.5 in 2022.
That thing didn’t even have a base Exception class.
been using Artix and Arch for two years, for work and play, no issues
I think bleeding edge linux is probably more stable than windows
I worked with someone who uses arch on his work laptop
One day it just died and he had to spend a day or two setting it all up again
I mean, its not common, but it happens
That doesn’t happen. When it breaks, it’s always recoverable, and it very very very rarely breaks (>10 years Arch user here, never lost sleep about it)
I’d guess that keeping configs in Ansible would reduce that setup time to an hour or two.
I used to do much distro hopping coming from gentoo and settling down with endeavour. My tip for all of you: use lvm for everything outside boot, root and swap (vms, home, games). That way a complete reinstall just takes minutes.
Yeah, I ran arch through college, it broke 3 times over 4 years, basically each time because Nvidia updated. Now that I don’t have the time to fuss with spending a couple of hours chrooting in and fixing Nvidia stuff, I just swapped to endeavorOS sway community edition (and made sure none of my PCs have Nvidia anything in them) and haven’t had an issue yet.
Yep, the only time things have broken in Arch for me has been with Nvidia driver updates.
Yep. Funnily enough, never really had any issues with the drivers on a desktop, only on mobile, mostly switching between integrated and discrete. But after messing with them on my laptop for a few years, you better bet my laptop was only running Intel integrated and my desktop runs on amd.
Skill issue.
I’ve been using Arch (btw) for a few months now and have been really enjoying it. I am scared that something is going to break though. I have Timeshift and BorgBase backups but I would rather not deal with that tbh. I haven’t tried Debian yet but I think I might make it my next distro. However, it’s going to be really hard to give up the AUR and Arch wiki.
Consider btrfs for your next install then. Won’t boot? Fine! Just select your last automatic snapshot in grub.
I like Fedora for my desktop. Close enough to upstream to get the latest features, but not so bleeding edge that it’s unstable.
I’m wondering where people like you and me, using non-LTS but not rolling distros, go on the OP pic.
I’m on Nobara, and if the installation ever dies, i will probably install pure fedora. My previous experiences were all with debian, which drove me crazy as a gamer because when playing current games you want your system to be a lot closer to the bleeding edge of the knife - debian is more like a chain glove for holding it.
Yeah same. Its a little annoying having to wait for certain updates, like when a new application can be built from source on arch, but i’d have to rebuild a core dependency from a scratch to get it working on fedora.
But ive been using it for years, and even if i broke the system, ive always got it working again, which is saying something.
And it’s Linus’s distro of choice.
Yeah, but he has stated that he really doesn’t have an opinion. He just happened to install Fedora on the family PC a long time ago and now he neither wants to deal with two separate distros, nor switch the whole household over.
I mean that and being open enough of a distro he can change the kernel out decently often, but not so open things like throwing a new kernel in arch leads to poking at other things.
This is the way.
I use Debian testing for… 20 years? I had serious problems with it. Twice. Nothing unrepairable, but still I needed another machine with internet to fix the problem. I suppose that is ok stability-wise for 20 years.
Sounds like the exact reason that official debian backports came into existence.
Used to be me. I ran Debian Unstable for years. Got tired of it breaking. I installed Stable probably 7 or 8 years ago and never looked back.
This but new Linux users. They get attracted to the worse newbies distros every time
What’s the best one, apart from Mint?
Min- oh.
I don’t really know a bunch of distros, but I helped convert some normies so here’s a list of pain points I rather not have as a first experience
- No rolling distro. While some people may never see an issue in their life, some may see it right away. Bad first impression (Someone insisted on starting on fedora, then noticed the hard way that the current Nvidia drivers were incompatible with the shipped kernel)
- easy Nvidia driver install (only for gamers on Nvidia)
- Has a gui app store
- has a common package manager that is often shown in tutorials (like apt. You always see exemple apt commands)
- sudo is configured (Sorry Debian)
- doesn’t have a DE that tries to revolutionize UX
New users are dumb, so it needs to be easy for them
The typical advice is:
- Mint
- ElementryOS
- Fedora
- Pop!
- Ubuntu (unpopular with Extremely Online people, but is pretty good at the Just Works for normies)
- Debian Stable for older hardware
Fedora
really? I haven’t touched regular fedora, how is the “vanilla” version different to derivities and other “vanilla” distros like debian or arch?
Yeah, vanilla Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome flavors, with good hardware support and a large community. For noobies, a good, familiarish desktop environment and comprehensive hardware support are really the most important things for them not to immediately bounce off.
Yeah, vanilla Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome flavors, with good hardware support and a large community.
I have never installed Arch, but I guess it doesn’t; but debian does come with various DEs , including KDE and Gnome.
Arch can be great and you can install whatever desktop environment you like, but there are just too many concepts for the average new user. Making a USB install stick is “difficult” enough to make a lot of people give up.
Debian is great, and my personal preference but it tends to be a bit behind on the latest hardware support, particularly for laptops. It’s easy enough to install whatever drivers you need, but again that can be just one thing too many for a new user.
Debian is great, and my personal preference but it tends to be a bit behind on the latest hardware support, particularly for laptops.
ah ok, so fedora is generic and more up to date for new hardware, but debian lacks … cutting edge support, otherwise, it’s just as good for newbies.
And arch is still wiki based to install, even if you use archinstall.
Just use nyarch /s
I choose the bleeding edge because nothing else cuts it.
I have this, but in Windows 11. I’m stuck.
TFW Windows drops everything you’re doing to automatically install unstable updates
Best feeling ever.
Same here. I want to ditch Windows 11 so badly, but I tried Linux Mint and I lost half my frame rate in games. I guess if you use a Nvidia GPU on Linux then you’re shit outta luck sadly, as I heard the reason is poor driver support. If I did something wrong I’ll gladly try Linux again but I don’t have high hopes it will work now :(
Did you install the actual nvidia drivers or were you just using the default nouveau driver?
You need to change to a newer kernel when you use Mint for gaming. It has a GUI for it.
But personally, I’d just install Bazzite instead, it has all gaming- related optimizations built in from the start.nvidia drivers are good performance-wise, you should have installed the proprietary ones because mint comes with nouveau, which does not perform well at all. if you did that, let’s talk about L3 cache. ironically gaming on low end hardware is worse on linux because apparently proton needs quite a bit of that cache. my previous cpu (9600kf) had 9 MB and it was hopeless, current one has almost 100 and performance is not an issue anymore.
btw pop os comes with proprietary nvidia drivers so you don’t need to think about it all, but because they ship it with their half-done cosmic de, can’t recommend it to newcomers anymore…
Tumbleweed and Nvidia Proprietary drivers worked really well for my games. There is Bazzite that’s ready to go for gaming too.
Opensuse Tumbleweed is my way to go and I am pretty happy. Also do have an NVIDIA Card…
I’m just waiting for win 11 to fail catastrophically in me. That will definitely give me the time to install Linux… checks notes… Debian?
Yep that’s my plan, whenever my Win11 install becomes broken, I’ll make the switch, laggy games be damned! Maybe we can install Arch so we can fit in with the Linux crowd and finally say “I use Arch btw”
What games specifically? Some distros require a bit more driver installation, so maybe that was part of it (was running an rtx 2070 super on linux until a few months ago on linux, didn’t have any issues with frame rates). The poor driver support is mostly on laptops, as they sometimes have issues switching between integrated and discrete graphics.
Obligatory reference to NixOS.
I’ve been very happy with Endeavour / Arch on my desktop for the past year until last week. Issues when waking up the desktop, Plasma panels disappearing, resolution forced to the minimum, etc. I rolled back the kernel to the LTS version and it fixed a few things. I can’t complain because it’s not my main computer but it’s not ideal.
Gentoo
*/* ~amd64isn’t unstable. If I have to use 5 year old packages with bugs long fixed, then I am getting unstable
