arch btw
Nice meme! Its interesting that you’ve tried more than one distro. Personally, I prefer to pick the best one right away and stick with that. I think one of Zote’s precepts mentions this. I use mint btw.
/jerk
Favorite: MX Linux
First Distro Used: Ubuntu 6.06
Distro You Want to Use in the Future: CachyOS
Honorable Mention: Pardus
Distro You Liked the Least: Mandriva
Distro You Currently Use: Bazzite
The Distro You Used for the Longest Time: Opensuse
- Favorite distro: Debian
- Also favorite distro: Arch
- First distro: Red Hat Linux 5.1 (not RHEL!).
- Honorable mention: Slackware for most of the 00s
Kubuntu FTW !
Ubuntu -> Mint.
I don’t know why I’d change, Mint just works. That’s all I ever wanted.
Same, really. I keep trying other distros, and have Kubuntu on my laptop right now, but it’s still just a tiny bit too buggy compared to Mint.
I always come back to Mint. Far from just a “beginner distro”, it’s a practical and solid choice for anyone devoted to something other than tweaking, perfecting, and personalizing an OS. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if it’s your passion and you have the time. Personally, I wouldn’t mind making my perfect Arch or NixOS setup, but my free time is limited and there is always something I’m interested in working on more.
All I ever wanted. All I ever needed. Heeeere , in my arms.
Words are very unnecessary
I’ve never seen an infographic for “I use arch, btw.” until now.
oh come on. I don’t ever say it outside of meme contexts. I just personally enjoy rolling releases and don’t really like the corporate feeling of Fedora, so i’m left with only really Arch as a good option.
Opensuse can also be rolling. And that is european!
Just lighthearted poking, I don’t have anything bad to say about anyone’s choices. I didn’t mean any offense. Sorry if that was its tone.
No, no don’t worry, no offense taken 😅 I should have expected it lol
Or, as honourably mentioned, OpenSuSE, specifically tumbleweed.
Fedora is corporate? I nearly spat my coffee ;-)
I’m flashing back to working with suse on unitedlinux and the challenges we had. If you want a very Corporate distro, it’s right there.
Never again.
I mean… fedora is RHEL, which is very corporate
I’m getting tired of dispelling this myth, and I don’t even use either 🙄
Do people even read? RHEL is downstream from Fedora. They’re both forks of Red Hat, but Red Hat ≠ RHEL.
Does this need to be on a billboard or something?
Sorry. It’s still corporate, since it’s coming from red hat. Thanks for telling me though.
It’s not “coming from” Red Hat, Fedora is forked from it originally but is directly downstream from the linux kernel, there’s no Red Hat involved between the Linux Foundation and the Fedora devs.
In fact, there’s no more Red Hat at all, there’s only RHEL, which is downstream from Fedora.
Fedora is not downstream from Red Hat. I don’t know how to put that in any plainer terms…
I see. Have a nice day. I still won’t use Fedora.
Other way around mostly…
Fedora trys stuff first.
Funny that it’s not a rolling distro, yet it is often ahead of my cachyos box. It’s astounding how fast fedora puts stuff out yet never any effort on my part to manage it. Unlike cachy or even arch.
Fedora is the most corporate not-actually-corporate distro
Alma
I really think Ubuntu is the most common first distro people try. A common reoccurrence here is the inability to see what an average person, in terms of tech literacy, knows and are willing to put time and effort into. Ubuntu has been the face of Linux for a long time (obviously not based on people who know and use linux). I wish Mint took that place as it’s so much better.
I was gonna say that “and put effort into” is important.
I admin various Linux Servers, been through most distros at work and at home. I’m an experienced Linux admin/user. I’m settled on Mint at home for the foreseeable future.
After a long day/week/career doing IT, the last thing I want is for my primary PC to be a project-home. Mint Cinnamon ended up being the home I fell in love with - honestly was expecting it to be another kitchy distro that I would maybe reccommend for noobs (I mean it is also that). I couldn’t be happier - LMDE is the only thing that makes me wonder about greener grass.
I haven’t gotten to 95% perfect since Ubuntu pre-unity, and that one very long Arch build I did that one time. Even Debian, the home I grew up in, wasn’t the home I wanted to live in forever.
No shade on any other Distros/DEs out there. Everyone has different homes and it’s their home and I love that people have them and that they’re all different, and I want many options to keep existing. Past me would not understand present me’s choices.
Similar situation, experienced professional user but I’m running kubuntu at home. I just posted to another user about not wanting a project pc. I want to use my computer, not fix it or tweak it. It’s not other distributions are bad, it’s that this one is fine for me right now and it’s not windows.
Favorite is OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It’s stable mostly, and quite fixable when it isn’t. Just a great overall balance.
My first was actually DSL: “Damn Small Linux”, contained entirely on a CD to remove a TERRIBLY resistant malware from my Windows XP machine. (It was awesome for that! Had no idea what I was doing lol.)
Tried Ubuntu, then Ubuntu Studio, but they didn’t like my Wi-Fi devices back in those days, so I didn’t get to do much with them!
Used Mint seriously on my aging laptop and loved it. It’s such an excellent on-ramp and you can hang out with it as long as you like.
Later tried Manjaro for a while but…it started having some controversial project decisions and just didn’t feel like home.
Using EndeavourOS on my gaming laptop and it works great! Considering migrating though: Arch is an excellent teacher, but I’ve had to spend unexpected weekends fixing weird hitches after updates.
Honorable Mention: Puppy Linux! I used to be able to boot it to any laptop from my Android phone, and that was a really neat trick for public computers and stuff.
Hey I resemble that journey. Very few people metion DSL and Puppy. Those lived on a multiboot flash drive I carry around “JIC” (these days I just bring Mint and Tails).
I just commented elsewhere how Mint became home - that “long as you like” is still going (jeez 8y at this point lol).
Cool! Yeah, they don’t seem to be referenced as much anymore, but they were seriously impressive and had their use cases. :D
that “long as you like” is still going (jeez 8y at this point lol).
Yeah, Mint is often referred to by folks as a “beginner distro” implying you’ll somehow inevitably skill up and distro hop, and sure, plenty do, but it really doesn’t have to be that way!
(Heck, Eliot the super hacker in Mr. Robot used it as his home distro! Lol 😉)
I mean, it’s stable, you can still get newer stuff and gaming via FlatPak, and it’s just overall friendlier. The community is super helpful and nice too!
I personally jumped to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because I like having new features sooner. (I blame Blender haha!), and honestly, I didn’t expect to fall in love with KDE as much as I did. I really like KDE. :p
I’d always encourage people to try other distros just to see if they do something that fits them better or something, but yeah, you shouldn’t feel any pressure to “graduate” from Mint. It’s lovely. :D
Favorite is OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It’s stable mostly, and quite fixable when it isn’t. Just a great overall balance.
I am actually thinking that a stable-stable distro like Debian or OpenSuse Leap as a base system, and on top either GNU Guix or a VM with Tumbleweed or Suse Slowroll is a great option. Very stable for productivity, and at the same time very current for programming and exploring new stuff.
I currently use Debian stable, and both Gnu Guix and an Arch VM on top.
OpenSUSE got me onto Linux and was such a great option for a first distro. I still think about changing back sometimes. I’m surprised it doesn’t get recommended more often.
SUSE has always kind of been of an also ran in the eyes of a lot of users. I have tried the stable versions before Tumbleweed and I have even used Tumbleweed for a while. It’s a solid choice and the user base is awesome.
I really, really, wanted to love SUSE, but there is just something about it that I just don’t vibe with. It’s a good distro and offers a lot. But it’s just a bit uncomfortable like a suit jacket that doesn’t quite fit right through the shoulders.
I had a similar experience. Smaller standard repositories, unfamiliar package manager syntax, a package manager that’s probably even slower than apt (doesn’t matter longterm, but makes learning it more annoying), and I didn’t find using the community repositories particularly smooth. Plus I’m always running custom setups with tiling WMs, which is a bad fit for smaller, desktop-focused distros.
openSUSE Tumbleweed is my daily driver. I recommend it to most people. It’s a nice balance of leading edge and stability. Plus, snapper makes it easy to rollback if an update borks something.
Same. It is really nice.
Slowroll is my daily. I like it because most distros preach some kind of extreme philosophy, like Arch is ultra bare, Ubuntu et al are super easy, others are bleeding edge or slow and stable. openSUSE is (mostly) absolutely middle-of-the-road with a get-the-job-done kind of attitude I guess it makes it somewhat forgettable but I need the OS to just get out of the way and let me use my computer.
Started with Debian and still use it on servers. Moved to Arch but recently put Tumbleweed on my old laptop to try it out. Fast becoming a favourite. Like you said, rolling release with automatic snapshots is the best of both worlds.
Favorite: Debian
First Distro Used: Ubuntu 10.04
Distro You Want to Use in the Future: CachyOS
Honorable Mention: Fedora
Distro You Liked the Least: Post-Snap Ubuntu
Distro You Currently Use: Debian, Fedora, SteamOS
The Distro You Used for the Longest Time: Debian
I’ve been seeing a lot of kbuntu on these images, what makes it so appealing to people besides kde instead of gnome?
I made the switch on my main pc (from Windows) to Kubuntu about 2 months ago. A friend had switched about a year before that and said it was fun to use so I tried it and it stuck.
I don’t see myself changing, it works. I don’t want a project, I want a computer I don’t have to think about. I actually enjoy using my pc again, feels like I’m back in early days when my computer did what I wanted it to do. Forgot what that was like. Anyway my upsides are not other distributions downsides, it’s just what I have now.
For context, in industry for 20 years, previous linux admin, dev and eng, I’ve used probably 15 distributions in my years, and I run a home lab server too.
It’s stable and reliable.
Exactly that.
The desktop environment is the only difference between Ubuntu and most of its flavors.
When I first saw “Distros i’ve used:”, I thought there’s no way I could list that, after my prolific distro-surfing phase between 2004 to about 2014… I don’t know how many tall spools of CDs and DVDs I filled with distros, before I switched to usb, trying even more, with even less footprint to gauge it by.
… But, by just simply following the outline provided, I arrive at:
:)
That was fun.
uh… since when is SystemD a distro?
Fair query.
I was torn for which one distro I liked the least.
Considered something rpm based, but then realised all rpm based distros (bar two), I dislike to similar levels, and have thus not used them sufficiently to really say… and they also get lost amidst similar levels of dislike of distros I tried only ever so briefly in my distro-surfings.
Then I realised, the answer was obvious… my “liked the least”'ness has all systemd-imposing distros in a constellation, orders of distance further into “liked the least”, more than any other criteria, and all so far out there, they’re all as good as the same to my view. Rotten poison. Under an Embrace-Extend-Extinguish op. Centralising, homogenising, imposing, “the one true way” dogma. Beyond just a single point of failure, already compromised from within, agnogenic, dependency-generating, disempowering. and many more reasons.
So that’s how I arrived at [any distro imposing] systemd as my least liked distro.
This should be a stance that makes sense when considering in context that my fave/current and longest used, are bedrock & gentoo. I like choice. And so, any distro that’s striven to not facilitate user’s freedom to choose, and even striven to make the ability to choose harder, has fallen into that same homogenising “one true way”-dogma gestalt. Obediant copy-pasta distrod can Foxtrot Oscar.
… Could have done a wayland logo there too [or GNOME3, lol]. XD But I have less experience with that. Perhaps (as in the third link of reasons^), I could have used the term “FLOS”, but then that would have been more obscure and misleading. … And [even if interpreted correctly] perhaps a mite more broad than best depicts my “liked the least”, throwing a few which I like more, under the bus.
Anyhoo…
Reasoning elaboration [for my latteral-thinking lazy-cheat cop-out gestalt criteria choice] aside,
The distro I want to use in the future’s far more interesting…
Got into linux on the server side before I seriously looked at the desktop side. Run a mix of Ubuntu, Debian and what used to be CentOS but is now Almalinux in this space.
On the desktop started fiddeling with Ubuntu at first, but first distro I actually used was Mint. Tested a lot of them over the year, can’t bothered to list them.
Mainly just use Fedora (KDE).
Debian is where greybeards go to retire things just work once you configured them and you don’t need the helping hand of the AUR as you can just build your own packages with aptbuild.
Hey! My beard isn’t that… oh, fuck, I guess it is. Where does the time go?
I hear you brother 1998 was just yesterday right?
I sure am excited for gaming this year. I saw some adverts in a magazine for Half-Life, Ocarina of Time, and Resident Evil 2 and I can’t decide.
Debian is for my homelab, where things randomly breaking would ruin the day of multiple family members. Arch is for my personal machines, where things randomly breaking is an excuse to learn more about my hobby
Shit. I’ve been on Debian for decades now. Maybe I’m just an old soul… Or I’m just lazy. I don’t even configure my DE anymore. The OS install of today will be wiped in no time, so it’s not worth being too attached.
Same, on the XFCE/LXQt/MATE desktops
Same started on OG Suse from a boxed copy I bought in a store that came with a thick manual but then a year later found Debian and have there ever since.
As a youngblood I have heard of the iron stability of Debian, but simply find it difficult to adopt for gaming-related reasons (both hosting and as a game client).
I do wish to one day study the greybeards’ work for a future project box, however. That knowledge needs to be part of my generation as well, for at least a few of us.
Nethack runs fine on my Debian computer.
The thing about Debian is that it’s really not meant for the bleeding edge, not unless you shim a completely different runtime platform onto it, like Docker or Flatpak (or Proxmox). It shines as a very stable very basic host OS that’s limited to just the base functions of the machine and lets the other platform deal with the latest and shiniest releases.
Yeah. I’ve been loving it as a rock solid base for a server. Trying to use it as a desktop though? For basic browsing and such, sure, but once you want to do anything complex and require recent packages it becomes a mess.
Debian, but simply find it difficult to adopt for gaming-related reasons (both hosting and as a game client).
I do remember installing a mesa PPA on Ubuntu to play Elden Ring the year it was released, doing the same or similar on Debian stable seems even more of a mess … I kinda soured on AAA gaming since, though.
I’m not a greybeard (yet) but
xbps-srcwould like to have a word.Also, Debian is bad for cognitive abilities since if you use it long enough you forget how to configure things. /j
Every time I have to upgrade to a new release I have to go read the instructions on how to do it…
I would appreciate a big button like in fedora “push here to upgrade to Debian sailwind”
