What Linux Operating Systems do you like?

Buffalo2102 · 10 Sep 2025 at 10:34

meandu229 said:
After a year or so on cachyos I spent a while moving to hyprland which I now absolutely love. Its very different but now I miss it when using work macbook.
I also spent some time setting up snapper(btrfs snapshots) and limine bootloader so I can very easily rollback from the boot menu if needed.

I've just installed Hyprland to try it out. Did you start from scratch or use a template to start with?

I really enjoy tinkering and setting things up how I like them so I'm looking forward to that but I'm tempted to start with a template to get me up and running.

meandu229 · 10 Sep 2025 at 11:00

Buffalo2102 said:
I've just installed Hyprland to try it out. Did you start from scratch or use a template to start with?

I really enjoy tinkering and setting things up how I like them so I'm looking forward to that but I'm tempted to start with a template to get me up and running.

I did start with https://mylinuxforwork.github.io/dotfiles/ but didnt like it. Gone for a much simpler setup and when I find something missing I just google how to add it and do it.

Buffalo2102 · 10 Sep 2025 at 11:03

OK thanks. I'll just find a dotfile that I like the look of and start with that. There seems to be a huge selection now.

ic1male · 13 Sep 2025 at 00:42

Well I can’t give up on Linux now I’ve tasted it. Installed CachyOS tonight and it seems to be working ok. The Fish shell is great!

Buffalo2102 · 13 Sep 2025 at 12:27

Great choice. CachyOS is great.

Yea I really like the Fish shell too.

Mercurial · 13 Sep 2025 at 12:34

Talking about CachyOS; their Wiki has much improved over time, so that combined with the normal Arch wiki is great for support. Well worth a read through.

Buffalo2102 · 13 Sep 2025 at 12:37

I admit I have previously got into a pickle with updating CachyOS due to clashes between packages available from Arch and those in the CachyOS repository. I lost patience with it and re-installed to resolve. Something to be aware of I guess.

Mercurial · 13 Sep 2025 at 12:43

I think the trick is to be very careful with your use of the AUR and also of updating around the time over major updates.

The "new"* CachyOS updater hints you should be reading/checking the Arch release blog, which I don't think was made clear enough before.

* it's Arch-Updater

Edit - I'm still banging the PikaOS drum for anyone that will listen, the more I use it the more I like the way things are done.

Buffalo2102 · 13 Sep 2025 at 12:48

Oh yea, I'm pretty sure it was something that I did wrong rather than an issue with the OS itself. These things can be difficult to resolve though.

It's why I use Timeshift and other backup routines.

Cromulent · 13 Sep 2025 at 14:03

Buffalo2102 said:
Great choice. CachyOS is great.

Yea I really like the Fish shell too.

I might have to try the fish shell. I've only ever used zsh seriously.

Ad_Augendae · 14 Sep 2025 at 15:46

Buffalo2102 said:
Great choice. CachyOS is great.

Yea I really like the Fish shell too.

I can't say CachyOS is ready for the mainstream either. If you can't plug a well known blue-tooth speaker in without it diverting the Audio to input and then being unchangeable it's useless.
Never mind stuff crashing/locking up.

Buffalo2102 · 14 Sep 2025 at 15:56

I've no doubt it's solveable and if that's the only issue you have then I would say it's still, better than Windows in a lot of ways. YMMV of course.

Ad_Augendae · 21 Sep 2025 at 14:52

This week Jeremy I'm trying out Manjaro Plasma, well It's survived a whole week anyway

WantoN · 21 Sep 2025 at 19:57

I'm pretty enamoured with Fedora still. Very snappy, looks great, love the widgets, feels like a much sleeker OS than windows.

Ubuntu is like a boring, familiar workhorse, and Fedora closer to the bleeding edge; the regular kernel updates are a downside for some, but it snapshots several versions so you can always regress.

I wouldn't recommend Nvidia on it though, got it working but bit of a pain.

ic1male · 21 Sep 2025 at 20:42

WantoN said:
I'm pretty enamoured with Fedora still. Very snappy, looks great, love the widgets, feels like a much sleeker OS than windows.

Ubuntu is like a boring, familiar workhorse, and Fedora closer to the bleeding edge; the regular kernel updates are a downside for some, but it snapshots several versions so you can always regress.

I wouldn't recommend Nvidia on it though, got it working but bit of a pain.

Did you go through the MOK rigmarole with Secure Boot or just turn that off?

WantoN · 21 Sep 2025 at 21:22

ic1male said:
Did you go through the MOK rigmarole with Secure Boot or just turn that off?

Secure boot including VT-d, so MOK and the whole nine yards.

Had to blacklist nouvea in the grubby bootloader (and the live USB). NIC needed some custom commands as well. RPM fusion drivers were pretty solid when I finally got there.

will13 · Tuesday at 01:12

I've been thinking of changing my GPU too AMD to give Linux a fair trial (as in long term not just couple week like last couple times) with CachyOS, I used it briefly a few month ago when I had a temporary 9070XT and FSR4 was working well then except for performance loss in comparison to running FSR4 on windows, those of you who have a 9000 series can you share some details on how it performes now?

I think the only other major thing stopping me is BF6 unfortunately, I loved the beta

Rroff · Tuesday at 01:28

WantoN said:
Ubuntu is like a boring, familiar workhorse

For a lot of people that is going to be a plus though. Though not entirely the case most things in Ubuntu are where you'd expect them to be and/or work how you'd expect albeit even with my experience I find I dip into Google a fair bit to find out how to do things.

WantoN · Tuesday at 19:27

will13 said:
I've been thinking of changing my GPU too AMD to give Linux a fair trial (as in long term not just couple week like last couple times) with CachyOS, I used it briefly a few month ago when I had a temporary 9070XT and FSR4 was working well then except for performance loss in comparison to running FSR4 on windows, those of you who have a 9000 series can you share some details on how it performes now?

I think the only other major thing stopping me is BF6 unfortunately, I loved the beta

Passthrough to a windows VM is absolutely doable, especially with an AMD card. I'm not knowledgeable on CachyOS, but the performance difference from what I've seen is a few percent, I don't even notice (7800xt) when gaming in Fedora KDE Plasma, which has been a delight. That's with Secure Boot and VT-d, too.

I'm not one for multiplayer unfortunately so I can't give you anecdotal experience, but in Fedora you can run a windows VM for this sort of requirement.

For me it's setting up non-linux peripheral profiles to write to the device, AquaSuite configuration, and the extremely rare single player game that refuses to work on Windows (which I've not actually come across yet).

Obviously do your research, but Windows VM seem to be the choice for pesky windows only online requirements.

WantoN · Tuesday at 19:30

Rroff said:
For a lot of people that is going to be a plus though. Though not entirely the case most things in Ubuntu are where you'd expect them to be and/or work how you'd expect albeit even with my experience I find I dip into Google a fair bit to find out how to do things.

Oh please don't think I was being derogatory; I think Ubuntu is probably the best recommendation for 90% of people considering the switch - even over Mint.

I just fancied something a bit different.