What Linux Operating Systems do you like?
- Thread starter Retro6
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Debian has been a stable operating system for a long time. Back when people were still using Windows XP the astronauts aboard the International Space Station switched there laptops over from Windows XP to Debian also many government agencies use Debian.
For me Debian 13 has got to be the best because its simple, stable and light weight. It also looks clean. I use the XFCE desktop environment without Gnome just to keep it simple and light and super snappy. Touch wood I've not had any issues with it yet.
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I'm also using Ubuntu on my Panasonic FZ-M1 tablet. I had planned on wiping it and replacing the OS with Debian 13 but as Ubuntu is working fantastically I decided to leave Ubuntu on it. I did previously have issues with the touch screen being out of calibration and on screen keyboard but after some tweaking and sudo fixes its perfect now.
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Debian is great - if you have a need for stability and your hardware is supported, and it runs the applications you need. But imagine it almost as stable but with all the fun stuff! 
so here is where I put my obligatory PikaOS pimp 
If you run a more current generation AMD or (imo any) Nvidia card or a newer CPU, and are into gaming at all, it really is a solid choice, especially if you are coming from a Ubuntu/Mint background but want something more up to date and (again imo) less trouble when gaming, it is a solid choice. This is in addition to it being very pleasant and friction-less general computing experience.
Full disclosure - I use Debian 13 on my home fileserver/generalserverystuff machine, I also use the RaspberryPi OS flavour as a Plex server. Both machines are solid and faultless no matter how hard I try sometimes, and this is what Deb does best.
so here is where I put my obligatory PikaOS pimp If you run a more current generation AMD or (imo any) Nvidia card or a newer CPU, and are into gaming at all, it really is a solid choice, especially if you are coming from a Ubuntu/Mint background but want something more up to date and (again imo) less trouble when gaming, it is a solid choice. This is in addition to it being very pleasant and friction-less general computing experience.
Full disclosure - I use Debian 13 on my home fileserver/generalserverystuff machine, I also use the RaspberryPi OS flavour as a Plex server. Both machines are solid and faultless no matter how hard I try sometimes, and this is what Deb does best.
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Debian is awesome, just to join in on the high praise. My main server is currently running Debian 13. As others have said so hard to break. I also have a small Lenovo IdeaPad Duet3i (only 4GB RAM and super-lightweight CPU) which also runs Debian 13. And it's perfect OS for this sort of scenario too. I think the only quirk I've seen on Debian was recently when I logged in via Cockpit on my older Debian 12 install and 4 services including PCP (metrics/logging) had all stopped running and wouldn't restart. I think an update had maybe stripped some dependencies, but it was so easy to fix just reinstalling Cockpit/Cockpit-PCP.
I could easily run Debian as a daily. I think the other strength is that often when organisations say they have a Linux version of their software it means a .deb version. Take Obsidian for example, no rpm, or pkg, they offer a .deb, Appimage, Snap and community Flatpak, or AUR. That said if I'm using a machine for gaming I will default to something like CachyOS, Arch or Fedora. I do think those are better for that use case. Not that you can't on Debian, but just personal preference.
I am going to re-build my two small mini-PCs as home servers soon to run ssh, nfs, Docker, Pi-Hole etc.. And it will once again be Debian following a little bit of exploration of the NAS/server OS scene. It's just too dependable and easy to manage.
I could easily run Debian as a daily. I think the other strength is that often when organisations say they have a Linux version of their software it means a .deb version. Take Obsidian for example, no rpm, or pkg, they offer a .deb, Appimage, Snap and community Flatpak, or AUR. That said if I'm using a machine for gaming I will default to something like CachyOS, Arch or Fedora. I do think those are better for that use case. Not that you can't on Debian, but just personal preference.
I am going to re-build my two small mini-PCs as home servers soon to run ssh, nfs, Docker, Pi-Hole etc.. And it will once again be Debian following a little bit of exploration of the NAS/server OS scene. It's just too dependable and easy to manage.
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A lot of the Debian purists on Reddit are baffled as to why anyone would modernise it with the latest kernels, video drivers and Flatpaks when there are plenty of Debian-based distros that will do it for you.
Plus you get a shed load of maintainers and developers along with it doing all the heavy lifting.
Plus you get a shed load of maintainers and developers along with it doing all the heavy lifting.
DistroWatch.com: PikaOS Linux
News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.
so here is where I put my obligatory PikaOS pimp
I didn't realise that PikaOS originated in the UK, i wrongly thought it was Japanese for some reason.
Yes, at least one of the core developers (Ferreo) is UK based, although as is usual there is quite a geographical spread (Cosmo is Syrian aiui) so can be quite handy (the Distrowatch stub used to say UK/Syria).
Support your local distro!
Edit - I've just read some of the distrowatch comments (which seem very positive), and noted one about it being a "hobby" distribution. The developers have stated previously that if work were to stop, then they would make sure Pika would transfer fully back to Debian rolling, which is always nice to know, if you are on the fence about trying it and that is a concern.
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I'm sure CachyOS is faster than other distros, particularly with the v3/4 modern optimisations. But unless I'm missing something there aren't any gaming benckmarks in those Phoronix tests which I personally think would be useful. I saw the other day that The Linux Experiment chap on Youtube the other day had CachyOS faster in most tests over vanilla Arch. That said I don't think he stated the Proton versions used.
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As with most of these things, whether you'd notice the difference is debatable. I use Arch and switched to Cachy for quite a while. Any performance difference was not noticeable for me and I've since switched back.
True, also Linux distro's can be customised very quickly, so it's also possible to bring over some of the CachyOS optimisations and repositories to vanilla Arch. And everyone is different and has different hardware setups.
I could imagine a scenario where if you're very much a beginner, or learning Linux going from say 47fps to 60fps with a baseline install, or even where the minimums fps are higher that could be more noticeable. I did say in the other 'random linux' thread with a video comparing Fedora 44 to CachyOS there seems to be very little benchmarking on games between actual main distros. Rather its more Windows vs Linux that is very prevalent when it comes to gaming benchmarks. Maybe that changes over time as Linux is more widely adopted although I appreaciate that the numbers of potential test candidates is a problem.
Fwiw I've been driving daily driving CachyOS since March and it's super impressed me. That said when I do a new PC build soon I am thinking about returning to Fedora. That's my comfort zone. I think I read the other day that Fedora 45 is looking at X86_64-v3 packages and I think that credit has to go to the CachyOS team for driving that change.