What Linux Operating Systems do you like?

I think it was to some extent, especially when installing. The addition of a decent installer has made it much more accessible to newer users.

I use Debian for VMs and containers on my (Debian based) Proxmox server but use Arch for my desktop.
 
I still use NixOS. Don’t know about the community as never relied on it but I find it extremely dependable and I think the declarative config is brilliant. Even if I screw up there’s always a way back. Seems to have broad package support too.
 
Ice Tea said:
As much as i love the idea of set once and forget conf files, i just can't be arsed with editing it all.
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Mine has been set and forget for years really. Without any of cult-ish buy-ins. Never understood it all. Had the same i3 config forever now on my main rig. It works across Debian, OpenBSD and everything else I've installed over hte years. I have backups which run as a cron job, and with 99% less work. Maybe people just have infinitely more complex use-cases than I do and maybe I'd get it all if I did something which required more complex software configs. I also have a tiny ansible playbook which installs all of the packages I need, which is basically just an array of packages and then my dotfiles do the rest.
 
I dipped my toes into Linux with Linux Mint.

Which I think means I am using Ubuntu

Which I think means I am using Debian

The only thing I don't like is that the volume icon changes to a wee musical note when something is being played. I think that can be changed but I am not sure how.
 
I’ve traditionally been a vanilla Ubuntu user, then dabbled a bit with Pop.
On my virtual servers I always throw an Xubuntu on for a lightweight management box.

Last night I reinstalled my desktop PC after a lot of deliberation, it was running W11 fine but I use a good windows laptop for work, I have a MacBook so a Linux desktop seemed to be the compliment I needed.

Went for Mint because reading a lot of threads it’s always mentioned and I haven’t tried it yet.

Installed as you’d expect but getting weird artifacts across the screen I didn’t get in Windows. Going to do some digging to try and get rid but yeah, kind of regretting not just installing WSL at the moment.
 
So as if by magic the Linux gods heard my plight. Booted this evening to try and fix the problem and it's fixed. Not sure of moving to Nvidia drivers and a system restart wasn't enough and it needed a cold restart but yep. Working. Installing a few bits and bobs now. Quite impressed so far, Mint is clean, well polished and doesn't have the amateur feel that some distro's have about them.
 
ParrotOS because I feel like im a hacker

All jokes aside, the home version is actually pretty good to use as a daily if you are interested in cybersecurity/pentesting stuff on the side.
 
I replaced my boot drive and thought I'd have a change from Debian. I do a lot of CentOS/Rocky/RHEL at work, so I thought i'd run Fedora for a while as I'm considering grabbing my RHCSA this year and it makes sense to get into it on Fedora. Still running i3 with the same config, in fact the only difference is remembering to use dnf instead of apt.
 
Throrik said:
I replaced my boot drive and thought I'd have a change from Debian. I do a lot of CentOS/Rocky/RHEL at work, so I thought i'd run Fedora for a while as I'm considering grabbing my RHCSA this year and it makes sense to get into it on Fedora. Still running i3 with the same config, in fact the only difference is remembering to use dnf instead of apt.
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Fedora is comfy, good choice ;)
 
I'm still on TuxedoOS but I am keeping my eye on https://kde.org/linux/ as it's made by the developers of the KDE desktop and KDE is what I prefer. It's still in alpha at the moment so I'm waiting for a stable release to come out.
 
Makhaira said:
Shifted to CachyOS as my main a couple of months ago and zero regrets so far. Keep W11 on dual boot for a couple of specific apps without a Linux alternative.
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Same, I've tried distros over the years but there is usually something missing or doesn't work but switched recently and so far so good.

What started me trying this time was I backup using an external USB to SATA device which doesn't work in Windows 11, so I either replace that for £80ish or Linux for free. Tested it works there.

Plus all the other things MS does; bloat, opting me into things I don't want etc.

There will be differences and I missed a few things when I moved from Amiga Workbench to Win 95 :)

I've just got middle mouse scrolling working in Chrome so I'm happy. Type things blindly into the konsole from AI, well maybe checking first, learning wtf that all means etc. I've got separate drive dual boot but unless I want Cyberpunk PT max performance I don't really see me going back.
 
Another vote for CachyOS here. Been using it for just over one week on this Ryzen 5 5600X/AM4 PC and it's been pretty much faultless in that time. I think it's a top-tier Linux distro and sits alongside Arch, Debian, Fedora, Mint, Steam OS for me. Maybe Bazzite too, but I've yet to try that one.

I choose Limine bootloader, BTRFS and GNOME.

There are some quirks like the the CachyOS Hello & Kernel Manager programs which don't change to dark mode despite that being the style set in the appearance tab. There seems to be some duplication in included apps; 2 x terminals; Alacritty & Ptyxis, 2 x document viewers, multiple text editors; Micro, Nano, VIM, Text Editor. And they include CachyOS Package Manager plus Shelly which I think can be confusing for new users if they aren't fluent in the terminal. That said these are relatively minor points and the strengths/uniqueness of the OS; optimised repositories, custom kernels and their wonderful Wiki set it apart.

I don't know how robust this build will be but I am thinking about an upgrade/new PC build in the summer and CachyOS is going to be my first choice I think. I've seen the github guides on amending Arch to use the CachyOS kernels and respositories for all the optimisations which is also tempting to try, but it's so easy to install CachyOS fresh and that adds to its robustness for me. Beyond some packages I wouldn't have included it feels like a close to perfect prebuilt Arch OS.
 
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I'm gonna need Linux on my main system soon. Its an Intel i5 with 16GB RAM and I'm going to put in a larger SSD I shouldn't need anymore than 500 GB its only for internet use. Windows 10 extended security updates will run out later this year. I know that Linux is mostly aimed at newer hardware these days so I don't want nothing too heavy... I might give Kali another shot as Ubuntu based Linux operating systems tend to be designed for more modern hardware in terms of driver support. The i5 machine does everything I need it to do. I'm not a fan of Windows 11.

I may get a new thin client at some point to replace the main system.

I'm also looking for a desktop OS that can run Zello which is an Android app that will be on 24/7 that will be running an internet linked radio repeater. I've tried things like Android x86 but not reliable.
 
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Retro6 said:
I'm gonna need Linux on my main system soon. Its an Intel i5 with 16GB RAM and I'm going to put in a larger SSD I shouldn't need anymore than 500 GB its only for internet use. Windows 10 extended security updates will run out later this year. I know that Linux is mostly aimed at newer hardware these days so I don't want nothing too heavy... I might give Kali another shot as Ubuntu based Linux operating systems tend to be designed for more modern hardware in terms of driver support. The i5 machine does everything I need it to do. I'm not a fan of Windows 11.

I may get a new thin client at some point to replace the main system.

I'm also looking for a desktop OS that can run Zello which is an Android app that will be on 24/7 that will be running an internet linked radio repeater. I've tried things like Android x86 but not reliable.
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Kali overall is a bit of an odd choice - it's very much designed to be a pentest/ceh distro - not that you can't frankenstein any distro into anything. I also highly disagree with Linux being mostly aimed at newer hardware, maybe if you want to run DEs which are badly optimised, have more animations than a Pixar movie and are so incredibly bloated that they have a role in the Nutty Professor movie. My Debian still boots <150MiB of memory. Also been playing around with Alpine with musl etc, that's well under <100MiB. But again not necessarily aimed at desktop usage.

I'll probably always recommend Debian Stable for Linux because it's just stable, but depends completely on if you're running bleeding edge hardware, as it does cater for stability and not cutting edge. I've never had any problems but my hardware is all getting a bit long in the tooth anyway.
 
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