Why is everybody so shy about liking Fedora? You don’t have to name lesser distro’s first to make them feel good, you can just outright say Fedora is the best…
Joking. Whatever floats your boat is fine.
It isn’t so much that fedora is the best distro, just that all the other distros are worse.
Using it is just common sense, not something anybody would feel proud about.
College-aged me would have loved Arch. Maybe retirement me will have to play with it for fun in the vaults.
Present-day me however, in middle age with a growing family and a full time job already working on Linux-based software all day, is a total slut for Linux Mint.
It installs and gets running easier and faster than Windows, and is based on widely used and tested stuff from Ubuntu and Debian. It’s not the “learn how operating systems work” distro for sure, but there is a lot of practical use in the world for the “plug the installer drive into your busted old Windows 10 machine and in 15 minutes have a responsive useful Linux PC where your parents can find the Internet browser” distro!
I am very interested to see if SteamOS makes a big push into desktops, though. A whole lot more of the desktop Linux world could become Arch based.
There’s always Bazzite, if you have gamers you want to get into Linux. It would be nice if SteamOS got bigger than it already is, but I don’t know if that’s the direction Valve wants to take it anymore. It seems more to me like they gave up on desktops, and are focusing on the mobile market with the Steam Deck, since that’s someplace where they quickly distinguished themselves.
Linux mint is the Toyota Camry of Linux distros.
I like to call it the Sweet Brown distro cause “Ain’t nobody got time for that”
Vanilla Ubuntu (boo! hiss!). It gets the job done and is out of the box usable with easy flatpak installs. It is 2025, there is no need to tinker with a desktop distro unless you’re deploying on ancient or exotic hardware.
I love Ubuntu’s default yaru theme, and gnome extensions. It seems currently the best distro on my Thinkpad which is unfortunately pretty incompatible to most linux distros due to the shitty Qualcomm WLAN drivers.
Plus Ubuntus package repository is pretty robust.
The only negative thing IMO is snaps being kind of iffy. I don’t think they are that bad but they seem a little too forced on the user.
Like Flatpak is kind of default on Fedora but they almost never force them on you.
Hardware isn’t the only thing worth tinkering though. Coonfigur coonfiguring DE and WMs might actually be more productive and efficient in doing things
My top five Linux distros:
- Debian: It may not be exciting but its rock stability is what makes it good for the vast majority of people (aka what I would genuenly reccomend to people)
- Alpine: Not the easiest or most stable but very lightweight
- OpenSuse: Stable yet up to date, very good defaults and themeing is amazing (especially on Sway)
- Arch: Ignoring the community or documentation you get a distro with up to date packages and not much else to seperate it
- NixOS: Way too advanced for me but I love the way it works, seems amazing for a select type of people
Of course my opinion is objectively correct and if you disagree im going to burn your house down with combustible lemons (made by my team of scientists ofc) /s
antiX is a pretty user friendly and light distro. Plus it’s Debian based.
Honestly when it comes to Debian derivatives Devuan is the only one I would reccomend (still doesnt get in my top 5)
I’ve yet to try Devuan, but I quite like the fact antiX has a bunch of stuff setup, like the WM with Rox and a bunch of apps etc
Devuan is like Debian but without SystemD and much lighter. Like Debian however you set it up yourself so feel free to use whatever WM you want (I personally like Sway).
antiX doesn’t use SystemD, so that works for me. A nice balance between lightweight and being lazy and not having to set it up from scratch, but it doesn’t feel quite as janky as Puppy Linux.
Imo when it comes to lightweight distros theres a reason why you set it up manually, when 100mb is the difference between a usable system it makes sense for the user to customize it to their needs.
I get that. It depends what you’re after. I just wanted something that’d run on old hardware without too much effort.
Debian: It may not be exciting but its rock stability is what makes it good for the vast majority of people (aka what I would genuenly reccomend to people)
debian is what windows wishes it could be.
Yeah Windows is not stable at all :3
i have historically had more stability issues on windows, than on my bleeding edge archlinux workstation. Sure shit changes, sometimes things break, but i can fix them, or find alternatives/workarounds if i really need to.
Windows, uh. Good luck.
based, alpine is really fun for running on obsolete hardware
I would really like to thank the Arch community for maintaining such a wonderful wiki; it’s great that your nuts-and-bolts approach naturally generates the best documentation. That said, Debian will always be my distro of choice.
i run arch on my workstation because the flexibility of being able to install any given recent software is just too great. Compared to something like debian which i run on my server, it’s great, you just don’t things that are up to date very often. But it’s incredibly stable.
I truly am living the best of both worlds right now.
Mint for me, but the Arch wiki is just the best.
I’m officially off of arch now and back on debian, my first and true linux love. I used to love arch for the AUR, but I had a couple of AUR packages that took so long to upgrade, they were basically un-upgradeable. I switched from i3 on X to sway on Wayland at the same time, so I can’t say how much of my issues were that, but various small issues are no longer issues, like better Playstation controller support. And I don’t have to restart every time I update repositories because I’m not constantly upgrading the Linux kernel. And there are so many .deb packages! But sincerely, thank you arch community. I still use the arch wiki.
Debian my beloved
I really like Debian, it’s what I use at work and for servers at home. At least until a few weeks ago when I decided to try NixOS. I’m really liking it so far and am thinking of switching over my other home servers.
Part of me wants to main Gentoo just to neutralise any arch smug I come across.
But then I remember I don’t really want a 2nd job
I imagine telling an Arch user you use Gentoo is like telling a Texan that if you cut Alaska into two halves Texas would be the third largest US state.
It’s only a second job if you ever want to add a new app
Actually, only if you want to tune stuff, like selecting from hundreds of USE flags and some may cause trouble, but who can resist.
This thread once again proving that complaints about arch elitism are 1000x more common than actual arch elitism
This would have been the perfect comment if you were from a slightly different instance
Edit: wait there is (was?) an “I use arch btw” instance right? I’m not imagining it?
This guy uses arch btw.No seriously, there’s plenty of arch elitism in this thread alone, And other distros too. You really don’t need to be preemptively defensive about it though.
I just scrolled the whole thread and can’t find any at all, what are you talking about?
Elitism isn’t „I like arch and I think it is good for some stuff”, it’s „I’m smart because I use arch, you’re dumb if you don’t, and any problems you have with it are your fault.”
Gentoo, that’s fun. Brings back a lot of memories from Kindergarten. Let me know when you’re ready to build LFS with the big dogs.
I’m literally in the process of switching my main from Arch to Gentoo now. (Yes it’s taking a while.) And I intend to be even more smug. Bwahahaha!
Gentoo is not that bad. Its just arch with a longer install. You still got to read the wiki when installing something and still have to follow the news.
IMO Arch’s defaults (especially w.r.t. audio and fonts) are a little nicer than Gentoo’s, but that’s a pretty minor inconvenience all things considered.
Arch’s defaults haven’t always been good and I’d argue they are still not good enough for users to rely on. As an arch user (im not an arch user) you are expected to not just plug and play everything without checking its configuration matches your system and needs.
Just main NixOS.
I just need to learn Diet Haskell first…
I don’t get that ‘Gentoo takes forever’ argument. With todays hardware it’s really a non-issue. Just let the updates compile in the background while you do other stuff. My Arch install broke several times, not so my Gentoo. Also, the Gentoo community is really kind and don’t treat you like an idiot for not knowing something.
On the other hand, what’s the benefit of running Gentoo on modern hardware?
The ability to patch packages with little effort ( https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/patches ) is the main reason I’m currently considering switching to gentoo.
controversial opinion: distro/software wars are good, because they make people discuss about their software, which motivates the developers. you don’t see windows software wars, because they can’t choose their de
Pretty sure that for most things it’s simply that there’s one software that’s way above the rest or you simply have no interest in the fields where people debate what is best and on Linux you often are stuck with the one software that does the trick because there’s not enough demand for real competition that pushes devs to come up with something as good as what you’ll find on Windows.
For a purist like me, arch IS the best distro.
However, best for me doesn’t mean best for thee.
Recently started using openSUSE Tumbleweed after 15 years of on and off Linux experimentation. I think I’ve finally found the distro to make me stay. :)
I’ve recently switched from Debian to openSUSE Tumbleweed (edit: with KDE) and am extremely impressed, it’s just so polished. German engineering at its finest.
Warning: Hot take
Who you are and what your needs are will affect which distro is best for you.
Sacrilege! Burn the person bringing a reasonable perspective to the flame war!
What? Sacrilege. Of course my mum’s PC runs arch so does my server I would install arch on a hospital Server and have it auto update if they’d let me … /s
Ngl, I was expecting something spicier than your utterly reasonable comment.
first place is tied with arch and debian, second might include RHEL.
everything else is non deterministic.
The best way to trigger an Arch user is to use Ubuntu and love it.
Heh, I have two laptops: one with Arch and one with Ubuntu. I like both systems. I guess i like triggering myself.
why did that last sentence sound so sexual 😭😭
“Oh yeah. I’m triggering myself aaaall night long!”
What’s wrong with Ubuntu? It’s a great distro in all honesty.
I personally have no issues with it, but a lot of people really dislike things like snaps (seen as reinventing the wheel of flatpaks and using closed source backend to do it no less) and Canonical really sadly does have a history of making some really silly and thoughtless mistakes which were all bad for the Ubuntu community. I can see an understand those arguments’ validity, but I do think they’re just a little silly because there’s far worse companies doing far worse things out there than Canonical.
Anyway, I still like Ubuntu but I know it gets a lot of hate so I like to poke fun. Xubuntu is like my ride-or-die for old hardware.
As someone who’s in the process of moving to an almost fully Linux environment but only has experience using Ubuntu. Is there a lateral alternative or ‘step-up’ distro you would recommend I try given the downsides of Canonical/ubuntu?
Mint is generally the suggested new go-to for newbies, as I understand it, because it’s probably the closest to Ubuntu but has snaps disabled.
Debian if you’re going for something more pure, but they are a lot less current, albeit more stable due to that.
If you want start menu and taskbar, Linux Mint. It was based on Ubuntu so under the hood is very similar but the desktop is more Windows like.
If you want a similar experience to Ubuntu then Fedora, which uses the Gnome desktop environment like Ubuntu but without all the Ubuntu changes. Plus Fedora does some things in different ways under the hood so there is a learning experience that is a nice stepping stone rather than being thrown in the deep end.
I tried raw Gnome and hated it. Ubuntu’s changes made it actually usable. At the same time, I don’t really like all those DEs that just mimic XP.
Interesting. I love Vanilla Gnome over Ubuntu’s version. What do you prefer from Ubuntu that I might have overlooked?
The dock/taskbar. Gnome’s default one being hidden in a menu was unpleasant. I did try the dash-to-dock and dash-to-panel extensions, but I preferred Ubuntu’s implementation.
I was a primary Kubuntu user for a long time, but I just recently started using EndeavourOS and I’m really liking it so far. It is Arch-based, but a usable system immediately post-install.
Seconding the Mint suggestion. I started on Ubuntu ~15 years ago, nowadays I run Mint if I need a GUI, or Debian on anything headless
so Canonical is the Mozilla of Linux…
If you think Mozilla is the canonical of browsers, you’ve been consuming too much of Google’s anti-mozilla propaganda after they announced v3 manifest.
My ubuntu server install gives me an ad for Canonical’s “enhanced security” and a Kubernetes ad every time I SSH into it :(
search for the text file used by MOTD and change it to whatever you want.
Or use a distro that doesn’t come with ads
Canonical is what’s wrong.
One word. Snaps
Seven additional words: Apt installing snaps instead of Debian packages
That’s fair, haha
If you’re not registered (which is free for non-business use) the GUI softwate updater may tease you with extra security patches you won’t get.
it feels corporatey and it’s not exceptional at anything
It really isn’t.
I use Mint, by the way.
Same. After Unbuntu and trying Arch and couldn’t figure it out.
Arrays start at 0, which leaves plenty of room for SCO Linux powered by UnitedLinux
Wait, I think there was an underflow error…
Is this a scaldera joke?
It’s ancient, but I couldn’t think of a worse distro
“Linux heals the heart, no matter the distro”
- Someone.
