If you have been using Linux for +10 years, what are you using now?
Been using Linux for over a decade, and last few years Ubuntu (on desktops/laptops), plus Debian on servers, but been looking to switch to something less “Canonical”-y for a long time (since the Amazon search fiasco, pretty much).
Appreciate recommendations or just an interesting discussion about people’s experiences, there are no wrong answers.
Edit: Thanks for the lots of interesting answers and discussions. I will try a few of the suggestions in a VM.
I’ve been fully daily driving Linux for about 15 years now, and for me it’s almost all Arch now.
I started out distro-hopping between Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, Slack, etc, but once I found Arch (and spent two weeks getting it installed, booted, and customized exactly to my liking) I was finally at home.
I know the meme. I’m not here to claim superiority, or diminish the value of other perfectly good distros. I love Debian, I love Void, Ubuntu can die in a fire, etc.
What I love about Arch is the lack of bloat. You get precisely what you ask for, no more, no less. You can legitimately run htop and recognize literally every program, and know if something’s wrong immediately.
Every one of my Arch boxes is a perfect little snowflake, suited to exactly the task(s) I built it for. And if there was anything I had to learn or configure along the way? That’s just the journey, man.
I have been eyeballing NixOS though…
I just used NixOS daily for maybe a month? I really love how it’s designed, but I had to give up because there were just so many small fixes I had to do and I found myself banging my head against the wall when I couldn’t build something that depended on python-tk. You will see this criticism around a lot, but the documentation just isn’t there yet. If you try to search for a fix, the packages have changed how they’re configured since a solution was posted or they depend on a Nix flake which 50% of searches say not to use because it’s experimental and 50% are all in on flakes.
I have since moved back to Arch, but I’ve started to use the nix package manager for some cases since you can on-demand non-permanently install a package.
Almost the same story here, I ran nixOS on my laptop and was over my head instantly, but kept treading water for almost a year before I got tired of the quirks and went back to arch. Much as on desktop; it just works and works well.
Since bouncing off I’ve found myself using the nix package manager for my Steam Deck, allowing it to serve as the “laptop” now. It just so happens that Valve recently added a persistent /nix folder to steamOS and so I’m declaratively back at it again. Thankfully the syntax is now starting to stick.
“You’re cool, you’re cool, screw you tho , you’re cool…” XD
Half Baked 🤝
Glad someone caught that XD
exact same story as I. have also been eyeballing NixOS lol. big time investment for me though
Same, with one exception I don’t really like Debian. Ubuntu, I’m surprised it’s still around. I wonder who uses it, especially on a server.
I’m eyeballing NixOS. And Gentoo too. And I’m looking for excuse to try FreeBSD.
You’re surprised the most popular desktop distro is still around?
I’m surprised this shite is the most popular distro, let’s start with that.
Really? They did a ton of work to make Linux accessible to the masses, have an active and helpful community to help out if you get stuck, works really well out of the box on most hardware and you’re pretty much guaranteed there’s going to be a compatible deb available for it if you’re looking for software outside normal repos. Seems like a no brainer tbh.
You’re correct, if that’s true. I wasn’t following them since almost twenty years ago. They were great at the time, all these free CDs you could get, I’ve ordered some as a kid and they really arrived, that was magic. I have some gratitude for that.
What I don’t like is quite a number of very questionable decisions they made over these years after. That’s why I am surprised someone thinks they are a great distro. You want Deb, why not go with Debian? Especially on a server. I truly have no idea who are the people who install Ubuntu on a server.
In my experience, Fedora just works. And hence, I recommend it to everyone. Ubuntu, not. Snap alone made me not considering it ever again.
Why don’t you like Debian?
I’m not old enough to appreciate its obsolescence. It broke on me so many times, basically every single major update on various machines. Arch Linux never broke on me, and I still run my very first installation. Basically on every single machine. Had no need to reinstall anything. I wasn’t deliberately breaking Debian even, never introduced any unusual repositories, used the default flavour of the desktop environment I chose from the installer. Didn’t change defaults too much. Yet every upgrade I did, something was wrong, it simply broke, and the easiest was to simply reinstall than attempting to fix anything. Arch, broke just a few times, most of which was either me doing something, and I knew that was me, or it was on the main page of the distro, in their news, the breaking changes announcement, plus the steps to mitigate them.
I see no point in using Debian, at least for me personally. I use its flavours, DietPi and Armbian on the SBCs, as there’s no Arch, and I don’t really like Arch ARM. Also, Debian’s website yells unprofessionalism, and it’s a bit difficult to tolerate. And the cherry on top, each time I’m about to download it, I have to hunt that BitTorrent link. I know it’s less than a gigabyte, and I could just download it as is from the website. But it’s a matter of principle, if I can download via BitTorrent protocol, I’d do that. Less pressure on the servers, easier and faster for me. Arch, you don’t have to hunt that link. Debian isn’t simple enough for me, I don’t understand its ideas and approach. Having obsolete everything because of stability … how do you know the updated versions are worse, huh? I don’t know, perhaps Sid is stable too, but my bet it’s less stable than Arch.
And the names, I personally dislike them. You choose a random Pixar movie and stick to that. Why? Even Ubuntu’s animals are just so much better. To me that’s as weird as naming your software as Gimp, or having fun with these GNU is not UNIX and other recursive abbreviations. It may be fun when you’re a teenager, or a part of some community, but I just don’t like it either.
I just don’t feel like I’m the part of this community. I’ve been around Debian for like two decades, and never grew liking it. Not my cup of tea.
As much of the meme of an arch user will tell you they are using arch.
NixOS is SO much more accurate to the meme.