- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/42673820
Looking for suggestions besides Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Debian, Arch Linux, or Kali.
Would be on a modest Dell Latitude with i5, 14" 1080p display with intel graphics, and maybe 16gb ram. I have previous experience with XFCE, Ratpoison, Openbox, KDE Plasma. Recently started trying out LXQT.
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i noticed you havent tried fedora atomic cosmic. if youre just looking to run the gamut of DEs its probably the best cosmic distro right now. bonus points its fairly easy to rebase between each fedora atomic distro so you can DE hop without too much pain
Sounds fun. I did try Cosmic some time ago on a live disk and it had almost no features at that time, but was very snappy.
theyve come a long way, i keep an eye on them all the time. i think its possible that one day they will eclipse kde in functionality but theyre still in the adding features stage. its getting close though, maybe another year baked and i’ll swap entirely. its very snappy on cheap laptops, fully recommend it for that use case
I’m on Zorin, and i love it.
Cool, how long have you used it?
on and off for a few years. It’s decent as fuck. It’s very windows like, more so than KDE or cinnamon imho.
I’ve just switched to Pop_OS and so far I’m really impressed. Very fast, and Cosmic desktop has a totally different design and aesthetic to any other DE
Added to list
Fedora.
I prefer the KDE spin over GNOME, but I hate GNOME.
Whatever DE you prefer, pick that one.
Curious about Gnome after avoiding it since version 3 dropped
NixOS and Guix System! I’m currently using Guix System + Nix (via home-manager, mostly) but you can also do it the other way around.
NixOS uses systemd, but Guix System does not. They are both awesome though. Absolutely my favourite distros. Incredibility flexible, and reproducibility and “declarativeness” are core concepts. The only negative is that they both have quite a steep learning curve, compared to other distros.
Cool, added Guix system to the list with Nix.
Someone else was saying to go for Flakes
Yeah, it’s been an ongoing debate whether the old Nix style or the newer Flakes are a better approach. I don’t really know that much about it, but thus far I definitely like using Flakes more
So Guix is the old stye?
No no, Nix has two ways of handling configurations, where Flakes are the new style, but still experimental. Guix just have one way of handling configurations.
hannah montana linux
If you didn’t comment this first I would have
The only issue with this is it is Kubuntu, which is exactly what I already use. The theme and icon pack can be added onto any other distro, so that works.
Fedora.
Its not new, its not special with some big changes or special kernels, it has sane settings.
It has releases every 6 months, and updates about as much as arch
This was the first thing recommended: Fedora with default Gnome. I’ve never even tried Yum, so would be interesting.
me and my homies are using fedora KDE, which we can greatly recommend. we use it not just for personal gaming, creative tools, and software development but also (especially) on our work machines.
If you’re looking for something that won’t give you any headaches then I wholeheartedly recommend Bazzite. IMO it’s the best distro for the casual user.
I’ve also been interested in NixOS lately for the ability to easily transfer and back up the config, but I have yet to make that jump. It seems like a really great way to set up an OS though.
I agree. On a new machine I’ve been using I tried Ubuntu and then Zorin, but Bazzite just works better. Could be the Fedora base that’s helping a lot, idk. But switching that machine over when I’m not lazy.
It’s the first distro I’ve tried where everything just works right out of the box and nothing is overly bloated. All of the software I use was available from the Bazzar and my printer even worked right away. No fiddling with CUPS or trying to install from binary/tar/appimg/etc.
Agreed
Would you run it on the specs: i5, 8 - 16gb ram, intel integrated Graphics
Okay, I’ll add bazzite and nix to the wiki suggestions. Thanks
I prefer Fedora over Bazzite as it gives you more control, but this also means it’s easier to break. Bazzite is an immutable distro, whereas Fedora uses the traditional mutable root filesystem. But despite the difference, Bazzite uses Fedora Atomic as it’s base OS.
Just as a fun little factoid, Linus Torvalds runs Fedora and while he was using KDE for a while, he switched to GNOME as he felt it required much less fiddling around with than KDE.
They are both on the list… Bazzite and Fedora w/ Gnome
I’d recommend KDE over GNOME, especially if you’re coming over from Windows. My take on Linus’s move is he’s tinkered with Linux 5+ days a week for ages, so GNOME makes more sense. But as a nerd who doesn’t work in tech, I love KDE as I can tinker until I’m content and changes are just made in settings. Either way, I’d say finding the Desktop Enviornment you like is more important than the distro!
I’ve been on Plasma for a while. Haven’t tried Gnome since version 2.
I’ve been enjoying LMDE. Mint without Ubuntu.
same here
Any notable differences between Ubuntu and Debian base for you?
Linux Mint uses the LTS version of Ubuntu so the “base” gets updates about every 2 years just like Debian. As such, both are going to be “about as new” as each other (emphasis on “about”).
Ubuntu LTS pushed a bad kernel update where the headers were not available for a while. This meant that anyone using additional drivers (like I was for my networking) would have the kernel fail to install and then the operating system kernel panic when you boot up the next time. That is surprisingly “not stable”…
Debian, which will update about the same amount, has not pushed a bad update like that as far as I recall. That being said, I have had less experience with Debian.
The Linux Mint team seems to publish packages to LMDE so that it will have similar features to Ubuntu (like codec support) so you won’t be missing that by using the Debian base. That being said, minor differences were present (such as guest mode missing compared with the Ubuntu base). Also, Ubuntu may have support for additional hardware in case you need that sort of stuff and will have HWE kernels that will support newer hardware than Debian.
Still, if LMDE works for you then it is more likely to keep working in a boring and predictable manner. If you are using the Ubuntu base, you may have a random update mess things up which will require you to do some troubleshooting. Ideally, you won’t notice much of a difference between the two though.
The big one is no Snaps. You can get them, but I prefer flatpaks which I use on LMDE.
Added to list
Ubuntu server (headless)
Install pulse, x11, awesomewm.
Building the gui stack yourself on top of Ubuntu server gives you all of the debian/Ubuntu stability and issue searchability with none of the gnome/canonical cruft.
Have you tried this on base Debian? Works well!
Yes I have, admittedly it’s been about a decade but at the time I switched because getting hardware acceleration in chrome and Firefox was difficult on debian, trivial on Ubuntu. I like the stable, but newer packages that Ubuntu offers, plus the first-party support you get from a lot of projects. I wish debian was the standard dpkg assumption for first-party support but it unfortunately is not.
If you’re going to do that why not just install Debian ?
I like the stable, but newer packages that Ubuntu offers, plus the first-party support you get from a lot of projects. I wish debian was the standard dpkg assumption for first-party support but it unfortunately is not. Ubuntu makes it pretty easy to build automation on top of that is good for 5+ years without touching.
One I’m always interested in but never tried is Void Linux
Trying for fun or trying to settle?
I like NixOS but Void is cool too
Just got void submitted. Will add Nix. Window manager preference? Any nix stuff to try?
Niri is a joy! Tried it once and never looked back.
Nix is a wide ecosystem and you have tons of tools to use for your config to your hearts content, so this is a bit tough. Id say: Make your config a flake (its an experimental feature, but it’s a de-facto default), use home manager or GNU stow to organize your .config and home directory, and if you like Nix and plan to stay, look into the dendritic pattern for your config (not the best for someone just testing nix, but for long term it’s a total life-saver)
Best of luck to you!
As in declarative?
Yup it is. You configure your whole system by setting options in your config files, using a functional language. It’s hard at first but with time you naturally get used to it
Where I got stuck before was in the number of packages that were not actually supported within Nix. I found the documentation very frustrating, but the community very welcoming.
When I was shopping distros to jump ship from winslop, came across niri videos and I was smitten. Having decided to try cachyOS because 1. gaming, 2. Arch with training wheels, 3. Installer has niri option, I went for it.
I was dual booting with winslop for a week, but that one was cachy with plasma, then seeing I truly do not need winslop anymore, I wipe the whole drive and installed cachy again but this time with niri.
I use colemak as my keyboard layout, so during the dual boot period I set that as system layout during installation, but that had some problems with games. So when I wiped and reinstall, I just leave qwerty as system default. The cachy installer installed niri with noctalia as its shell
Well too bad, currently I do not have the understanding nor the inclination to learn how to configure niri and noctalia lol. Even adding colemak was too much. Tbf to myself, it was already 11 pm and I have work the coming morning. I’m glad that another reinstall and having all my needed software restored is o my 10 minutes.
Tldr, niri noctalia too hard for me now. Will revisit again when I have time to learn by trial by fire.
Although I have to say that I found a plasma plugin called mousetiler that’s almost exactly like fancyzones. That was the biggest thing I was missing dearly. I don’t have to remember so many keyboard shortcuts lol
I have tried nix but so far all I have managed to do is misformat the config file and brick the laptop I put it on 4 or so times.
Any suggestions on actually using it
it’s more like the oldest linux distro but slackware is good
Anything else to try in regards to Slackware?
there’s a stable release 15.0 released in 2022 and -current rolling release that’s up to date for everything. i recommend -current for desktop/laptops.
there’s not much automated tools like other distros, but the system itself is extremely simple and well documented. many tools in the system (package manager, init, etc) are all simple shell scripts.
there’s also distros that are based on slackware like salix, could be easier as it comes with apt-get afaik
Cool, so you are on the rolling release. Does it do everything you want as a daily driver?
yes, i prefer it over other distros mainly because of its low complexity. tried gentoo recently but the toolings felt too complex for me. the package repository is a bit small so you might have to compile some from source.
Hannah Montana
Didn’t I see something about someone bringing it back? They should call it Miley CyrOS.
It got a whole new release within the last week. Only thing- it is a reskin of Kubuntu, which is exactly what I already use.
it used to be that… the ‘new’ one is debian trixie-based. runs plasma but there’s also a ‘lite’ spin that uses lxqt
That is awesome!
Someone else just asked for it as well, lol
Just do it!
Dam, beat me to it
Qubes OS. Enjoy a taste of absolute security.
I know a developer of it, but have never tried. Will add to the list of options. Anything else to consider in Qubes software?
The install can be pretty tough with Qubes as the compatible hardware for it is quite narrow. But if this is what you go with, be sure to setup and play with Whonix!
Dell Latitude 5410. edit, seems this model is not listed under qubes…