Yeah I installed that one you’re thinking of.
I use and love Arch, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
The one that makes you happy.
^Or at least overrides the desire to grab a sledgehammer when troubleshooting^
Happiness is achieved through compiling rust
Unless its like arch or gentoo does the distro matter that much? Like its mostly just the default settings which you can tweak. I feel like 90% of distrohopping is just wanting to try a new UI which can you just install yourself.
The main difference is package management so rolling release vs LTS vs 6 month cycle.
In practice we really need to stop using dynamic dependencies/package managers for most applications, for desktop usecase its just not a good pattern anymore, honestly I feel its like 99% of the reason the linux desktop never took off, app dev is just a pain. Thankfully stuff like flatpak and appimage exist now
Comparing Arch and Gentoo is wild. Arch is so much more simple and well documented.
Arch is harder so install to as a recommendation its harder than the others. Though I think the last time I installed it was years ago ik theirs like a graphical installer now??? How the mighty have fallen
But yeah Gentoo is like in a league of its own
There’s no graphical installer officially, no. There are many Arch derivatives with installers though, like CachyOS.
Installing Arch is literally running like 10 commands, and it’s all very well documented.
- Put your Archiso USB stick in and reboot
- Format your disks if needed, mkfs
- Mount root and boot partitions
- Run pacstrap to install base system
- Generate fstab
- In chroot, set time and locale(s), set password, install bootloader
- Choose/install a network manager, like systemd-networkd
- Reboot
Now you’re running Arch. Make a user and install a DE, optionally.
It’s even simpler now: Plug in stick, reboot
Select the stick as the boot media
“archinstall”
Configure
Done.
I don’t recommend it to first timers, because the install process does get you a good feel of what you’ll be expected to know, but I’ve been running arch for years I’m not doing that manually anymore xD
I didn’t even know that existed until today
Yeah I feel like people vastly overestimate how difficult it is.
It used to be a lot more difficult.
On my first Arch install, I had to edit xorg.conf blindly, because the screen didn’t show anything due to an error in xorg.conf.Could you not have switched tty and edited there?
I can’t express how much I disagree with you and further I can not fucking stand flatpacks and the like. Unless I’m running a server, I don’t want that crap on my box at all.
Why would you want flatpak on a server, server feels like ideal for dynamic dependencies as you have some highly used, static build (Debian 13 or Ubuntu LTS) where problems can be easily tested and fixes distributed out. The dependencies don’t change too much aswell as the usecase for the server stays static. Security features can then be patched in when needed. Desktop usecase all people want is an up to date latest app that works, security rarely matters, and the dependency graph is highly volatile as people constantly update and add new software
So keep the different server processes somewhat isolated without going full VM. If I was admining production boxes for a company, I’d go with VMs. I’m talking about home servers running a couple services, and about desktops at home. Being retired, I haven’t had to really do real sysadmin work for years.
I haven’t had any issues, that I can think of at least, updating my desktop install which is going on about 10 years now. I’ve not been stuck in some type of dependency hell for even longer than that. To each their own, if they work for you, great. I can’t stand the extra layer that flatpaks bring to me. Seems like back in the day they would have been really useful…but thinking about past hard drive space, processor speeds, and internet speeds, maybe not.
Are you confusing flatpaks and other containerization solutions like docker? Flatpaks are specifically for UI applications, and that doesn’t make much sense on a server.
Shit, yeah. I’m dumb. I’ve just grouped those together in my mind.
Distro can alter how it behaves on your hardware. I tried every Debian derivative out there on a 2010 laptop. They would fail install or fail boot due to some hardware error, but fedora or opensuse were fine, and weirdly nixos. All those acknowledged the error and worked around it.
Also, not sure if other distros are this easy (because I didn’t experiment) but opensuse let’s you install as many DEs as you like with their pattern selections, and you can flipflop between them at the login screen.
I thought that was a good tool for a beginner just wanting to try out each DE without reinstalling as you change your mind.
Pretty much all the distros I use if I install like kde or hyprland it appears as an option in the login screen. Its a little cluttered since you have overlapping gnome and kde apps but I feel like people distrohop alot when they could just install a new DE
NixOS
Username… almost checks out. It’s missing the leading
/nix/store/.Lmao, that had not actually occurred to me before.
Obviously we all have our own opinions and good for us but it’s fairly obvious that if you’re using something that’s been around for 10 or 20 years it’s probably gonna be okay. So good for you. The Super New Disros are ones where you probably want to pay more attention before adopting them. But some of them are pretty good too, I would imagine.
I recently switched from Linux Mint to Ubuntu Studio. Both are fantastic and intuitive. Ubuntu Studio just has more of the Linux audio configuration worked out by default.
I’m running kubuntu which I find runs well with no issues (Intel with an NVIDIA card) and plays every game Ive tried to play. I chose kubuntu because I’m more experienced with debian based distros and I like KDE, but I do feel like maybe I should have gone with fedora and KDE instead. Can’t really be bothered to distro hop right now though.
So I put kubuntu on my bf’s laptop (intel/nvidia), and it’s been a painfully bad experience.
Interesting, what hasn’t worked? Im running a desktop so might be having less issues due to less bespoke hardware.
I ran it on an Intel/NVIDIA laptop about 10 years ago and had a lot of trouble getting the graphics to work well, particularly the Optimus switching. It never felt like it was working properly and graphics were always sub par to what I got running windows. It was a long time ago in computing terms though.
My 2012 MBP has Intel/ Nvidia graphics and every distribution I’ve ever tried has struggled with that, it seems to just be the way of things.
Have it working perfectly now (disabling Nvidia altogether) but involved both an NVRAM tweak and VGA Switcheroo.
Many distros have failed to even boot to the live USB on that Mac.
Kde is laggy in general, taking a full second or longer to do things like open the start menu or other menus.
Graphical glitches on the secondary display, especially in 2d things like steam or various kde menus. displays are mirrored, btw.
Volume slider appears randomly in the middle of both screens, no apparant cause.
Some games that worked fine under windows don’t work anymore, like cyberpunk 2077 (which is known to be better under proton than native windows).
Sound sometimes doesn’t work, don’t know why.
To resolve this, I tried to switch him over to Mint, because that’s what I use and it’s great on my machine so I should have tried that first. Laptop won’t boot that live usb.
edit: another one, cannot open the driver control menu (I forget what it’s called) at all.
Holy moly, that’s a lot of issues. Seems like there’s something else going on with that laptop given mint won’t even boot …
And that’s just what I know of from observing for a couple hours every week. He’s not a techie, and I’m out of practice.
I’m thinking either nvidia or dell is at fault, but I haven’t had the time to investigate.
I should try to get the model and specs of the machine, and maybe start a thread about it in a linux help community.
Next time you see an error on it run ‘journalctl -r’ in a terminal and see if you can spot anything specific wiggling out. Should be a good start to working out where the errors might be stemming from.
That said there seems to be a few different issues with that machine so its difficult to see how they might be related …maybe a hard disk with bad sectors or trashed ram? You could try reseating the ram module(s) and HDD connections?
You could also try update the NVIDIA drivers manually from terminal, switching between the closed and open versions of the latest driver can make a big difference. That might resolve your additional drivers access issue. I have found that GUI sometimes takes a long time to open …
I am a big fan of OpenSuse personally. You have a lot of different options between stable 2-year releases, a rolling release that pairs nicely with a Slowroll monthly snapshot release model if tumbleweed updates too quickly for you, and finally immutable options.
On the question: throw a dice and hope you don’t piss off too many people :v
Any popular non-specialized version will be perfect.
For a new user, the internal differences will be imperceptible, the same applications will be available, and community support will be there.
If you can, install Virtual Box on your current operating system and test the distributions you are considering to see if there is one whose default interface you like best.
I use Mint/Cinnamon.
Fedora for sure, generally pretty up to date, lots of users so you can find articles pretty easily, and it’s a lot more stable than Arch BTW
WHY DOES NO ONE GET THAT IT DEPENDS?
… srsly tho, how do you want your distro to be?Anything that’s not Windows.
My favorite is NixOS, but for the love of GOD do NOT try to install and use it. It’s like one of those puzzles you buy in a store, it makes you happy every time you solve it, but it pisses you off every time it breaks and you can’t figure out how to fit it.
