I’m between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?

I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)

  • CalicoJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    26·
    1 year ago

    For laptops, I’ve been using EndeavourOS lately. All of the Arch goodness, but with an easy installer that handles the DE too. It’s as close to “just works” as you can get while still having pacman + AUR at the end.

    I still love raw Arch, but I leave that for server installs.

  • Carter@feddit.ukEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    OpenSUSE TW for me. Used to be Arch but it’s just too much faff for me.

    • ProtonBadger@kbin.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      Same, I’ve used Linux since the late nineties and know my way around but I have other things to do. TW with Plasma/Wayland is great.

  • krimson@feddit.nl
    181·
    1 year ago

    Arch for many, many years. Absolutely zero reasons to switch. I used to distro hop alot back in the day but I don’t bother with that anymore. I need a system that works and Arch gives me exactly that.

    • Footnote2669@lemmy.zip
      51·
      1 year ago

      Why distro hop from arch if you can make any distro out of it anyway lol I use arch btw

  • OSH@lemmy.ml
    13·
    1 year ago

    Fedora Silverblue. But when switching I had to wrap my head around the differences in the workflow of doing things. Once youre past that it’s rock solid and had no issues so far.

    • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world
      22·
      1 year ago

      when switching I had to wrap my head around the differences in the workflow of doing things. Once youre past that it’s rock solid and had no issues so far.

      This is the case with every distro nowadays.

    • blotz@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      1 year ago

      I’m surprised by how many people are rocking opensuse in this thread. What made you go with opensuse?

      • tron@lemm.ee
        5·
        1 year ago

        I would say the benefit of OpenSUSE is that everything is preconfigured to work right out of the box, including btrfs snapshotting with snapper. Once you boot it’s time to download apps, and go. Very windows like for those who just want the system to work. Updates are one click.

        • kylian0087@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          In my case not at all. But that is by choice. I always start from a server install. For me i like rolling as i do not get major version updates. And with tumbleweed it is very solid at the same time. Snapper and btrfs are also great aditions.

    • space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      1 year ago

      The only downside is that they don’t support zfs properly, and the package selection is more limited. The community repos aren’t always maintained.

    • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Until the kernel updates to something unsupported and you find out that they don’t keep old kernels in the rolling release. An amazing experience.

      • kylian0087@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Never hat issues on my 10+ year old system. I did how ever with rocky linux 9.4. It is unsupported on my old dell r610s

        • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I had it on two systems. Some peripherals stopped working after an update on one system and the attempt to downgrade it to the LTS (Leap?) failed miserably --> Ubuntu. On another one the graphics card stopped working and somehow forced it to the LTS with a custom kernel. That worked until trying to upgrade it by two minor releases (X.2 to X.4? Can’t remember if it was 13.Y 14.Y or 15.Y). There were so many conflicts and messing around with the source lists (or whatever they’re called)…

          It was the most difficult system to update that I’ve ever had. YaST is great though. Best GUI for system configuration I’ve had so far.

  • llothar@lemmy.ml
    7·
    1 year ago

    PopOS on gaming PC Fedora Silverblue on daily PC Ubuntu Server LTS for small servers Ubuntu Desktop LTS for digital signage

      • thayer@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        I’ve been running Fedora Silverblue on nearly all of my PCs for about a year now and overall it’s been great.

        • Automatic and unobtrusive updates for the core OS and user apps (everything happens in the background without interaction; flatpak updates are applied immediately, and OS updates are applied at next boot)
        • I can choose to apply many core updates immediately, but rarely do
        • Atomic OS updates means that everything must be installed successfully or none of the OS updates are applied, which prevents a partially updated system
        • Being an image-based distro, I can and do easily rebase to Fedora’s test/beta/remix releases, and just as easily rollback, or run both stable and beta releases side by side for testing purposes
        • Being image-based means there’s no chance of orphaned packages or library files being left behind after an update, resulting in a cleaner system over time
        • In the event that anything does go sideways after a system update (hasn’t happened yet), I can easily rollback to the previous version at boot

        Some elements not unique to Silverblue but part of its common workflow:

        • Distrobox/toolbox allow you to run any other distro as a container, and then use that distro’s apps as if they were native to your host system; this includes systemd services, locally installed RPMs, debs, etc.; I use distrobox to keep most of my dev workflow within my preferred Archlinux environment
        • Flatpaks are the FOSS community’s answer to Ubuntu’s Snaps, providing universal 1-click installation of sandboxed user apps (mostly GUI based); Firefox, Steam, VLC, and thousands of other apps are available to users, all without the need for root access

        My only complaints about Silverblue are more to do with how Flatpaks work right now, such as:

        • Drag & drop doesn’t work between apps, at least not for the apps I’ve attempted to use; for example, dragging a pic into a chat window for sharing; instead, I have to browse to and select the image from within the chat app
        • Firefox won’t open a link clicked within Thunderbird unless the browser is already open, otherwise it just opens a blank tab
        • Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer

        That said, I’m confident that these issues will be addressed over time. The platform has already come a long way these past couple of years and now that the KDE and GNOME teams are collaborating for it, things will only get better.

        Like I said though, overall Silverblue has been a really great user experience, and as a nearly 20-year Linux veteran it has really changed the way I view computing.

        • jack@monero.town
          2·
          1 year ago

          Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

          Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer

          On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

          • thayer@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

            The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

            On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

            Aha, that must be one of the newer features implemented from the beta portal they’d been working on. I’m glad to hear it, and overall I hope to see more official upstream devs come on board with the platform (Signal, I’m looking at you).

            • jack@monero.town
              2·
              1 year ago

              The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

              That’s great to hear. Maybe I’ll give Silverblue a try

              • thayer@lemmy.caEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                Sounds good. I don’t think the automatic background updates are enabled by default, at least they weren’t when I last installed it. To enable:

                1. Edit /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf and set AutomaticUpdatePolicy=stage
                2. Reload system service: rpm-ostree reload
                3. Enable the timer daemon: systemctl enable rpm-ostreed-automatic.timer --now

                Also, consider disabling GNOME Software’s management of flatpaks with the following:

                rpm-ostree override remove gnome-software-rpm-ostree

                The flatpaks will continue to be updated by the backend system, but you’ll no longer have to deal with the sluggish frontend UI to keep things up to date.

  • reddit_sux@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 year ago

    I use Arch BTW…

    Joking aside I use Arch on my desktop, Raspbian on RPi1, Debian on homeserver and VMs.

    • uis@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      Gentoo on desktop, gentoo on Rock64, gentoo on Allwinner A10 device, gentoo on Powerbook G4(don’t ask why I have it). Ah, and OpenWRT on router.