One big happy family.

Linux Mint. Cinnamon. With a Windows Vista theme. It confuses and/or irritates everyone who sees it.

I was going to go Mint/Cinnamon, but now I'm going to more.
I'm using the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper on my Fedora PC at work. I've had a few people ask about it haha. Most of the company uses Macs.
Tech support scammers HATE this trick!
What's it called?
- Windon't
- Not sure but it’s by B00merang-Project. Check their site.
LDME/Cinnamon
Nice! Not my thing but I'm glad that you can enjoy the Vista theme (I remember enjoying it when it came out)

Hannah Montana FTW
- RebeccaBlackOS > Hannah Montana Linux
So going off the chalice in the movie, the distro that will save you from judgment is the plainest one – the one with the least bloat? That tracks.
- "the cup of a ~~carpenter~~ coder"
- Is this going to be Arch or Debian?
- BTW...
  Also kudos to you for your modding last couple days.
- So… Slackware?
Possibly a perfect use of this.
Is it really a choice?
TEMPLEOS
I use arch, err nixos/nix on macOS btw. Do I win or have I made the Linux nerds angy?
I recently installed Manjaro. It works for my games right now
- I highly recommend avoiding manjaro like the plague, their team is incredibly incompetent (see: https://manjarno.pages.dev/ ), I say this as someone who has given people manjaro for years and regretted it, I was also their it person, manjaro regularly broke every few months and gave people a very bad taste of linux
  for example, why are kernels given version numbers in packages? This caused 3 separate peoples computers to break multiple times. Everything good about manjaro comes from arch, everything bad about manjaro comes from the manjaro team.
  Y’know how it’s not rolling release because they delay packages by 2 weeks? They actually do no testing in this time. How do I know this? They pushed an update that caused steam to uninstall your desktop environment. Famously covered by linus tech tips… this is something that should have easily been caught, and yet the two week window did absolutely nothing.
  the truth is for manjaro there is no real usecase, there’s no set of desires that align with manjaro being the best choice for you. I am not asking you to switch away from manjaro, but I do not think we should ever recommend it to anyone, and on your next machine, I recommend trying the arch installer.
  But if what you’re looking for is an easy pre-setup arch, use endeavoros
  If you want something simple and up to date, use fedora kinoite
  If you’re a power user and want to configure every little thing about their system, use arch or nixos
  If you don’t care at all about updates and want the most rock solid system possible, debian.

This is why you just fucking lie and say "Arch btw"

Or just suck it up and learn Arch and never worry about the incredibly minor differences in distros

Screw that You're all great everybody from slackware to steam deck.

Slack where?
- Slack there!
to steam deck.
to SteamOS
Steam Deck is weird. I mean, I love it, but coming from vanilla Arch it can be frustrating at times. Discover is terrible. Luckily, Distrobox is a thing.
- Portage Prefix is a thing too
- I putz with Discover sometimes. Though I have no idea how it resolves package updates under the hood, as it often will produce a different manifest than running dnf itself.
  What would you like to see improved?

For as much as Linux nerds (myself absolutely included) complain about distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro, I'd still take either one over Windows or MacOS any day.

Mac OSX isn't bad... so long as you sell it your soul, and don't want freedom in return, it's great 👍.
I kid... mostly - it's iOS that is horrifying, but Mac OSX is still Unix (tho not GNU), so not anywhere within leagues of Microdick.
And - possibly dumb question - couldn't you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
- You can use UTM on an M1 or up Macbook and iOS/iPadOS:
  https://getutm.app/
  It is not VirtualBox yet, but it is moving fast. And thank $deity it’s not Oracle… like VirtualBox
- I’d say iOS is still unix too, just rootless.
- Mac is BSD, and the Darwin kernel is open source.
- The company that laid me off let me keep my Mac which was a nice parting gift. I don't think I'd ever buy one myself. They're just way to expensive.
- A VM doesn’t change the underlying OS collecting data from you
- "always" in this case is when you have two or more gpus in your system, which limits the ability to "just" run a vm considerably.
- couldn't you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
  The obvious downside is that Linux is no longer the host OS. MacOS or Windows would be closed source code managing your hardware. And any VM could only be as fast as the host OS allows it to be.
new to Linux, my first distro was and is Manjaro. what do people complain about? i love it and am glad i left windows for it :)
- This website has a decent summary: https://manjarno.pages.dev/
  TL:DR: Repeated dumb mistakes that a (relatively) big distro like Manjaro should not be making. Haven't heard any drama in the past year or so though, so maybe they've finally gotten their act together. Time will tell.
- It's too "easy" for all the kiddos who tie their self-worth to their ability to follow installation instructions.
Ubuntu has Snap and ads and stuff, but I thought Manjaro was considered good. What's wrong with it? It's supposed to be Arch based.
- Replied to a different comment about this: https://lemmy.world/comment/12365020

That's all well and good, but can we talk about proper use of this meme template?

- Shouldn't it be "further"? farther is for physical distance, further is for figurative/metaphorical distance.
Eh it works just fine 🤷‍♂️
Nooo !!!! You can't just use the meme template how you want to, even if it's funny !!!!11!1!1!1
- Ah yes, that's exactly what I said.
I’m shocked there wasn’t a single minion or cry-laugh emoji plastered on.
(Sorry in advance..)
Look, a meme Heimdall.

This is great. Just to let you know, whatever decision you make is wrong. Cheers!

Still works though!
Why?
- The only people who hate Linux users more than windows and Mac users are Linux users who think you chose the wrong distro
- Because there's always going to be someone who says the distro you liked the most is not the distro you should be using. (I use Arch btw)
- Because of in-fighting.

I'm using debian btw

I've been rolling Debian more and more this year. If you've got solid Linux chops, it's really great.
I also really like LMDE, it's what I run on my Business laptop.

Fuck it, I'm switching to TempleOS

Has anybody tried to get TempleOS to run Doom?
- A quick Google search says... Yes! they even implemented a basic sdl2 library in holyc to access the full potential of the video hardware.
I'm not doing that unless it has its own compiler.

Just setup Mint last night and have been troubleshooting how to get everything to work. So far I'm liking it. Last thing I setup was Lutris for gaming so that's nice.

Which edition of Mint?
- Nooooooo
- Cinnamon

Anakin no doubt uses Oracle Linux

The only wrong choice.

Mint, judge me

PS anyone have any favorite resources for absolute tech illiterate noobs? I'm trying, but without a baseline understanding of the subject, it's hard to find the right guides

you're not using debian? that must mean you hate freedom.
My advice is to get a hobby. Self-hosting, or home automation to name a few examples. When you have a specific goal for something you want to do, it's a lot easier to learn.
- First half has the actual advice
Literally the most suggested newbie distro, so you're probably fine :)
Like, ideologically I may mention it's Ubuntu-based so it sucks, but from end user perspective, it's alright.
Doubling down on literacy, Linux guides are either "here's how to do that absolutely basic thing" or "using veheydgvrl for quantumschropping the badumbliss". To me, Mental Outlaw produced quite some simple guides (warning: most vids are rants so you'll have to search for actual guides), Veronica Explains might be the fun option and not bloated with anything but tech, and just searching for solutions to whatever your issue is before you grasp how it works.
- They have a debian based version, it's pretty awesome. It's still a beta fork atm, but it's rock solid so far
Mint is a very nice starting distro tbh, it was my first too!
What exactly are you trying to do?
- That's the thing, I don't know enough to know what to even ask. So far I've been able to follow step-by-step instructions for installing Mint and downloading software, but I don't know what I'm doing at all.
  One example of something I spent hours on is adding Cura to the panel. I finally got that done while I was writing this comment by following AndyMH's answer here.
  Now, I can read
  I would move the appimage into a folder in PATH. If you create a folder /home/you/bin it is automatically added to PATH next time you boot.
  And I can do that. I have no idea what PATH is or why I want to do that, but I can do it. And I can look it up, and I'm sure I'll eventually get to a point where all of this makes sense to me, but I feel kind of helpless when I have to look up multiple terms every time I want to do something as simple as adding an application to the panel
Depends on what you're wanting to learn. I'm a fellow tech illiterate noob, but I've been off and on with Linux since like 2006. Finally switched full time a few years ago. Honestly, with Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora I've found you basically can just set it and forget it, depending on your use case. YouTube has been my best friend whenever I have a problem, normally I type my issue into that before even google. How long have you been using Linux? If you're still in the distro hopping phase,I suggest trying to swap Desktop environments instead of distros, as it gives you a little experience with the terminal, is well documented on how to do it, and gives you a good idea of what kind of UI you want
That's all I got, though. I really am pretty illiterate at tech stuff haha
This may be shit advice, but it may help.
I have a mint laptop and was also linux illiterate when I started. The way I did most of my learning was by googling (or duckduckgo-ing) "How do I [x] linux mint" and reading through stack overflow threads. If this doesn't return results, (almost) any solution for Debian or Ubuntu will work on Mint.
In general, I just assumed that if I thought the computer could do it, there would be a way to do it.
- Literally me. Can confirm, Stack Overflow is based.
Mint is the shit! The only reason I don't use it is because they don't have a native KDE version. If they ever do, I plan on going right back Mint.

Just a humble Arch Linux user here

It's wonderful how the expression "humble Arch Linux user" manages to pack a contradiction in a mere 4 words.

EndeavourOS

Same. I have zero clue how to use it but anything's better than windows.
- I just open the Welcome app, and click the first 4 options to update like once every week or so.

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 Distro

What? Why would you choose that over Baptist Church of Missouri SynodOS, you heretic?
Sick Emo Philips reference, bro.
Ah- then I have to dispute your theology on daemons.

The best one, of course

Of course! There is nothing like Hannah Montana Linux! 😌
- Nuh uh, obviously its AmogOS

I'm an unwashed Mint peasant. Tell me how inadequate I am.

There is nothing wrong with Mint EZ mode. I got a computer illiterate buddy with a 8 year old shittop running it like its new.
Mint is about as uncontroversial as its popularity allows lol
- Except all the cool kids use Arch, of course.
You're completely adequate as you are my minty friend!
I love Mint, it has become my workhorse distro. I use LMDE on my personal business laptop. I switched my parents from Windows 10 to Mint earlier this year, and it's been great on their very old and low power desktop.
Cinnamon is not the prettiest or slickest DE, but damn if it ain't the most stable DE I've used.
I'm a KDE fanboi myself, but when I spin up a machine that I need to just work in a super dependable way and is no muss, no fuss, I usually choose Mint with Cinnamon.

I run distro, btw

Fedora Workstation 40.

On windows until last year, after trying 11 on my T440s which made it unbearably slow so had to start over but instead of going back to 10 tried a bunch of distros.

Fedora stuck, mainly because of gnome vanilla (I really like the paradigm, don't care about deep personalisation) and how everything just worked great.

Fight me?

Nah, Fedora is a valid choice, just like Ubuntu is. Both are great if you don't care that much about personalization and just want a solid distro to get work done.
- Fedora is pretty much the new Ubuntu more or less. Ubuntu has gone so far downhill that I can't recommend it to anyone and that's been the case for quite a while.

Hannah Montana Linux

That was one of the first distros to support Wayland, so it has my begrudging respect.

Reactions:

Ubuntu: 😮why?

Manjaro: haven’t you managed to kill it yet?

Mint: ex windows guy?

Debian: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?

Endeavour: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?

Arch: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?

Nix: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?

OpenSUSE: 😃nice, how did you got to that decision?

…

Ubuntu: 😮why?
For a lot of people Ubuntu is the linux. Canonical is just good at marketing. For all it worth, Ubuntu is not the bad choice for average user who's not into ricing and not bothered by bloat.
Manjaro: haven’t you managed to kill it yet?
I've been using Arch and Manjaro for couple years each and in my experience they both break regularly. But, for some weird reason, Arch Linux is praised, when Manjaro is shamed upon.
Mint: ex windows guy?
Aren't we all?
- I’ve been using Arch and Manjaro for couple years each and in my experience they both break regularly. But, for some weird reason, Arch Linux is praised, when Manjaro is shamed upon.
  No, there is not some weird reason but actual very good ones.
  Things can break on a bleeding edge update scheme. That's to be expected from time to time. But the questions are "why did it break" and "what is done to fix it".
  If something breaks on Archlinux it's because of some new package with a issue that escaped testing. Then the fix come out as fast as possible (often within minutes even, but let's assume hours as those things need to move through mirrors first...).
  If something breaks on Manjaro it's either because of the exact same reason as above, but 2 weeks later. Because Manjaro keeps back updates for two weeks "for stability reasons", yet doesn't do anything in those 2 weeks. So they just add the same problem later, completely defeating the argumant about stability. Oh, and fixes are of course kept back for 2 weeks, too, because... reasons.
  Or it breaks because they fucked up their internal QA. For example by letting their certificates expire again and again and again and again... of by screwing up their very own pacman-wrapper and then ddos'ing the AUR for all users, not only Manjaro ones.
  Or -speaking about the AUR- it breaks because they give their users full access to the Arch User Repository (without any warnings about user content being less reliable and used at your own risk) pre-installed. Also they do it on a system generally out-of-date because it lags 2 weeks behind. Which is not what AUR packages are build for (they assume up-to-date systems) and is a straight path to dependency hell and breakings... not because something went wrong but because the whole concept of an out-of-date system not running their own also 2-weeks behind version onf the AUR is idiotic. On the "plus" side they have an easy fix: blame the user, because he should obviously know that an pre-installed part of Manjaro is conceptionally flawed and shouldn't be trusted.
- The main problem with Manjaro is they hold updates to the repos back for to weeks, which in itself isn’t a problem but they don’t do the same for the AUR, meaning you’re almost guaranteed to have dependencie issues at some point. And a, very minor, issue is that in the past they have broken their forum site, but that hasn’t happened for a while now.
- Linux mint: ex windows guy? I take offence, I’m an ex-SuSE 4.2, ex-macOS, windows only at work guy. (My cinnamon is themed to have macOS ish appearance btw.) [and I lied, not ex-mac as such, I have a few macs round the house, and built my Linux machine to run games on steam/lutris, around a spare gfx card that came out of my classic Mac pro5,1]
Ubuntu: was the first distro that came up… hated it and went back to windows Manjaro: tried it after Ubuntu, was great for 2 months until it broke and I swapped to arch Mint: never used it Debian: used it once for a VM because it wasn’t canonical, but it was meh Endeavour: never used it Arch: it was great and I still use it for my cheap side laptop, but I forgot to update it for a month and it broke on my main laptop and I wasn’t good enough with Linux to fix it at the time so that computer runs Nix Nix: used it after arch broke and I was paranoid with having to fix stuff… still use it on my primary computer but am frustrated with how hard it is to develop in rust on
- In my experience, nix works exceptionally well with Rust. Python and JavaScript are nastier, especially if the libraries use C extensions.
... Fedora?
- Lol, forgot that very important one 😂
  Reaction: 😃good choice! I think it is a good well distro for people coming to linux✌🏻
Yeah honestly I like to know what drew people to that distro.

I've been on mint for a while. Here's a tip for anyone who needs some windows apps that won't work in Linux.

VM workstation 17 is free and is fast as balls. With plug and play pass through too.

Why would you want that on Linux? We already have qemu KVM which can be used via libvirt. Just install virtual manager and be done with it.
The speed you are seeing is the same as KVM
- Why would you want that on Linux? We already have qemu KVM which can be used via libvirt. Just install virtual manager and be done with it.
  Slow down. VMware can be one click and done. All these alternatives and extras and configurations are the reason windows people don't try Linux. Don't over complicate a simple thing. If they want new or more they can figure that out at a later date.
Any clue how it handles Illustrator?
- Unfortunately not. But I'd imagine flawless. You know of a free way to test?
Can you test. paint.net for me
- Lol really? Edit: oh! My bad thought this was something else. Gimme a minute I'll run through it

Ubuntu

- I activate Ubuntu Pro
- Ubuntu is awesome Change my mind

SteamOS.

That's Arch BTW
- It's Arch-based, but if
  distro = base
  then
  Mint = Ubuntu
  Ubuntu = Debian
  Mint = Debian

So true. But this is (usually) more like sibling rivalry instead of actual disrespect. It is kinda fun if you're in the mood to poke at your peers.

SteamOS, what else?

You use SteamOS btw?
- Yes, I use SteamOS on my steamdeck. Aside from my nuc which is running ProxMox with several Debian based VMs, that’s sadly currently the only thing that’s running Linux in my house.

Red Star OS, commrad!

Someone should do this meme with the Fediverse

What do you mean?
- Well you know, the commie instances, the nazi instances, the cp instances
- Which software
- Which instance?

Tumbleweed!

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences

Ubuntu. I have nothing to prove.

I can't stand Gnome 3. That's why I go with Kubuntu.
- Hey another Kubuntu user! Seems like a very overlooked distro, imo

Whichever one you chose is the wrong one!

This is the only right answer
One of the main reasons I've stayed on the sidelines. Lol
Every time I get close, I read about something else screwy.
- lol, just try one for a few months and then switch at some point. At one point in my life I was switch distros every two weeks to a months with some stable distro for 3-6 months. But it was an exciting time in 2004-201. Lot of variety back then on how a distro worked
Whichever one you choose is the right one!
list one problem with Gentoo?

I finally joined the Fedora nation after being on Arch for a long time. Both are great.

I love arch, but I'm also a pedantic computer nut
It's not for everyone
Same, Fedora's my main driver at this point. It's the only one that seems to support being close to the edge that well without instability. And I no longer have the patience or risk acceptance for Arch/-derived systems at this point, as much as I enjoy using them as a hobby and to preview the latest tech stacks.

Ooookay, this will get controversial.

Proud Manjaro/Debian user!

Ubuntu and derivatives suck because of Canonical and their practices
Fedora sucks because of Red Hat
OpenSUSE sucks because RPM (why?!) and still SUSE (but they're the best of the three)
Rest is exotic and obscure

So we end up with Arch and Debian. Debian 12 is good enough as is, and runs on a work laptop where I don't care about anything but stability. Arch is respectable and great, but requires excessive maintenance to work properly. Among its derivatives, Endeavour is just a nicer archinstall (so, why?), Garuda is cool but unstable and too gamer'y, Manjaro is a bit problematic at times but generally the safest bet when it comes to Arch. So, when it comes to my main PC doubling as a gaming rig, this is a no-brainer.

this will get controversial
In a linux community? Im shocked, shocked!
- Normally when people hear Manjaro, hell breaks loose :D
  Apparently folks here are a lot more chill about it
What did you not like about EndeavourOS?
- The fact that it adds too little to Arch to be seen as a separate entity. And I don't want to run mainline Arch. It requires too much maintenance to work with it properly, and every update is a bit of a gamble on what's gonna break next - unless you spend solid time reading notes to every update.
Mint where?
- Lol
  See Ubuntu and derivatives

Been running Bazzite for a month and having a great experience with it! My nvidea cards work with no hassle, and with the extended proton I have had issues with only 1 game so far, and even that was fixed by just switching to a different version. Only downside so far is that Wayland doesn't work as well as X11 on my DE, but with the rest working great, I have no complaints :)

I feel like Bazzite is the new Arch in the sense that people are proud to use it and recommend it all the time
- Could be, though I am not claiming it is the best distro ever made. It is very good for my use case, however, and I think that it is a good option for many gamers that are considering taking the leap.
Would you recommend this distro to someone who hasn’t used Linux (Ubuntu) since 2006? I have nvidea as well and haven’t switched because I hear of issues with nvidea
- So... FWIW I post often about I have a painless NVIDIA experience, including playing Windows only games, including VR games.
  I thought "Damn... how did I get so lucky?" and yesterday while tinkering with partitions (as one does...) I decided I'd try a "speed run" to go from no system to a VR Windows only game running on Linux.
  I started from Debian 12 600Mb ISO and ~1h later I was playing.
  I'm not saying everybody should have a perfect experience playing games on Linux with an NVIDIA but ... mine was again pretty straightforward.
  I'd argue it's easier with Ubuntu and accepting non-free repository, probably having the same result, ~1hr from 0 to play, without even using the command line once.
Ran Aurora that is also based on Fedora Kinoite, just as Bazzite.
The world is seriously not ready for atomic distros. SO many workarounds to make basic things it's insane.
- What was some of the difficulty you ran into?
  I haven’t had to do anything weird but I don’t need anything outside of flatpaks usually.
  For most other things a container with more traditional package management works well.

Still quietly asking myself why tf that is important. I need an OS to do a task, and I need it to be as easily configurable and as unobtrusive as possible. If I was into nursing an OS I'd have stayed with Windows.

Then do with Ubuntu or its variants. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.
- Ty. Didn't want to add "I'm using Debian, btw.". Debian ticks all my boxes for ease of install, usage, updates, software availabiliy and - most important - stability.

I have zorin and mint dual booting on my surface book.

really liking zorin, very pleasing to look at, simple, haven't run into any software I had on windows that I can't run here. I don't game on, could still be a slight negative, but so far I love it.

Zorin looks really nice and clean. I'm still waiting for them to release the Grid management tool...if that is actually going to happen
I've used Zorin for a time, it is really good
Why having two Ubuntu-based distros on a dual boot, if I may ask? Matter of whatever visual preference you now have?
- it was actually an accident. I had mint, then went to install latest zorin and it asked to split, I said sure why not. hadn't gone through the process in a long time, wanted to see how it went. I really only use zorin though
I've run Zorin for about a year for my 13yo's gaming machine. Most games are through Steam w/ Proton, and almost nothing has been impossible to run. (Except Roblox so f Roblox I guess)
- lol Roblox is what he's into right now. he can play that on anything though really, so he uses a surface.

PopOS is fun. Mint is pretty good too.

I'm really looking forward to using their Cosmic DE once HDR support is in.
- Is PopOs or mint getting support for HDR? I'm dual booting PopOs but the lack of HDR support is of the things holding me back.

Went with nix about a month ago and it started off great. Slowly learning to not really like it. A lot of problems that are really hard to fix

What kinda issues are you having? Most of my problems with Nix are solved with overlays or creating a module. Admittedly, in order to do that you still have to know how to fix your issue the usual linux way. Afterall, Nix is more of an abstraction tool IMO; good for replicating something across a ton if devices. If you don't need that, there's other distros that work much better out of the box.

Whatever it is it's the wrong Linux

You dropped this -> /s
- They're deadly serious. Every Linux is the wrong Linux.
  BSD is the only way.
  (hears the rumble of the hurd in the distance)

Debian for the Transbians (trans lesbians).

Debian is like the Unitarian Universalists of distros. “You’re here? You’re here! That’s great!”
I am finding this argument strangely compelling.
Oh no.
But isn't Mint based on Debian? Can I be in the club despite my vanilla choice or do I have to change?
Maybe Mint can be for transbian subs?
- There is Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) but default Mint is Ubuntu based (Ubuntu is also based on Debian).

mint.

NixOS

NixOS
but am looking to move away because of the lack of SELinux or even AppArmor
- apparmor is partially supported (check nixos security. apparmor, some manual configuration may be needed), not selinux though and probably never will be

Find me a distro, that works with Nvidia 4070 / Intel CPU.

Can support a 3 monitor setup with weird sizes. 4k, 1440( in vertical), and a 1600-1200.

Play most games with out scaling issues.

That should do

P.s. very little CLI and tinkering needed.

Bazzite or Nobara.
Bazzite worked well for me with dual monitors and a 1060. But I can’t speak for 3 monitors and a 4070.
Sounds like a job for a USB trial run on a rainy weekend when you're not doing anything else.
Nvidia supply OEM drivers for the Debian family (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint), if not others, assuming the open-source drivers don't cut it for you. Microcode updates are released for both Intel and AMD.
You'll probably run into issues with some games. Things are getting better on Linux, slowly and steadily, but many games are written specifically for Windows with no Linux port available. Steam's store, for example, shows which games are SteamOS compatible, which usually means they'll run on Linux too.
For other games it's worth checking the Internet - e.g. www.protondb.com to see if anyone else has a particular game running under Linux. You're probably aware that there are programs that attempt to provide some layer of Windows behaviour that form part of the solution. Some of the solutions may or may not involve command line use.

The one that does what I need it to do on the device I'm running it on. I've currently got four different Linux distros on x86 PCs around my house at this moment.

ChromeOS

Bazzite bro here

Openbsd

Sorry, I'm Plan 9 all the way

~~Did first 8 plans fail?~~
Very interesting thing. Linux Namespaces were inspired by it.
- It's from outer space

Put any distro in front of me and provided I don't need to master it, I'm good. Ubuntu is fine. Debian is fine. RedHat is fine. Fedora is fine. I even have a tiny low-end system that is using Bohdi. Whatever. We're all using mostly the same kernel anyway.

90% of what I do is in a container anyway so it almost doesn't matter; half the time that means Alpine, but not really. That includes both consuming products from upstream as well as software development. I also practically live in the terminal, so I couldn't care less what GUI subsystem is in play, even while I'm using it.

Alpine, mainly. It's not bad on desktop.

I'm on Tumbleweed right now. Used to be on Arch flavors, Garuda then Cachy OS.

Tumbleweed is almost as fast for gaming performance, I just don't have it in me to do all the tinkering anymore. Just want something up to date that works.

Arch was... great and pretty reliable, just got tired of the tinkering.

As someone mildly interested in OpenSUSE and currently on an Arch-based distro, how much do you miss AUR? Or do you use Distrobox?
- I don't miss AUR. Well, I do but opensuse has OBS. Technically OBS is better as packages can be rebuilt automatically when dependencies are updated, but there are a lot more users on the AUR than OBS so AUR has more stuff on it.
  OBS packages are less likely to break your system in an update, but the AUR is just flat out bigger.
  There hasn't been anything I've needed that I haven't been able to find either on OBS or as a flatpak. When something isn't in the disro repos, I look for a flatpak first, then check OBS. Mostly cause flatpaks are easier to search.

Manjaro and Debian

Nixos 💀

Go on.....

I have been talking and thinking about switching for a while. I want to go straight to Debian.

Good choice! Running it on my laptop.
Debian 12 is solid and much more user-friendly compared to previous editions.
Expect the software to age without updates, though, or rely on Flatpaks/Distrobox for what you need to be fresh.
- Is updating the software an issue? I always try to keep my stuff up to date. Sometimes I can be a little lazy, but I do care to keep the latest stuff going. Doesn't the software have notifications that a newer version is available?

I've gone with PopOs. Ubuntu based so well supported. They've been around for a while now so they won't disappear over night. Gaming just works.

I was on Nobara for a while and really liked it. but while glorious eggroll is the goat, I don't want to put my DE in the hands of a single person.

Since swapping the I've experienced one game crashing freeze (which I hope was a one off), and when screen sharing BG3 over discord it slows the game down to a crawl. But I blame discord for this one, as its fine when streaming from OBS.

Backed by a hardware reseller. Likely to be around as long as they stay in business.

Mint Cinnamon. Fight me.

Nah, good choice.
I use arch(btw) because of the aur, but mint is a fantastic distro

It lasted for a precious second.

Currently, PopOS although I'm not really that enthusiastic about it.

I've been using Pop for years, I just feel like its always worked so well for me and never given me any major gripes. Web browsing, playing a few basic games, editing documents and even recently setting up another home server with it for media streaming with Jellyfin.
I'm a big advocate for any OS which works well out the box and is mostly hands off once configured!
If PopOS isn't your thing you'll find it eventually 🙂
Yeah, there's stuff to like, but.. but..
I just disable most of the Pop stuff and use vanilla gnome.

Just curious does anyone actually care about what distro people use or more just a meme?

In real life not at all, online though it ranges from friendiy banter to elitist peeps bickering about package managers, those guys can be ignored.
Definetely a meme at least among my friends and coworkers. Just a friendly banter akin to prefering console vs pc or supporting one sports team rather than the other
The only time I've encountered people that care a little too much about what distro is being used, is right after having transitioned to Linux; the sheer liberating potential of the thing can make you lose your head.
I've come across a lot of professional bias about Linux distros, but that's usually due to real-world experience with tough or bad projects. Some times, decisions are made that make a given distro the villain or even the hero of the story. In the end, you'll hear a lot of praise and hate, but context absolutely matters.
There's also the very natural tendency to seek external validation for your actions/decisions. But some people just can't self-actualize in a way that's healthy. Sprinkle a little personal insecurity into the mix and presto: "someone is getting on great with that other Linux I don't use, so Imma get big mad."

I've been a Windows... Let's say a power-user, no expert but I could install it, find a way to troubleshoot most problems. Then at high school a friend lent me a bit outdated Knoppix CD. I never managed to make ppp work on that so no internet, but I loved the old KDE. Somewhat later, when we had a normal DSL line with a proper router, I got Fedora. Then Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian for a while...

Finally I found Gentoo. And there I am, some 10 years later, still on that. After a bit of a bumpy road of the first install (no automation, but the handbook is very helpful if you know the basic Linux and HW terms) it was almost flawless. I remember two problems, and both of them were my own fault. The first one was some testing kernel version that had a bug where small files on ext3 filesystem would get randomly corrupted. The second was when I was trying to remove some hidden files, mangled the command and ran basically rm -rf /* (seriously, don't do that, it will delete everything on your system). I reinstalled the system (I had data on a different drive that either wasn't mounted atm or it didn't reach them before I Ctrl-c'd that command.) and all was well.

Finally I did last clean install when I bought new (used) Ryzen build to replace my old i5-2500k, I would've had to recompile world anyway and I had pretty much dependency hell of my own making at that point (I was testing tons of unstable stuff, new Plasma 5 from testing repo and so on).

Now I'm running mostly stable system with only bunch of packages unmasked from testing and there are no problems with that. I never had that with any other distro. No matter if Deb based, rpm based, sooner or later I inevitably ran into some variant of "I need a package that's not in basic repo, and the package I found requires a version of some library that's not available as well" or something like that. In Gentoo, the packages either compile against the version you have installed, or if not possible, you can have more versions installed at the same time in different slots. Also if you need something that's not available in repo, you can just write a text file that downloads and compiles the version you need and it integrates in the package manager automatically, no need to create whole Deb/rpm package.

Debian Testing.

Learning about the xz backdoor was a fun week.

Which Podman version are you running it on?

5.2 , slowly migrating all my homelab to quadlets.

last time I was messing around with Linux on a second machine I think I installed Mint. it was fine 🤷🏻‍♂️

This is dumb because it's making it out to seem like there are Super Distro Wars and not just folks calling out bad decision makers like Ubuntu and Manjaro, and non-free-as-in-beer distros like Zorin and Elementary

I'm pretty sure outside of those two categories nobody really cares

And yet, the worst design choice was how this meme template was used.

Distro wars, like the old vi vs emacs wars (showing my age, I know) is not entirely serious. I never understood sportsball fandom, but it's kind of like that. Debian is my home team; if you use Fedora, you're from out-of-town.

Home server: Proxmox (Debian). Redundant DNS: Raspbian (Debian). Parent's server: Debian (Debian).

Gonna be honest, I mostly live off my phone and a retroid pocket.

Nobara! switched 2 days ago, deleted my Windows partition 3 hours ago because it's smooth sailing and quite the different experience compared to bashing my head against debian jessie ages ago.

Edit: the final nail in the coffin were the fking backported ads in the start menu. seriously, wtf.

Dual booting W11 and Linux Mint. I like linux, but can't get adobe premiere to work satisfactorily there. There are also some softwares like a viewer for 3DS games on my modded 3DS that I can't really use either

Linux is Linux.

We should send all those people, pages and guides suggesting distros to hell.

And then instead we suggest update-schemes (fixed, rolling, slow-roll), package managers and Desktop environments. People with enough brain cells to start a computer are then absolutely able to chose a distro fitting them based on that. Everything else coming with a distro is just themeing/branding anyway...

(and just for the use statistic: Archlinux, Opensuse (Leap and Kalpa), Debian here...)

I'm ready for the feature triangle
There’s a lot of advantages that simply come with using a more popular distribution. For one, having a larger pool of package maintainers (and therefore more packages) is pretty important. Have you ever tried using NixOS as a daily driver? I did a few years ago. Very annoying having to create my own packages for so many different (and relatively common) things I wanted to use.
I don't care in the slightest which package manager or UI or if releases are rolling or rocking.
What I care about is usability and ease if use, so I went with the best one, Linux Mint!
😁
WSL and Android, then?

Smarch

After several years I have landed on Debian with plain old gnome for my whole family. Boring as f***, but it just works. Currently untraining myself from opening my terminal on fresh boot to do pacman -Syu. Flatpacks have solved my need for updated software.

Void Linux stays winning

Why Void? What are the advantages?
From what I've gathered, its "do it all from scratch" approach entails a steep learning curve, and I wonder what one would get into it for.
- Not really I feel it's adjacent to arch amount of do-it-yourselfness but it's extremely lightweight it has runit instead of systemd everything starts extraordinarily quickly I just prefer that. Xbps is it really good package manager and just slightly better than most others in my opinion it's one of my favorites.

Nobara :)

"She is adopted" - Arch user

WSLinux

I had to ditch my girlfriend because she became an arch elitist. Debian ftw.

Both is good, but I like the aur.
- Heh. I was kinda playing at being a Debian elitist.
  But yeah, none of the major distros get there without reason.

Arch.

TEMPLEOS