I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I’m learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?
RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.
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Linux Mint because it’s extremely simple and has caused me no issues for over a year. It’s the best distribution to get someone who is afraid to switch from Windows or MacOS to understand that using Linux can be just as easy.
Endeavour OS is the best because you get all the benefits of Arch combined with a familiar and friendly installer, a good out of the box setup with the desktop of your choice. Not to mention the outstanding community that’s built up around it.
I really like CachyOS:
- Arch based a. Pacman package manager b. AUR c. Rolling release distro
- Graphical installer
- Extensive software repo. Things that I used to only be able to get as a flatpak are available in the repo, such as SurfShark VPN as an example
- Super fast.
- Updates are tested before they are made available and the delay is only a few days.
I wanted to try it but its installer kept hanging when it saw my LUKS on LVM setup :(
Mint. It just works and Cinnamon is a good DE (ui design peaked in the Windows XP days). Plus you also get all the software built and tested for Ubuntu without the bullshit of using Ubuntu.
For my server I use NixOS, because having one unified configuration is so nice.
Mine is the best for me because I like it the best. It does what I need with a minimum of configuration or customization. My needs and preferences are probably different from yours though, so Linux Mint Debian Edition with Cinnamon desktop environment might not be the best for you.
having tried many distros over the years, Arch (and most derivatives) is best for me
pacman is the best i’ve used, packages are very up to date, and it’s pretty easy to troubleshoot with the enormous amount of info on the wiki and elsewhereI use fedora silverblue for a couple reasons. After jumping from elementary to Ubuntu to Manjaro to Artix I got tired of dealing with distro specific modifications and weird issues. With the Ubuntu based distro I never enjoyed how out of date some packages were. I’d hear about a cool new update for a program I use and realize it would be a while till that would be in my repos.
I really liked artix and Arch’s rolling release nature and I would probably enjoy arch if I still used my computer daily like I used to but now I can be away from it for a couple months at a time and I need updates to be stable.
I’ve found Fedora (silverblue in particular) to be a perfect middle ground between rolling release and having a more regular update schedule. I use silverblue because I never wanted to have to worry about an update breaking my install ever again.
I will admit that because silverblue uses flatpaks almost exclusively, my appreciation for software being up to date could be achieved on almost any other distro, but the vanilla style of fedora is what keeps me now. I’m a big fan of vanilla gnome and not too many distros ship it like that.
Honestly, having tried both atomic and regular Fedora, I ended up with regular, as it allows you to do all the same things without limiting you to them.
Install flatpak? Sure. Use Distrobox? Of course. But if you have to use native package, you can simply install it without jumping through the hoops with rpm-ostree (which doesn’t even always work properly).
Fedora itself is great, though - a healthy release cycle, high stability, and mature base.
Arch is the best, the arch wiki is massive, pacman is just amazing, no nvidia drivers bullshitting, and rolling release has only broken one thing once, life under the arch is pretty great
Also PKGBUILD’s are the superior packaging format. Back in the day people use to talk about preferring debian or redhat based distros based on how much they liked debs or rpms. Building packages on Arch is easier than pretty much any distro I have ever tried to build packages on.
I recently needed to build newer versions of some packages for Debian. Now, they’re go based so the official packaging is super complicated and eventually I decided to try and make my own from scratch. After a few more hours of messing with the official tooling I start thinking “there must be a better way.”
And sure enough, after a bit of searching I found makedeb which allows you to make debs from (almost) regular PKGFILEs. Made the task a million times simpler.
Arch wiki is the best! I reference often, even though I’m generally applying the information to other distros
Debian (testing) is most suitable for me. If there were a universally best distro, all the others would cease to exist…
It isn’t made by a for-profit company and thus doesn’t have “features” I don’t want.
It pays attention to software freedom, though it isn’t so restrictive about it that it doesn’t work with my hardware.
It was very easy to install only the things I wanted and needed.
Because I don’t have a fickle heart, and My distro is the best, right now, for me. There’s nothing more to it. I do like Mint - but a few apps are out of date, and that’s annoying. But it’s stable, looks great, and works like a charm.
It’s probably not the best but I have it set up and it does what I need it to do 🤷 Fedora KDE
It’s what I use!
Gentoo works best for me because I’m a control freak. It lets me tune my system in any way I want, and I don’t mind leaving my computer on while I’m asleep so that it can compile its way through libreoffice, webkit, and a couple of browsers. Plus, based on complaints I hear from people using other distros, Portage beats other package managers in every way except speed.
This doesn’t mean that it’s best for everyone, mind you, just that it’s best for me.
Gentoo is the best, if you have a beefy CPU with enough RAM, it’s not even that slow. (Yes still slower, though dnf may be on par).
But it’s just the best thing for having control over your hardware and software.
USE flags are divine, I can’t imagine a life without them anymore.
I agree with Gentoo.
I had installed Arch for my wife, to get fast install times and more normal user friendly upgrades, but it kept breaking all the time.
It really opened my eyes to how incredibly stable Gentoo is while still allowing living on the bloodiest of edges at the same time.
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I switched from pop os to Fedora a while back. I did like pop, but it gave me problems regularly and I think it just needs to cook for a few more years probably. Fedora fixed every issue I was having 👍
Seeing all the arch praise here is definitely giving me distro fomo though. Lol
As someone who used both Arch and Fedora: no need to fomo, Fedora is great and delivers everything you may ever need from Arch without the headache.
The only strong side of Arch here is AUR, but then again, I’ve never found anything I would need that wouldn’t be available in Fedora.
So, you’re golden.
Thanks for the reassurance, I appreciate that
Arch. I tried other distros and always came back to Arch. Other distros are very bloated and honestly I can’t be bothered with removing them manually. I also love the AUR and the wiki.
Another interesting distro was NixOS, but that is a bit of a pain in the ass to learn.
For newbies, Fedora KDE Plasma edition or Mint Cinnamon is my recommendation. Kinoite is Fedora KDE Plasma edition but immutable for the ones that keep breaking the system because they keep following some absurd guide online for whatever.
