As someone who builds a computer, installs whatever seems like the most stable LTS distro at the time with the longest support period, and only switches to a new one when the current LTS expires, I’d like to thank all of you for being my beta testers. Your support means the world.
you’re welcome mr debian user
This guy runs debian (btw)
We’ve got to come up with a different acronym. What says old and stable?
“I use Debian, lol (lots of love)”Why the face?
I was born with it
I once heard someone say that Debian is like the sound Dads make when getting off the couch. I’ve never felt so seen.
(I absolutely run Debian, lol)
I installed the latest version of Pop and was shocked when like a third of the shit I wanted to find was missing. The settings page is barren. Zero VNC support out of the box, and most VNC software doesn’t even WORK! The shop is much better and faster than Pop shop… when it isn’t freezing all the time.
Reverted back to 22.x before cosmic and all the stuff I need is back, VNC is built-in, and the slower Pop Shop never freezes. Nothing freezes, it’s perfectly stable.
Cosmic looks nice but damn, the latest version of Pop is NOT there yet.
I reverted back to Mint when remote sound stopped working in Remmina.
I use Arch BTW full-time for work and personal for about 3 years now and haven’t had any issues at all.
I worked with someone who uses arch on his work laptop
One day it just died and he had to spend a day or two setting it all up again
I mean, its not common, but it happens
Yeah, I ran arch through college, it broke 3 times over 4 years, basically each time because Nvidia updated. Now that I don’t have the time to fuss with spending a couple of hours chrooting in and fixing Nvidia stuff, I just swapped to endeavorOS sway community edition (and made sure none of my PCs have Nvidia anything in them) and haven’t had an issue yet.
Yep, the only time things have broken in Arch for me has been with Nvidia driver updates.
Yep. Funnily enough, never really had any issues with the drivers on a desktop, only on mobile, mostly switching between integrated and discrete. But after messing with them on my laptop for a few years, you better bet my laptop was only running Intel integrated and my desktop runs on amd.
I used to do much distro hopping coming from gentoo and settling down with endeavour. My tip for all of you: use lvm for everything outside boot, root and swap (vms, home, games). That way a complete reinstall just takes minutes.
That doesn’t happen. When it breaks, it’s always recoverable, and it very very very rarely breaks (>10 years Arch user here, never lost sleep about it)
I’d guess that keeping configs in Ansible would reduce that setup time to an hour or two.
Skill issue.
I’ve been dailying the exact same arch installation since 2014 without reinstalling it a single time.
Now to be fair I did have it non-bootable at several points. Worst of which was a PAM update which broke it completely because the new config was in a
.pacnewfile and the old one was not compatible anymore. But since it was a edge-case there was no forum post about it. Still recovered it just fine after an hour or so of troubleshooting.It’s all open-source and usually decently documented. The only reason anyone should have to reinstall a Linux desktop is lack of experience, but I would always advise to persevere because troubleshooting my system is how I gained much of my expertise. If that’s not what you want, stick to Debian.
been using Artix and Arch for two years, for work and play, no issues
I think bleeding edge linux is probably more stable than windows
Around 10 years here. Some issues, but much less time wasted in total than if I had done “dist-upgrade”s the whole time.
One huge advantage of a rolling distro is that generally only one thing can break at a time :)
whats dist-upgrade? this is the first time ive heard of it
It’s what Debian and similar distributions use to switch from one stable release to the next. This happens every half year for Ubuntu and every blue moon for Debian, which makes it a significantly more error-prone process than updating Arch every week in my experience.
The LTS released every other year) is supported 5 years.
Oof, that’s probably almost a full reinstall when you upgrade, depending on how stable your stack is. A lot of services will will have breaking config changes in that time frame.
Yeah, people like to think that bleeding edge means “untested”. As if your OS was directly receiving the dev’s
git push…I wonder if there’s a package manager that does just that, I want the real bleeding edge!
Portage allows that to some extent - you can make it install thr latest of everything. Depending on the ebuild, a lot of that will be straight from git. Master branch, not some random working one, mind you, but still.
The only issue I ever had was Arch ARM changing the naming convention for network devices and making me have to plug the first Raspberry Pi that I upgraded into a monitor to debug what was going on.
This was annoying for sure, but less annoying than using a 6 year old Python version like the Red Hat Enterprise Linux at work…
I see your 6 year old python version and raise you RHEL5 running python 2.5 in 2022.
That thing didn’t even have a base Exception class.
I like Fedora for my desktop. Close enough to upstream to get the latest features, but not so bleeding edge that it’s unstable.
And it’s Linus’s distro of choice.
Yeah, but he has stated that he really doesn’t have an opinion. He just happened to install Fedora on the family PC a long time ago and now he neither wants to deal with two separate distros, nor switch the whole household over.
I mean that and being open enough of a distro he can change the kernel out decently often, but not so open things like throwing a new kernel in arch leads to poking at other things.
Yeah same. Its a little annoying having to wait for certain updates, like when a new application can be built from source on arch, but i’d have to rebuild a core dependency from a scratch to get it working on fedora.
But ive been using it for years, and even if i broke the system, ive always got it working again, which is saying something.
I’m wondering where people like you and me, using non-LTS but not rolling distros, go in the OP pic.
fence and then grass and then dirt and rocks
It’s balanced as all things should be.
I’ve really started to enjoy Kinonite. Fedora’s atomic version of KDE Plasma.
This is the way.
I’m on Nobara, and if the installation ever dies, i will probably install pure fedora. My previous experiences were all with debian, which drove me crazy as a gamer because when playing current games you want your system to be a lot closer to the bleeding edge of the knife - debian is more like a chain glove for holding it.
I use Debian testing for… 20 years? I had serious problems with it. Twice. Nothing unrepairable, but still I needed another machine with internet to fix the problem. I suppose that is ok stability-wise for 20 years.
Sounds like the exact reason that official debian backports came into existence.
yo you can just turn a choice into a meme and the crowd will go crazy
You’ll never become the governor of South Dakota like that
Step 1: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.
Step 2: but then again maybe I should try out this little extra thing I just found online that might not work…
It turns out you love installing and configuring software, not actually using it.
I’m in this post and I don’t like it
Step 1: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.
Step 2: but then again maybe I should try out this little extra thing I just found online that might not work…Step 2: Why is x broken after an update!?
…
Step 99: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.
Is it just me? I’ve had more issues with Linux updates than Windows updates at this point. Don’t get me started with major distro updates.
To me it kinda depends on what hardware/distro.
Currently running MX on multiple systems for more than a year now and it’s been pretty smooth sailing.
I do remember, however, using fedora and whatnot ages ago having exactly what you describe.
If you want something more stable you might wanna look at debian, opensuse,… (I’m sure someone more knowledgeable will complete this list). They might not be as flashy but you can depend on those and get some work done.
More than a year doesn’t sound particularly long.
I’m running LTS versions of Ubuntu server (and Windows 11 on my PC). Debian would be more stable, but then it’s so far behind that it’s a pain to use at times, especially for running any kind of game server. Ubuntu has been pretty good so far, but LTS to LTS isn’t always easy.
Either keep things minimal or keep the complex stuff isolated.
I never make it to step 1
Obligatory reference to NixOS.
LTS is all fun and games and stability until someone releases an update with features that I really really want right now. This is why I keep coming back to KDE neon.
I’m really curious as to what those features would be?
Most recently I switched from Debian because the version of plasma I was running had a bunch of little issues running wayland on my Nvidia card (bought when i was running windows, will be going amd… Someday). The new version of plasma had a bunch of Nvidia specific fixes that wouldn’t make it down to my system for months.
Tbh, I also kinda like the little issues that i occasionally have with rolling release distros. I learn a lot from having to fix things and it keeps me sharp.
This but new Linux users. They get attracted to the worse newbies distros every time
What’s the best one, apart from Mint?
The typical advice is:
- Mint
- ElementryOS
- Fedora
- Pop!
- Ubuntu (unpopular with Extremely Online people, but is pretty good at the Just Works for normies)
- Debian Stable for older hardware
As usual OpenSuSE gets totally forgotten. Tumbleweed is 5the most stable rolling release I’ve ever seen.
Oh yeah! I’ve always heard good things about OpenSuSE, just never tried it. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl on my other old laptop.
Fedora
really? I haven’t touched regular fedora, how is the “vanilla” version different to derivities and other “vanilla” distros like debian or arch?
Yeah, vanilla Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome flavors, with good hardware support and a large community. For noobies, a good, familiarish desktop environment and comprehensive hardware support are really the most important things for them not to immediately bounce off.
Fedora is pretty good. However in order to install drivers or firmware for specific hardware can be more difficult as it involves adding extra repositories.
Yeah, vanilla Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome flavors, with good hardware support and a large community.
I have never installed Arch, but I guess it doesn’t; but debian does come with various DEs , including KDE and Gnome.
Arch can be great and you can install whatever desktop environment you like, but there are just too many concepts for the average new user. Making a USB install stick is “difficult” enough to make a lot of people give up.
Debian is great, and my personal preference but it tends to be a bit behind on the latest hardware support, particularly for laptops. It’s easy enough to install whatever drivers you need, but again that can be just one thing too many for a new user.
Debian is great, and my personal preference but it tends to be a bit behind on the latest hardware support, particularly for laptops.
ah ok, so fedora is generic and more up to date for new hardware, but debian lacks … cutting edge support, otherwise, it’s just as good for newbies.
And arch is still wiki based to install, even if you use archinstall.
Arch takes a long time to install, even if you have done it before.
For Arch, I’d go with something like EndeavorOS. The installation is easy for someone who knows what a file system or software repository is and I absolutely loved that you can install a bare bones system: just the desktop and almost no apps and you can go from there and install what you like (I wish fedora offered this).
I ended up not using Arch/Endeavor because of rolling releases and I found the AUR dangerous. I mean, its not dangerous, but anyone can put anything on there and its your job (and the communities) to make sure its good. I think a “build all the software yourself” is a great philosophy, but it only fits computer geeks (and I mean this in a good way). We cant all be Richard Stallman. I think for somethings, I can accept an “arbiter of software” who curates what gets on the repo and what doesn’t and that its shared via compiled binaries instead of code.
Fedora’s philosophy is free software only. So vanilla Fedora ships with FOSS only. Imo, they’re really good at this, but I personally couldn’t live with that. The community maintained fusion repository is essential because of Nvidia drivers and full ffmpeg. Steam is in a separate non-free repo as well.
Other than than tidbit, Fedora is easy to install, well maintained, has a large community and wide third party support (as in software devs often build “native fedora” binaries available on their repo).
I prefer it to any other Fedora based distro, but for the reason above, it may not be best suited for the average lemming.
Min- oh.
I don’t really know a bunch of distros, but I helped convert some normies so here’s a list of pain points I rather not have as a first experience
- No rolling distro. While some people may never see an issue in their life, some may see it right away. Bad first impression (Someone insisted on starting on fedora, then noticed the hard way that the current Nvidia drivers were incompatible with the shipped kernel)
- easy Nvidia driver install (only for gamers on Nvidia)
- Has a gui app store
- has a common package manager that is often shown in tutorials (like apt. You always see exemple apt commands)
- sudo is configured
- doesn’t have a DE that tries to revolutionize UX
New users are dumb, so it needs to be easy for them
Sudo is configured in the Debian installer, if you click the “root not allowed to log in” checkbox. So it literally checks all your boxes.
Oh? Didn’t know about that. Thanks
Just checked, and sadly it’s not as straightforward as that.
Sudo is configured if you leave the password field blank for the root user.
Which is of course documented in the installation guide, but hardly anyone ever reads that.RTFM I guess
the current Nvidia drivers were incompatible with the shipped kernel
A more common issue with Nvidia is older hardware no longer being supported by Nvidia’s current drivers and the kernel not supporting the old drivers. For older cards, you need to run kernel 6.8 or older for the binary drivers to work. The open source Nouveau driver is noticeably slower and getting hardware accelerated video to work can be difficult. So you can easily end up with mesa-llvm, meaning your CPU emulates OpenGL.
The easiest way to get this to work is to install Linux Mint 22.1.
Pop was mine,
Yep I outgrew it and moved on to better and worse distros. But pop helped me kick windows to the kerb
Just use nyarch /s
If you want up-to-date rolling release packages without living dangerously, I recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed. It breaks way less than most other rolling distros such as Arch. I don’t know how they achieve it but they do.
Automated testing.
other distros don’t?
Don’t know. I don’t keep up with other distros that closely. I’m not saying that it’s a unique feature, but that it’s why updates tend not to break things even though it’s a rolling release.
I have many other things I’d rather do on my computer, than mess around with the OS. I just want one that works and stays out of my way. Oh, and doesn’t spy on me.
Used to be me. I ran Debian Unstable for years. Got tired of it breaking. I installed Stable probably 7 or 8 years ago and never looked back.
If you ever feel the need, OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is shockingly stable on my old rig.
Big up for Tumbleweed, i run it on servers.
OK that’s past even my level of chutzpah
I have this, but in Windows 11. I’m stuck.
TFW Windows drops everything you’re doing to automatically install unstable updates
Best feeling ever.
I had an update today knock out my wireless card. We’re living on the edge.
Ooh fun! I didn’t get that one!
Windows 11 will never touch my home machines, but I still need to use Windows for a couple things. I’m so happy there’s Windows 10 LTSC ioT.
Same here. I want to ditch Windows 11 so badly, but I tried Linux Mint and I lost half my frame rate in games. I guess if you use a Nvidia GPU on Linux then you’re shit outta luck sadly, as I heard the reason is poor driver support. If I did something wrong I’ll gladly try Linux again but I don’t have high hopes it will work now :(
Did you install the actual nvidia drivers or were you just using the default nouveau driver?
I tried both propietary drivers and the open source (x.org) drivers. All were lower FPS. Ryzen 9 3900XT + RTX 5080 for reference
You need to change to a newer kernel when you use Mint for gaming. It has a GUI for it.
But personally, I’d just install Bazzite instead, it has all gaming- related optimizations built in from the start.Thank you so much!
nvidia drivers are good performance-wise, you should have installed the proprietary ones because mint comes with nouveau, which does not perform well at all. if you did that, let’s talk about L3 cache. ironically gaming on low end hardware is worse on linux because apparently proton needs quite a bit of that cache. my previous cpu (9600kf) had 9 MB and it was hopeless, current one has almost 100 and performance is not an issue anymore.
btw pop os comes with proprietary nvidia drivers so you don’t need to think about it all, but because they ship it with their half-done cosmic de, can’t recommend it to newcomers anymore…
100%, biggest performance upgrade I ever experienced for Linux gaming was upgrading to a X3D CPU.
My CPU (Ryzen 9 3900XT) is a 12 core CPU paired with an RTX 5080. My CPU sucks for gaming and is meant more for workstations, so you might be onto something here…
your cpu is good, seems like you were on the right tracks originally. people have been complaining about 5080 performance with dx12 games on linux. it may take them a while to get the drivers right, but i did recently see some news (techlinked probably) about nvidia adding resources to optimizing their linux drivers
Opensuse Tumbleweed is my way to go and I am pretty happy. Also do have an NVIDIA Card…
I’m just waiting for win 11 to fail catastrophically in me. That will definitely give me the time to install Linux… checks notes… Debian?
Yep that’s my plan, whenever my Win11 install becomes broken, I’ll make the switch, laggy games be damned! Maybe we can install Arch so we can fit in with the Linux crowd and finally say “I use Arch btw”
Tumbleweed and Nvidia Proprietary drivers worked really well for my games. There is Bazzite that’s ready to go for gaming too.
On my system I am using kde x11 instead of wayland for the same reason. Last time I tried wayland I was getting half of the framerate compared to x11.
At some point I want to switch to a gaming-oriented distros and see if it’s magically better there.
What games specifically? Some distros require a bit more driver installation, so maybe that was part of it (was running an rtx 2070 super on linux until a few months ago on linux, didn’t have any issues with frame rates). The poor driver support is mostly on laptops, as they sometimes have issues switching between integrated and discrete graphics.
NixOS unstable… I like to live dangerously, safely.
Well, if you’re okay using 3+ years old versions of various software…
With bugs that were fixed years ago, but won’t make it into your distro’s repo for years.
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