What distro do you use?

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

I was watching  lot of linux content and I just became curious what is your daily driver linux distro? (If you have one) and what are the problems with it? Do you use KDE or Gnome or XFCE?

[WhitetailAni]

I don't use it too often, but I use Linux Mint 17.3.

Linux Mint because I grew up using Linux Mint, and 17.3 because 17.3 is the best version in my opinion.

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

2 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I don't use it too often, but I use Linux Mint 17.3.

Linux Mint because I grew up using Linux Mint, and 17.3 because 17.3 is the best version in my opinion.

Have you ever tried LMDE4 it's very solid in my opinion I am currently rocking Manjaro for it's aur and the cutting edge updates. Not arch yet because it's too complicated and I have to reset my workflow and redo the csutomization

[RONOTHAN##]

I use Fedora 35 with the Gnome desktop on my laptop. I use Fedora because I want rock solid stability (so no Arch-based stuff), the laptop I have uses Intel integrated graphics so Wayland by default is appreciated, and DNF is really good for a package manager. Don't really have any problems with it, it's very stable, everything is pretty up to date for a static release distro, and I don't need to think about configuring most things. My only gripe is that it uses BTRFS by default but doesn't have any snapshot capability by default. that is easy to add with snapper, but it would still be nice if I didn't have to do that. 

 

I use Gnome because it's a 2 in 1 and Gnome offers the best touch support. When I did daily it on my desktop, I would use KDE for the more familiar and more functional UI, but on a laptop Gnome is really good. 

[OhioYJ]

28 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I don't use it too often, but I use Linux Mint 17.3.

Linux Mint because I grew up using Linux Mint, and 17.3 because 17.3 is the best version in my opinion.

I feel old... 17.3 was my preferred version as well. However running 20.3 on most of my machines at the moment.

 

I've run many distros, PCLinuxOS stuck for quite some time, until they ditched Gnome. Mint has been the other one that has stuck around for me for a very long time for many versions.

[Needfuldoer]

I tinkered with a bunch of different Linux distributions and desktop environments a bit many years ago, but nowadays if I need to use it for something I'll just install the latest LTS release of Ubuntu MATE. (Why Ubuntu MATE? Because GNOME 2 is still my favorite of the major Linux desktop environments and I'm lazy.)

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

36 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I feel old... 17.3 was my preferred version as well. However running 20.3 on most of my machines at the moment.

 

I've run many distros, PCLinuxOS stuck for quite some time, until they ditched Gnome. Mint has been the other one that has stuck around for me for a very long time for many versions.

I am curious do you like where mint is going with the less accent-y stuff because green was theree identity but that has somewhat disappeared to a small degree in linux mint I think as a past time user that  the green accent should remain

[BondiBlue]

Most of the time I use Mint. It's always worked well for me on most hardware, and I even switched my daily driver over to it for a bit. 

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

I want to know if anyone on the forum daily drives linux because I do

[10leej]

I daily drive Gentoo on 17 different systems locally and 3 VPS servers running on Linode.

 

Is it a pain to maintain? Actually, no. I have a dedicated server at home that builds all my package updates for me via distCC

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

1 minute ago, LloydLynx said:

I use Arch+i3 on the gaming PC because very up to date packages, highly configurable, and is very well supported for that kind of thing. 

I do Debian+i3 on the personal laptop because I want stability and high configurability. 

Ubuntu for the school laptop because mainstream use case. 

Is i3 better than kde?

[cretsiah]

currently running/ daily driving  Linux Mint 20.3 XFCE on 3 machines possibly going to swap to LMDE 5 ( Linux Mint Debian 5 ) when it gets out of beta....

 

current daily tasks

- gaming

- youtube

- news sites

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

32 minutes ago, cretsiah said:

currently running/ daily driving  Linux Mint 20.3 XFCE on 3 machines possibly going to swap to LMDE 5 ( Linux Mint Debian 5 ) when it gets out of beta....

 

current daily tasks

- gaming

- youtube

- news sites

Manjaro KDE is rock solid why not try that?

[Lightwreather]

So I use a distro that goes by the name of macOS, it's pretty small I doubt you've heard of it.... /s

But apart from that, when I do use Linux it's usually OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or KDE Neon

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

Just now, J-from-Nucleon said:

So I use a distro that goes by the name of macOS, it's pretty small I doubt you've heard of it.... /s

I heard of it it apparently is very user friendly for those who have the money to buy a mac either wise for those poor Billies with hackintoshes I heard that it is a bad distro

[OhioYJ]

9 hours ago, fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead said:

I am curious do you like where mint is going with the less accent-y stuff because green was theree identity but that has somewhat disappeared to a small degree in linux mint I think as a past time user that  the green accent should remain

Ive used Linux as my primary OS for many years. Can't say I've ever really considered colors, themes, etc as a deciding factor really?  So no I don't really care about the green. The new rounded corners and such in 20.3 have some of the same issues Windows 11 has where they are harder to select to resize, but you can turn that off. 

 

I do however think Mint needs to slow down their release cycle. I'm not an expert but it seems to me things are starting to feel rushed like they have to get something out.  I know every release it seems like I manually install more and more things. I don't think they need to slow things down to a Debian style release schedule, but they are approaching the Ubuntu "breaks my system" every update model. 

[Ultraforce]

I don't think I could call it a daily driver and rather I'd have to call it a side project, but I currently use KUbuntu. Basically just because of some things with taking out hard drives broke my Pop!_OS with KDE and Grub set up, I decided just going with Kubuntu to have the more windows like default KDE from Ubuntu would be better. Though I've not been using it because I've been busy with schoolwork and the whole restarting to switch back and forth for dual booting is a pain. Though that's not an issue with Linux or Windows and just an issue with my set-up and if I had a more powerful machine or wasn't busy with uni I might try and solve that by trying to do some form of virtualization to be able to quickly swap operating systems.

I'm not sure what I might try next since I probably should try experimenting with distros and desktop environments but if I'm doing stuff for school something that's relatively stable, decent for programming and can mostly stay out of my way like Kubuntu is working well.

[Arokan]

I use Debian Bullseye as daily driver.

The reasons behind it are twofold; I already knew something about Debian from raspberry pi and I wanted to build everything from ground up with no junk preinstalled.

I do a lot of Gaming which works more or less flawlessly, sometimes even with better performance than on windows.
Else I use it for studying, work and converting videos.

 

I see the big advantage for Linux in it's customisability. I'm sure there are ways to do most things I do in windows as well, but it strikes me that Windows tries to make anything a bit more advanced way harder than it should be.
The comfort in Linux definitely lies in freedom and scripts

What I tell people is that Linux has somewhat of a high entry-barrier. You have to learn how it works, how to use the command line and how to use bash scripts. Now that takes a little bit of time and effort, but it's really worth it! Once you got your stuff figured out, you'll ask yourself, why you didn't make the switch years ago.

Here's the really cool thing: I don't do shit manually! Whenever I have to do something more than twice, I'll write a script for it; I could use it again anyway if I had to do it in the future.

Sorting/Synchronising data, downloading the latest Videos from my favourite YouTube-Channels, getting Notifications about just anything I want, all is done with a simple script and cron.

Seriously, if you're a little more interested in tech than the average joe and don't have too busy of a life, try it!

 

[RaptorPudding]

I use Kubuntu. I've created a multiboot USB using Yummi UEFI with a bunch of different distros on it. I really liked vanilla Debian but the wifi driver's weren't working and I am too noobie to figure out how to fix them. This was the same across a bunch of the vanilla distros. The newer the wifi adapter, the more problems I had getting them to work. Kubuntu worked immediately, no changes needed by me. Everything was installed right out of the go. The KDE apps preinstalled are excellent, they work great. The Kubuntu interface resembles classic Windows as well, no taskbars in weird places or weird looking menus. It's also very easy to install updates either from the terminal window or from the software app. I have used Linux Mint before, and it does work fairly well, but I really don't like the Cinnamon desktop environment. It looks kind of cartoony to me.

 

I really like Breeze Dark as a a theme and that you can basically customize the taskbar with a search widget, folder app widget, firefox and filezilla or whatever apps you commonly use just like in Windows.

[linkboy]

I'm running Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon.

 

The Cinnamon DE is my preferred environment and Mint is the main distro for Cinnamon. I've tried a few other DEs and they just never clicked for me like Cinnamon did.

 

I want something simple that isn't overwhelming (like Plasma can be) and isn't to radical (like Gnome is).

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

Anyone using Manjaro KDE I really feel lonely here .For me at first I was scared of arch but after I tasted the ayr I couldn't get away from it. If you think about it in some situations the aur is easier the manually installing a app from github so I think it makes up for the initial user curve. Ubuntu is easier when you begin but gets harder as you try to install niche apps. Manjaro is easy to start with and than you get accustomed to the package manager (the highest point in the curve) and than it gets easier. That is my personal experience

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

1 hour ago, linkboy said:

I'm running Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon.

 

The Cinnamon DE is my preferred environment and Mint is the main distro for Cinnamon. I've tried a few other DEs and they just never clicked for me like Cinnamon did.

 

I want something simple that isn't overwhelming (like Plasma can be) and isn't to radical (like Gnome is).

I agree cinnamon is really great it has all the options you need but not overwhelming. However I like being overwhelmed so I am using kde

[cretsiah]

17 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

I do however think Mint needs to slow down their release cycle. I'm not an expert but it seems to me things are starting to feel rushed like they have to get something out.  I know every release it seems like I manually install more and more things. I don't think they need to slow things down to a Debian style release schedule, but they are approaching the Ubuntu "breaks my system" every update model.

if im honest about it this is why im thinking of changing to the LMDE version.... but im not a developer or maintainer ......... i think the LMDE version should attempt to be sped-up (but needs developer's and maintainers) and the ubuntu one should be slowed down

 

im not one for messing with backgrounds and stuff, which  kinda puts me off debian itself they just dont feel quite as polished even if they are more stable + the extra work in some cases to get other things working ..... sorry im not an anti-propietry person .... i want my codecs, my graphics and wifi to just work...

 

the manjaro i tried i only liked the openRC version which they dont do now...if i was a more hardcore tinkerer i would look into either Artix or Debian with something other than systemD but thats just me

 

downloading the latest slackware to to ponder right now  

[jde3]

FreeBSD because Unix dammit!

 

Why? ZFS, Jails, PF, and Ports.. do you need another reason?

 

It's elegantly simple and easy to configure and customize. It's a Full Complete OS designed by a single team of people with one vision for what that OS should be and not a jumble of different software from different people with different goals like Linux. (The Kernel, the GNU, RedHat, Ubuntu ... NO.. FreeBSD is all one thing) It does not change the way it does stuff every 5 years and.. it is very fast and lean. They aren't chasing the new shiny and still care about technical improvements to the OS. (not hacking stuff together to make a product.. *ahem* like redhat) Linux imo in the past 10 years has become a dumpster fire. I use to love it but it has changed too much and gone too far away from Unix.

 

FreeBSD's vision however is that of a excellent server OS. As a desktop your mileage may vary. I sometimes use Gentoo to make it look and smell as close as I can to FreeBSD. Usually that involves ripping out anything redhat. For a desktop personally I use MacOS because again.. Unix.

 

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

4 hours ago, jde3 said:

FreeBSD because Unix dammit!

 

Why? ZFS, Jails, PF, and Ports.. do you need another reason?

 

It's elegantly simple and easy to configure and customize. It's a Full Complete OS designed by a single team of people with one vision for what that OS should be and not a jumble of different software from different people with different goals like Linux. (The Kernel, the GNU, RedHat, Ubuntu ... NO.. FreeBSD is all one thing) It does not change the way it does stuff every 5 years and.. it is very fast and lean. They aren't chasing the new shiny and still care about technical improvements to the OS. (not hacking stuff together to make a product.. *ahem* like redhat) Linux imo in the past 10 years has become a dumpster fire. I use to love it but it has changed too much and gone too far away from Unix.

 

FreeBSD's vision however is that of a excellent server OS. As a desktop your mileage may vary. I sometimes use Gentoo to make it look and smell as close as I can to FreeBSD. Usually that involves ripping out anything redhat. For a desktop personally I use MacOS because again.. Unix.

 

I think next time I distro hop i will go to gentoo it seems on par with arch and way more customizable