Best Linux Distro for Daily Driving?

[JJackson]

I'm look to force myself to learn Unix by switching to Linux for about six months. Does anyone have any good recommendations for what's flexible enough to reliably use as a daily driver, yet not so janky that I can actually rely on it?

 

Thanks,

[powertoys]

Ubuntu. It's the most mainstream distro.

[Sauron]

Any major distribution.

[Volcust]

I would recommend Ubuntu for sure I used to daily drive Ubuntu before I realized that my laptop had a windows 10 licence 

[baronvonsatchel]

Any Ubuntu derivative should also be compatible with the same software and mostly only differ in UI, so you can pick your favorite. I use Linux Mint and I like it enough after 3 years of daily driving that I haven't gone looking for alternatives. The UI is very reminiscent of Windows (taskbar+start menu+system tray+window management) which makes it accessible to new users like I was at the time. Other Ubuntu descendents include Debian and pop!OS but I have no experience with them.

[Ultraforce]

4 minutes ago, baronvonsatchel said:

Any Ubuntu derivative should also be compatible with the same software and mostly only differ in UI, so you can pick your favorite. I use Linux Mint and I like it enough after 3 years of daily driving that I haven't gone looking for alternatives. The UI is very reminiscent of Windows (taskbar+start menu+system tray+window management) which makes it accessible to new users like I was at the time. Other Ubuntu descendents include Debian and pop!OS but I have no experience with them.

just a note Ubuntu is a branch off of Debian not the other way around. Debian's ancient/long-running and a big thing was Ubuntu being more new user friendly then base debian.

[baronvonsatchel]

4 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

just a note Ubuntu is a branch off of Debian not the other way around. Debian's ancient/long-running and a big thing was Ubuntu being more new user friendly then base debian.

You're right yeah I got that backwards.

[RollinLower]

Personally a big fan of Kubuntu, i daily that on my work laptop. But yeah, it's not very far off regular old Ubuntu.

[NinJake]

I'd go Ubuntu or Manjaro. With Ubuntu having a bit wider audience it's easier to find solutions or guides on things. Manjaro feels better IMO but can be a bit more digging to figure out exactly "what makes this work" or "why is this behaving this way".

[Defunct Lizard]

A lot of people in here are recommending Ubuntu because it's the most popular, however Ubuntu hasn't been the most popular for a few years, and personally I have a few issues with it. (snap, messing with gnome shell, for those in the know).

 

If you want to see some general statistics about Linux distro popularity I'd look at sites like distrowatch. MX Linux has been the most popular for a while now and if you're looking for something for beginners that's stable, looks pretty good, and is fairly lightweight I recommend it. If you're coming from windows it's also much more similar to windows than Ubuntu.

 

Personally I use Arch () because it's the best for systems development IMO, but the installation process and desktop environment setup is a bit of a barrier to entry.

[Ultraforce]

While I really am not used to it aesthetically or how it expects work loads to go I've been trying to use vanilla Fedora. I feel like if you aren't trying to set up anything weird at the start fedora actually isn't crazy difficult to start using and I don't think it's janky per se. The big thing is just I'm not used to gnome but I want to see if I can try and be used to working with my computer in a way different from windows otherwise I would just use the KDE Fedora spin.

[LloydLynx]

Linux Mint on desktop; Ubuntu if you need stuff like fractional scaling, gestures, touchscreen, etc; PopOS if you use bleeding edge hardware.

11 hours ago, JJackson said:

force myself to learn Unix by switching to Linux

If you wanna learn Unix-like systems, I highly recommend Void Linux. Some say it's the most BSD like Linux distro. It doesn't come with the SystemD init system, which is controversial for being so monolithic and handling so much on the system. The package manager (xbps) and the system as a whole feel very sensibly architected, at least to me. The Void Handbook is kinda small so you'll probably be turning to the Arch Wiki for more advanced help.

 

Arch Linux is more popular, uses SystemD, keeps more bleeding edge packages(good or bad thing depending on your preference), much larger package selection than Void, and has the AUR(Arch User Repository). The biggest downside to Arch is the hostile community. You'll get less than positive replies if you don't learn and understand the manuals to an inhuman level.

[The Hope]

I would also recommend Void Linux, more specifically the image with XFCE and glibc that you find on their official page.

 

I have listed the specific instructions to install it here: 

It is not the easiest installation of all Linux systems. Solus has an easier installation. But in my experience, installing Void is more than easy enough, and it's more stable and reliable than Solus once installed and also faster boot and shutdown. 

 

I haven't tried MX Linux yet, but good things are said about it, including in this new article:

MX Linux 21.2: Middleweight Debian-based distro is well worth a look https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/mx_linux_212/

 

As a third option, I would recommend Manjaro, KDE Neon, Mint, Solus, and Fedora.

 

I simply wouldn't recommend Ubuntu, contrary to the advice of many of the above comments. Ubuntu was good until 2010 and then it went downhill. I'm not sure how to explain it, maybe Canonical's employees lack talent, maybe poor management, maybe their employees have been bribed. Every new thing Ubuntu has done in the last 10 years has turned out to be a flop, and for good reason. The only good thing I've seen them do was Unity 8 but they didn't finish it because a lot of people criticized it.

 

The problem with Ubuntu is mainly that once installed it doesn't do much things better than say a Void Linux. It will start up slower, apps will generally perform slightly slower than Void, and Snaps will make your apps start up slower, security will not be better than Void, nor will stability.

So the problem with Ubuntu is that it's not really good at anything anymore, it's just the slower and less stable version of Void.

 

Ubuntu's Decline 

 

[JJackson]

@The Hope

@LloydLynx

So far, just based off of replies, I'm leaning toward Arch or Void - I'm not necessarily looking for the cleanest or easiest experience - the most important thing to me is stability. I don't want to take an OS to work that has a chance of just crashing suddenly. If the OS forces me to rely on the terminal though, I consider that an upside. Forced learning a command line is a good thing in my mind.

 

@Defunct Lizard

I'll also be checking out distrowatch to see what's going on in the community as a whole. Thanks for all the good replies!

[The Hope]

4 hours ago, JJackson said:

So far, just based off of replies, I'm leaning toward Arch or Void - I'm not necessarily looking for the cleanest or easiest experience - the most important thing to me is stability. I don't want to take an OS to work that has a chance of just crashing suddenly. If the OS forces me to rely on the terminal though, I consider that an upside. Forced learning a command line is a good thing in my mind.

I'll also be checking out distrowatch to see what's going on in the community as a whole. Thanks for all the good replies!

FreeBSD is the most stable system and it is closer to the pure Unix systems, it is a direct descendant of a pure Unix system. I use it as a daily driver and it also has the best audio stack of all operating systems and other unique tech like Jails and bhyve, and it also has the best ZFS implementation and fastest network stack along with NetBSD. It doesn't matter if you learn this or Linux, FreeBSD uses many of the open source apps that are also popular in Linux and the Almquist shell is largely exactly like Bash. FreeBSD is maybe more flexible than Linux because you can use it for routers, firewalls and NAS (TrueNAS), and it's better in these area's than Linux.

 

I have used Arch for over five years. In my opinion, Void has some advantages:
1. systemd makes Arch slower on startup
2. Arch has few standard packages and many packages in AUR. Many people consider AUR to be the great strength of Arch. I think it's its major weakness. Compiling takes a lot of time each time and after a while you start to have problems with those AUR packages.
3. Xfce on Void as I may have mentioned is absurdly responsive, on a level I don't think any other distro has done this better
4. Purely theoretically, Void should be more stable, but in six months you normally won't experience any real problems with Arch, or very little chance at all

[The Hope]

If you're doing it purely for educational purposes then perhaps I'd recommend getting FreeBSD or Void and then installing Nix on these systems as well. Nix has over 80,000 packages and learning to work with them is a skill that will come in handy on both FreeBSD and most Linux systems. It's not the easiest package manager.

 

That's going to be a more useful skill than learning to work with Arch Linux's AUR.

[RollyShed]

As others have said, Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop. That is if you want to use it to do things with, web, email,  documents, spreadsheets, sound, video, accounting, etc. etc.. I've done 50+ installations and users simply use it, especially those who originally used to have to use Windows.

 

Yes, you can do coding easily enough in the Terminal, if that's what you really want to do.

[The Hope]

11 hours ago, RollyShed said:

As others have said, Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop. That is if you want to use it to do things with, web, email,  documents, spreadsheets, sound, video, accounting, etc. etc.. I've done 50+ installations and users simply use it, especially those who originally used to have to use Windows.

 

Yes, you can do coding easily enough in the Terminal, if that's what you really want to do.

He says he's not necessarily looking for the easiest option, so it seems to me that Mint offers little or no added value.

Pretty much everything he's going to do on Mint is going to make him lose time compared to installing Void + XFCE:

startup, login, UI responsiveness, launch apps, app performance, shutdown. He's going to lose time in any of those common situations because of Mint.

 

He also literally says the following: I'm look to force myself to learn Unix
What will he learn by using Mint? Mint is a point and click system that will learn you almost nothing even after 30 years of use.

[RollyShed]

1 hour ago, The Hope said:

Pretty much everything he's going to do on Mint is going to make him lose time compared to installing Void + XFCE:

How? What time loss? How will Mint loose time? Are we talking microseconds?

 

He does say, "flexible enough to reliably use as a daily driver, yet not so janky that I can actually rely on it? "

I'm not sure what he means by that. "janky"? It means not reliable, of poor quality. A reliable or not reliable requirement? Which?

 

Possibly what is missing is what is actually meant by "daily driver". Driving what?

[The Hope]

4 hours ago, RollyShed said:

How? What time loss? How will Mint loose time? Are we talking microseconds?

 

He does say, "flexible enough to reliably use as a daily driver, yet not so janky that I can actually rely on it? "

I'm not sure what he means by that. "janky"? It means not reliable, of poor quality. A reliable or not reliable requirement? Which?

 

Possibly what is missing is what is actually meant by "daily driver". Driving what?

How big the differences will be depends a lot on the hardware. Let's take a worst case scenario: an HDD from 12 years ago and a system that cost about $600 back then.

Startup is at least 16 seconds slower with Mint, login is a few seconds slower, you lose an average of one second or more every time you open the app, the apps themselves have an average of 5% less performance, the UI of Mint is less responsive, which means you also lose time , shutting down the computer is also a few seconds slower on Mint. So you lose time in your workflow all the time.

Mint's package manager also makes you lose time, XBPS is significantly faster than 'apt'.

[RollyShed]

7 hours ago, The Hope said:

How big the differences will be depends a lot on the hardware. Let's take a worst case scenario: an HDD from 12 years ago and a system that cost about $600 back then.

Startup is at least 16 seconds slower with Mint, login is a few seconds slower, you lose an average of one second or more every time you open the app

OK, you are using a 12 year old computer. That means time doesn't matter. You are quoting a HHD instead of fitting an SSD. That means time doesn't matter.

 

Try Windows, I've had a 1/4+ hour boot time and after that, 8 minutes each time. That computer ended up with an SSD and a 20 second boot time with Mint.

 

Always, always, what is the user going to do with their system?

[10leej]

On 8/31/2022 at 2:31 PM, JJackson said:

I'm look to force myself to learn Unix by switching to Linux for about six months. Does anyone have any good recommendations for what's flexible enough to reliably use as a daily driver, yet not so janky that I can actually rely on it?

 

Thanks,

Want to learn Unix? Use more proper Unix (BSD, OLD MacOS). Linux is Unix Like.

 

Any distro will work for your task, what your asking is the one that has polish and works reliably without the need to "RTFM" or manually configure. WHile still being able to run steam games (presumably) and open office documents and watch netflix (because it's still the heaviet site for performance.

 

In this regard:

Ubuntu is still the gold standard. Dont want to deal with snaps? Mint.

Fedora would be there, but there's philosophical reasons which prevent that (rpmfusion, not enabling flathub).

Want even more stability? Look at openSUSE LEAP and Debian stable. 

 

Now lets talk "learning Linux"

 

Really, what your learning is the BASH shell and individual components of the GNU Operating System. It's really a question of "What do YOU want to learn" because I can learn enough to be a system administrator and DevOps specialist with just a cutom built NAS running somehting like proxmox/debian/redhat/xcp-ng/ect. 

If you want to learn how the piece of a Linux distro fit together you can get a really good primer from just the Gentoo Handbook/Instalation Guide (sorry arch, your wiki in this context sucks).  

 

Would you rather learn the philosophies of Linux? Well there's oodles of Linux Conference talks.

 

Ultimate what you'll likely find out as you "Learn linux" is that the Distro really doesn't matter at the end of the day. I ran ArchLinux as a server, used RedHat as my daily driving desktop operating system, installed Gentoo as my phone's OS of choice.

[Arokan]

Let's get some good old Linux-Ideology in this thread
I reeeeally don't get why, on this conditions, ubuntu is recommended when "I don't want easy-mode" is stated and well, chris said it best. ..also snaps.. It just isn't really good at... everything.

Next, stability is asked. Why the hell would anyone recommend arch? If you don't already know what you're doing and are somewhat experienced in Linux, arch is gonna crash on you anywhere from every day to every two months.
Void Linux with XFCE: Have you had a look at it? It looks like shit!

I know y'all hate systemd, but really, Debian is the choice here. When you ask stability combined with the need for learning, lightweight and potential to build anything as quickly and precisely as you want, plain old Debian is what you should go for. I'd also recommend KDE, but only because I like neither Gnome nor xfce and I'm a fanboy. Also for apt there are quicker alternatives targeting the same packages. 

[Takumidesh]

I don't see much love for endeavourOS here :(. I use it as my host OS with a pretty bare bones xfce DE.

 

Easier to install than arch, doesn't want to be a weird problem child like manjaro.

[Celestia_]

Personally I have used far more distros than I should have. But nothing has made me as perfectly simple and dare I say average as Fedora 36. It just works and works well. No maintenance required, considerable software repos, flatpak is installed by default if you're into that. Great hardware compat. I have 0 issues with it.