Distro choice

[goatedpenguin]

Hi, I have been using windows as my daily driver but I am fed up of using it(privacy, bsod, buggy), I have been trying out distros like arch linux, ubuntu and fedora etc. but can't seem to find one that is fit for me. I am pretty experienced in using linux so its not a new thing but it was just never a daily driver since many games now have been ported it to it I see no reason to not use it as my daily driver. The Main things that I do are programming and gaming I should also mention that I use VMs(another reason to switch to linux kvm, qemu). Some things I am looking for is a huge package repo(like AUR), customizable, doesn't break easily. I have been hearing great things about nixos like being able to role back to previous versions of a package or having a single configuration file and having a declarative configuration instead of it being imperative, what are your thoughts on it and if it is a good fit for my case.
Thanks in advance   

[treestain]

8 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

Hi, I have been using windows as my daily driver but I am fed up of using it(privacy, bsod, buggy), I have been trying out distros like arch linux, ubuntu and fedora etc. but can't seem to find one that is fit for me. I am pretty experienced in using linux so its not a new thing but it was just never a daily driver since many games now have been ported it to it I see no reason to not use it as my daily driver. The Main things that I do are programming and gaming I should also mention that I use VMs(another reason to switch to linux kvm, qemu). Some things I am looking for is a huge package repo(like AUR), customizable, doesn't break easily. I have been hearing great things about nixos like being able to role back to previous versions of a package or having a single configuration file and having a declarative configuration instead of it being imperative, what are your thoughts on it and if it is a good fit for my case.
Thanks in advance   

I've never used Arch or their derivatives, but I've heard great things about EndeavourOS. The two distros I've personally loved are Pop_OS and Vanilla OS for both stability and their nice security implementations. Pop having neat things like out-of-the-box disk encryption, SELinux, and their own power manager, which makes game mode pretty much useless because it's very performant. But for you, I'd suggest Vanilla OS which is like Fedora silver blue, so, an immutable distro but just plain better with their own features like apx which is basically apt but doesn't install packages in the root directory, and apx also allows you to download packages from any distro which is one of the biggest upsides about it. So you can download things from Arch, Fedora, and Debian all in the same OS. it'll take up a little bit of extra space because of all the dependencies, but it's really nice. They also have abroot which allows you to customize the root directory and install native deb packages there if you really do need to with rollback as well. It just takes a bit to learn and read the documentation. They're currently working on a huge revamp called "Vanilla OS 2" so it's your call if you want to wait for that to release before switching as it will require a reinstall with how much is going to be changed for the base.

https://vanillaos.org/

[goatedpenguin]

9 minutes ago, treestain said:

I've never used Arch or their derivatives, but I've heard great things about EndeavourOS. The two distros I've personally loved are Pop_OS and Vanilla OS for both stability and their nice security implementations. Pop having neat things like out-of-the-box disk encryption, SELinux, and their own power manager, which makes game mode pretty much useless because it's very performant. But for you, I'd suggest Vanilla OS which is like Fedora silver blue, so, an immutable distro but just plain better with their own features like apx which is basically apt but doesn't install packages in the root directory, and apx also allows you to download packages from any distro which is one of the biggest upsides about it. So you can download things from Arch, Fedora, and Debian all in the same OS. it'll take up a little bit of extra space because of all the dependencies, but it's really nice. They also have abroot which allows you to customize the root directory and install native deb packages there if you really do need to with rollback as well. It just takes a bit to learn and read the documentation. They're currently working on a huge revamp called "Vanilla OS 2" so it's your call if you want to wait for that to release before switching as it will require a reinstall with how much is going to be changed for the base.

https://vanillaos.org/

disk space is not my concern this looks like a good Os I will be sure to try it in a vm first and see if it suits my needs I always frustrated why package managers installed the packages in the root partion which is honestly a pain in the ass so having apx could be a factor for me to make the switch. I have tried endeavorOs but found it to be arch Linux with just a gui install and my only problems with arch based distros is that its too bleeding edge. Thanks for the suggestion  . 

[leathco]

I'm a big fan of Mint.  It has a large user base and the community is willing to help (I've noticed some elitism in other distros).

[treestain]

Just now, leathco said:

I'm a big fan of Mint.  It has a large user base and the community is willing to help (I've noticed some elitism in other distros).

Mint is great, but for newer hardware with things like gaming it isn't the best because the kernel is pretty old.

Works great on my laptop tho, idles at around 2-3% CPU usage and barely consumes battery life

[goatedpenguin]

3 minutes ago, treestain said:

Mint is great, but for newer hardware with things like gaming it isn't the best because the kernel is pretty old.

Works great on my laptop tho, idles at around 2-3% CPU usage and barely consumes battery life

agrred mint tends to be too stable sometimes and since I am running new hardware(3070ti, 12700kf etc) I don't think it would be using it too its fullest

[PCGamer2727]

53 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

I have been hearing great things about nixos like being able to role back to previous versions of a package or having a single configuration file and having a declarative configuration instead of it being imperative, what are your thoughts on it and if it is a good fit for my case.
Thanks in advance   

Nixos is great but I don't think it would be my first choice as a gamer.

 

It uses a declarative config for settings, software and almost everything else.  Dependency management is practically a non-issue on Nixos because you can easily have multiple versions of the same libraries installed.  This is all great but not without it's drawbacks as well.  It has a completely non-standard filesystem layout that is mostly immutable.  Almost any tutorial you can find on how to do things on Linux will not apply to Nixos.

 

Also, installing commercial software on Nixos is sometimes painful depending on what your specific needs are.

[goatedpenguin]

34 minutes ago, PCGamer2727 said:

Nixos is great but I don't think it would be my first choice as a gamer.

 

It uses a declarative config for settings, software and almost everything else.  Dependency management is practically a non-issue on Nixos because you can easily have multiple versions of the same libraries installed.  This is all great but not without it's drawbacks as well.  It has a completely non-standard filesystem layout that is mostly immutable.  Almost any tutorial you can find on how to do things on Linux will not apply to Nixos.

 

Also, installing commercial software on Nixos is sometimes painful depending on what your specific needs are.

I see thanks for the info

 

[OhioYJ]

1 hour ago, treestain said:

Mint is great, but for newer hardware with things like gaming it isn't the best because the kernel is pretty old.

 

1 hour ago, goatedpenguin said:

agrred mint tends to be too stable sometimes and since I am running new hardware(3070ti, 12700kf etc) I don't think it would be using it too its fullest

It's Linux, if you want a newer kernel, install one? 6.2 is included in the repos already. If you want to go newer than that, just load the Canonical Kernel team PPA (That should go all the way to 6.5).

 

As a long time user of Mint... Mint I would say Mint does not fall in the "too Stable" category. If anything they have are starting to fall victim to this "we must have a new version out every 6 months" disease, as version has more issues, more broken things.

[dcgreen2k]

How about PopOS? I've been using it as my daily driver for the past year after switching from Windows 10 and it's been amazing. All my programming work has been a breeze on it and it's been super stable. I don't use it for gaming but other people seem to have good experiences with it, and it even comes with Nvidia drivers preinstalled.

[goatedpenguin]

11 minutes ago, dcgreen2k said:

How about PopOS? I've been using it as my daily driver for the past year after switching from Windows 10 and it's been amazing. All my programming work has been a breeze on it and it's been super stable. I don't use it for gaming but other people seem to have good experiences with it, and it even comes with Nvidia drivers preinstalled.

might look into that

[Needfuldoer]

If I have to use Linux I just install Ubuntu MATE because I am basic, lazy, and content with GNOME 2.

[treestain]

1 hour ago, dcgreen2k said:

and it's been super stable

So long as you don't try and install any other desktop environment, then yeah, extremely stable in my experience!

[treestain]

3 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

 

It's Linux, if you want a newer kernel, install one? 6.2 is included in the repos already. If you want to go newer than that, just load the Canonical Kernel team PPA (That should go all the way to 6.5).

 

As a long time user of Mint... Mint I would say Mint does not fall in the "too Stable" category. If anything they have are starting to fall victim to this "we must have a new version out every 6 months" disease, as version has more issues, more broken things.

You're right, I completely forgot Linux Mint has a very easy kernel manager but just never messed with it because it had a huge warning sign that I had to agree to before installing a newer kernel. I guess Mint can be a viable choice for gaming after all! I might try it sometime later on my main rig.

[OhioYJ]

5 hours ago, treestain said:

You're right, I completely forgot Linux Mint has a very easy kernel manager but just never messed with it because it had a huge warning sign that I had to agree to before installing a newer kernel.

This is part of my install process on a couple of my machines, as Mint just refuses to boot normally on the older Kernel. So I have to boot in compatibility mode, then install, then edit the boot parameters, to once again boot in compatibility mode, and install a newer kernel so my machine can boot normally.

 

Oh and lets not forget that secure boot has been broken on the last couple versions, so disabling secure boot, updating, then  re-enabling secure boot is also mixed into that process as well if it's a clean install.

[goatedpenguin]

Thank you all for the help after trying all the suggested OSes I decided to go with pop os as it is well suported and has out of the box support for nvidia gpu and gaming. Thank you all for the help  

[thiccbeard4linux]

I use Manjaro.  Some folks will complain about various things about the organization (letting their SSL certs expire [amateur hour], bundling non FLOSS office suite, etc), but it works well as a distro for me.  It's rolling release so it always has the newest packages without using flatpak, snap, or other garbage like that.  Compatibility with the AUR is huge, never run into anything that you'll want to run that isn't packaged for your distro (tho this is largely fixed with flatpaks and such, but I absolutely hate sandboxing that comes with them).  It's basically Arch (meaning if you use an install script for Arch you can do the exact same thing with no need for Manjaro), but I like the delayed / curated updates.  That prevents things from breaking as often as Arch, especially if you read the forum post that comes with each stable update (I suggest adding Manjaro news to an RSS reader). 

 

I run it on all my machines, both personal and work.  The best Linux distro to me is one that doens't get in my way, even if I want to do something stupid. 

 

Solus is also very good, but the repo is much smaller, probably the smallest of any distro.  However, it is very easy to package something yourself for Solus... assuming the necessary deps are available.  However, Solus is dead set against not including anything from "dead" projects... so if you come across something you want to install that still works, but hasn't been updated in a couple years, you're SOL.  That is not the case on Manjaro, as you can be pretty much assured that there will be an AUR package.

 

On servers I run Ubuntu LTS... I enjoy being able to install something and know that it will keep running with security updates for 10 years without me having to think about it again.

[thiccbeard4linux]

On 8/8/2023 at 2:07 PM, goatedpenguin said:

Thank you all for the help after trying all the suggested OSes I decided to go with pop os as it is well suported and has out of the box support for nvidia gpu and gaming. Thank you all for the help  

Just saw this, definitely a good choice.  It will be even better when they come out with their Cosmic Desktop. 

 

Solus is also great for gaming... as long as you don't have an AMD GPU.

[Ultraforce]

One nice thing about Pop!_OS is they have an updater to help make sure they support newer hardware than their upstream does. While I personally don't love the current Pop!_OS just because the release has been around for over a year and I find trying out recent Gnome/KDE versions fun as far as hardware and just having things run out of the box goes, it's great.

System76 is a system integrator first and foremost so they care about getting hardware working well, one of their engineers was on a podcast recently and explained the whole reason for Pop!_OS was to make setting up the computers easier because Ubuntu would take 6 months in 2017/2018 to update hardware compatibility which wasn't acceptable for them and so they decided to just do their own distro where they could have it update hardware compatibility faster and test the hardware with their SI capabilities.

[treestain]

2 hours ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

It's rolling release

To my knowledge, they're using an LTS kernel and older packages. Still newer than, probably something like Ubuntu? But it's not rolling release… unless… They've changed.

 

2 hours ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

Compatibility with the AUR is huge

Using the AUR on Manjaro is extremely problematic. At least from my personal use and from others I've heard online as well. Enabling the AUR and using bleeding edge packages that expect you to also have the latest dependencies which Manjaro doesn't have will lead to problems, and having too many AUR packages will most likely brick Manjaro after an update or two.

Again, this is my personal experience with Manjaro, and I've heard many others share my same complaints. If it works for you, then that's great, anyone using a Linux derivative is a win in my book.

[Biohazard777]

42 minutes ago, treestain said:

Using the AUR on Manjaro is extremely problematic. At least from my personal use and from others I've heard online as well. Enabling the AUR and using bleeding edge packages that expect you to also have the latest dependencies which Manjaro doesn't have will lead to problems, and having too many AUR packages will most likely brick Manjaro after an update or two.

Again, this is my personal experience with Manjaro, and I've heard many others share my same complaints. If it works for you, then that's great, anyone using a Linux derivative is a win in my book.

From my personal experience, most of the issues with AUR on Manjaro can be avoided by doing the following:
1) Disable 3rd party updates
2) Wait for official repo updates (once every 2-4 weeks), update those
3) Enable 3rd party updates right after you've updated Manjaro, then update 3rd party,
and then disable again (repeat from #1)

 

That being said, if something I need isn't in the official repo I will use Flatpak and sometimes Snap before using AUR,
thus keeping the number of AUR packages low.
Also when updating stuff from the AUR I always check the pkgbuild.

 

 

[goatedpenguin]

I love using manjaro but since it was a arch based distro is used to break on me a lot(might be my problem) and I think compared to ubuntu popOs is better since the company are good stewards off the os and they also make laptops that support intel and nvidia gpus which means that there OS would ought to have good support for it and not to mention that everything on it is mostly important and not bloatware at least in my opinion. The OS just works and is well supported for nvidia rtx 3070ti  

[worldsoftech]

On 8/7/2023 at 11:59 PM, treestain said:

Mint is great, but for newer hardware with things like gaming it isn't the best because the kernel is pretty old.

Works great on my laptop tho, idles at around 2-3% CPU usage and barely consumes battery life

Yes mint is the best

[The Hope]

If you want to know if NixOS works properly, is stable and has a lot of packages. The answer is all positive.

But I wouldn't recommend anyone to use NixOS as a desktop system. Actually, for security reasons, you should update your system at least every fortnight. This takes a lot longer on NixOS than on other systems. So you lose a lot of time if you do it right.

The same with blendOS. This probably works fine too but you lose a lot of time because of the containers.

 

The best options for you are probably openSUSE Tumbleweed and mageia 9.

Both are compatible with a lot of software, openSUSE is even better than mageia in this area. openSUSE also has the rollback option via btrfs which makes it more stable than e.g. Fedora.

But mageia has better overall stability in the sense that you usually never have problems with it.

[The Hope]

ROSA Fresh (rpm) and Debian Testing (deb) are also reliable and they are compatible with most software.