Distro choice

[goatedpenguin]

1 hour ago, The Hope said:

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.

Yes I agree with you the main turning point of me not using nixOS was the fact that installing packages and having a configuration file and the OS being declarative etc. etc. was just too much to learn so it just made sense to use popOS.

[thiccbeard4linux]

18 hours ago, treestain said:

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.

 

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.

Rolling release has nothing to do with the age of packages.  Rolling release means there are no point releases.  On something like Ubuntu, your package versions are frozen apart from bug fixes and small updates until the next whole release of the distro.  Rolling means everything is updated as you go, no waiting for the next version for the updated release of Gnome or KDE or other software that was released after the repos were frozen for the current release of your distro.  Manjaro does include the latest release of software, but they are typically a couple weeks behind when those packages hit the Arch repos. 

 

Manjaro warns against AUR packages (and they should, because they have no control over them & cannot guarantee there won't be issues).  AUR isn't even necessarily supported on Arch.  However, just don't be dumb about it.  You're not going to break your distro if you install some photo editing program, or other "normal" program... but you probably don't want to install a desktop environment or some other crucial element of an operating system from AUR.  I have never had an issue because of something I've installed from AUR.  There have been times where an AUR package is too new for the included libraries of stable Manjaro, but the worst that happens is that the program just won't launch... then you just install the previous version from AUR. 

 

So yeah, saying AUR will most likely break your distro is absolutely not true, is at best CYA, and at worst fear mongering.

[PCGamer2727]

22 minutes ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

saying AUR will most likely break your distro is absolutely not true, is at best CYA, and at worst fear mongering

The problem with statements like this is that everyone has a different definition of "broken".  There is a whole spectrum of broken depending on who you are:

* Completely unrecoverable

* Doesn't boot without manual intervention

* Displays strange behaviours while running

* Several applications don't work

* It cannot be updated without manual intervention

* A single application doesn't work

* Part of an application isn't working as expected

 

It really depends in large part on your expectations.

 

But more than that, it depends what you install from the AUR.  The AUR doesn't only contain GUI applications like photo editors.  It is also contains things like alternative versions of critical system libraries.  If you follow many guides for gaming, they will often recommend you install these libraries.

 

This is a risk on any distro but it is especially a risk on Manjaro because AUR packages usually target software versions in the Arch repos.  However, Manjaro often has older versions of those packages in their repos which often will cause issues to occur.  However, if those issues make your system broken is, IMO, debatable.

[thiccbeard4linux]

47 minutes ago, PCGamer2727 said:

The problem with statements like this is that everyone has a different definition of "broken".  There is a whole spectrum of broken depending on who you are:

* Completely unrecoverable

* Doesn't boot without manual intervention

* Displays strange behaviours while running

* Several applications don't work

* It cannot be updated without manual intervention

* A single application doesn't work

* Part of an application isn't working as expected

 

It really depends in large part on your expectations.

 

But more than that, it depends what you install from the AUR.  The AUR doesn't only contain GUI applications like photo editors.  It is also contains things like alternative versions of critical system libraries.  If you follow many guides for gaming, they will often recommend you install these libraries.

 

This is a risk on any distro but it is especially a risk on Manjaro because AUR packages usually target software versions in the Arch repos.  However, Manjaro often has older versions of those packages in their repos which often will cause issues to occur.  However, if those issues make your system broken is, IMO, debatable.

You and I are both saying the same thing... with great power comes great opportunity to be dumb. 

 

I was a linux n00b once, we've all been there at one point (I was very good at breaking Ubuntu installs at one point).  But one should never blindly follow random "how to" guides online, that's a great way to break your system no matter what distro you're running.  You can lean that lesson the hard way, or heed advice and not do it.  Even if a random blog post or forum post had good instructions, they get out of date very quickly.  Stick to the arch wiki (good for most other distros as well as long as they're systemd based) or, when in doubt, create a new thread on your distro's forums if you get stuck trying to run some piece of software.

[goatedpenguin]

The reason why aur would break on manjaro Linux would be because of how the repos work on it, the aur installs packages from the official arch repos and not manjaro’s hence this can lead to packages with different version causing dependicoes to be conflicting and some to be dropped/removed causing your system to break. 

[treestain]

1 hour ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

Rolling release has nothing to do with the age of packages.  Rolling release means there are no point releases.

I feel stupid, I got it a bit mixed up when you said "It's rolling release, so it always has the newest packages without using flatpak, snap, or other garbage like that." My bad.

 

1 hour ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

Manjaro warns against AUR packages (and they should, because they have no control over them & cannot guarantee there won't be issues).

Agreed.

 

1 hour ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

You're not going to break your distro if you install some photo editing program, or other "normal" program...

It's not just the distro itself I'm talking about. Signal from the AUR for example broke after an update or two as an example from my experience. (yes I know there is a signal package in the Manjaro repo's it's just the only example I can remember currently. I haven't used Manjaro in years.)

 

1 hour ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

I have never had an issue because of something I've installed from AUR.

Again, if it works for you, then that's awesome. I think the more people who hop onto the Linux train, the better. But this unfortunately just wasn't my experience with Manjaro.

 

1 hour ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

So yeah, saying AUR will most likely break your distro is absolutely not true, is at best CYA, and at worst fear mongering.

Maybe, but I would argue it's more of a warning to the user and to let them test the distro out a bit before fully committing to it. This is the beauty of Linux, allowing you to try the operating system off of a thumb drive before installing it, and fully committing to it. (vm's work too.)

Other's have shared my complaints, and many others such as yourself tend to disagree because of how Manjaro tailors to your needs and how you find it to be great for your work flow. Nothing is wrong with that. But for the people who are looking to find a distro to stick to should hear the good, the bad, and the ugly about it.

If someone is looking at using Ubuntu, for example, they should be warned about the terrible experience the snap store offers and how it is not usually the best "out of the box" experience. This doesn't mean Ubuntu is a bad choice, and many others still prefer it and even snaps for that matter. And will tend to disagree with those who post their complaints about snaps and the snap store, and the user can decide for themselves if Ubuntu will be a good choice for them after hearing all the negatives and positives. This should go for all distros.

[treestain]

17 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

The reason why aur would break on manjaro Linux would be because of how the repos work on it, the aur installs packages from the official arch repos and not manjaro’s hence this can lead to packages with different version causing dependicoes to be conflicting and some to be dropped/removed causing your system to break. 

These packages aren't containerized like flatpaks. When you install something from the AUR, for example a video editor, and it installs its own dependencies, (like for video encoding, hardware acceleration, etc.) you're walking on thin ice. And after a few updates, either from a package, dependency, or the OS itself. One of them is going to break. Which isn't ideal for the user.

Any application installed from Manjaro's repo's is installed in the root directory (I think?). And the same goes with applications/packages from the AUR. So you're mixing and pretty much mashing these two repos together, hoping they mix. This was my point before.

I'm happy Manjaro warns to not enable the AUR, but discussions like this should still be brought up, so the user can decide what distro to daily drive. I personally don't see this as fearmongering, if someone wants to use Manjaro and see a discussion like this they would go "Manjaro is a solid choice so long as the AUR isn't enabled".

[thiccbeard4linux]

For sure, which is why I said that CYA is the good faith warning, but people get weird about distro choices and there's definitely people out there that will trash the distro and use the potential dangers of the AUR as evidence for that. 

 

Also, to the point of installing a video editing program with its deps being dangerous... I wouldn't say that's necessarily true.  Manjaro and Arch are pretty close, so you're usually not going to be pulling in a bunch of mismatched deps that are going to break things.  I'm not saying it can't happen, but usually the worst that will happen is that Arch updates something and the AUR maintainer then updates, but Manjaro hasn't updated yet which will cause the program to not work until Manjaro updates.  Older versions of the AUR packages are stored on the hard drive, making it very easy to roll back to a version that does work until Manjaro updates.  Rare instances may require AUR packages as deps, but a lot of the time versions of libraries can live side-by-side and not cause issues, or newer versions can be statically linked to older versions and work just fine.  Or if you find something that requires you to install multiple levels of AUR packages as deps... perhaps don't do that and go find an appimage or snap or flatpak of that application.  If you go to install a package and it warns you that you'll be replacing some important library, that's a good indication to not install that package.

 

Anyway, the point I keep making is that these things are possible to happen, but not all that common.  Yall keep pointing out that they are possible, and I keep saying that they are possible.  I've broken plenty of Ubuntu installs trying to install software that isn't in the repo, but I've yet to break an Arch or Manjaro install.

 

At the end of the day, use whatever distro works for you.  Only trolls care what other people use.

 

Personally, and it may just be being "old," I hate containerization.  I get why it exists, but it always ends up with me having to figure out how to disable or otherwise break the containerization to use the app the way I want, especially when trying to access files stored on the network.

[treestain]

4 minutes ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

For sure, which is why I said that CYA is the good faith warning

"CYA" ? No clue what it means sorry lol.

[thiccbeard4linux]

Also, if you watch the Linux challenge where Linus tries to install steam from a repo package it warns him that it is going to uninstall his desktop environment... he ignores that warning and proceeds to brick the install.  That can happen on any distro if you don't read what the package manager is trying to tell you is about to happen.

 

[thiccbeard4linux]

Just now, treestain said:

"CYA" ? No clue what it means sorry lol.

Cover you rear side, lol sorry.

[The Hope]

20 hours ago, goatedpenguin said:

Yes I agree with you the main turning point of me not using nixOS was the fact that installing packages and having a configuration file and the OS being declarative etc. etc. was just too much to learn so it just made sense to use popOS.

You didn't fully understand me.
I did not say that NixOS is difficult. (It's super easy and it has excellent documentation) I said it takes a lot of time to update your system.
Suppose if you want to update all your packages in nixos-unstable you are going to do the following command:

nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade

I usually install my Linux systems on USB 2.0 sticks and the above command with a limited number of apps really took around 5 hours sometimes to update the system. You can test this yourself by using NixOS (unstable channel) on USB 2.0 sticks. With a powerful SSD it's going to be much faster, but that's not the point.

The point is, suppose I fully update Void Linux with the XBPS package manager, my system is literally updated 10 times faster than with NixOS.

 

By the way, Void Linux is also pretty good for your requirements.
It has reasonably many packages that you can install directly through XBPS:

https://voidlinux.org/packages/

It supports Flatpak so you can easily use all these packages as well:

https://flathub.org/

AppImage works as well on Void Linux:

https://appimage.github.io/

Nix package manager

https://voidlinux.org/news/2014/01/Using-the-Nix-package-manager.html

 

Void Linux is what I would call the best Linux desktop system of 2023.

Installation and configuration require more work, but after that it is a system that requires little maintenance and provides everything the average person needs.

 

Another very qualitative system is ALT Linux.
It is compatible with RPM and for system administration you can use the apt-get commands.

So it feels very familiar if you've ever used Debian or Ubuntu.

It's also stable and it's currently on kernel 6.1 which is a LTS kernel.

It also has good performance in apps and supports the proprietary Nvidia driver and Mesa.

[goatedpenguin]

2 hours ago, The Hope said:

You didn't fully understand me.
I did not say that NixOS is difficult. (It's super easy and it has excellent documentation) I said it takes a lot of time to update your system.
Suppose if you want to update all your packages in nixos-unstable you are going to do the following command:

nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade

I usually install my Linux systems on USB 2.0 sticks and the above command with a limited number of apps really took around 5 hours sometimes to update the system. You can test this yourself by using NixOS (unstable channel) on USB 2.0 sticks. With a powerful SSD it's going to be much faster, but that's not the point.

The point is, suppose I fully update Void Linux with the XBPS package manager, my system is literally updated 10 times faster than with NixOS.

 

By the way, Void Linux is also pretty good for your requirements.
It has reasonably many packages that you can install directly through XBPS:

https://voidlinux.org/packages/

It supports Flatpak so you can easily use all these packages as well:

https://flathub.org/

AppImage works as well on Void Linux:

https://appimage.github.io/

Nix package manager

https://voidlinux.org/news/2014/01/Using-the-Nix-package-manager.html

 

Void Linux is what I would call the best Linux desktop system of 2023.

Installation and configuration require more work, but after that it is a system that requires little maintenance and provides everything the average person needs.

 

Another very qualitative system is ALT Linux.
It is compatible with RPM and for system administration you can use the apt-get commands.

So it feels very familiar if you've ever used Debian or Ubuntu.

It's also stable and it's currently on kernel 6.1 which is a LTS kernel.

It also has good performance in apps and supports the proprietary Nvidia driver and Mesa.

Yes I was thinking to use void Linux since the package manager was really fast and neat not to mention it is a rolling release and I do have bleeding edge hardware but the updates don’t break it compared to arch Linux. Unfortunately now that I have installed pop os and set everything up on it I don’t want to go through the hassle of installing another OS again. By the way just a quick question: does installation OSes many times on a drive shortens it’s life span cuz I have done it to try a myriad of distros I am just worried it might fail etc.

[Xiee]

17 hours ago, thiccbeard4linux said:

Also, if you watch the Linux challenge where Linus tries to install steam from a repo package it warns him that it is going to uninstall his desktop environment... he ignores that warning and proceeds to brick the install.  That can happen on any distro if you don't read what the package manager is trying to tell you is about to happen.

 

I remember this. I was a PoP_OS user at the time (I'm now using EndeavourOS). I was facepalming the whole time when Linus wasn't even reading what was on the terminal. I remember posting a comment asking Linus why the hell would he use the terminal when PoP_OS has its own graphical AppStore where you can just click on "INSTALL" and it does everything for you. He was completely making things complicated for him. If he truly wanted to dabble on the terminal then use Arch Linux instead. 

[goatedpenguin]

18 minutes ago, Xiee said:

I remember this. I was a PoP_OS user at the time (I'm now using EndeavourOS). I was facepalming the whole time when Linus wasn't even reading what was on the terminal. I remember posting a comment asking Linus why the hell would he use the command line when PoP_OS has its own graphical AppStore where you can just click on "INSTALL" and it does everything for you. He was completely making things complicated for him. If he truly wanted to dabble on the terminal then use Arch Linux instead. 

Honestly Linus doing the Linux daily driver challenges in general was an insult to the Linux community I mean he basically screwed up his system and was not even well versed in the Os which is why I think that is another reason why mainstream users who use windows and OSx don’t switch to Linux as there is always some dependcy to maintain the Os through the terminal etc. hence, requiring some form of technical knowledge which not everyone has.

[thiccbeard4linux]

43 minutes ago, Xiee said:

I remember this. I was a PoP_OS user at the time (I'm now using EndeavourOS). I was facepalming the whole time when Linus wasn't even reading what was on the terminal. I remember posting a comment asking Linus why the hell would he use the terminal when PoP_OS has its own graphical AppStore where you can just click on "INSTALL" and it does everything for you. He was completely making things complicated for him. If he truly wanted to dabble on the terminal then use Arch Linux instead. 

Meanwhile Luke was having such an easy time of things

 

To be fair tho, digitally signing a PDF in Okular is a confusing mess.  It took me a while to figure it out too when I had to set it up to sign PDF files for work. 

[Xiee]

Just now, thiccbeard4linux said:

Meanwhile Luke was having such an easy time of things

 

To be fair tho, digitally signing a PDF in Okular is a confusing mess.  It took me a while to figure it out too when I had to set it up to sign PDF files for work. 

Yeah. Okular is bad. I currently use OnlyOffice to edit my PDFs.

[thiccbeard4linux]

51 minutes ago, Xiee said:

Yeah. Okular is bad. I currently use OnlyOffice to edit my PDFs.

I like Okular because it does a cryptographic signature rather than just an image that looks like a signature.

[The Hope]

18 hours ago, goatedpenguin said:

Yes I was thinking to use void Linux since the package manager was really fast and neat not to mention it is a rolling release and I do have bleeding edge hardware but the updates don’t break it compared to arch Linux. Unfortunately now that I have installed pop os and set everything up on it I don’t want to go through the hassle of installing another OS again. By the way just a quick question: does installation OSes many times on a drive shortens it’s life span cuz I have done it to try a myriad of distros I am just worried it might fail etc.

It's not only the package manager that's faster than Ubuntu's.
You also have the init system which is very fast, making Void Linux boot faster than 90% of Linux systems.
Void Linux also seems to get more IOPS than other systems. To give an example, Firefox opens almost exactly twice as fast on Void than it does on openSUSE Tumbleweed. If you have a SSD it might not matter as much for opening web browsers but for games loading it might be noticeable.

What I also notice is that most apps are more responsive in Void than in Ubuntu and openSUSE. In Ubuntu and openSUSE I notice that apps can often be unresponsive for a long time and then suddenly be responsive again. In Void Linux, I then notice that those same apps remain fully responsive all the time.

 

I don't think installing operating systems multiple times has a noticeable impact on the performance of a quality SSD that has a (very) high TBW value.

What I sometimes do on FreeBSD is to overwrite USB sticks or HDD/SSD with zeros:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=xx

Then I always have the original performance of the USB/HDD/SSD when I format it in ZFS or EXT4.

[goatedpenguin]

9 hours ago, The Hope said:

It's not only the package manager that's faster than Ubuntu's.
You also have the init system which is very fast, making Void Linux boot faster than 90% of Linux systems.
Void Linux also seems to get more IOPS than other systems. To give an example, Firefox opens almost exactly twice as fast on Void than it does on openSUSE Tumbleweed. If you have a SSD it might not matter as much for opening web browsers but for games loading it might be noticeable.

What I also notice is that most apps are more responsive in Void than in Ubuntu and openSUSE. In Ubuntu and openSUSE I notice that apps can often be unresponsive for a long time and then suddenly be responsive again. In Void Linux, I then notice that those same apps remain fully responsive all the time.

 

I don't think installing operating systems multiple times has a noticeable impact on the performance of a quality SSD that has a (very) high TBW value.

What I sometimes do on FreeBSD is to overwrite USB sticks or HDD/SSD with zeros:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=xx

Then I always have the original performance of the USB/HDD/SSD when I format it in ZFS or EXT4.

I see thanks for insight and yes systemd is so shit compared to init