Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What Linux distro surprised you the most? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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During the first impressions of said distro, what feature surprised you the most?

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Arch Linux. Everyone said it was hard to use, unstable, etc. but my experience with it has been the exact opposite.

Yes, the install process is needlessly complicated (although it got a lot simpler now that we have archinstall), but the OS itself is rock solid and rarely has any issues that require more than a reboot or a package reinstall to solve. The AUR is a godsend too if you don't want or don't know how to compile stuff from source.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Arch Linux has by far the best community, the support wiki is the most useful wiki to Linux there is, it basically covers everything. Mad props to the arch Linux community.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Agree, but mad props to the Gentoo people too. Nice community and incredible wiki as well.

[–] zoly 4 points 3 months ago

I heard all the stability concerns when I first started using it. That was in 2008. It's been my main distro ever since. Apart from 2 or 3 major changes over the years (eg, the infamous /usr/lib migration) it's been rock solid and very up to date

[–] turbowafflz 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah I feel like even if arch is a little easier to break than other distributions, it's also way way easier to fix which basically cancels it out.

[–] sga 2 points 3 months ago

I second this - for some reasons, my (almost) first distro was arch (first was a fedora for 3-4 days). Arch is great if you know what you are doing, you can have a lean mean compute machine