this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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42
Endeavouros alternatives? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I dont have any problem with it i simply would like to see peoples different opinions, so, this is what the system would be generally used for/what id like it to do:

  1. stay out of my way (just work), ex: i dont get any notifications i dont want from the system itself and all i need to do is type 3 letters to initiate an update

  2. requires little ram to actually use (not really needed due to hardware but simply to reduce the pcs noise as much as possible, bonus points if programs generally do the same thing on it)

  3. Doesnt require too much fiddling (endevouros never needs this generally, when installing something it usually installs everything you need for things to work, i prefer GUIs usually but if its deadsimple commands like yay its fine as well)

  4. I game and stream so both would need to be doable as easy as possible (i use obs, when it comes to games i usually do emulation and try to avoid proton)

id love to hear what yall would recommend, thanks yall in advance

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My recommendation is Fedora Silverblue, or to be specific, uBlue. SB is already great, but uBlue ships with some better QOL-defaults. It's not a fork of SB tho, it's just a project for custom images.
You can rebase anytime you want to a SteamOS-clone, KDE spin, and so on, with one command and without any traces.

Why? Here are my reasons for you:

stay out of my way (just work), ex: i dont get any notifications i dont want from the system itself and all i need to do is type 3 letters to initiate an update

uBlue is even less.
It updates automatically in the background and creates the new (updated) image for you.
BUT, not similar to Windows, where the OS just decides to shut off your PC randomly.

You can still keep using your PC and don't notice the staged updates at all.
And when you switch on your device the next time, like once a week or so, you automatically use the new image.

requires little ram to actually use (not really needed due to hardware but simply to reduce the pcs noise as much as possible, bonus points if programs generally do the same thing on it)

That's the same on every distro, doesn't matter. SB is very lean though imo, though not as much as Debian or Arch of course, but therefore very comfortable.
Also:

  1. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. As long as it doesn't bottleneck you, why care?
  2. This is why
  3. If you want to keep your PC silent, change the energy profile or install some fan control software/ more silent fans (Noctua f.e.)

Doesnt require too much fiddling (endevouros never needs this generally, when installing something it usually installs everything you need for things to work, i prefer GUIs usually but if its deadsimple commands like yay its fine as well)

Silverblue "just works" OOTB. It is very user friendly imo and I basically never open the terminal, only, when I have to install something through Distrobox, which isn't often. But 99% is available as Flatpak in the Software Center.

I game and stream so both would need to be doable as easy as possible (i use obs, when it comes to games i usually do emulation and try to avoid proton)

Again, doesn't matter which distro. Almost everything is available as Flatpak.

Why Silverblue?

  • As streamer, you want something to always work reliably. An immutable distro ensures that by atomic updates and perfect reproducibility (less bugs and more secure)
  • Easy to use (if you forget how traditional distros work)
  • Huge software access: you work with containers all the time, and with Distrobox (pre-installed) you can access the AUR, Debian, and much much morenon the same distro! ^(works on other distros aswell...)
  • Almost impossible to break
  • Flexible: you can always rebase to another spin or variant with one command and without any trace
  • And much more.

I would advice against Arch based distros like Garuda, Endeavor, and so on.

I don't see much reasons to use them and due to their nature, they might be not as reliable. It would suck if your install breaks before or while streaming... With SB, you can roll back to your old image in just seconds and everything works again, even if you fucked up.

Most stuff you mentioned works on every distro, you don't need Arch for that. If you like it's UI, then go for Kinoite (the SB KDE spin), or, better, uBlue KDE.

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

wow thats a very detailed response! those are some very compelling reason.

are files in home affected by an immutable distro? Would you still recommend silverblue for nvidia? when i tried fedora before (3 times in total) my system was honestly nigh unusable with or without nvidia drivers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

are files in home affected by an immutable distro?

No, there's a clear distinction between "your stuff" and "the OS' stuff", which is one reason I find immutables easier to work with, especially for beginners.
Pretty much everything you interact with (files, program data, configs, etc.) are in your personal folder.

On traditional ones, there's a weird mish mash and everything is cluttered.

Would you still recommend silverblue for nvidia?

Yes, but especially the uBlue Nvidia spin, where the driver is integrated and more guaranteed to work.
On "normal" SB you have to install that driver yourself.

To rebase to the uBlue Nvidia image(s), you just have to follow the easy guide for the net-installer or rebase to one of their images, which is also very easy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i dont trust myself at all, every time something has to be done manually there is a good chance, even with simply copy and paste instructions that it might fail (and it has in the past), are there readymade images available?

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

The cool thing is: you literally can't do anything wrong!

If you do a mistake, which honestly is hard to do, you just rollback and try again. You only loose 2 minutes.

The images are already pre-made. You just either

  • Use the net-installer from uBlue, where you can select the image, or
  • Go from the original SB (I had to do that, since the installer didn't work at the time due to my internet connection) and rebase.

The How-To is also very easy to follow, and that's coming from a dumb-ass like myself.

Try it, and if you have problems, ask me. I'm here :)

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

thank you again for being so considerate about all this and since you offer your help.. so, i see that rebasing is a thing, does that simply mean it changes the entire system? is it just the immutable part? if i wanna install a certain DE for one reason or another..does that count as part of the system?

apologies for these questions i just never used an immutable distro before

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As I said earlier, there's now a clear distinction between "the OS base" (stuff like your UI and the whole construct that provides a working PC, which you shouldn't touch or worry about) and "your stuff" (programs you installed yourself, cat pictures, and so on).

They are, opposed to traditional distros, decoupled now.

And "rebasing" means just that: you swap out "the OS"-part, while keeping your cat pictures, Spotify and OBS.

On a normal distro, you basically have to reinstall the whole OS, since switching from Gnome to KDE for example messes with many many dependencies, and in the best case, only makes KDE now more unstable and in general messy.

If you are experienced, you can do it relatively easy, but the times I did, it felt really really dirty...

On Silverblue for example, you have a Gnome and a KDE spin. And if you rebase, you now switched to the KDE version, just like you would by reinstalling the whole OS and then copying your files.

The cool thing now is, the KDE base is just one of many potential bases, especially if you look at uBlue.
There are hundreds of community deviations, like a "Vanilla" Silverblue with pre-installed Nvidia-drivers, which are tied to the base OS, so they should be less likely to break because you use the same image as thousands of other people. Or a special "gaming-console"-image, which is a clone of SteamOS with many gaming related tweaks.

P.S.: I don't wanna be rude, but why did you choose EndeavorOS? Was it because of the good looking desktop theme?
You don't seem to be experienced enough to use Arch in my eyes. I wouldn't be too if I'm honest.

You know that you can just theme KDE or other DEs exactly like EOS with one click, right?