this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
52 points (90.6% liked)

Linux

45582 readers
1260 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
52
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

I've happily been a Fedora user for many years now, but RHEL's recent choice to put their source code behind a paywall has me pondering ethical considerations of my distro choice.

It's my understanding that this doesn't have a direct impact on Fedora, and I feel confident that it will continue to be a great distro for the foreseeable future, but I want the commercial/enterprise/corporate influence on the distro I run to be as minimal as possible. For it to be as free as possible.

With that in mind, what distros would everyone recommend?

I only have recent-ish experience with Fedora, Debian, Arch, and Ubuntu. I don't really know much about any others.

Ideally, I'd like it to fit within these boxes as well:

  • Reasonable release cycle time. Debian as an example tends to be too stale by it's nature. Edit for clarification: doesn't have to be bleeding edge, just don't want to fight with outdated dependencies if I'm compiling something from source. I feel distros generally ride this line well, but I've run into a handful of times in the past with Debian.
  • Doesn't try too hard to be user friendly. Obsfucating system internals, forcing a specific DE on you, that kind of thing.
  • Not overly time consuming to maintain. Arch would be an example of that in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, Arch is awesome. But maintaining a rolling release and a bunch of AUR's gets tiresome.
  • Doesn't try to force you to use a flatpaks, snaps, etc.

Seeing it all written out, that's pretty picky. And maybe this unicorn distro doesn't exist. But on the other hand, maybe it does.

A final thought. I know Debian has a testing branch. Anyone have any experience using that as a daily driver? Is it viable?

top 40 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

OpenSUSE checks everything except the part about enterprise influence. Mint maybe? I don't know much about it though.

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

Yeah, I was going to suggest the same. Probably one of the best rolling distros that is low maintenance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

openSUSE also has sponsors other than just SUSE. They have a very good and close relationship with SUSE, but it is also somewhat different than Fedora.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS. IMO it's fine for gaming since you can use Liquorix or an Ubuntu OEM kernel plus the kisak-mesa PPA to keep more up-to-date, but seeing as how OP wants to be close-ish to the latest and greatest, only upgrading wvery 2 years is probably too slow for them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'd recommend Mint, because, from my experience, it's pretty stable, UX is designed so terminal usage can be kept to a minimum (but you can still prioritize it if you want), support from programs is overall good, and it ditches snap. But worth noting that, if you need cutting edge features, Mint is not for you, as it seems to be the new Debian, where updates are traded off for stability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Mint is based off of Ubuntu LTS, which in turn is based off Debian. Likewise LMDE is based directly of Debian.

Both are probably too slow to update for OP.

I say this as someone whose main rig runs Mint 21.2 with a 6.1 OEM kernel and kisak-mesa drivers

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

A final thought. I know Debian has a testing branch. Anyone have any experience using that as a daily driver? Is it viable?

I've used Debian testing (bullseye at the time) before and it was a pretty pleasant experience. I like how much control I had over it compared to Ubuntu at least.

With that in mind, what distros would everyone recommend?

I like Arch and I don't have much trouble maintaining it. It's just a yay every now and then. The only issues I've had were upstream packages introducing drastic changes like when Nerd Fonts changed their naming scheme so I had to fix my ~/.Xresources manually. I use i3wm so it might not be an issue if you use some popular DE like Gnome and KDE.

Have you looked into OpenSuse's Tumbleweed or Leap? They might fit the bill, but I don't have much experience using either.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've used Debian Testing on workstations for years, it's great! Sure sometime security patches come in a little later, but it's generally not an issue.

[–] TunaCowboy 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You can integrate debsecan with apt and pull security updates from experimental and unstable as demonstrated here, linked and recommended here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Nifty, I'd never seen that (it's pretty recent), great job Pabs & Anarcat!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Your mentioning i3 got me to thinking using a light window manager would probably go a long way to keep dependencies down and simplify maintenance.

I've been running sway on a laptop and I'm starting to get accustomed to it. Might be worth considering.

Looks like OpenSuse is sponsored by SUSE, which has an enterprise Linux product.

[–] kylian0087 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Maiby opensuse Tumbleweed is something that might intrest you. Although it is company tied.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Probably the most underrated distro ever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm using EndeavourOS on one PC, and Pop_OS! on another. After a bunch of distrohopping (pure arch, manjaro, Linux mint, fedora, etc.), these are the two I like the most and have decided to settle for (for now at least lol).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would recommend EndeavorOS too, easy to install, sane config, nearly pure Arch.

Testing out Artix right now - I wanted to try out lightweight init system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I do find I like the idea of not having systemd. I don't hate it, but it feels unnecessary. If I end up back on Arch, I'll check that out!

[–] BrownianMotion 8 points 11 months ago

Your second, third and fourth points eliminate many distros such as Ubuntu. And many of the distros out there are based on Debian.

Debian isn't really stale. It is currently running kernel 6.1.10 which is not a long way from 6.1.39 (longterm, and that only came out 2 days ago). Stable gets constant updates. Testing is also generally very stable. The only thing that stops testing moving into stable is what are considered Release Critical bug count. All documented here: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ftparchives#testing

Also while Debian 12 is LTS, it won't stop 13 from coming out and it doesn't stop you from upgrading to 13 (although you may lose LTS if they decide that 13 will not be LTS).

Debian is about as open as you can get, certainly does not infringe on your 2, 3 and 4th points.

Only other thing is what you are doing with your Linux, this might make a difference (you say daily driver, but doing what? Just office stuff, or heavy video editing, etc)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

My go-to distros are Pop os for better game and new hardware support, and Linux Mint if I'm wanting something a little more stable. Both have served me really well over the years.

I've been playing around with Siduction (basically Debian unstable) recently and that seems pretty decent if you want the latest and greatest.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What distro forces you in to a DE?

Mint has been pretty good for me. They didn't follow along with Ubuntu and snap everything, but if you don't want to touch anything Ubuntu there's a version based on debian directly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I don't have a specific example, just seemed like something a user friendly distro might do.

I'll look further in to that Debian based Mint. Thanks for the the recommendation!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

OpenMandriva recently released a rolling release version of their distro. It's a small project, but I'm personally looking at it as an alternative for Fedora.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Looks promising! Seems to check all the boxes. I think I'll try it first. I'll give it a spin in a VM, get a feel for it. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I hope it works out!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Woah Mandriva is back?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Debian Sid fits the bill with flying colours. I'm personally sticking with Bookworm though, I enjoy stability and slower upgrades.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Debian Sid is even more unstable than Arch, though. I'd never recommend it for anyone who doesn't want to be routinely maintaining their system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It's been a few years since I last used Sid, but I don't remember it being that unstable. I've never spent much time with Arch to make that comparison though, so I can't really judge on that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Another Debian Testing user here, I've been running it for I-can't-remember-how-long and genuinely can't recall the last time there was a showstopper. My use case is very standard though, no gaming or running servers or heavy development. Recently rolled up to Trixie with no issues whatsoever

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm sure the arch people will be here soon to say snarky things, but...

I've used Manjaro (stable) on my desktop for about 5 years and have no reason to leave. Updates are about once a month, other than security patches to browsers that for zero-days. It's still arch at it's core, but it's less upkeep.

Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but I feel like I'm in a pretty similar situation as you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Manjaro has been absolutely lovely for me as well. The only breaking updates for the past few years were because of the bugdie desktop, but fault seems to be with budgie.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I like Solus. Rolling, stable, independent.

[–] Presi300 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Solus, Rolling, stable, dead... soon to be hopefully revived

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It never went away. A new ISO is out too! Give it a try.

[–] Presi300 1 points 11 months ago

New solus iso is out? YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

MX Linux has served me well. I used Ubuntu. Get fed up of snaps quickly and changed to MX Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

OpenSUSE Leap seems to be your best choice. It does not have the time consumption of being rolling release, but has a good release cadence. It is also an RPM distro, that should make things feel at least a little bit more familiar.

https://www.opensuse.org/#Leap

[–] Presi300 1 points 11 months ago

EndeavorOS... It sounds like what you want

[–] Sizably8826 1 points 11 months ago

My go to is always linux mint. It always work every time I install.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I've been using RebornOS, which is an arch based distro. I think it fits what you want perfectly. It's a rolling release and has heaps of customisability and nothing is forced on you.

load more comments
view more: next ›