this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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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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I'd like to settle on a distro, but none of them seem to click for me. I want stability more than anything, but I also value having the latest updates (I know, kind of incompatible).

I have tested Pop!_Os, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu. Arch and Pop being the two that I enjoyed the most and seemed the most stable all along... I am somewhat interested in testing NixOS although the learning curve seems a bit steep and it's holding me back a bit.

What are you using as your daily drive? Would you recommend it to another user? Why? Why not?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use Arch because it is generally the easiest one I've found to pretend it's 2010 again. Most Linux distributions are fine, but they've all been busy trying to solve problems I don't have and accepting that some niche corner cases are fine to break. I'm just a niche corner case in general.

I have nothing against Wayland trying to modernize the UI stack, but if their answer to half the things I need is "well the compositor should do that" and the compositor doesn't in fact do that yet, then I don't want to use Wayland yet. I have nothing against Flatpak trying to modernize application packaging, but their current story for making applications available from a shell is effectively "why do you want to do that", and well...I do want to do that, so I guess I don't really want to use Flatpak yet.

That's just me. Like I said...I'm a corner case. I understand that everyone else wants their computer to be an appliance that does what most people need without requiring any tinkering. And I'm not opposed to getting rid of the need to tinker. I'm too old to view tinkering to make something work as I thing I look forward to. I just view tinkering as a one-time cost with perpetual returns. I'm OK editing an xkb file to make some obscure input device work the way I want it to, because that might take me an afternoon, and then I just have that device do exactly what I want for the rest of its life with no further effort. Make it so that I never have to edit another xkb file again and I'll be just fine. But you can't do it by just saying, "no more needing xkbcomp because it doesn't work anymore, and if you needed it, go see if the compositor vendor will write some code for you".