this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023

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Suggest me a libre OS to try using on my new desktop PC (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Edit: And in the end, it's back to good old Fedora with Xfce. I guess I'm an old man, fixed in my ways. Haiku was interesting, but not nearly as stable as needed. OpenSuSE with Xfce was rough, it requires more polish.

I've been a Fedora Linux user for a million years by now, and I haven't touched any other OS (outside of Windows 10 and 11 at work).

Lately I got a refurbished ThinkCentre from ca 2018 (7th generation Intel i5, 16GB RAM, Intel HD 630). The initial idea was to use it as a media PC but the small form factor ended up not being small enough for my living room.

Now I'm thinking of using it as a desktop PC for a while, to see if it can make my laptop be a portable machine again instead of always plugged, always on. If it doesn't work out, I'll use it as a home server.

Since this is all an experiment, I want to give a new OS a shot before I settle for the familiar Fedora.

OpenSuSE is the first on my list, but even from the LiveUSB I noticed that the software selection is more limited than I'm used to.

I'm thinking of giving HaikuOS a shot as well.

What else has been going on in the world of free OSes since 2007? What's one that you are excited about?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Personally I am excited for immutable distributions, so my suggestion would be Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite. It may be a spin of Fedora, but it works completely differently than regular Fedora. I am using it as my daily driver for over a year already and I am quite happy with it (apart from reoccurring breakages caused by kernel updates, e. g. my AMD desktop currently does not work with kernel 6.4 or newer, but this doesn't have anything to do with Silverblue).

There are other immutable distributions out there, e. g. Vanilla OS or openSUSE microOS, so if you really want to avoid Fedora, you could also choose trying out one of these. In the case of Vanilla OS I would wait until version 2 is out, because version 2 will be radically different from the first release.

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

Oh, that's a great idea. The whole concept of immutable OSes passed me by - I've read the terms before at some point, but I have no idea how they work and which problems they solve. Definitely ideal candidates for my experiment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You could also try Universal Blue and change images until you find something you like.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have been running NixOS for a fair amount of time by now, and I can confirm, its a rad concept. Though I find NixOS the most comfy, becuase can run ZFS, and certain things, much more easily.

But yea, Silverblue, Kinote, and others, are nice as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Silverblue is very "traditional" as far as immutable distros go. The main difference from regular Fedora I've noticed are the side effects of using rpm-ostree instead of dnf, which is that by using a base image, it is easier to track how an install deviates from the base image, and easy to swap out for another base set of packages by changing the image.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use mint on my PC , for its stability , and since all ubuntu software are supported , it is pretty great software selection wise too !

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm a windows user, but I did play around when I built my media PC. Mint had problems right away with monitor drivers (AMD iGPU) and connecting to the home network (all SMB windows drives).

Before giving up, I tried Ubuntu, and with Ubuntu i DID experience the "it just works" and no problems getting everything running. That said, I still eventually went to windows, because I just dont have the free time to learn/adjust to another environment. But I did really like it. (Ubuntu)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Linux is UNIX made by people who hate Windows.

FreeBSD is UNIX made by people who love UNIX.

Give FreeBSD a shot.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm sorry what
I'm not opposed to trying out FreeBSD but 1. Both aren't Unix 2. Linux's development has no more relation to Windows than BSD, I don't see why you think FreeBSD loves Unix more. In fact you could fully say that macOS loves Unix more.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Relax buddy, it’s just a very old joke.

FreeBSD absolutely is UNIX, it is descended from Berkeley Software Distribution, itself a descendant of UNIX 5.

But the joke isn’t so much about the lineage of these operating systems, rather their design philosophy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

OpenBSD

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

If you're looking for something to keep it as libre as possible, then Debian is a great choice. I know Fedora by default keeps it that way, though you can install non-free software/codecs/etc if you want. Debian is the same way. And since Debian is the foundation of some of the biggest distros out there, you're pretty much always going to find packages for what you need. And if you go with Debian Testing or Unstable, you can get a bit more recent packages, and I've never found them to be really "unstable." Wouldn't run them on a server, but a desktop is totally fine.

I do like some of the suggestions here for FreeBSD or OpenBSD. If you were to go that route, I'd go with FreeBSD. Their documentation is stellar (though OpenBSD's is as well), the man pages are fantastic and actually helpful, and between the ports and packages repos, you'll generally find what you need. Plus things like ZFS, jails, etc. are great.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Try Haiku, it's the current open source version of BeOs (currently on it's 4th Beta release) and it runs on x86 hardware.

Or what about just using a bare bones Linux as a wrapper for an emulator? Then you could try running something like Workbench 3.9 or MacOS 9, which makes browsing the web an interesting experience ... plus, cute icons :-)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think something like alpine or void with a wayland based tiling window manager could be fun.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Go with your instincts on trying Haiku and come back and tell us all what it's like :)

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

@agrammatic
I really love to test FreeBSD. But I have been advised not to do this. Because #FreeBSD hardware support is not as good as #Linux.
Please tel us more about your experience with FreeBSD.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I used to run FreeBSD on my laptop on high school, worked pretty good - even stuff like wifi and bluetooth with a bit of effort - but the battery life was atrocious compared to Linux or Windows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@vahid @agrammatic For me hardware support on my Dell Latitude has been (almost) plug and play. It probably depends on (the #FOSS ness of) your hardware. But I wouldn't recommend it if you don't like fixing things. Funny story though, the video driver for my #nvidia quadro atm (470) is not supported by #archLinux where #freebsd has a prebuilt package ready to go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If you're looking to try something a little different, I recommend Guix.

It's based around a nyx-style package manager written in scheme, which is also called guix. There's an EDSL for writing package definitions. One interesting result about this is that the package manager has a REPL and a dedicated emacs mode

Instead of systemd, the PID1 process is called GNU Shepherd, and is also written in scheme.

Guix also has a strong emphasis on bootstrapping. You can build almost the entire system from source, relying on only a few binaries to start with.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

For true freedom and to challenge yourself, try OpenBSD. For something easier, try GhistBSD since it comes with a GUI desktop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Xubuntu. Ubuntu because most of the time, I just want a plug and play experience with a huge community. And XFCE because it's lightweight and has all the tiling features I like.

I really enjoyed tinkering Arch, I learned a lot of stuff, but it's too much effort for my usual laziness.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Plain debian testing with the desktop of your choice (I like xfce). Rolling release, slightly newer packages than ubuntu, very stable and reliable, as minimalist and light weight as you want (depends on installation method).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

MX23 would work great on this

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

Did you check the opensuse community repos? Search here: https://software.opensuse.org/ - lots of stuff that isn't included in the core / official.

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

Looking again, it seems like more packages are available for the Tumbleweed stream, compared to Leap. I was testing Leap.

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

Tumbleweed is generally the place to be. I think it is easier to target for packagers and is the basis for most of the interesting stuff going on in the distro. The immutable versions (now named Aeon and Kalpa) use something like a stripped down Tumbleweed at the core, with applications mostly containerized. Think tight rolling core that has strong automated tests and rather safe, with applications mostly isolated in Flatpak to prevent library conflicts and such.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and also Leap is going away due to SUSE rebasing SLE on their proposed ALP, which will essentially be the downstream of Aeon and Kalpa.

Tumbleweed is still the way to go for general desktop use. Can be fun to experiment with the others, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have really enjoyed OpenSUSE. solid, snapshots built in, GUI Yast admin tools. My other machine is NixOS