this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Considering switching away from Fedora and to another distribution. Does anyone have any suggestions for distributions I should consider?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Arch Linux

Reasons:

  • Pacman
  • the AUR
  • community driven
  • bleeding edge
  • pragmatic stance regarding closed source software
  • sane defaults
  • minimalism, build your own without too much compiling
  • the wiki
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

The wiki is what makes it really hard for me to move out. This masterpiece is where I learned 70% of what I know about linux systems 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  • Mint, because it works with a minimum of effort.

  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, because it's more up to date than Mint, it's a rolling distro, it works, and in the rare event of a problem it's easy to roll back to a snapshot.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Arch.

People think it's really challenging and brittle, but everything seems to always work no matter how often I update (or don't) and the wiki is top notch.

I actually chose arch initially because when you go to forums to troubleshoot problems there is always an ubuntu answer and an arch answer, and the arch answer is almost always shorter.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I only use Arch, it's really stable and easy to fix if something goes wrong thanks to the excellent arch wiki.

But I recommend PopOS for anyone who just wants something good looking and stable and who doesn't need the latest packages all the time.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed without hesitation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This is the best answer. It’s the most comparable to Fedora with it’s semi-rolling releases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Tried it for the first time last week. I was hesitant because I'm forced into SLES for work, and I fucking hate it. But thats because all of the default configs for all packages are overly secure. Like, installing apache required a ton of extra steps to allow HTTP traffic. But I needed to test both HTTP and HTTPS for the feature I was working on, so I needed HTTP.

But overall I have been very happy with Tumbleweed. I like that the packages are more up to date than Ubuntu LTS (what I was using previously), and I haven't had as many driver issues either. Oh, and snapshots are amazing. It already saved me once when I accidentally deleted the wrong config file, I just cp'd it from my last snapshot.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Unpopular choice here but Ubuntu LTS with ubuntu-debullshit (vanilla gnome, replace snap with flatpak).

My main factors:

  • stability of the LTS
  • drivers and HW support
  • tons of resources online
  • already use Ubuntu for servers and Raspian on my Pi

I’ve had my fun distro hopping in the past but I just want a low maintenance system nowadays.

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

Ohhh, I'll have to check this out. I've been gradually moving away from Ubuntu toward Debian (w/ GNOME) for a while because Snap is hot garbage and I don't want to have anything to do with it. Were it not for Snap, I still really like Ubuntu.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Linux Mint: Debian Edition. After watching a YouTube review I decided to take a break from Arch and give it a try, I'd always like Cinnamon, and I really like this.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Depends on what you're looking for.

I cannot recommend NixOS enough, it's such a good distribution but on the other hand it's quite tough to learn as it deviates a lot on how distributions do things. It still uses a standard stack (glibc, systemd, GNU tools and all) but the nix tools which include the package manager are totally different from what other distributions offer. It's very solid, yet flexible. It offers a lot of packages by default. I've switched my machines to it because of the advantages.

Arch is great as a rolling release distribution with solid repositories (lots of packages and quite up to date) and it's very close to upstream with a more traditional approach to the distribution tools. In fact there aren't really any apart from the package manager by default. I feel this is one of the most comfortable distributions if you want to learn how a classic Linux system is structured. I ran Arch for about 15 years and didn't really have anything to complain about and I learned more about Linux there than with Ubuntu and Debian.

Please note that neither of these are what one would consider beginner-friendly distributions.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Debian only household here ..

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Pop!_OS. Sensible defaults and it's based off of Ubuntu, which is the distro I'm most familiar with.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I try so dang hard not to use Linux Mint because I have been using off and on since 2008 but always come crawling back to it when I run into some esoteric issue on another distro. It just hits the sweet spot of what I understand computing to be. I have desperately tried to use various forms of arch. OpenSUSE, fedora, debian, and a whole host of others and eventually get frustrated for some probably solvable reason and go back to my sweet, my love, my wart covered X11 using, 5.15 running, stale boring life mate Mint.

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

Pop_os for my laptop and desktop. I use these machines for dev work and gaming. I want to spend as little time as possible doing maintenance. Debian for all servers and containers. Very stable, maintenance doesn't take much effort.

If I was running a pure gaming system I'd probably go with Arch.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Mint. It just works.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've been a long time Debian user. Debian 12 has been almost a perfect release so far. Highly recommended.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I have been running OpenSUSE Leap on my home server for 3 years, and I moved from Fedora after many years to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on both my work and home (gaming) PC. I am super happy!

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

Debian + GNOME.

Historically I've been a huge fan of Ubuntu, but I just can't tolerate Snap any more and started moving away from Ubuntu in general.

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

Void Linux user here with Qtile - Wayland as my WM.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My journey roughly went like:

  1. Mint + Cinnamon
  2. Mint + i3
  3. MX Linux + i3
  4. Debian + i3

Right now I'm using Debian + i3. It's pretty lit

My main reason is that Debian is a very stable, very popular distro, that isn't a fork of another distro. The fact that it's stable means issues are more rare; the fact that it's popular means when issues do pop up, there are much higher odds that I'll find others who ran into them before; and the fact that it isn't a fork means that I can just prefix "debian" to any search, rather than say having to contend with it being potentially a "debian" issue, or an "ubuntu" issue, or a "mint" issue. In fact, debian is popular enough that most of the time I could just prefix "linux" to a search, rather than "debian".

While there are distros that market themselves on other merits, it seems to me that the main goal of an operating system is to be a stable foundation. I wanted to pick something that would let me have a good time with i3; Debian seems one of the most straightforward choices. I considered arch, but in the end Debian seems like the lower-effort option.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I was going to say Arch but I typically install EndeveavourOS these days ( lazy man’s Arch ).

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Void. I like xbps, and I prefer distros that make as few assumptions as possible.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

EndeavourOS, it just works really well and never breaks. The only time I had an issue was when I was using the Zen kernel and it locked up installing league of legends and watching a YouTube video at the same time. Using the mainline kernel though gives me no issues.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for now, with Garuda for gaming. Still working up the courage to combine all the best features of both into my first Arch install.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm the wrong one to ask because every time I try something else, I end up returning to Fedora.

But what you switch to depends on why you want to switch:

  • Want to learn more about how Linux works? Install Arch the Arch Way, or try out Void.
  • Want a different DE? Well, you've got Fedora Spins if that's your main goal, but KDE Neon lets you try out the latest stable KDE stuff, which is fun!
  • Looking for a rolling distro but don't want the extra complexity of Arch's minimalist philosophy? OpenSuse Tumbleweed is fantastic.
  • Do you really want to dig deep and have total control of your system? Look into Gentoo or Linux From Scratch.

I've done most of these and more, and I'm happy to recommend something more specific, but I can't without knowing what you're looking for.

If you don't know what you're looking for, and just want to do something different, then do what I do when the distrohopping bug strikes: check out several distros' websites, pick a couple that appeal to you, then research those a little deeper, maybe rum them on a virtual machine for a bit. If you find one you like, back up your critical data and go for it!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone immediately want you to use their distribution of choice. However no-one can really answer this unless you include more information about yourself and your Linux experience, objectives, what kind of tinkering you're comfortable with, what you expectations are, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

10 years of Arch and counting.

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

I'm considering to switch from Fedora to Debian stable with Flatpaks for the available apps (more up-to-date and more isolated).

But I'm also considering NixOS atm

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

that arrangement on debian has worked well for me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

EndeavourOS is good, I was frequently using arch wiki on other distros so it's handy to have it actually apply accurately to my distro. AUR is super handy as well.

I could use regular Arch, but I appreciate the simplified installation.

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

Guix. I like Nix and Scheme so it just makes sense.

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

btwOS.

I can't tell you if it's *your* cup of coffee. You should decide it by yourself.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Ubuntu. It Debian without the driver issues.

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

You know where to go, BTW

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

i like fedora a lot, but its updates got a little too far ahead for me. So i recently switched to debian 12, and with flatpaks and their more-current mesa components, everything is working on my desktop as well as it was before, especially games on steam (flatpak) and in bottles.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Linux Mint Cinnamon. Seriously, it's the best. Fast, light, Ubuntu based, stable, good looking, full featured. All the power of Ubuntu without the downsides (snaps, heavy, slow etc)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Been using PopOS for the last 2 years (ish) with zero issues. It's been a delight!

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

Nobara on my desktop, Pop_os! on my laptop. As soon as the new COSMIC DE is ready I will switch to Pop on my desktop as well.

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

I've been switching between Arch and Debian for the past 5ish years. I don't really notice much of a difference, other than Arch has updates much more often than Debian Testing usually does. I like how meta-packages in Arch are more minimal than the ones in Debian, but that's a very minor thing.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I need to settle on one for a bit. I like Fedora for it’s edge stability and embracing newer secure technology. But, I will be shifting to Debian 12 or Ubuntu LTS because I need to get real work done. I like Pop and Mint, but they don’t have secure boot which I desire.

I’ll probably enjoy arch when I get the time to play with it more.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Still Arch on main desktop, but slowly moving towards NixOS everywhere.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The biggest selling point for Fedora IMO is the way it handles UEFI and Secure Boot. I haven't found anything comparable. Securing the proprietary garbage running on your main board is critical regardless of your OS.

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