I’m between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?
I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)
A Chevy volt. Turns out gm figured out that a PHEV is a great idea 12 years ago
What kinda rpms you getting on that
Not sure, just realized this is a computer post lol
If you want mpg it’s anywhere from 75 to 130mpg per tank of gas.
Haha, welcome. rpm was just the first vaguely-car-sounding Linux term I could think of.
What is rpms in Linux? I just lurk on /all so I see a ton of Linux stuff that I don’t understand haha
RedHat Package Manager. It’s also the file extension for their packages, so you’ll see stuff like firefox_nightly.rpm
- It probably uses apks.
I’m using Mint, but I’ve avoided using flatpaks (generally downloading DEB packages directly, or adding ppa sources). It’s worked pretty well so far.
I do have a handful of AppImages, but they’re a bit easier to work with.
PopOS on gaming PC Fedora Silverblue on daily PC Ubuntu Server LTS for small servers Ubuntu Desktop LTS for digital signage
What’s fedora like to use? I dont see it mentioned as much as Debian or Arch.
I’ve been running Fedora Silverblue on nearly all of my PCs for about a year now and overall it’s been great.
- Automatic and unobtrusive updates for the core OS and user apps (everything happens in the background without interaction; flatpak updates are applied immediately, and OS updates are applied at next boot)
- I can choose to apply many core updates immediately, but rarely do
- Atomic OS updates means that everything must be installed successfully or none of the OS updates are applied, which prevents a partially updated system
- Being an image-based distro, I can and do easily rebase to Fedora’s test/beta/remix releases, and just as easily rollback, or run both stable and beta releases side by side for testing purposes
- Being image-based means there’s no chance of orphaned packages or library files being left behind after an update, resulting in a cleaner system over time
- In the event that anything does go sideways after a system update (hasn’t happened yet), I can easily rollback to the previous version at boot
Some elements not unique to Silverblue but part of its common workflow:
- Distrobox/toolbox allow you to run any other distro as a container, and then use that distro’s apps as if they were native to your host system; this includes systemd services, locally installed RPMs, debs, etc.; I use distrobox to keep most of my dev workflow within my preferred Archlinux environment
- Flatpaks are the FOSS community’s answer to Ubuntu’s Snaps, providing universal 1-click installation of sandboxed user apps (mostly GUI based); Firefox, Steam, VLC, and thousands of other apps are available to users, all without the need for root access
My only complaints about Silverblue are more to do with how Flatpaks work right now, such as:
- Drag & drop doesn’t work between apps, at least not for the apps I’ve attempted to use; for example, dragging a pic into a chat window for sharing; instead, I have to browse to and select the image from within the chat app
- Firefox won’t open a link clicked within Thunderbird unless the browser is already open, otherwise it just opens a blank tab
- Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer
That said, I’m confident that these issues will be addressed over time. The platform has already come a long way these past couple of years and now that the KDE and GNOME teams are collaborating for it, things will only get better.
Like I said though, overall Silverblue has been a really great user experience, and as a nearly 20-year Linux veteran it has really changed the way I view computing.
nixos + xmonad + xfce-no-desktop here. Its not for noobs perhaps but so stable and confidence inspiring.
Arch + Hyprland on my Notebook, Endeavor OS + Gnome PC (11years old PC), 2x Khadas VIM3L + Kodi (Coreelec), home server Odroid + Armbian.
Acura MDX
Fedora but I’m not loving it. Due to my hardware I think I’m limited to that, arch and openSuse.
? If you’re hardware runs Fedora, it should run anything
Debian Sid, mostly for ideological reasons.
I assume you mean Debian for ideology, not Sid, unless you have strong feelings about breaking toys
but is that because of the community nature of Debian, or because default it’s free software only? Guessing the former, since there are other options for the latter
Yes, it’s the community nature. I just love how there is no corporation behind it.
Some people also like super stable
Arch on my “desktop PC”, Armbian on my rpi 4, Dietpi soon ™ on my Orange pi zero 3.
Gentoo, running pure Wayland and Pipewire, no X11.
which de?
River WM
I use Arch BTW…
Joking aside I use Arch on my desktop, Raspbian on RPi1, Debian on homeserver and VMs.
Gentoo on desktop, gentoo on Rock64, gentoo on Allwinner A10 device, gentoo on Powerbook G4(don’t ask why I have it). Ah, and OpenWRT on router.
I have 2 PCs running Arch currently. My SBC is running Ubuntu but that is just a print service for my 3d printer. I have a few Ubuntu & Fedora vns for testing and self study
Neon is my daily driver. Planing on pop os after their new de
kubuntu
kde connect wasn’t working on endeavouros with sway and i wanted something easy and debian based
EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop side of things.
I run Guix System on my personal laptop and Project Bluefin on my work machine.
Guix is even easier to get started with now thanks to the Guix Packager , a web UI for writing Guix package definitions.
Project Bluefin auto-updates thanks to its use of container images deliver system updates. It’s also just a great platform to get started writing containerized apps, since it ships with rootless Podman by default and you can easily add new developer tools using
just
commands.