Two years into full-time Linux and I’m finally burning the distro-hopping cycle. I fell for the Arch/AUR trap for a while, but I got tired of spending my weekends debugging file manager crashes instead of maintaining my home lab.
Switched back to Fedora, and it’s boring in exactly the way I need it to be. It’s a stable launchpad for my projects, not the project itself.
Fedora for fun, OpenSUSE for work.
Nobara for fun, rocky for work.
I worked on United Linux, with suse. Never again.
Uh, twenty years ago? Why’s that?
Debian for server, NetBSD for tinkering
I don’t do either of those things tho
Then OpenSUSE for everything else
NixOS for everything except my phones (one clean iPhone with Lockdown mode enabled and one Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS).
I did the same thing. Settled om Baazite
Me too, on all my desktop PCs. Aurora on my work laptop. Ublue rocks.
Don’t get comfy, I used to be fedora, then debian, then arch. Mint + Cinnamon is my final resting place.
I like cinnamon. Haven’t run desktop Linux since slackware, so it was a breath of fresh air on Nobara.
CachyOS anyone?
Went from OpenSUSE way back then, moved to Ubuntu for a while, then when I decided to finally switch totally to Linux, I went with Arch. Last December I migrated to CachyOS and I really like it. I remove a bunch of stuff on installation and I install no DE/WM as I prefer to bring my own config, but as a base, it’s solid and has some stuff already configured that I don’t have to do, like btrfs snapshots for example.
I have been on this Linux jam since 1996 with a CD copy of Red Hat that came with a magazine (Byte, maybe?). In 2018 I made the jump to Debian based distros specifically because I got tired of the surprises. Now my lab runs LMDE. The only thing more stable and boring is Debian Stable itself.
Like you said, I want to focus on my projects, not have the OS be my project.
it’s kind of strange hearing about all this stability and everything on debian stable (and ldme by extension), when it was constantly broken for me and i had to do all kinds of weird fixes
i have a lenovo thinkpad t490s too so it’s not like im running on brand new components or anything either
been running fedora kde for a few months and it’s been running like a dream
That is strange.
it is!
i’m wondering if i have some special version of the t490s cus thinkpads are supposed to co-operate well with linux
fastfetch says the host is “20NYS0FU00 (ThinkPad T490s)” if that rings a bell to anyone
My first Linux distro was Red Hat 6 around 1996 I would suspect. It came with a Linux book that I bought.
I am pretty sure I started with either Halloween or Mother’s Day because Red Hat Linux for Dummies came with Red Hat 2.1 which I am pretty sure came out in 96 or 97. I know Red Hat 6 was released in 1999, because I was neck deep in Y2K work at the time I installed it on my Compaq laptop.
I found the O’Reilly Red Hat 6 book online and it came out in August 1999. I would have pegged it earlier than that but I guess not.
I fell for the Arch/AUR trap for a while, but I got tired of spending my weekends debugging file manager crashes instead of maintaining my home lab.
What sort of file manager crashes were you having?
Right mouse click, it was an intermittent issue and never did get to the bottom of it as the only forum posts I could find were from 10 years ago. Yes I know I could of used the keyboard shortcuts but my muscle memory is more mouse orientated than keyboard lol
I’ve stuck with Debian on my server and EndeavourOS (Arch, btw) on my PC. Both have been rock solid.
I also settled on fedora with kde but the fans in my laptop keep spinning up every few seconds, even when locked. It’s very annoying.
I get the opposite with any Linux distribution I’ve tried on my HP laptop. Windows, fans never shut up but with Linux just pure silence!
I sometimes dual boot into windows on the same laptop and it also hits the fans hard, especially after booting up, but it doesn’t suffer the periodic fan problem. Not that I’m shilling for windows. I hate windows and use Linux on my server.
Is your computer Lenovo by chance? I experience the same with my Lenovo laptop. I could figure out some tweqks to calm it down a little bit, but it’s still running quite often despite a minimal load.
It is; it’s a Lenovo Legion 5. Or something like that.
This issue seems symptomatic to Lenovo Legion laptops, as far as I know. Something seems to trigger the cooling effect. Mine also is a Lenovo Legion laptop.
That’s strange, I hadn’t heard that thanks. Time to do some research.
I’ve recently had some issues with Fedora (KDE). After I install any update it tells me to restart to finish installing. So I restart and it still tells me the same thing. Probably time I distrohop again.
With the usual restriction of “either upstream or Mint, otherwise you’re doing it wrong”. There are 6 options. Ubuntu is obviously out. Arch is not my cup of tea. Fedora is already ruled out. Debian/Mint aren’t as secure as Fedora/OpenSUSE. That leaves me with going back to OpenSUSE Leap.
But the proprietary media codecs on OpenSUSE come from the AUR … looks like I’m out of options.
What’s the security issue with Debian and Mint? Debian is usually my goto but I don’t want to expose myself to security issues
Linux in general is not secure for desktop users. There’s basically never sandboxing, and when there is it’s usually weak, antivirus is rarely used, and developers aren’t vetted as stringently as with paid software. Apparently Fedora and OpenSUSE take these issues more seriously, and SE Linux does somewhat restrict what malicious things a piece of software can do.
It’s a pretty widely held view that Fedora and OpenSUSE are more secure than Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch for desktop users but I’m not really an expert so I’m mostly retroactively justifying what I’ve heard second-hand.
There’s also https://secureblue.dev/
Tried it. Firstly it wouldn’t install. Secondly, the developer lead developer is a very private person and I don’t trust a Linux distro made by someone who is so secretive.









