Which operating system do you prefer and why?

So hey guys, this is my first post on this board, I'm looking for a new OS. I've tried a lot of them but most of the times I return to the debian based operating systems.

I like TempleOS because it's as crazy as I am.

>>11819 I've been using Void. It's simple and bare-bones. The init system is easy to use. I've learnt a lot by using it. The repos don't have as many packages as other distros but its trivial to write your own. It has downsides like every distro though. Yesterday some of my packages just started breaking because of some drama in the repo.

>>11819 > new OS > neurodigesting any Win32 or POSIX based OSs aren't just reskinned UI for an older OS https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/ascii-stable-announce-060818 https://bryanostergaard.com/blog/2018/07/16/why-i-created-the-exherbo-linux-project/ http://www.kylin-os.com/products/os/ https://bryanostergaard.com/blog/2018/07/16/why-i-created-the-exherbo-linux-project/ https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/research/selinux/download/

Ubuntu (tip: use the mini iso). I don't like how tedious it is to install more minimal distros, such as Arch or Gentoo. However, I might try GuixSD. As someone learning Lisp, I find it increasingly attractive the more I learn.

The best thing to do is to pick one distro and stick with it. Distro hopping is the best way to get burnt out on Linux as a whole. Just use Ubuntu or Linux Mint so you can actually use your computer to make your life easier, not mindlessly playing around with various distros with slight, meaningless variations.

Does anyone here have experience with Gentoo? I've been considering switching. The lack of systemd as well as the educational aspect of it's configurability intrigue me.

>>11849 You should definitely give it a spin. I tried NixOS way back and it was pure garbage, you had to work so hard just to get a $path and everything was weird. GuixSD was very easy to pickup, it worked and I could actually understand the configuration despite only knowing lisp 101. I can't even imagine how good it must be for a sysadmin who happens to be a lisp magician. Gentoo is still the girl I come home to everyday. Even though I've installed maybe +30 times, I should probably just use it as my only OS since the installation is getting quite tedious and migrating old configs (although an excellent shortcut) is becoming a chore.

>>11825 I noticed Void started breaking a lot after about 3-4 months of daily usage

>>11826 I don't understand why you posted this once let alone twice: https://bryanostergaard.com/blog/2018/07/16/why-i-created-the-exherbo-linux-project/

>>11819 my story is similar, I ended up on pure Debian with i3 and I love it >>11851 You are right as long as we are talking about slight, meaningless variations. But I think that trying gentoo is a good experience I have a question to all Arch users: Why don't you use Gentoo? Using arch seems like: "I want to be edgy but I am too lame to use gentoo" But I haven't used arch so I hope I am wrong (I must be because lots of people use arch). So what are cons of this distro which gentoo doesn't provide?

>>11855 and now its posted thrice. Thank's fbiOS!

>>11862 >You are right as long as we are talking about slight, meaningless variations. But I think that trying gentoo is a good experience Never tried Gentoo or even Arch for that matter, although I guess I kinda have since I have tried Manjaro. But if there is a clear benefit to a distro like making your system super lightweight and you are willing to go with it, then switching is good. But if you are like me, using Linux Mint and are pretty happy but then decide on a whim to install something pointless like SteamOS or elementaryOS, or all of the unneeded Ubuntu spins then you might as well stay with what you got. I just see too many new Linux users get caught up in all of the choice and then they forget to, you know, actually use their computers. I would never down something like Gentoo, but it's not really for me.

>>11862 I don't see how Arch and Gentoo fit the same niche at all, beyond the rolling release thing which is certainly no longer a rarity. I guess you could say they're both educational to set up and use, though in slightly different ways. Beyond that, we're comparing a binary distro to a source distro. Binary will almost always make more sense in a lot of cases (laptops, low performance hardware, systems that don't have the cycles to compile software all the time), and most people will probably prefer binary distros in every use case that a source based distro doesn't provide tangible benefits. Arch also has an "advertising" edge because their wiki so extensive, trusted, and written specifically for desktop users. Of course you can use not-Arch and use the Arch wiki, but I don't think we should underestimate the power of bringing people to the website.

>>11819 From my experience with linux I didn't see any advantage on using debian based distros apart from debian itself. About Arch and Gentoo I would reccomend Gentoo over Arch if you have the time for compilling and setting USEFLAGS there is no reason why you should use arch. its main selling points are archwiki and AUR, archwiki is nice but I see my learning curve since I started to read manpages and actually learn how to use a *NIX system instead of just copying and pasting for solutions on the internet. Currently I am running FreeBSD, why? because my wireless card isn't supported by OpenBSD and I need compatibillity with linux and windows. FreeBSD offers both benefits from a source based and binary based linux distro. The cons are that you would need to spend some time configuring it for desktop use. You can also use a fork like True OS but I haven't tried that because is based on the unstable branch and I prefer to use a window manager. Use whatever system is better for what you want to do and don't follow my advertising/opinion above.

>>11873 >I don't see how Arch and Gentoo fit the same niche at all They usually get bundled together by certain types of people because they are considered the "hardcore" distros that all the cool kids use. >systems that don't have the cycles to compile software all the time With portage you can compile binary packages on a fast machine and then install them on slower machines. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Binary_package_guide

>>11849 I agree. The install process for distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro is simple and fast. I still think its beneficial to understand how partitioning works and how your os is set up though. >>11852 Also interested. >>11864 That's a sensible attitude. Not everyone needs to compile their own kernel or deal with technical details. I've also seen the same thing where people just spend time doing "nothing" like researching what distro to use or pointlessly swapping between them and feeling like they've accomplished something meaningful with their time when the opposite occurred. >>11825 Same anon that posted this. I'm finding it really hard to find a distro to use. I used to use Manjaro but there were a few things that convinced me to leave. Some of their download links were several versions behind and weren't updated which led to failed installs. Their command line installer downloads and uses the latest packages but the installer itself is seldom updated which leads to constant breakages that require you to chroot into the system to fix it before rebooting. Took me ages to debug too. It all seems really unprofessional. I ended up moving to Void to escape systemd and to have a bare minimum system that works but that's been its own disaster as well. The owner/lead dev dropped off the grid and they lost control of their repos and irc. They still use GitHub instead of a self hosted instance of GitLab or something similar. The build process for their packages fails for no reason sometimes and requires you to trigger a rebuild. Documentation is very poor. As mentioned in my post above, everything went to soykaf in the repos recently and there were hundreds of broken packages because one of the devs upgraded something important without testing it. Can anyone suggest a no drama, minimal distro without systemd, that also has support for the nvidia driver (card to recent for nouveau)? I considered Alpine Linux but because it uses musl, theres no support for nvidia afaik.

>>11888 >I've also seen the same thing where people just spend time doing "nothing" like researching what distro to use or pointlessly swapping between them and feeling like they've accomplished something meaningful with their time when the opposite occurred. Yea, my attitude comes from distro hopping and falling victim of the very thing I'm talking about. Once you become burnt out on Linux from distro hopping, every little glitch is something to gripe about because now you gotta find that perfect distro again. And there's that Youtube product review culture where the e-celeb is saying things like, "I've considered using [meme distro] as my daily driver" during their "reviews" of Linux distros. Which is downright silly, honestly.

>>11852 >>11888 Gentoo is similar to Void Linux, but it's more mature and stable. I run Gentoo on my main PC, and Void Linux on my laptop. I'd say that by design Gentoo requires customization while Void Linux enables it, and more importantly Gentoo is very annoying without a good CPU and some RAM. Even if you go super minimal like I do, there are usually those small packages that pull in monsters like Qt as dependency. I'd say that if you have good enough hardware, go for Gentoo.

>>11862 Because I want rolling release/cutting edge but I don't want to compile everything myself. I also use Debian on systems that I don't want to have to fuarrrk with all the time. I've considered gentoo but I'm not one of those people that uses arch for the learning experience or whatever so I haven't had a compelling reason to switch. I do intend to try out gentoo at some point though. If I like it, it will probably replace arch for me.

I have a distribution based on arch that looks a crapload like the image on the op

>>11888 >Can anyone suggest a no drama, minimal distro without systemd, that also has support for the nvidia driver (card to recent for nouveau)? Gentoo is a bullseye for those specs. I chose it for similar reasons when I did. Works a treat with nvidia binary drivers, no systemd, no drama, and the only time it breaks is when you've fuarrrked up. I love it.

I'm currently using QubesOS with mostly debian based VMs. It salright, not great if you are looking for pure performance, but it's security minded and easy enough for an average joe like me to use.

Arch Because i prefer binary based os, i have more control over the system then debian based distros,i havent used debian itself however but i like arch's environment. You will feel that community has the best for you if you use arch.I did find almost every package in repositories, it is not bloated compared to most of them, i could learn some linux with arch and that also means i had to fix stuffs,pacman is great i dont think there would be better one aptget is gay systemd is a disadvantage but i am okay with it.However, best distro is not a fact but a personal choice, i would recommend try some these and select one; arch-debian(and maybe void-gentoo-antergos) i dont recommend using ubuntu because it is super bloated and it is a product -not a software for you to use- and ubuntu forums and wiki is fuarrked up compared to arch's

>>11910 You talk like a retard

>>11917 You know, I was about to say, no bullying until I fully read his post and saw; >However, best distro is not a fact but a personal choice, i would recommend try some these and select one; arch-debian(and maybe void-gentoo-antergos) i dont recommend using ubuntu because it is super bloated and it is a product -not a software for you to use- and ubuntu forums and wiki is fuarrked up compared to arch's >Ubuntu is super bloated >Ubuntu is a product >Ubuntu is not software >>11910 Ubuntu or Linux Mint is a great place to start and even settle with. And the "bloat" that comes with it is actually pretty useful, especially for newcomers. I like having things like LibreOffice or Firefox preinstalled considering I'd be installing it anyways if it was a Windows machine.

>>11917 Sure but it seems you cant even talk >>11922 As i said it is a matter of personal choice and i dont like to get things preinstalled because i like to build my system myself, i said it is not a software for you to use but a product meant to bring some money they did eject amazon spyware to gnome search because there is really huge difference between them like Gnu/Linux and Windows. Products wants to get people to use it but softwares as i referred to wants to work better. And what is great about ubuntu so that it is recommended to every new user?what if they are a little bit more adventurous? it is ridicilous the fact that literally everybody says ubuntu is good for newbies not everybody is same, for example i used ubuntu as a start for a little than i thought that it was not for my taste and i directly switched to Arch and if you are not afraid of breaking soykafs and willing to read alot, i think most of people is able to do so and this way is more enjoyable.

>>11905 Sounds perfect. The only concern that I have now is that it's source based. Would it be unreasonable to run it on a laptop considering how much compilation is required? It runs an i7-7700HQ which is pretty beefy so maybe it's no issue at all. In any case, I'll try it out and see where it gets me. Thanks for the recommendation.

>>11923 Your literacy and grammar are very poor, that's what those two anons were hung up about. I agree when it comes to Ubuntu. I don't think it should be recommended to new users. It had its time but I don't see it as being relevant anymore. However, Arch is a far cry from a beginner linux distro. The target audience for Ubuntu just want an easy to use, working system, so that they can get on with basic tasks. They aren't necessarily developers or sysadmins. They don't want to partition their system manually and install over the command line. They aren't people that want to sit down and spend hours reading through poorly written documentation that they likely don't understand and contradicting forum posts to solve some obscure breakage for a package they didn't even know was installed but breaks everything. Arch simply isn't reasonable for these people. >if you are not afraid of breaking soykafs and willing to read alot, i think most of people is able to do so and this way is more enjoyable The reality is most people don't want to do this and most people do not enjoy it - especially the target audience I mentioned above. I do it because its the compromise I make to use the system I want but I definitely do not enjoy it. I would rather spend my time doing something that's actually meaningful to me, like working on a feature for one of my projects I maintain.

>>11923 I disagree with you here. Ubuntu is great because it gives the newcomer a solid OS so they can actually use their machines from the get-go BUT since you have the terminal you can do pretty much anything you want. You want to remove GNOME and use KDE or even use i3? You can still do that in Ubuntu. Personally, I would recommend Linux Mint over Ubuntu but it's the same concept even with all the worthless Ubuntu forks. A person is just better off with the easier option unless they actually have a clear benefit, in your case, you saw a clear benefit so that's good for you. My issue was not with your grammar like >>11926 thought it was I can't speak for >>11917 but I saw a post that was possibly encouraging needless distro hopping and some weird distro bashing. I know not everyone is the same, I'm the opposite of you, I don't care about customizing my OS beyond a Nep-Nep wallpaper, a dock for my frequently used programs, and a dark theme. I'd rather play with hardware to be honest with you. I'd rather see people just use Linux period than get into some feces flinging over distros.

I usually use mint but I'm on manjaro atm because I'm doing vulnhubs.

>>11819 Debian. Some of the benefits include: - Having objectively the best package management system - Not being soykaf in any other department compared to the competition - See above - See above - See above - See above

>>11948 >Debian. >- Having objectively the best package management system Are you aware of Nix and Guix? >- Not being soykaf in any other department compared to the competition Debian packages are months, sometimes years, out of date.

I was on centOS for a long time and quite enjoyed it, figured I'd make the jump to fedora and stayed on there for a few months now. Everything just werks

>>11950 >Nix >muh functional Ok seriously now a it doesn't matter how a package manager is written (or how it 'treats' it's packages). It can be written using ((purely functional)) autism or plain old C that likes to segfault once in a while. I will confess that I would really like a rollback system in apt so maybe apt is not the best package manager until a rollback system is added >Guix Haven't had any experience with it seems similar to apt with the ability to rollback the latest transaction >Outdated packages Only if you use the stable branch unstable (sid) branch has the latest packages you can't be scrub while using that branch though a blind dist-upgrade could break your system

>>11819 If you like Arch, you probably like a minimal distro, so I think you should try Void or Alpine, both are good

>>11955 >muh functional I don't think you can claim your favorite package manager is "objectively" the best when you have such a ridiculously shallow understanding of what else is out there.

>>11819 Currently been running MX Linux. I like Debian Stable because I just prefer stability, and they update lots of packages and provide their own repos and tools to help with setup. It runs well and also avoids systemdicks. My laptop doesn't play nice with a lot of distributions, so I don't foresee myself changing it any time soon. In general though, distribution is not a huge deal. Package availability is important, but not much else. WM or DE makes a far greater impact in day to day usage I think. I have i3, XFCE, and openbox all installed on here, depending on what I'm in the mood for or fits the workflow I need for a particular scenario.

I used void for a year or so on my laptop, wrote a couple packages for it and contributed to the wiki but ended up back on arch. I run arch on my server, desktop and laptop. Its not my favorite distro. My fave would be void. But the archwiki is so great, i prolly can never leave it. Yes, the wiki works with any linux distro. However, the wiki is made specifically for arch and some tiny variations (packages in repos, slight program differences) although easy to compensate for, are still a nuisance.

>>11955 Nix solves alot of problems. Leaving atomic rollbacks aside, it also solves dependenceny hell [1], without the use of total containerization like some might first assume. At the same time it allows multiple versions of packages to be installed. Or if you want you can quickly spawn a shell with whatever packages you need. This also leads to every system user having the ability to install software for their own environments. Truly multi-user [2]! I'll not kid myself though, Nix and NixOS definitely seem foreign at first and I understand someone being immidiately turned off. But if you start reading into it you'll at least be intrigued, I promise. 1. https://nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/why-you-should-give-it-a-try.html#idm140737316695424 2. https://nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/install-on-your-running-system.html#idm140737316611008

>>11925 >The only concern that I have now is that it's source based. Would it be unreasonable to run it on a laptop considering how much compilation is required? Running gentoo on laptop is completely fine. The compiling time is not long as you imagined, considering some big packages like palemoon, firefox or libreoffice have prebuilt. I'm using gentoo on my T530 with an I7-3840QM and it's been pretty comfy so far

>>12015 >I7-3840QM I tried to run Gentoo on a chromebook once. It took 24 hours to do a -uDN world and like 12 of those hours was chromium alone.

>>12016 >I tried to run Gentoo on a chromebook once. He asked if his I7-7700HQ is enough to run gentoo so I gave him the answer. But it's my fault anyway since I should have specified it. >12 hours of those was chromium alone You could have saved 12 hours of your life by installing a prebuilt binary of chromium from some overlays.

>>12044 >You could have saved 12 hours of your life by installing a prebuilt binary of chromium from some overlays. I wouldn't recommend casually using random overlays, especially for binaries. Anybody can set them up and you have no way of knowing what you're getting. Very bad advice. The correct answer is what >>11887 said. If your device is too slow you can (cross)compile packages on a fast machine and them install them as binaries on the slow device. Portage can do both.

>>11819 Void Linux. Fairly stable, very easy to use, and seriously simple init system

used mint a lot. Changed the UI a lot which was a bit of a nightmare. Cinnamon ain't great for that. Want to try something else with similar ease of use but more customisability but not sure.

>>11819 After having bounced around several different Ubuntu flavors and Debian, I've settled on arch. I'm now very familiar with how to install and configure it, and sometimes troubleshoot my own issues. Main benefits I see from it are the AUR (yes I know it's technically insecure but it's fine if you're careful, and issue generally get found and resolved in a matter of hours) and extensive documentation. >>11852 I ran gentoo for a couple of months, and while it was very interesting I can't say it appealed to me. The installation process was unnecessarily complicated and long, and there is very little functional benefit to compiling everything yourself with your own set of flags. I do think it's a cool idea and respect the devs and people that use it, but it just didn't resonate with me.

>>11948 In what way is "objectively" the best? >>11955 Nix is written in C++. The point isn't that the package manager itself is written in a functional language, but that a functional approach is used for package management and this really matters. And Guix is Nix's packaging model re-implemented in Guile (GNU's project Scheme).

TempleOS or the Love Shack OS.

>>11819 May I ask why you jump around so much? I stick to Arch / Ubuntu distributions, depending on the application.

>>12330 Not him but for me it's to try something new. You can't tell if something is good/bad without trying it first.

>>12332 I strongly agree with you anon.

Xubuntu or any lightweight Ubuntu based distro. I just want a comfy setup that just works.

Just fuarrrking use CoplandOS

Distro hopping is my favorite way of procrastinating on projects

>>11819 Arch, but don't think I'm an elitist. I couldn't care less if you use a variant or a simpler distro such as Ubuntu. In fact, I encourage most to use Ubuntu especially if they're just now starting out or something that works. I have heard good things about NixOS, though I never seriously tried it.

>>11819 Before I start let me tell you what I look for in a operating system: >convenience >interface UX >preinstalled software experience >compliance with the latest software standards Here's a list of operating systems I've used/tried up a bit until today: MSWindows: Win98, Win2k, XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win8.1, Win10 (currently on 1803) GNU/Linux: Ubuntu 12 (my first time with linux), Ubuntu 16.04-17 (2016-late 2017), OpenSUSE, Debian 8 (didn't have drivers for my wifi adapter so I had to compile them from github while using my moto G for usb tethering so I could have internet), Fedora, Puppy linux and slacko on a ASUS EEEPC4G as well as Trisquel and arch. OSX: OSX Mountain lion, OSX yosemite, macOS sierra, macOS high sierra. Others: android froyo up to android 7. iOS 5.1, 6, 7~8 and 11. FreeBSD w/ gnome3, MacOS 9 and Plan9. My current setup: a hackintosh running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (updated from 10.12.6 while keeping HFS+ because APFS wasn't a good experience for me even though I use a SSD for my boot drive) with Windows 10 1803 on dual boot with clover bootloader. Why macOS? Even though the defaults on macOS are pants on head retarded once you change it there's literally no system that compares imo. What I like about it? >can read/write almost any kind of file system (with FUSE, openZFS, paragon etc...) maybe that's why a huge company like drivesavers uses OSX >runs unix-like programs natively so in case a package isn't on ports/brew you can just compile it >can run a X11 session with Xquartz >I can actually use more programs without relying on wine (which I'll adress this later) >hands down the best interface >has a ton of built in tools that are fuarrrking impressive eg: apple preview is fuarrrking amazing, it not only allows you to preview the image and annotate stuff on it but it's a pretty fuarrrking good image editor as well (allows you to resize images with almost no loss while even showing final filesize before saving, add text and images from the clipboard and align them to a grid, crop, rotate, add a signature etc..) eg 2: grab: you can take screenshots of p much anything you want on your screen: a window, a rectangular area, your dock/menubar, desktop, indivudual menubar items... it even applies transparency when saving the image eg 3: audio MIDI setup: the fuarrrking audio setup is amazing: you can change output frequency/format, create a multiple output setup (output audio from multiple sources) Although macOS isn't really that secure by default but you can do a ton of improvements just by following patrick wardle's guides, keeping an eye out for security exploits and updates on the app store. I honestly can't see a single reason to use any linux distro anymore unless on my EEEPC4G. Before I forget: why Windows 10 instead of linux on your secondary SSD? because games. *on my grudge with Wine: I've used wine on my machines for almost 4 years now and it has improved ALOT recently but why I disregard it most of the time? (even though I still use on macOS) simple: sometimes it's just inconvenient. eg: file picker prompts will use wine's own file picker which doesn't include thumbnails and other basic features eg 2: some programs will require resources that wine simply doesn't seem to be able to install (some resources just hang forever during install/crash wine before finishing the install) back when I was using linux I would just read WineDB and see what I could do but I lack the patience to bother with this nowadays.

Ubuntu, install just as easy as windows pretty much, I'm pretty new to linux, looking at gentoo though for my next distro but I don't think I'm switching anytime soon

>>12044 >You could have saved 12 hours of your life by installing a prebuilt binary of chromium from some overlays. or use a deb/rpm file and the converters available as packages. or use snap/flatpak.

I like OpenBSD because it works out of the box on my machines and has sane defaults from which to build the rest of my system on. Lack of (or difficulties building) key software has pushed me away from it somewhat. As far as Linux (which I need for certain software) is concerned I tend to find out of the box Linux distros have way too much soykaf going on thus I prefer bare bones setups to build on top of. I like Arch's model of supporting only the latest software and it seems to have loads of users for better or worse. There's a charm in source based distros but that has it's limits for me. I don't want to build X or a web browser or stacks of rando unused build dependencies. >>11948 apt is perfectly fine. apt front ends seem to be universally awful.

Gentoo, why? Well, it's highly customizable, fast, stable and you can use it without systemd soykaf. I used to run Arch, but I got tired of it. Besides, I was having issues with hardware acceleration. If you're too retarded to install, you can always try CloverOS. Portage is the best package manager by far.

Can we talk about DEs? I just like pretty eyecandy. Enlightenment looks amazing and Terminology terminal emulator is fraking rad. Sadly, nothing ever works, and I can't seem to get it on anything but void, which has its own issues. Anything similar anyone else has run into?

Unironically GalliumOS. It has been the most stable, reliable, simple, and easy to use Linux I have ever used, and it is custom tailored for a machine that literally cost me $210 to get. $160 for a 4GB Chromebook C740, $50 for a bigger SSD. This thing does everything I want except high end gaming / CUDA dev, which is fine, I have a different machine for that.

openSUSE is good for the ARM projects I’ve been working on. It has the resources of an enterprise Linux with the flexibility and FOSS-like community of a completely volunteer project.

pfSense just appeals to me in lewd ways~

Arch because it was my first distro and I've never had a good reason to change. I really like having the aur, and how easy it is to do custom builds of things. The docs are generally high quality, which helped me when I was first starting out with Linux. I've used Debian on servers but it never really stuck. I sometimes think of switching just to broaden my experience. Gentoo seems like everything I like about arch but moreso, so I might try it out on my desktop at some point. I want to get some more experience with Debian too, but I'm not sure in what ways it would be an improvement over Arch. Maybe now that Valve has that windows to Linux port thing through steam I might try replacing my win7 "gaming partition" with Debian.

Gentoo. Because it works great

I'm the one who wrote >>12586 I'm back to say to you all: Never, ever EVER use exFAT (a.k.a FAT64). It may be tempting that it's cross-compatible through most if not all systems but once your data is corrupted that benefit is MEANINGLESS. My plan now is to buy a pi and a SATA module for it, install a linux on the pi and use it as a SFTP server to store my data. That way I won't have to deal with compatibility throughout systems. I think I'll probably buy a USB switch as well. Good thing my monitor has 2 HDMI inputs and the pi already has a built in output. I'm currently using a nice recovery software I found on arch wiki and it works fine but I don't expect it to recover all of my data - although it's mostly unimportant stuff.

Obarun - because Arch without systemd (s6 instead) is pretty nice. Used to run Gentoo but my pc isn't good enough for all of the compiling. Thought about OpenBSD but muh games. And thinking about trying Void.

>>11862 >Why don't you use Gentoo? Repos and AUR are more up to date across a wider range of software. portage is (and has to be) quite fiddly. same with ebuilds. I don't want to have to compile *everything* from source. The only reason I might not use Arch would be if I wanted a long term stable environment to work in, as opposed to bleeding edge everything. Though Arch hasn't soykaf itself on me for a few years now.

Parabola GNU/Linux-libre >Arch-based >No proprietary software >your-privacy >it's very good

i was distrohopping until i settled on openbsd. it's comfy, stable, secure and the core system never breaks. it has good documentation unlike any linux distro ive ever used

>>13674 OpenBSD's documentation is unbeatable. I feel like I know my system inside out and I instantly know where to look when things break or need to get changed. It's like I became one with my machine. It is something I've never felt when working with Debian or Arch.

>>13675 That sounds fun lainon. Maybe I should swallow the bsdpill.

>>13674 >>13675 Take a look at 9front's documentation.

I've always liked it a lot since the first time I test it. It is very comfy and easy to use, also it is good to work.

openbsd is great if the software you need is in packages/ports and you don't mind the performance hit.

Haiku, because it is fun.

>>11819 I prefer OpenBSD because >muh security and also because it's one of the few usable (for me, at least) UNIX-like operating systems which doesn't have issues such as rampant systemDICK cancer (and other related poetteringware) or (((Code of Conduct))) in common software. I also prefer OpenBSD because it doesn't include much GNU software by default. GNU software is generally bloated and doesn't place as much emphasis on security as does OpenBSD's core utilities etc. I have tried Haiku and gotten rid of it because it was SO fuarrrkING SLOW. I don't know why but everything was just laggy and freezing all the time. Maybe it's my particular hardware configuration.

This will probably come out as cliché but I use arch. Why ? >zen installer >I work as a web developer so I need my tools to work >cutting edge, although it has some drawbacks it's nice to have up to date packages all the time. >stable, if you know what you are doing And that's about it, there are other stuff I like about arch, but if I were name each and every one them, it'd take a while.

Been on the Debian sid (unstable) train for a while now and I'm in fuarrrking love with it! You can do a very minimal install (if that's your thing), dpkg manager is my fav, and unstable branch has very very up to date software repos compared to testing/release. Another thing I've really grown to appreciate about Debian in general, is that it does not really try and be anything in particular in terms of style, performance and usage. I feel as tho a lot of distros try to be too much of one thing or one style, which can be nice. But with Debian, I feel I have total freedom of my setup

>>11819 Arch >easy to install (memorization or user scripts) >bleeding edge allows for newest versions of applications >great documentation I've been running the same arch install on my laptop for 6 months and I've yet to have any issues that weren't my fault.

>>11862 >>11948 >>13706 Happy Manjaro user here. I tried Debian Stable long ago and found that package were a bit outdated for me. I'd take a second try but I hesitate : which branch (sid/unstable) is the more suitable for regular computer stuff (web browsing, CLI usage, music, no very specific need in audio/video/games) ? I've read that the unstable can be frozen for loooonnngg time and can leave you with buggy software until next release.... Does sid break often ? Is maintenance time consuming ? Is pic related relevant ? My opinion on Manjaro as a normy, casual user : very easy to install on MacBook Pro 5,5 2009 with the UEFI compared to a Ubuntu ; no hardware problem ; regular updates ; never breaked in 3 years (or always manageable) ; few maintenance ; access to AUR ; the Archwiki +++ ; good distro to get you on tracks to learn UNIX and all ; I would install Arch and begin serious learning if I had time.......

>>13741 This infographic is out of date. For one testing doesn't have a security team anymore, the patches from that are upstream patches that make it from unstable. Debian Stable is not on a "whenever it's ready" schedule anymore, they're on a two year release cycle. Freeze times happen like 6 months before a new release is scheduled to come out and it's not just testing that gets frozen, unstable doesn't get new package versions until it ends, which is like a week or two after a release. Which is a change i wish got advertised more because i still see people recommending unstable as a constantly rolling release like its 2011. The really bad breakages tend to happen soon after freezes end because that's when new packages come in and the package maintainers like to switch up dependencies to accommodate new versions, if you ask about this on forums or on their mailing lists or irc, you are likely going to get told to follow a named release in apt instead of following unstable or testing to avoid this. Bad breakages after the unfreeze calamities get sorted out are pretty rare, you are likely to see bugs surface more than breakages after that. If you are going to use it, the faqs recommend you follow the dev mailing lists or idle on the dev irc channels so you can know when is a bad time to update your packages so you don't stumble right into a bad breakage because you aren't likely to be able to figure out whats wrong and fix it on your own if you aren't familiar with the way debian does things. Debian officially recommends nowadays that you use stable for nondevelopment use, but its still pretty possible to use unstable day to day if you're careful.

use stable and unmask packages at the individual level as required imo

>>13745 I realized I was confusing the fact that Sid=unstable -_-' What I've read on 'https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases#Current_Releases.2FRepositories' is misleading. It describes "testing" as a suitable release of Debian for "advanced users" which is not the case in the end.... Thanks for this (quality and complete) explanation ! >>13746 That's the best solution I suppose. I will have to do a few readings on how to setup backports.

Gentoo. Really. It's just awesome.

Manjaro

>>13773 I'd like to, but the convenience of something like Ubuntu or Debian is too hard to give up at this point. I don't have the patience to compile all that stuff, wait for it, and hope I didn't mess it up. I'd rather install GuixSD

Any EXP with FreeBSD as main desktop OS, Should I give it a try ?

>>13817 I tried it once, it wasn't a very enjoyable expereince for me. I found myself in just about every way having to fight the operating system to do what I wanted. I think that's why I historically ran arch and these days run openbsd. nothing to resist on the one hand and sane defaults on the other. often a challenge is enjoyable, but persistant challenge against simple tasks can be annoying, take this into consideration before setting off on your journey.

I like Antergos the best because it's basically just Arch with a few nice packages in the repos and some good defaults.

>>13818 So you prefer OpenBSD over FBSD and Arch. Right?

>>13834 yep, I've been using Openbsd on my server and personal computer for a little over two years now and I have no plan of switching to anything else for the foreseeable future. My personal computer is pretty minimal with only 7 packages out of base, I almost never change any config files because things are generally set the way I like and have been since I first moved over, and the only maintenence I do is updating to new versions every 6 months, writing scripts to make certain tasks easier, and updating/creating cronjobs. it's everything I could ask for and it's pretty /cozy/

>>13835 after I do a little search I found That OpenBSD don't carry about performance while FreeBSD do. Also because Ifuilt to install FreeBSD Yesterday due to wird Grub Issue I decide to try TrueBSD ( cus I'M Noob ) and latter I will try FreeBSD and OpenBSD (I love minimality of OpenBSD but FreeBSD should be faster ) what do you think?

>>13842 try everything you want, I mean it's your system, and it's good to try new things so you can develop opinions of your own. keep in mind in practice the performance of a unix derivative is going to depend more on what gui and other applications you have installed rather than on the derivative, but chances are that if you care that much about performance openbsd isn't going to support what you want to run anyway.

>>13745 >If you are going to use it, the faqs recommend you follow the dev mailing lists or idle on the dev irc channels so you can know when is a bad time to update your packages This isn't exactly related, but is the Void community active enough to follow this? Many seem to enjoy it and I've been thinking about trying it, but people also seem to complain about it breaking a lot. I'd consider just delaying updates by default or something if it didn't kind of ruin the point of running a "bleeding edge" distro.

>>13817 stick with Linux. desktop FreeBSD is basically the same thing nowadays with less performance and more hassle. OpenBSD is excellent out of the box but like the other anon said, check that your software requirements will be met. I wish there was a Linux distro that found that balance of having a good general base setup with sane defaults like OpenBSD does.

>>13875 >>>13817 (You) >check that your software requirements will be met. So simple, dwm, mksh, emacs, weechat, links2 and surf >I wish there was a Linux distro that found that balance of having a good general base setup with sane defaults like OpenBSD does. Yeah, could someone make a custom gentoo/crux with this balance, also I read that voidlinux is the most bsd-like exist is that true,. I tried void previously and found nothing spical at all (maybe I'm so noob to find difference) except it simpler and sysD-free

>>13877 I don't think I'd describe Void as BSD-like. When I think of what it means to be a BSD I don't think anything about the software, what I do think of is a relatively isolated small community working on their own kernel and userland to fit a very specific objective (we want to be fast, or we want to be secure, or we want to run everywhere). The closest distributions to meeting these goals I think was Stali Linux and MirOS Linux, both of which are abandoned but could be revived if you've got the skills and the time. ;) BSD-ness isn't a measure of quality anyway though.

>>13663 >obarun Parabola is a better fork of Arch that doesn't have proprietary software in its repos. It's GNU/Linux-libre.

I switched from Xubuntu on my desktop to Debian testing, and it's quite nice, apt kinda is like kicking dead whales down the beach tho. I still have Xubuntu running on my laptop.

I've used Arch since I discovered Linux (literally the same week when I installed Ubuntu and disliked it) and haven't bothered to switch to anything else. I find the AUR really useful for downloading those obscure packages or anything else that's fancy. Been tempted to switch from it soon to either Parabola, Gentoo or some flavor of BSD out of boredom. I've got a spare computer that I could try these out on but it has some weird 32 bit EFI going on so it's stuck using Debian.

>>13937 Arch is bloated, I recommend a Debian netinst.

Linux is bloated. I mostly just use Plan9 on my old_laptop to write drivers for my new_laptop. Once I'm ready I promote new_laptop into old_laptop and get a new one.

>>11819 I've used most distros, especially apt based ones, tried suse because of the KDE integration with firefox but I didn't like the package manager. Debian is a safe choice if you don't mind not having the latest and greatest packages. I tend to not install a lot and use my laptop as a media machine so I went with Slackware, I've used it before but switched back to Debian/Ubuntu to try the new editions out so now I'm back. >Extremely Stable >Very simple package format >No SystemD >Minimal Gnome glitterboyry >Gets out of your way as soon as you install everything you need >Slacpkg TEMPLATE is very handy There are drawbacks of course, among them are: >Packages that are arguably considerably dated even if it's for a reason. >No release cycle (this isn't so bad) >No dependency resolution >A bit of a learning curve I recommend it to anyone who isn't an Arch user since they are diametrically opposed to what Slackware is, even if it's for a while or in a VM.

i like Emacs

>>11819 a netinst of Lebian with Openbox because at least then I know what I'm working with a fedora installation for example installs all these default programs and dependencies and what not and I just lose track of what *my* OS is made of

BASED SLACKWARE FOREVER THANK YOU BASED PAT

i use debian because it's stable, secure, fast, convenient, complete, and i'd rather spend my time using my os than maintaining it. and i'm way, way past competing about the size of my epeen or arguing about silly, trivial horsesoykaf.

>>13675 This. I've been a sysadmin for 7 years and I feel like I sucked at computers until I started using OpenBSD. OpenBSD makes you good at computers.

>>13842 The speed issue is only relevant if you're running high-performance applications that demand everything out of your CPU, like commercial-grade email servers, file servers, firewalls, etc. If you are going to be using it as a desktop, you're better off with OpenBSD because it's more secure, stable, and it is easier for the end-user to understand because the OS is more logically designed.

>>14263 HOLY soykaf THAT IS THE BEST BYAKUREN I'VE EVER SEEN

>>14286 >OpenBSD makes you good at computers What exactly did you accomplish? Also in what way OpenBSD makes you good at computers?

openSUSE Tumbleweed, because it's a rolling distro that actually tests their releases. No more "Arch broke my X" meme. Also the community isn't edgy 16 year olds but people who just want to get soykaf done.

>>11819 Depends really: >For deploy once never update Alpine, because it's very small (fits on embedded devices) and focuses on security >Deployment, home Ubuntu, mostly due to the fact that it has the most packages (excluding user created ones in arch) >Lazy home usage Debian, it just werks. > If I wanna spend 3 months perfecting my OS Gentoo, due to the sheer amount of power it gives you, it's essentially like LTS but you don't have to download the packages manually and compile them. >>11851 lunduke plz go

>>11819 The operating system you choose really depends on what you wanna do with it and if you like the default software configurations or not. I find most Linux distros to be unbearable clusterfucks in one way or another, be it packages and package management, the Gnome or Plasma based desktops, the horrific default themes, and other assorted types of user unfriendliness. The one distro that does exactly what I want is Q4OS. It's based on Debian so it has great support for the programs that matter, I get regular updates, I get stability and security. My first Linux distro was Debian, so I already know how nearly every inch of the base system works. And best of all I get a nicely configured Trinity desktop right out of the box. TDE is a KDE 3.5 fork. Plasma has a billion menus and buttons and it's buggy as all fuarrrk, but TDE is stable, time tested, and it does everything I need. >>11851 >The best thing to do is to pick one distro and stick with it. Distro hopping is the best way to get burnt out on Linux as a whole This is basically what happened to me. I distro hopped my way into the most stable and boring OS that I could find. I'm actually pretty satisfied with it.

> NixOS > XMonad NixOS is very comfy for me bc of its hell stable, and you can rollback easy if something happened. Also you config system just with configuration.nix, its awesome.

>>14410 >NixOS Learning a new programming language just to configure my system doesn't sound like fun.

>>14426 much better to learn a new configuration language for every thing you need to configure, amirite?

>>14296 I'm not the lain you're responding to but I thought your question was worth a response. for starters good manuals and a easy way to access them is one of the most important things to understanding your system. OpenBSD is exceedingly good at this. OpenBSD programs are simpler, meaning there is simply less to learn. One last thing is that when you're learning something from scratch it's easier to leave behind your bad habits and look for the right way to do things, a anecdote for this would be that I never typed properly before I started to learn colemak mod-dh, but because I originally learned the positions of the keys for the layout relative to home row I do now. >>14410 I feel like Nix hasn't been properly loved since Guix stole its thunder. To some extent it seems justified because dmd and guile seem very nice, but on the other hand they're both unique systems with unique advantages. I'd like to hear what you love about Nix over Guix if you're willing to share. >>14426 You can think of Nix as being "only a programming language if you want it to". Unless you want to use it as a scripting language it operates simply as a sophisticated universal and regular configuration syntax. In this regard it exists to make configuration easier, rather than learning a different configuration syntax for every program you learn one capable of expressing both the most complex and simplest configurations in a succinct manner.

>>14431 I prefer NixOS is over GuixSD bc for me GuixSD looks not production ready for now, and also bc its GNU project, and i need spend some time to somehow configure proprietary drivers for my T420. Since its my working machine i was needed to configure everything very properly and as fast as i can, and with Nix it was faster and easily. Mb one day i will switch to Guix, at least bc of i'm passionate with lisp.

>>14434 yep, those all seem like pretty valid concerns, thanks for sharing lain.

>>14426 I've been on NixOS on all my machines for about a year now. I can't deny learning the Nix language and getting productive with it doesn't have its learning curve, but the same holds true for any other advanced GNU/Linux distribution. NixOS is advanced in how it handles package management and system state, in that it completely eliminates dependency hell and is much harder to break than mutable operating systems. The Nix configuration language itself is something like a purely functional JSON with control structures. See >>11990

I prefer Plan 9 from Bell Labs. It's full of great ideas and is an embodiment of its philosophy. Nobody uses it because people were too lazy in the 90s to abandon UNIX philosophy by Ken and DMR for UNIXXX PHILOSOPHY by Ken and DMR, but it's still the one and only OS I love. Every OS I actually use, I hate. They all suck.

>>14431 >You can think of Nix as being "only a programming language if you want it to". From what I've seen it's some awkward half-haskell type thing that nobody actually likes. Using a standard language like Guile would be much better but Guix's excessive autism over what is or isn't "free" is extremely counter productive. Both projects are equally disappointing from my perspective.

>>14442 Your response doesn't conflict with anything I said. As a guile programmer I even agree despite guile being far from perfect.

>>14442 >>14445 I mis-clicked on the reply button, in regards to your second comment free distros are politically productive, and for many people running exclusively free software doesn't hinder actual productivity.

>>14445 >Your response doesn't conflict with anything I said. Just elaborating since more than one person jumped me for that comment.

>>14446 >free distros are politically productive, and for many people running exclusively free software doesn't hinder actual productivity. Speak for yourself, having no wifi because of Stallman's autistic crusade hinders my productivity a lot as it happens. Even OpenBSD draws the line at firmware.

>>14449 ah, okay lain. >>14450 >Speak for yourself I was trying to do even less than that with the ``for many people'' part. If you're incapable of replacing your wireless because of a bios lock or like me you needed a really beefy wireless card to overpower the hordes of ignorant masses in your college dorm this seems like it would be a reason to potentially avoid a free distro. (OpenBSD is the OS I use by the way if that wasn't clear)

>>14451 >I was trying to do even less than that with the ``for many people'' part. Guix doesn't support any intel wifi cards, that's basically all laptops. I'm not going to buy a new wireless card just to use Guix. https://blog.paranoidpenguin.net/2018/07/guixsd-review-the-herdless-gnu/ >OpenBSD is the OS I use by the way if that wasn't clear Why are you fighting this so hard when you don't even use it?

>>14463 >Guix doesn't support any intel wifi cards, that's basically all laptops. I'm not going to buy a new wireless card just to use Guix. Okay, well that's a personal choice, I'm really not encouraging you to switch to Guix. >Why are you fighting this so hard when you don't even use it? I'm really not, I just disagreed with your assessment that the distro is counterproductive and didn't want folks lurking the thread to think that they either can't get anything done with it or that it doesn't serve a purpose. Sorry if anything I said came off as aggressive that was never my intention.

>>14465 >I'm really not, Let's review. >Guix's excessive autism over what is or isn't "free" is extremely counter productive <free distros are politically productive, and for many people running exclusively free software doesn't hinder actual productivity. >having no wifi hinders my productivity. Even OpenBSD draws the line at firmware. <just buy one of the 3 wifi cards that are supported hurr durr >I just disagreed with your assessment that the distro is counterproductive and didn't want folks lurking the thread to think that they either can't get anything done with it or that it doesn't serve a purpose. It comes across as though you have an emotional investment in either promoting Guix or declaring me wrong regardless of the facts.

>>14470 I'm exceedingly confused by this response. >It comes across as though you have an emotional investment in either promoting Guix or declaring me wrong regardless of the facts. The only fact you've presented is that you don't feel like buying a wireless card to which I responded: ``Okay, well that's a personal choice, I'm really not encouraging you to switch to Guix.'' I have zero attachment to Guix as I've only run OpenBSD for going on two years now, the only indirect relation with it being that I wrote a few programs in guile and as I mentioned earlier the reason I responded was because ``[I] didn't want folks lurking the thread to think that they either can't get anything done with it or that it doesn't serve a purpose.'' which I supported with the facts that people do get things done working in free environments, and by mentioning that it serves a political purpose. Regardless I think this conversation is beyond fruitless at this point so unless a authentic question or comment is made I will not be responding to any further messages within it. I wish you well lain.

>>14471 >he only fact you've presented is that you don't feel like buying a wireless card No, the fact I presented is that no matter what laptop you have, Guix won't support wifi on it. Yes you can spend time and money finding out which wifi card is supported and buying it and installing it. But that doesn't contradict my point that this impedes productivity. The thing is there is no technical reason behind this nonesense, it's not just a bug that might get fixed one day (or hell, a bug you can fix yourself in the true spirit of open source), it's purely ideological autism and serves no useful purpose. When Atheros open sourced their drivers it was because someone took the time to reverse engineer them so well. When Atheros open sourced their firmware it was after that same person was hired. But this had nothing to do with Stallman's posse or even Linux. >it serves a political purpose What do you have to back this claim up? The fact is, the only reason GNU can blow off non-free wifi firmware is because of work *other people did* to get open source Atheros drivers. >Regardless I think this conversation is beyond fruitless at this point Because you made a mistake and don't want to own up to it? How nice of you to throw mud in my face and wish me well instead.

>No, the fact I presented is that no matter what laptop you have, Guix won't support wifi on it. Yes you can spend time and money finding out which wifi card is supported and buying it and installing it. But that doesn't contradict my point that this impedes productivity. I mean it's a one time investment of like 30 minutes and less than $20. Is that really enough to condemn the distro as unproductive? >When Atheros open sourced their drivers it was because someone took the time to reverse engineer them so well. When Atheros open sourced their firmware it was after that same person was hired. But this had nothing to do with Stallman's posse or even Linux. I suppose it's not really relevant but I was under the impression that Atheros released (and continue to release) their drivers under their own volition, could you link to a document to back up that they were reverse engineered first? I couldn't find anything. Also many of Atheros's cards simply don't have firmware, so there was never anything to opensource, this was certainly the case of the first set of chips they opensourced in 2008. >it serves a political purpose >What do you have to back this claim up? The fact is, the only reason GNU can blow off non-free wifi firmware is because of work *other people did* to get open source Atheros drivers. Yes, the reason it serves a political purpose is that you're supporting a company over another company because it actively supports opensource. Similarly to how I would consider boycotts politically productive I consider this politically productive. >Regardless I think this conversation is beyond fruitless at this point >Because you made a mistake and don't want to own up to it? How nice of you to throw mud in my face and wish me well instead. No, because you were just mocking me instead of developing your argument unlike what you did the rest of this post. I wasn't trying to through mud in your face, I just wasn't interested in participating in a conversation that looked like this: >>14470

>>14475 >could you link to a document to back up that they were reverse engineered first? Why would someone reverse engineer a driver after it was open sourced? >I couldn't find anything. I assumed you already knew what I was talking about because it was the OpenBSD project that did it. If you don't even know anything about your own OS, why do you insist on acting as an authority for others? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8076435

>>14475 >I mean it's a one time investment of like 30 minutes and less than $20. Is that really enough to condemn the distro as unproductive? 30 minutes and $20 for every single person who wants to use your distro? That's a lot of wasted productivity for zero gains. What do you think open source firmware even gets you? Do you know what firmware is?

>Why would someone reverse engineer a driver after it was open sourced? I was trying to say I wasn't aware that it was reverse engineered at all, I though atheros simply released the driver and that was that. >I assumed you already knew what I was talking about because it was the OpenBSD project that did it. If you don't even know anything about your own OS, why do you insist on acting as an authority for others? I know quite a bit about OpenBSD, I didn't know about the origins of this project from a decade ago. As I said it's not really relevant anyway. >30 minutes and $20 for every single person who wants to use your distro? That's a lot of wasted productivity for zero gains. Not really, we waste so much time and money on so many stupid things that compared to anything else that's exceedingly insignificant. Like I said I don't think a one time investment of 30 minutes and $20 is enough to condemn it as unproductive. >What do you think open source firmware even gets you? You gain the ability to protect against firmware based attacks like those that store malware directly in your hdd and usbdrive firmwares, and to get public accountability on the competency of the software (the typical thing you get from all opensource software). You also get the requirement to support companies which support free software, which similar to a boycott encourages other companies to change their practices, even if it is small. I'm really not enjoying this debate, if you're willing to accept I'd be willing to concede just to stop and do other things.

>>14322 Does Trinity have decent customization options ? I like classic KDE but i need at least some freedum2rice, y'know

>>14753 One of the reasons people got mad when KDE 4 was launched was the lack of customizability.

Depends. An OS is a tool. If I am doing general use and gaming, I use Windows If I am doing development, hacking, or OSINT, I am using Debian or Gentoo If I'm on my fuarrrking phone, I'm using Android. One of my favorite things is watching an OS purist get confronted with a situation where they are forced to use an OS they have forsworn, because they have to fumble like an idiot and second guess their silly little OS religion

>>14792 >Depends. An OS is a tool. ...I could use a little more of that mindset...

I love Devuan. And although I haven't tried it yet, GuixSD https://devuan.org/ - onion site http://devuanzuwu3xoqwp.onion/ - clearnet site https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ - GuixSD If it doesn't have systemd, it's already better than 95% of the other Distributions. Devuan gets bonus points for having a cool community of veteran sysadmins. GuixSD gets bonus points for being tightly integrated with Scheme (Guile) and using Guix (the coolest package manager to date).

>>11854 Yeah it happens sometimes but most of the time you will find the solution to your problem on the main page. it's not that often thou and most soykaf happens because changes in the repo

>>14792 >Depends. An OS is a tool. >If I am doing general use and gaming, I use Windows >If I am doing development, hacking, or OSINT, I am using Debian or Gentoo >If I'm on my fuarrrking phone, I'm using Android. So basically you prefer Debian or Gentoo,

>>14859 >And although I haven't tried it yet, GuixSD Nothing says meme like shllling an OS you've never even used. Guix really is the new Arch Linux. >Devuan gets bonus points for having a cool community of veteran sysadmins. I fail to see how a distro dedicated to idiots who who think systemd is a (((backdoor))) but the linux kernel is 100% safe can have a "cool" community.

I use Fedora 27 because 28 was completely fuarrrked on launch and I haven't tested 29 yet and I need to install it on 90000 fuarrrking thinkpads and desktops and don't have time for arch bullsoykaf and IBM/Redhat discontinued 27 updates and now my soykaf isn't updating and Im holding out for fedora 30 but its still not out yet GOD SEND HELP

>>15008 also I have Peppermint on my t201is and centos on my servers.

>>11852 try it in vm's. it is a very satisfying but long to love OS. you will go through love hate cycles with it.

I know this is not a popular choice among anons but, Ubuntu. My activities are limited to browsing a couple of imageboards, reading news and ebooks from my massive library, and newbie programming. Once in a blue moon I watch some movies and anime. That's all. My desire to have a comfy system I don't need to maintain lured me into Ubuntu.

The differences is OSes keep a healthy software market flowing. However, especially in the phone market, all the phones are running one OS, and only one. And this is all under Google's "open source"

>>14060 Debian was my first contact with Linux, then I installed Slackware and things got so clear, it's amazing how simplicity makes a system so consistent and easy to understand. I tried other distros, but I always went back to Slackware. If you want to learn how Linux really works install Slackware. The last release was 2016, but the "current" repository is updated daily.

>>15616 i've been very interested in slackware (i'm currently on a very minimal debian where i only use terminal vim and a browser). is the current branch stable enough to do daily programming?

>>15617 The curious thing is that the central part is very clean, having Lilo as bootloader and the services being started by the scripts in /etc/rc.d/ (http://www.slackware.com/config/init.php). But the distro comes with many application packages: 4 video players, 3 pdfs viewers, 3 browsers, the entire XFCE4 suite, all KDE, OpenBox, Fluxbox, WindowMaker, GTK and QT development programs, Gimp, Audacious, Krita and much more. All these packages end up being useless, but some make sense because you can change DE with a simple line in your '.xinitrc' and end up not seeing certain programs from another DE. Of course you can remove groups of packages during installation. The packages are very easy to manage, one command installs, another removes and another updates. A script automates the process by checking the changes in the official repository, downloading and installing automatically. In another script you can see the list of installed packages and their contents, Unofficial packages are treated the same way by these tools. Certain programs such as Geany, Deluge or i3 can be compiled with automated scripts that can be downloaded from slackbuilds.org, or by a tool that automates the process (sbopkg), but you need to see the dependencies of each package and compile one by one. In the end they so transformed into packages and can be easily uninstalled. The system is very stable, but it is also easy to break, as packages do not care about dependencies you can uninstall some library if you do something by mistake. Take a look at the official website and the wiki. http://www.slackware.com https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install

Anyone here have any cool 3rd Party Phone OS to try?

It seems for the sake of my university I might have to leave my beloved OpenBSD to return to the land of Linux (I'm undecided about running a vm, even vmm/vmd). I was hoping someone might suggest me a distribution with the following characteristics: minimal install (no X), simple maintenance (including new OS releases), good offline documentation, & stable packages. I don't think I'd mind a difficult install, having a small number of packages available, or lack of hardware support. Thanks for your help!

>>15623 Arch Linux has some of the best documentation around.

As much hell as Devuan might catch due to its origins, it's what I use. I've been considering moving to something else, though, possibly Void or Gentoo, mainly because Debian's package repo (on which Devuan is based) is out of date on a lot of things. I've had to build my own versions from source just to stay up to date, and while it might be easy for simple applications and games, it's proven to be a pain in the dick for complex things like DEs. Maybe it's just my luck, maybe it's because I'm relying solely on APT to get the libraries necessary for building. In any case, I feel like maybe I should start moving away from Debian-based distros. I'm really leaning more towards Gentoo, as I've heard it's got more up-to-date packages and Nvidia driver support is pretty nice. Maybe even the long build times would prove advantageous by convincing me to get off the computer more while waiting. Just need to see how it goes in a VM first. I've already set up the base system several times, but I never got around to setting up X and the like.

>>15624 correct me if I'm wrong as it's been many years since I've used arch but isn't the documentation limited to the online wiki and aren't the packages not particularly stable (certainly AUR wouldn't be stable)? While I consider rolling release to be a benefit to ease of maintenance, I don't think the aggressive update cycle of arch does.

>>15623 Would Gentoo meet my requirements? I know it's small & documented. How stable & maintainable is it? (does updating packages require manual work? is it simple to track LTS versions of packages?)

>>15626 I was pretty worried about stability as well when I started using Arch, but haven't had a serious problem since my install a few years ago. As far as the documentation goes, the wiki has served me very well. I often find myself going to the wiki to answer a question, even when I'm not using Arch.

>I was pretty worried about stability as well when I started using Arch, but haven't had a serious problem since my install a few years ago. Maybe it was just AUR packages I remember not working as expected then. I think Arch is the linux distribution I used the longest, on the order of years without a reinstall, so that says something about stability of the OS even if the packages could be a little broken and demanded to be updated quite regularly. >As far as the documentation goes, the wiki has served me very well. I often find myself going to the wiki to answer a question, even when I'm not using Arch. Yah, I remember the wiki being quite good, the thing I was complaining about was that it isn't offline, I really just want a good book and/or man pages. Anyway I'll keep Arch under consideration in case I don't discover anything else which after analysis I'd prefer.

>>15623 >>15627 After some research "Gentoo is as stable as you make it." seems to reflect reality, it can be stable but only if you do what it takes. Maintenance is regular (monthly at minimum) and quite demanding often requiring you to do several manual steps to verify the safety for every one of your updatable packages before performing them. It also requires searching through a mailing list to avoid any problems with updating before they happen. Slackware is another option which meets all my requirements except for the offline documentation, and in that it's not rolling release which would be my preference for maintainability. Another down side for me is that you either have to use unofficial tools or do what seems to be a timely bit of maintenance for updating and installing packages. Void seems like the last distribution which could meet a sufficient number of my objectives, it being relatively new and unused worries me, as does the fact that it's intended for desktop rather than server use, and that its lead developer abandoned the project last year along with a massive amount of infrastructure. That being said it more or less meets everything I listed except for offline documentation. I have until may 13th when I'd have to switch so perhaps what I'll do is grab a old machine and try out a these three, giving each their due time in the sun.

Trisquel. Freedom.

>>15676 I've been using void for my desktop, dankpad and acer laptop for almost a year now and I never looked back. I wouldn't call void relatively new, given it was already an established systemd distribution before they scrapped systemd for the godsend of an init system Runit as early as July 2014 (see http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/whyvoid.htm#secret). Regarding the absence of xtraeme, for me as a user there was no noticeable impact, at all. Apparently his absence caused issues regarding project management on github, which is problematic if the project owner simply vanishes. Never mind the fact he has since returned (see https://lobste.rs/s/kzajfq/xtraeme_missing_void_linux_founder_has). Your point on offline documentation is arguably true, but man pages and the rare lookup on their online documentation was sufficient. Back in the day I printed the network configuration page, which is concise and does the job (see https://wiki.voidlinux.org/Network_Configuration), that was all offline documentation I needed to get a system up and running. While the online documentation on void linux is not nearly as extensive as arch's for example, and rare issues not quite as covered on their forum as on Ubuntu's for example, I can't say I had unresolvable issues not covered in their documentation, they got all critical topics covered. Audio, video, EFI (or non EFI), w/e. Despite this, on the rare occasion you need a helping hand and can't find existing documentation on the wiki or forum, you can for the most part follow arch/gentoo documentation just fine (while adjusting file paths of course). Given all this, their laudably robust package manager, sane defaults in regards to file paths and preinstalled packages, package structure, package coverage, ease of use and simply beautiful init system make it a joy to set up and use, I can't say I even considered switching the last of months.

>>15686 >I wouldn't call void relatively new, given it was already an established systemd distribution before they scrapped systemd for the godsend of an init system Runit as early as July 2014 (see http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/whyvoid.htm#secret). I don't know, even though the projects from 2008 the package manager only stabilised in 2015 and they changed init systems as you mentioned in 2014. I guess the two things I'm worried about with "new" are change and bugs. (perhaps this was a reflection of the small user base up until that time though and as it's grown to a distribution with medium use it's also become a distribution more cautious of change.) >Regarding the absence of xtraeme, for me as a user there was no noticeable impact, at all. Apparently his absence caused issues regarding project management on github, which is problematic if the project owner simply vanishes. Never mind the fact he has since returned (see https://lobste.rs/s/kzajfq/xtraeme_missing_void_linux_founder_has). Yes, I heard there wasn't a impact on the users, and I'm glad to hear he's returned! It's just another thing that seemed to me to say that the project didn't seem too stable to me. >Back in the day I printed the network configuration page, which is concise and does the job (see https://wiki.voidlinux.org/Network_Configuration), that was all offline documentation I needed to get a system up and running. That's a good point, I really should be willing to download html pages and maybe string it together in a pdf if I really want offline documentation (or even just to open it with w3m). >Given all this, their laudably robust package manager, sane defaults in regards to file paths and pre-installed packages, package structure, package coverage, ease of use and simply beautiful init system make it a joy to set up and use, I can't say I even considered switching the last of months. That's great to hear. It seems like this is more or less what people who've tried it always say, so I'm looking forward to trying it myself! >>15676 I found the following formal metrics of how updated packages are: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/pnewest Others might find it helpful aswell!

>>11862 *-devel tools are bloat

i'm pretty comfy with devuan ascii. ymmv. it's way better than i expected.

>>15688 >I don't know, even though the projects from 2008 the package manager only stabilised in 2015 and they changed init systems as you mentioned in 2014. I guess the two things I'm worried about with "new" are change and bugs. (perhaps this was a reflection of the small user base up until that time though and as it's grown to a distribution with medium use it's also become a distribution more cautious of change.) You're of course right void doesn't have the biggest following out there, as well as developer team, but I can't say I had packages breaking rolling release style. The issues I had are not unique to void, and were always 100% related to graphics drivers. OPTIMUS employing laptops have always been a mess to setup with the proprietary NVIDIA driver, whether you're running exclusively on your NVIDIA or any switching solution. On my dankpad (x220 tabled) pretty much all hardware support I needed worked out of the box. On my pc, setting up NVIDIA didn't cause any issues, but removing the graphics driver to make space for open source AMD drivers (gotta love amdgpu) was sort of problematic. Sometimes (happened only this 1 time) when you have multiple possible dependencies on any graphics driver, those graphics drivers depend on mismatching versions of libraries, making it impossible to install a new driver and uninstall the old one without causing any dependency issues. If you know your way you can force certain actions in xbps, but I went the simple route, removed all graphics driver dependencies (hint: a lot of packages). xbps-remove -R nvidia > log to keep track of old packages, and simply reinstall all packages after getting the new driver. It was an effort of maybe an hour with a lot of waiting, you could even cache your packages to make it a lot faster. Just saying this package manager surely gives you options and for me it accomplished anything I needed. >Yes, I heard there wasn't a impact on the users, and I'm glad to hear he's returned! It's just another thing that seemed to me to say that the project didn't seem too stable to me. You're correct to assume such, I did too, but after just going on my worries have been voided. As far as I can tell, the developer team is a bunch of reasonable developers after all. >That's a good point, I really should be willing to download html pages and maybe string it together in a pdf if I really want offline documentation (or even just to open it with w3m). With all these posts on lainchan discussing how you could just scrape the wiki I suppose, hadn't thought of that! What I like about the void documentation is that it doesn't change very often, because there is no need for it to. >That's great to hear. It seems like this is more or less what people who've tried it always say, so I'm looking forward to trying it myself! Awesome, I hope you find your place in this world of distributions!

>>15695 Sounds good. I'll likely be running on a librebooted X60s (I typically run a corebooted X220 because OBSD doesn't have x86 libgfxinit support, and only have the one SSD to swap systems) but I'll be testing on a Xeon X5460 with a R7 265 (I might libreboot this and run it as my main machine as it's supported, especially if I go the gentoo route), so I shouldn't run into too many driver issues.

>>15710 I thought I'd document my experience entering the Void. The install was exceedingly simple, quick, & self-contained, I didn't need external documentation. Post-install wasn't ideal, I would've liked to see something directing the user on how to setup networking and where to look for further information etc, but this isn't the end of the world especially with a rolling-release distribution. I was able to get wpa_supplicant properly configured without external documentation (I just searched man for "Network" "Wireless" etc until I found wpa_passphrase), I wasn't however able to configure dhcpcd (with runit) without the help of the guide on the wiki (I found the wiki extremely lacking generally once I looked at it). After this I read the man pages for xbps*, runit, runit-init, runsvdir, runsv, sv, runsvdir, & svlog to get a better understanding of the system, overall it seemed to be well documented, simple, but with some nice features too (I found the init system very nice, and the package manager above standard). Moving on I started to explore the package manager by installing a few of the packages I use, this process was pretty normal but I did run into some things I don't like, namely that the xbps seems to require optional dependencies in many cases. I was interested in installing emacs-x11 (with X so I can use pdf-view) but to my surprise I saw it not only requiring ImageMagick as a dependency but through ImageMagick wayland and gtk+3 aswell among a whole host of other dependencies coming out to be 105. Similarly even the minimal-xorg install brought in wayland through its xf86-input package. I couldn't find anyway around this other than compiling from source which I didn't get around to trying today (also I don't remember seeing any offline documentation for this). One thing I do really like about the packages (and it'll be the same for all three I'm trying) is that they're unmodified, there are no distro introduced patches, I didn't fully realise this before when I was expressing interest. It also uses LibreSSL & the LTS kernel which I quite like. I'd say it's a mostly sane & certainly simple distribution for desktop use, I'd use it over arch for sure (arch being my backup plan if none of the three I tried worked out).

>>15738 A few other things I've realised I would like to see in the package manager. I'd really like a way to search based on category, for example 'www/browser' or 'mail/client' or 'irc/server' so I could look for all the applications available in a given category in a more precise way than just searching for 'web browser' or 'mail client' and hoping all the relevant packages would appear because of their description. I'd also like a means to track the security vulnerabilities of my system like glsa-check so I can know when I actually have to update something, and a way to update a package without updating its dependencies (unless necessary). I'd also like is a way to link packages to specific versions (either a nix/guix like system, or manual dependency management) (static linking sort of does this which means xbps-src is sort of capable of doing it) of dependencies and allow for multiple dependencies so that if I need to update one package due to a security reason and this package in turn needs a dependency to update uneccessarily (not due to a security update) this wouldn't update the dependency that other packages use. Last thing I suppose is that I'd feel much better about things if there was a stable branch of the repository. Oh and I tried xbps-src, it's quite nice, but it doesn't seem to allow for easy updating which is a shame. Anyway off to either Slackware or Gentoo the next moment I have some spare time.

>>15738 Gentoo's (minimal) installation is truly a masochist's wonderland. There is no chance of completing the install without lots of prior experience or the online manual. The minimal install doesn't come with 'man' so I couldn't even attempt to journey in the right direction, nor was I given any instructions other than to connect to the internet and view the online documentation. The installation took the better part of a evening, a night to compile and the morning to finish, this was with me doing minimal work (using defaults where possible, using genkernel rather than configuring, etc). The time consumption wasn't due to the goals of the distribution of being highly configurable but rather due to the lack of tooling to direct this configuration, that is to say my time was spent tediously copying information from the manual. This is the worst case scenario in my eyes and if this wasn't a rolling release distribution it would be enough to rule it out on its own. Luckily it is rolling release, so this tedium doesn't significantly add to the overall maintenence. Even post install 'man -k' was non-functional which is unacceptable, "luckily" I had touched many of the programs of interest during the install and I was able to type these in directly, and to do similarly for some of the 'read-also' sections. Similarly to Void after the main install I read the emerge, make.conf, portage, ebulid(1), ebuild(5), emaint, dispatch-conf, etc-update, egencache, emirrordist, quickpkg, openrc, openrc-run, rc-status, rc-update, init, inittab, & initscript man pages to get a idea for the system, in addition to the Handbook. There is very little you can't do with the package manager, on occasion the manual didn't present clearly enough what the default behaviour was, and often due to the overwhelming number of options it wasn't exactly clear how one should go about maintaining their system, but overall it was reasonably well documented. portage & emerge have many of the features xbps left me craving, searching based on category, the ability to select dependencies, more stable packages, checking security through glsa-check, & updating packages without their dependencies. This came at the cost of complexity, and left one notable critique, while the slot system does exist allowing for some degree of multiple dependencies, there is no system to tie a specific version of a dependency to a package. The configuration language is a tad sub-optimal in my eyes as well, it's a subset of the shell used in the rest of the system, meaning you have to be careful to avoid using advanced features from the primary shell, in addition to the problems that come with shells generally. Gentoo by default uses OpenRC as its init system, it's more traditional than runit, and also slightly more complex, but runit can be installed on OpenBSD systems. One can assume that the API of OpenRC is stable due to the use of Gentoo in production and the general traditionalism, which I find desirable even if it comes at the expense of making it slightly worse overall in my eyes. When it comes to updates things aren't as bad as I originally was lead to believe, I read many reports of individuals who only track glsa updates for upto 6 months and then do a @world update after this time. Due to the existence of the @system, and @profile sets it seems that even this @world can be avoided entirely in favor of doing small updates of the base system or to secure applications. Additionally much of the problems that can arise due to updating can be automated with the various maintenence tooling provided. On packages Gentoo uses the oldest LTS kernel still supported 4.14, which is appreciated, unfortunately it does use OpenSSL rather than LibreSSL and the only means of changing it is a overlay which isn't complete. I think I personally prefer Gentoo to Void, but I could certainly understand if someone disagreed (even using my priorities). Anyway off to Slackware next moment I have some freetime (might even be before the weekend).

OpenBSD is secure by default and works right out of the box. if you put a web browser on it, you'll have a system that does almost everything you need it to do, with very little learning required, even if you are a computer noob (especially if you're a total noob who hasn't even used mac or windows). the documentation is good (but could use some minor tweaks here and there). their FAQ addresses most "high-level" concerns (though not in Q&A form). there's no drama, or else it's so easy to ignore it that it hasn't even come to my attention. there are regular releases, it's easy to apply patches, they even have real-time source updates, for the "hardcore" users. their license allows you to do just about anything with their software. with all the above benefits, i think it's not even necessary to mention their obsession with security, except that all of that good stuff comes from their obsession with security. for those of you more socially minded, they created many software (for their own use) which have proven popular with other communities.

>>15798 I love OpenBSD but there are situations where you can't use it. Namely when performance is a significant concern, when you need to run Linux applications, & when you need to run on hardware OpenBSD doesn't support. All three of these things are equally likely to happen on a production machine as on a development machine. For a example see: >>15623 Barring these use-cases I do think it's the best OS you can run, it's especially well suited for beginner developers and tired system administrators.

>>15794 Slackware's install is among the most beautiful I've ever seen. It's well documented all the way through and directed through a nice simple menu system. It does this without compromising on customizability, and this allows you to get a unique install to your liking in 20 minutes, as complex or simple as you like. I configured my system to be quite minimal (just emacs, parts of the X series, parts of the networking series, and parts of the base system/extention series) and even being completely new to the system this neither took a dramatic amount of time nor was it particularly difficult. (Although I did have to do it twice because I LILO didn't like GPT). Slackware isn't a rolling release distribution so it's quite important that this process be as painless as possible unlike the other two distributions I've reviewed. The documentation once in the actual system is perhaps even more excellent than it was in the installation. After the install is complete your greeted with a mail to give you further thorough documentation on how to get started system (similar to OpenBSD's but with far more helpful information and far more thorough). /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/ is just a directory of tutorials on using various parts of the system, everything from using Valgrind to setting up wireless of X, not to mention the README, BUGS, CHANGES, etc for just about every program in the system in /usr/doc (I imagine Gentoo does this as well because of /usr/src but it wasn't documented). It's a wiki on your hard-drive! Not to mention the distribution has its very own free book, it seems just as suited to beginners of Linux as it is as a reference manual and it's a wonderful touch: http://www.slackbook.org/. I read the man pages of installpkg, removepkg, updatepkg, makepkg, explodepkg, & pkgtool, the init system is the same as Gentoo but without the OpenRC abstraction so I already read it, additionally I read relevant portions of the book. The init system is exceedingly simple and as traditional as you're going to get, but still perhaps a bit more complex than runit. The package manager is likewise as simple as it can possibly get, too simple for me. While it solves some of the problems I saw in xbps it exposed many worse ones. What it solves is the ability to update a package without updating its dependencies, a way of conveying the security of packages (a mailing list), and the stability of packages. What it introduces is a complete lack of dependency management, & a centralised repository. This means you can't search for anything let alone a package based on category, unless you manually download the packages and use find or similar. It also means that you have to be the dependency manager and do a bit of intimate research on each package you want to install not through a centralised source of information but rather through sporadic web searching or extracting the tarball and looking around. Slackware does make it moderatily easy to change build options but not nearly as easy as on Gentoo, meaning you can change the dependencies that a package is built with but only with a little bit of work. Overall this seems like a wonderful distribution to me I prefer it to Void, and perhaps to Gentoo, although it's oddly a close call. I think a FULL install of slackware would additionally be a great beginners distribution, especially if done with reference to the book.

This is briefly how I'd describe each of the distributions if you'd like justification to read the full experience log: >>15738 Void is clean, very simple, & bleeding edge. >>15794 Gentoo is complex, traditional, & "What you make of it". >>15833 Slackware is simple, traditional, stable, & well documented.

void linux, was much more simple to install than arch, though much more complicated package wise if you ask me. and from my experience, more troubleshoot heavy than what im used to, but im fine with it. still sad i cant get i3 to work though.

>>11819 dragonflybsd dwm for manager

I'm using Manjaro Budgie, pretty nice so far. It's based off Arch Linux, so it's probably going to suit you well.

>>11819 Ubuntu cause I don't got time to be fuarrrking around with build your own OS soykaf, I got a family keeping me busy and need to make soykaf work.

>>11819 Debian Xfce - Perfect and Stable!

>>16289 Enjoy your old software and dealing with third party repos. If you want something stable for home user, just go with ubuntu lts.

>>16180 >dragonflybsd How do you like DragonFly BSD? It's the only major BSD I haven't given a go and it seems like Dillon's done some neat stuff.

debian with i3wm

fedora workstation on a x220. best distro i've ever used, but i have to confess that i'm a redhat fanboy since 7.2 and nothing else felt as comfy to me than rh/fc. and yes, with gnome. i love it.

>>16325 I have the same setup, but I use i3 mostly, and gnome when I want a proper full desktop environment. It's really nice. With TLP installed it's very fast and lasts quite a long time on battery. I've never really liked gnome3, but it's not that bad. DNF, however, has me considering going back to Ubuntu - it's incredibly slow and revvs my CPU in ways that apt never could

>>16325 >>16333 I'm thinking of giving Fedora a try (so far I have been Ubuntu and the Debian user with a litle Slackware in between). I'm on a ThinkPad T420. Are there any problems with the drivers for ThinkPads on Fedora (wifi drivers, graphics cards, scaners, printers...)? Also as a long Fedora user would you advice me to hold for a month (release of version 30) or install version 29 now and upgrade (not reinstall, I don't have time to set up the system twice in one month) to 30 when it's out? What I'm asking is the process of of upgrading a live system painless? I once had a Ubuntu upgrade that broke a few things (mostly things outside of the official repository, but still it forced me to do some extra work). I'm using the computer mainly for web, programming, image processing (Darktable as I see it has a package for Fedora so I will be satisfied), and occasionally games from GOG or itch (would games be a problem here?). I would appreciate feedback from someone who uses the system,

>>16333 >DNF, however, has me considering going back to Ubuntu - it's incredibly slow and revvs my CPU in ways that apt never could. This. Fedora is a really nice distro overall but dnf is so fuarrrking slow. It even slows down neofetch when it queries package number.

Debian netinstall Barebones and Just works.

OpenBSD with herbstluftwm+sxhkd (with emacs-like chords). Looks stable and very comfy.

fedora workstation on my x220. professional distro that just werks.

>>16389 >Are there any problems with the drivers for ThinkPads on Fedora (wifi drivers, graphics cards, scaners, printers...)? no, everything works out of the box for me.

>>16527 What makes you prefer Debian over any other linux OS?

>>16389 Fedora user here. All I play is Age of Empires and Minecraft with some buddies. No problems on either of them. Works pretty well. Fedora's updates come at you like a firehose, though, so get comfortable rebooting fairly frequently and running DNF once or twice a week. The upgrades are pretty simple too. Never had one go sour on me yet. I'd wait if I were you, at least until 30 is a week old. If you really just want something simple, stable, and easy, use either Debian or Ubuntu (LTS). Fedora makes you do a little work. It's a little silly - acting like a rolling release but they have actual release versions.

Has any Fedora user here (or anyone else) tried Fedora Silverblue yet? I use NixOS and love the immutability and reproducability of the operating system, and seeing other distributions experimenting with the concept makes me happy. Just not sure how Fedora's going about it and how comparable it is to how NixOS does it. The Fedora documentation seems very limited and doesn't say much.

>>12616 Updating your system is a critical part of its day-to-day operations. Gentoo is not fast. I enjoy it myself, and it's really fun to use and tinker with. However, for all but the smallest minority, Gentoo is purely a distraction. Not something that should ever be seriously suggested to anyone.

try netrunner. it is mega kewl

>>16810 >Updating your system is a critical part of its day-to-day operations. Gentoo >is not fast. I enjoy it myself, and it's really fun to use and tinker with. >However, for all but the smallest minority, Gentoo is purely a >distraction. Not something that should ever be seriously suggested to anyone. I'm the lain who made the lengthy three part review of Gentoo, Slackware, & Void Linux. I ended up installing Gentoo on my new main machine (the mentioned x60s) two months ago. Once you get things set properly (which can take some time as the software tends to be highly configurable) by reading all the options and assessing each one there is very little to change about your system. After the first month I rarely ever touched configuration files. shell # run around once a week emaint sync -a glsa-check -f affected # run around once a month emerge -uaD @system @profile My interest in Gentoo was atypical, rather than looking to squeeze every drop of performance out of my system I was more interested in having a nearly static install that was very easy to debug. Gentoo provides exceptional tooling for both of these things with the glsa system and the base system packages sets, which allow you to keep track of only those updates which are necessary to get future updates or to patch security holes. It's capable of being the most debugable unix system with compile options like -Og, and -ggdb, having source, and examples in my USE and installsources, splitdebug, and compressdebug FEATURES. It also makes it very easy to install documentation for packages of particular interest.

>>16849 glsa-check -f affected The idea of having a centralized, automatic vulnerability database is great, but the huge size of Gentoo Portage Tree means they are not updated timely. Many vulnerabilities are only documented by the GLSA team a month after its disclosure, and even worse, the packages with 0day fixes are not immediately tagged as "stable"! The only good thing is the package update itself is usually very fast, as the developers are personally affected by them, as long as you watch the security news from various sites every week and update your package, but not a comfortable process. On the other hand, ArchLinux has really quick vulnerability announcement and fixes.

>>11862 Heh, Debian 9 with i3 here as well. Planning on installing Bumblebee-Status when I change to a 1TB drive but that's about it lole

I love fedora

GuixSD is very interesting and works quite well. I really like the ability to create environments for developing and not polluting my path with packages I need only when I work on specific things. It's like virtualenv but for everything. This also expands nicely to deployment since after you create an env you can move it around different machines easily. I think the Nix model is really handy and has lots of future and yet unknown capabilities.

>>11819 i've gone through nearly all of the modern distributions in the last 6 years and settled with gentoo last august. as of this may, i've moved to a pure64 linux from scratch based system of my own to micromanage and overengineer things myself, it's 4.8gib in size with only 384 packages. that 4.8gib also includes a modern toolchain that supports almost all of the used languages of today. i have never been so comfortable and satisfied with the cyber space i'm in like this.

I prefer the gentoo distro for personal use. I started learning linux with arch then tested: freebsd, ubuntu, debian, mint, qubes, opensuse tumbleweed arch - no pains except for breakage on updating sometimes, especially if you miss updating through a feature update. I still like to use arch on laptops freebsd - hardware / software / graphics support pains. ubuntu desktop- found myself subverting the system too much. ultra bloat debian - package configuration was annoying and i found the community to be super snooty. even more-so than arch. mint - found self subverting the system opensuse tumbleweed - disk encryption was unintuitive, very slow to start up, and it took a ton of configuration. qubes - eats battery very fast. Sometimes there are non-standard updates during version changes and these require an extraordinary amount of time. Constantly found myself analyzing if a hypervisor (especially xen) was the best defense in depth approach.

>>17827 how did you get here? Did you follow linux from scratch guides and what was your decision process when picking things?

Linux Mint with i3 is fine for me, I did a some distrohopping and tried a lot of LiveUsbs, but now I'm confortable, more confortable then I ever were with a computer and its always eficient for me to multitask, easy to update stuff and it works just fine for gaming because theres already some good drivers on it. Its fun to change a bit, I was using Windows for gaming but since theres a lot of support for GNU/Linux, I just switched and I'm not dissapointed.

>>17841 I usually get like 2 hours out of my battery with Qubes. On a regular OS (take debian for example) I get like 8 hours. The resource-expensive nature of the OS in my opinion is worth it. Is it inconvenient for laptop users? Yes. Is it impossible to manage? No. I was thinking about getting a Qubes-compatible desktop (or building one) and stripping some of the packages down (mostly gui) so it could run as a server.

>>17842 >how did you get here? if by "here" you mean lainchan, i've been lurking on and off to read stuff for about 5-6 months, i've heard about the place from /tech/ and /g/ refugees. if you're referring to the state of my system, it's rather simple. the base is created by following linux from scratch 8.4 then beyond lfs 8.4 for getting the thing more desktop-ish. other than that, i've read a soykafload of pkgbuilds and ebuilds and fine tuned them to my liking to build software which are not in lfs or blfs. gentoo people are great when it comes to finding patches as well. after a while, i've started cutting down stuff and polishing the system. the size is rather small because all of the binaries and libraries are stripped, the size before stripping was around 8.4gib. >did you follow linux from scratch guides? there's no such thing as linux from scratch guides, you're pretty much alone in a sandbox, there's only one lfs book and a blfs book separated from it which adds on top of it for making the thing usable but that lacks a lot of stuff. in that case, you'd either hunt down git repositories of the developers for build instructions if they're using something other than meson/ninja/make or look for package manager build recipes such as gentoo ebuilds or arch pkgbuilds. gentoo ebuilds are good for finding flags to disable components without reading the ./configure --help | less and they often provide patches that you normally wouldn't find in arch repos such as de-dbus/polkit/pam/systemd-ifying stuff. >what was your decision process when picking things? i know exactly what i need in my system and have a minimalist approach when it comes to building software, i basically try not to have things i don't need if i can while staying in a manner where i don't cripple myself for "muh minimalism".

I prefer GuixSD currently as its focused on reproducible builds making packaging much easier experience. That and having a declarative configuration for the entire system is something hard to leave once experienced. I guess I'm mostly in for the ride to see where this goes since I think they're really on to something here. Once Guix System gains graphical configuration tools (emacs doesn't count) and makes use of channels a bit more I could see it being a rival of something like Ubuntu in terms of ease of use without removing any of the current feature set. It can do it as it's capable of abstraction several layers above that it currently has. Partly because of the language it uses for communication (scheme) and partly nix's structure since it's composable*. Why not other distros? (I'll keep this one short) > Arch Linux Stability issues and I never really learned it properly. The latter is probably the cause of the former. Did carry through 2 years of usage though with one before and one after the systemd switch. > Gentoo Mainly time, I didn't want to sit and configure everything while it's installing and the interface for declarative style installations wasn't something I became familiar with. If I ever do revisit I'll look it up properly. > Ubuntu PPAs broke my system when I had no clue and when I did things were either out of date or configuration was a pain. It was my 15min introduction to linux though so I thank it for that. > OpenSuse To be fair, I already knew of Guix so ended up using it there instead of the native which brings up the question of "why not just use Guix System?". > OpenBSD Performance. I haven't looked into it too much on which parts to configure post 6.1 but my most recent use had scrolling issues, application startup times were extremely slow, etc. It's kind of sad it's hit that hard turning off hyperthreading but I guess that's the price you pay for security. Usually it wouldn't be performance but now that I have an intel machine it is. Since 5.4? Perfect system, wouldn't mind going back if it weren't for package requirements. Back to Guix, I'm not really into the "power user" time sink but have somewhat been caught by the need to tinker at least a bit with the system every now and again. This is something now satisfied with having a "just works" system. Only issues I'd complain about are performance ones in terms of how slow guile can be compiling modules and the slightly inconsistent package arrangement in the source tree (some packages have their own module while others do not) but I wouldn't call it a deal breaker. I'd call the "power user" syndrome a negative in that it results in focusing on the self and less on productive things. TL;DR- Declarative, reproducible, immutable makes the difference. Easier to package for and easier to configure and roll back then things go wrong. Plus easier to adapt considering one can mirror the exact system of another with just guix system reconfigure other-system.scm >>11990 I wouldn't say it "solves" the issue more than it brushes it under the rug. Nix works around the issue of fragile APIs by isolating packages in an immutable store where paths are calculated as the sum of inputs. Sure, that sounds very nice and works rather well for current software but it doesn't solve the actual problem at all. To actually solve the problem would require more work than the current would allow since the trend of "must reuse even if it pulls in 5M for one subroutine" continues. I guess the javascript ecosystem did get something right in spirit with the minimal modules and just completely failed in execution. Hey, maybe UNIX-like is the actual problem? But this topic belongs in another thread another thread. > purely functional Declarative >>13960 I probably could given the x220 (need to check the compat list) but I require haskell and I'm not up for porting GHC any time soon. 9front does seem interesting though. However, with the topic of non-linux systems that don't meet the package requirements I've come to like OK (chuck's colorforth OS) even if it removes nearly everything I would have currently. Maybe having a system compile on demand and cache instead of the current would be better? This does require much smaller software components and pretty much forces one to work with the system (no Qt, GTK, etc over a socket) but could work out well. A complete source based system would also allow for verification of security constraints given the right tools but again, another thread. -- * well, at the expense of disk storage which can have an exponential increase with some packages

Fedora >Latest kernel >Works great on modern laptop >Works out of the box >No issues with AMD hardware

Haiku because it is not a clusterfuck like *nixen.

Whichever one comes best out of the box with minimal configuration and is immediately usable. Distros made like Slackware but up to date and slim, and have sub-30 minute install times, and work on anything. Because I did distro hop for some years, and these were the most convenient to come back to; and I did learn to be comfortable with almost any software suite because I've been app hopping for even longer.

Hello, I'm looking for a distribution suggestion. I need 32bit support, compiled 32bit binaries, old kernels in the repos specifically 4.4, and functioning exwm & pdf-tools (these don't have to be in the repos). I'd also prefer stability and minimalism, as I only use linux as a bootloader for emacs. The following distributions do not meet this objective for one reason or another: Void, Guix, NixOS, Gentoo, Slackware (at least so far as I was able to glean). Thanks in advance.

>>11819 desktop/laptop: void linux customized with: >suckless core + 9base userland >sx >removed sudo, bash and most of the GNU userland >opendoas >mksh >reiser4 support compiled into the kernel >head is a 4 line posix shell scripts >customized both sx and ufetch to work with different userland 9front server: OpenBSD, Alpine Linux, 9front, a few systems running OmniOS for fmy ile server and SmartOS for virtualization (next upgrade will be replaced with dragonflyBSD and alpine linux respectively). My favorite desktop OS is void right now but I'm too picky so I might just end up going the linux from scratch route next time I reinstall.

Running P9. Need to update to the latest release and buy those books. Works fine since I do almost all my work on a remote server. Wish there were more of us, particularly a someone in her mid-twenties living nearby, so I’m just focusing on myself for now.

Gentoo on my desktop and laptop, Void on my server. I was using Void on my desktop, but the damn thing kept freezing several times each week. It turned out to be an issue between Linux and Ryzen rather than anything on Void's end, so I found a solution for it, but I still stuck to Gentoo. Void's whole bleeding-edge deal got tiring, as did its insistence on using LibreSSL which kept me from building a couple programs I wanted. It's staying on my server, though, simply because I'm too lazy to set everything back up and the compile times on its cheapo Celeron would be hell. It's just a NAS/ZNC box anyhow. Despite all the memes about how hard Gentoo is, it really isn't. I mean, setting up the base installation does take effort, but once that's done, everything else just works. Wine did take some tinkering with to get it to work with all my programs, but at least it has the 64-bit support that Void's Wine lacks.

>>18356 >Wine did take some tinkering with to get it to work with all my programs, but at least it has the 64-bit support that Void's Wine lacks. The problem with Gentoo is that the few corner cases are a mess to solve unless you're experienced with Portage and the build system. I was not (enough), and taking several hours to install and run something that would be dealt with in minutes on apt-based distributions was very irritating on the long run. Now I stick with Debian because I don't want to lose too much time on trivial soykafs but I long for something as neat as Gentoo every time I find myself untangled in specific Debian problems. But thinking about the compile time or pulling the whole Haskell or Rust toolchain just for Pandoc or Firefox keep me in my place. I also don't know enough Elisp to ascend and totally live in the Emacs plane.

>>18072 What about debian? >old kernels in the repos specifically 4.4 https://snapshot.debian.org/

>>11819 OpenBSD, it's an operating system that simply makes sense.