Share Your Favorite Linux Distros and Why You Love Them

Great wiki

The AUR

I was distrohopping for like a year or two when I first got into Linux desktop. As soon as I installed Arch for the first time that stopped. Now the thought of a distro pre-installing packages gives me the heebie jeebies. You don't get to tell me how I sync with NTP servers!

I do real work. Dont have time to waste

pacman goes brrrr

PKGBUILDs

• Community run distro

• Very stable, and can run the bleeding edge through Snap/Flatpack/Appimages, Distrobox, or VMs/Containers

• Compatible with more devices than many distros

I love debian because it's always there for you.

• Extremely customizable

The new release bookworm solves most hardware/software problems

Lightweight.

Low resource footprint — smaller than EndeavourOS on my laptop. Stability is fantastic. Bookworm practically just came out, so the packages are all much newer than they were in Bullseye, making it a viable option for someone who wants an uneventful Linux distro that fades into the background and lets you get stuff done.

Easy to set up, very helpful community. If you liked Manjaro or think Manjaro is sketchy but like the idea of a slightly pre-configured arch, check it out.

This, basically Arch but quick to install with all the most important things installed and ready without being bloated.

It's arch. It just happened to be the composition i had my previous arch setup as. Yay for AUR stuff, KDE Plasma for DE. Includes a couple of useful tools and makes for a very solid OS.

Anyone who has been in the Ubuntu sphere of things with Linux, should take a moment to try arch. EndeavourOS is perfect for these people.

Same. I’ve done the vanilla Arch thing and it’s alright, but the quality of life enhancements that come with EndeavourOS make it a great daily driver.

It’s the only distro I could get DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k, and my Radeon RX 6750 XT working with, consistently.

The big advantage IMHO, is the out of the box BTRFS set up that lets you simply roll back to a non-broken state, right from the grub menu, should an update break your system. I haven't had to use it yet, but it is a huge source of comfort knowing it is there.

Also, many people coming to opensuse remark how much snappier it is than other distros.

I had to scroll waaaaay down to find this. Mindboggling how underrated this distro is!

Security by default. Firewall is set up blocking ports for UDP etc. soyouu are protected out of the box.

YaST

It is up to date so you can often get newer hardware working due to newer kernels.

It's incredibly well put together

It's rolling and reliable

Everything just works

Stable

Only FOSS software and repositories unless otherwise enabled

Uses the latest tech in linux e.g wayland and pipewire.

Cutting edge application releases so I get the newest toys after they’ve been decently tested

Applies patches for better programs work under Wayland (SDDM with git patches before long awaited 0.20.0 release).

I agree, it's great!

• image with baked in nvidia drivers which work out of the box without too much fuss
• if you encounter problems, you can refer to the system76 website or use a solution provided by the community, since it's based on Ubuntu
• installation with full disk encryption enabled by default
• right now it uses a slightly customized version of GNOME as DE (with "normal"/traditional windows and optionally a tiling wm), but system76 is working on a Rust-based DE, named Cosmic DE

I’ve been using Pop for about 2 years. I have yet to run into an issue that I couldn’t fix. It’s the first distro that made ditching windows easy.

We cannot forget about the wiki, which is a great resource for not only the Arch distro, but for any Linux install.

Seriously, the ease of installing any and all programs from the main repo's or the AUR is such an extreme advantage over all other distros!

And it makes keeping your system and programs updated a breeze.

Seriously, I realize this every time I have to install something on my server (running AlmaLinux). Now I've manually set up a personal LURE repo for some software that I use.

Easy and fearless updates

Rollbacks

declarative configuration

Dependency Hell, begone

Ez dev shells

Home Manager + Stylix

Very good with containers and VMs

You get it for the low price of loosing all fun/motivation in setting up, customizing and mintaining machines with other distros

Can turn basically any distro into nixos in minutes

Reproducible

Single command to compile & install packages from many git repos

Makes me feel cool again 😎

A cool logo, meaningful rolling release version names and stickers

immutability

Easily build packages with custom compile flags

Easy to mix and match package versions with different dependency versions

I have been thinking to give NixOS a spin but feel like it's above my brain capacity for me to handle. Do you also use homemanager and Flakes? Homemanager kinda makes sense (manage packages for non root users) but what does Flakes do?

Overlays

As stable as you need it to be

A great selection and amount of packages and modules to build/install/enable

Many different and interesting community projects

Do it once, do it right. Save work be redeploying the same configuration (or submodules) on mutiple machines or the same machine multiple times.

Bootable Snapper snapshots enabled by default

Fish shell by default with auto-complete previews as you type and lots of great aliases

Post install wizard for easily adding common applications

Besides Wiki and AUR that all Arch derivatives share, they have their own wiki that documents the changes they're made to Arch and a very good forum for help

Nvidia driver installation options that correctly set the mode setting, dkms drivers installed ootb, common apps like GreenWithEnvy ootb, great Nvidia support

A lot of people think it's just Arch with an installer and lots of bloat and a neon theme but it's a lot more than that.

Ugliest unicorn poop default theme, most solid arch based distro for everything else

A lot of proprietary software is easier to install here

easy enough to use for me (I'm a linux newb) and I can setup steam on it!
edit: forgot to mention I can get hibernation working on Ubuntu when I couldn't figure out how to do that in Fedora

I don't have time to fuck about, I use ubuntu mate because it gets out of my way and does what I expect it to do.

Shit just works

I can use the same OS on my servers

I love the stability of LTS

Because it just works. Because it's based on free Debian and not corporate RedHat. Because mainstream Linux needs a flagship distro and that distro needs to be used and supported.

For when I can't get stuff to work on nixos 😅

I love the dock

It's easy to use

The Arch Wiki is in a language made by users for users. Meaning that its easy to understand because the wiki allows to talk about issues, alternatives and more hints about each small topic, every other wiki has some structure where important details are missing or not taken seriously.

Starting with a blank slate is so refreshing. It takes time to build everything up from scratch and I understand that you can get a great experience out of the box with other distros, but I love the simplicity of not having any bullshit I didn't install myself.

I always am going to run into heavy issues when using Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora. On Arch, things also aren't always smooth, but the issues are mild, always solvable and transparent.

Arch and KDE as a DE because I'm a borderline-obsessive tinkerer.

Although NixOS is tempting me, but I haven't moved past the virtual-machine-specimen-jar phase with that yet lol.

Manjaro is my main distro too! The package manager is great!

Switched to Manjaro after running vanilla Arch for several years and haven't looked back. I appreciate the slightly less bleeding edge updates and extra added stability around it.

Easy installs are probably less of a big deal nowadays after Arch overhauled their installation process.

It still blows my mind that with nixos, setting up and continuously renewing an ssl cert is literally just two lines in the config file. I use nixos on my homeserver, thinking about switching my laptop to it too (currently Void linux).

Congrats for making it to the treasure! I'm like half way in and not sure if I can fight through...

Slackware gets a lot of hate, especially from the btw bros. People are spooked about having to manage their own dependencies. But I couldn't agree with you more on simplicity and stability. I've been daily driving slackware since 99 or 00, and I don't think I've ever broken something I couldn't immediately roll back and fix.

I tried to install Ubuntu on a sbc recently. And within an hour of installing this and that with all the different dependencies, I had a completely unusable system. And I had no idea how to fix it. It was totally my fault but reminded me what I love about slackware.

Slack got me through undergrad on an IBM 600e ThinkPad (which was really old even then --- around the time of the early 2.6 series kernels iirc). Great distro, fond memories.

Rock solid.

Now now, saying Debian is free of too much bloat is going way too far, dude, even as as Debian enjoyer I cannot allow such statements to pass.

And with archinstall I'd argue it's about as easy to install as most "normal" distros these days.

dupe

I'm currently happy with it

Control

Out-of-box security configurations supported by the organization (SELinux, hardening)

Excellent package and dependency management with a wide variety of up-to-date software

Encourages hardware-based optimization and kernel specialization

There are dozens of us! And you can join us at !gentoo@lemm.ee if you haven't yet!

I love it because it's super configurable, lets you choose compiler optimizations (and through USE flags, features that you need in your packages - you don't have to include everything).

My Linux knowledge has skyrocketed compared to before I used Gentoo. Which of course means it's NOT the distro for people who want something that just works, but honestly, now that it's working properly, I feel it's actually pretty hard to break, and when it does break, I know how to fix it! Versus with Linux Mint a decade ago, if I broke it, I had no idea where to get started and just reinstalled it.

Of course, about half a year ago I decided to move from x11 and OpenRC to Wayland and systemd. And I use KDE. And have Nvidia graphics. Soooo it was a fun ride both relearning how my init system works, and also running into problems with Steam, etc.

I also try to keep my kernel in single digit megabytes, but occasionally I find something missing and have to recompile with more "bloat". So right now I believe it's around 11 MB, but I'll see about improving it over my next vacation. Not that 11 MB takes long to load off a gen4 NVMe drive, but the ePeen needs to be stroked! Also no initial ramdisk, to save even more boot time.

Reproducibility is a blessing for both software development and daily use.

Backing up NixOS is very straight forward and easy. It's kinda the same as docker-compose in that respect.

This is the way

Huge range of supported architectures

Agreed. I've been using Fedora Silverblue for about a year. I love the immutable OS paradigm but IBM/Red Hat's recent actions have left me feeling uneasy and I want to find an alternative.

Rock solid.

Lightweight.

This is subjective, but after distro hopping, Linux Mint XFCE requires the least amount of post install configuration for my use case and personal preferences.

Also, they show a preference for flatpack over snap but don't lock you in/out of either.

I don't need to install anything manually because of how extensive the AUR is.

more out of the box than what Arch comes with.

Rolling release model.

Nice default configuration. Good choice of gnome extensions and themes pre installed

It is has all the good and new stuff without being unstable. Will switch to Silverblue for an even more stable experience sometime soon

— @user8e8f87c@berlin.social

Stable rolling release

Supports musl on every architecture I have. ARM, AARCH64, x86_64 - no problem.

xbps

• Rolling release that is remarkably stable. • Supports a wide variety of architectures. • XBPS package manage • Lightweight, systemd free.

Very KISS. Runit is amazing once you get used to it.

Based on Fedora

• Fedora uses the latest technology and is quick to adapt new features such as PipeWire, BTRFS, Wayland and etc, yet remains very stable.

Clean separation

• The base system is separated from applications and user data
• Integration of Flatpak applications via Flathub
• Toolbox and Distrobox support, run applications from any distribution in a containerized environment

Nvidia support

• Multiple Nvidia driver streams (525xx, 520xx, and 470xx)
• CUDA support
• Container runtime support
• Secure boot
• Hardware-accelerated video playback
• Selinux support
• Multiple Fedora flavors and releases
• Post-install setup with just
• Multi-GPU support with supergfxctl (optional Gnome Shell extension)

Cloud-native approach

• Reliable, atomic updates with built in rollback
• Known-good state and fewer failures
• Significantly reduced configuration drift
• No compiling or building Nvidia drivers on the local client, they come premade on the image

Built-in container tools for developers

• Consume packages and software from any repo without risking breakage on the client
• Easy consumption of other OCI images, if it's on the CNCF Landscape it's a first class citizen thanks to Podman!

The MX Snapshot utility & other built-in tools make it instantly functional as a daily driver, even for people new to Linux, and the Quick System Info is such a handy baseline for troubleshooting if you run into problems and need help from the community. All the stuff that's provided out of the box just makes it a really practical distro to learn on!

Have used it before but am not currently running it. Absolute treat for someone who wants to start digging deeper into the inner workings of Linux. The tutorial videos are pretty clearly a labor of love.

An installer of Archlinux with sane default but also has all of Arch Power

No Systemd. It uses real init

Bleeding Edge

Bloat free

Also, gaming works out of the box on my hardware (my gfx card wasn't fully supported by 5.x kernel)

dupe

Has a clean interface, easy to customize if you feel like it, but not necessary. Works great on a 10 year old desktop.

Based on Fedora

Built for gaming

Stable and easy to set up

Based on Ubuntu, is KDE's "flagship" OS (so I trust they know what they're doing with their own DE), and is the first to get bleeding edge KDE updates. Everything else is pretty much standard Ubuntu.

The user repositories are decentralized, and very straightforward to setup, meaning anyone can package something, and share it with the community.

It does not use systemd.

The packaging system is the simplest I've ever found in a distro, meaning that making your own package is a very simple and quick process.

The setup and configuration is really simple and friction less (for example, daemon start/stop scripts are standalone and sit in /etc/rc.d).

Uses a port tree system for packages similar to openbsd.

.

basically Arch, including the AUR

intuitive

lightweight

lightweight

supported

beautiful

small

good documentation

stable