Ars LKF's Which Distro FAQ (ask "which distro-questions" here)

[malor]

I think Pop!_OS is using a modified GNOME, but it's pretty comfortable. The idiotic things that team does seem to be mostly gone.

Of course, it did kind of blow up this morning; updates got stuck in a circular dependency problem that took me about fifteen minutes until I figured out the right dpkg incantation to fix things. (I think it was dpkg --configure --pending, or something roughly like that.) It's mostly quite good, but that was definitely a rough spot.

 

[chibijon]

I'm interested in that too. KDE is the one big DE I haven't really touched since the early 4.0 days, but looking at the complete dumpsterfire that is GNOME 3 and how heavy and clunky a lot of Not-GNOME GTK environments are feeling lately, I should really give it a try. Definitely going to feel more at home in a Debian-based distro (maybe just Debian?) so that's where I'm glancing.

Yeah my first Linux experience was with KDE (1.1?) but by 2002 I was frustrated with font rendering and kearning issues in KDE 2.x/3.x and there was controversy in the community over Qt's not-quite-freeness and GNOME2 had just come out and I loved it so I jumped over to GNOME. For some reason when GNOME3/Unity turned me off I didn't immediately re-evaluate KDE, I used XFCE for a while, and Cinnamon, only just a few years ago kinda rediscovered KDE and I have been loving Plasma 5. I have my nitpicks with Dolphin (the file manager) but otherwise it's basically perfect.

 

[koala]

So I wanted to give Wayland a try (I wanted to know if it was really more stable/smoother), so I nuked my trusty Debian install (been using Mate + xmonad for ages) and decided to try Fedora.

Which was all nice and dandy, except for the default update mechanism. I really don't like being prompted to restart and seeing a progress bar (I suppose it does so for safety... but I really don't recall many incidents by doing updates from a terminal and rebooting if needed). And today, the update seemed to be stuck at 97% or something. So out of curiosity, I tried switching to a text console to run ps and poke. And I could, but my FreeIPA login wouldn't work there, so I essentially locked myself out. I was a bit impatient, so I decided to ctrl+alt+del, which was not the brightest idea, because that broke boot.

I wasn't in the mood to fix the boot, and I was intrigued by Pop's tiling mode, so here I am. Man, the change in default fonts feels a bit hacker-y to me, and the tiling hotkeys are a bit foreign... and decidedly inferior to my brief stint with PaperWM, but I'll give Pop a chance until I manage to bork my system again.

 

[chibijon]

Open to suggestions if anyone wants to recommend me a non-Ubuntu-derived KDE distro besides the above. I'm waiting for OpenSUSE Leap 15.4 to come out to give that a try.

If anyone is curious I settled on Fedora 36 (KDE Spin).
Edit: After running into an issue some issues with Fedora I ended up settling on OpenSUSE 15.4

 

[koala]

So Pop's tiling hotkeys were a bit painful for me, and it still had the limitation where only the primary display on Gnome has workspaces.

So my personal laptop's now on... CentOS Stream 9. I can't watch many online videos (Youtube works, though), because I think no one's bothered to package "troubled" codecs yet, but PaperWM works and, well, probably I'll be on EL9 for work at some point, so I say I'm kinda preparing for that.

I wonder if I should take the plunge and go Nix at some point, but I've done Debian -> Fedora -> Pop OS! -> CentOS 9 Stream in such a short period of time that I guess I should rest for a while (unless I find a showstopper issue on CentOS 9 Stream)- plus I hear Nix has some rough edges... so maybe... like always... I'll come back to Debian...

(I'm not a fan in particular of Ubuntu [until the server edition gets a ZFS-on-root installer] nor SuSE. I already had my Gentoo stage (about 20 years ago...), so I'm not sure I have many more interesting, viable options

 

[malor]

I don't use workspaces, but I'm pretty sure I saw something in the PopOS settings about restricting them to given monitors, which would imply that there's also an unrestricted setting.

 

[koala]

Yeah, sorry, yes, Gnome recent versions have a "workspaces span displays" option- but that's even worse. It means that switching workspaces happens simultaneously on all displays. Which IMHO makes it completely useless.

Having secondary displays without workspaces at least takes care of the "use secondary display for chat/mail/etc." usage. But I don't think workspaces span displays is really practical for anything.

 

[hestermofet]

I'm looking for a carputer OS. Does any one still make carputers, now that Android runs on a head unit? Anyway, I have a spare computer that runs off 12V already, and also a portable monitor that also runs on 12V, so I thought I would give it a try. Any distros that are geared towards touch usage, and designed for an in-car entertainment kind of use case?

My factory headunit already supports Android Auto, so "just install Android" is not a very helpful suggestion. This is for fun and tinkering, not for "optimal solution". Plus, I can do fun stuff my phone-based Android Auto headunit can't do, like hook into OBD with a USB adapter, and display metrics.

 

[koala]

So my personal laptop's now on... CentOS Stream 9. I can't watch many online videos (Youtube works, though), because I think no one's bothered to package "troubled" codecs yet, but PaperWM works and, well, probably I'll be on EL9 for work at some point, so I say I'm kinda preparing for that.

BTW, RPM Fusion now has all the necessary codecs (I think that happened some time ago, but I didn't notice). So CentOS 9 Stream (and so RHEL 9, Alma Linux 9, Rocky Linux 9, etc.) is now a pretty decent desktop I like so much PaperWM I don't miss xmonad

 

[whm2074]

So I have been using Manjaro since Oct 2015 and for the most part I was enjoying it. However Sometimes there are Jarring Bugs. Which is why I'm considering moving to Mint on my Desktop. I used to have Mint after it came out but I started using Xubuntu due to the former going to LTS only.

Manjaro is a rolling release which mean the newest drivers are used for Nvidia dGPUs. older Cards will need a sort of "Legacy" Drivers instead. And it not easy to switch GPU drivers with this Distro.

My Rig was built in 2013. I am just worried about a rolling release not working on the computers.

 

[Oddabe19]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Is the issue you need the newer Nvidia drivers or the older ones? I have also found Manjaro's MHWD being one of the better tools for switching between Legacy and Current Nvidia drivers.

Can you also clarify, Do you want a rolling release or not? Since you're already in the Arch ecosystem, why not Endeavour?

I think if you can clarify what you're looking for/how you use your system that would be helpful

 

[whm2074]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Is the issue you need the newer Nvidia drivers or the older ones? I have also found Manjaro's MHWD being one of the better tools for switching between Legacy and Current Nvidia drivers.

Can you also clarify, Do you want a rolling release or not? Since you're already in the Arch ecosystem, why not Endeavour?

I think if you can clarify what you're looking for/how you use your system that would be helpful

Sorry the last major updates are causing Firefox to sometimes crash when unlocking he screen. This is along with VLC stop working.

In any case I'm going to replace Manjaro with Mint on my Dad main Rig.

 

[malor]

Another distro to check out is Pop!_OS... despite the stupid name, it's very polished and usable. It's a Ubuntu/GNOME derivative, but with a nice custom skin that works pretty well, and an installer that doesn't do the dumb stuff the Ubuntu installer does. And it doesn't use snaps, it uses flatpaks, and doesn't force you into them.

It's just really comfortable. The designers have good taste.

 

[whm2074]

Another distro to check out is Pop!_OS... despite the stupid name, it's very polished and usable. It's a Ubuntu/GNOME derivative, but with a nice custom skin that works pretty well, and an installer that doesn't do the dumb stuff the Ubuntu installer does. And it doesn't use snaps, it uses flatpaks, and doesn't force you into them.

It's just really comfortable. The designers have good taste.

Does Pop!_OS have the Xfce Desktop environment? I'm really surprise the System76 didn't come up with a more professional name instead.

 

[malor]

By default it comes with a custom spin of GNOME. It uses a dock launcher, like the Mac. I think it can also launch programs from the titlebar, but I never do that. The first icon in the dock goes to a system-wide launcher that lets you pick programs out of categories. The second icon lets you search by name. It has some kind of keyboard shortcut I haven't learned, so you can type the shortcut and then the name of what you want.

I'm sure XFCE must exist in the packaging system, but you're probably just going to get the default install, without any extra polish. Xubuntu is likely to be better if that's the windowing system you want.

And, yes, I hate the name. I feel slightly stupid every time I recommend it. I don't understand how they can have such good taste on the desktop, while simultaneously insisting on calling it Pop.

 

[Oddabe19]

Pop_OS! is a stupid name, but they do have the best implementation of Nvidia drivers out there at the moment, if that's helpful to you. Their Gnome/Pop environment is very well tuned, stable, and nicely laid out.

Not many offer Xfce out of box anymore (Xubuntu; Manjaro; Endeavour; Debian (with some configuration); Arch/Gentoo (of course)), but Gnome v42 and KDE Plasma v5 have cleaned up their codebase so much that they and Xfce use nearly the same resources, if that's the concern.

 

[whm2074]

Pop_OS! is a stupid name, but they do have the best implementation of Nvidia drivers out there at the moment, if that's helpful to you. Their Gnome/Pop environment is very well tuned, stable, and nicely laid out.

Not many offer Xfce out of box anymore (Xubuntu; Manjaro; Endeavour; Debian (with some configuration); Arch/Gentoo (of course)), but Gnome v42 and KDE Plasma v5 have cleaned up their codebase so much that they and Xfce use nearly the same resources, if that's the concern.

I just like Xfce thank you very much.

 

[daniewicz]

Mageia also offers Xfce.

 

[whm2074]

Mageia also offers Xfce.

Not sure but didn't Mageia came out the same time as Mint? I have used both back before I gotten my Disability. Tried out Bodhi Linux as well.

 

[daniewicz]

Don't know. Maybe?

 

[rodalpho]

If you view it as a fun project use whatever you like, but I always recommend Ubuntu for daily use. Not because it's the "best distro", if such a thing exists, but it is the most popular, so when you inevitably run into a problem you can google "ubuntu customize logitech mouse buttons" or whatever and find someone with exactly the same problem and more often than not, a solution.

On a different distro you need to translate that advice and potentially package it yourself if they only have a deb. On an Ubuntu-derived distro like Mint that's no big deal, but in that case why not just run Ubuntu and install Cinnamon?

 

[MR2DI4]

Mint has had an XFCE version for a long time now, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to try it. I just installed 21.01 on my 17 R2 Alienware laptop and it appears to be functioning well with the onboard GTX 980M running recent version 515.86 Drivers. An older machine to be sure, but it's still potent enough for me.

 

[whm2074]

Mint has had an XFCE version for a long time now, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to try it. I just installed 21.01 on my 17 R2 Alienware laptop and it appears to be functioning well with the onboard GTX 980M running recent version 515.86 Drivers. An older machine to be sure, but it's still potent enough for me.

I have Mint on my Thinkpad.

 

[yyyymmmee]

Try fedora? It is somewhere between rolling release and lts

 

[whm2074]

Try fedora? It is somewhere between rolling release and lts

I looked at the website and discovered that for Xfce I will have to use a spin. On another note, why do Distros have more Services running then needed? Mandriva(Mandrake) was bad about this and I had to turn them off. Things are better now but...

 

[elh]

So basically I need a glorified typewriter and I still have a working White Macbook, this one:

MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 13" (Mid-2010) Specs (Mid-2010, MC516LL/A, MacBook7,1, A1342, 2395*): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 13" (Mid-2010). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

I'm thinking of installing ChromeOS Flex, but I would love it if there was CentOS/RHEL compatible distro that was compatible as I'm really familiar with RedHat due to server side work.
I will also consider other distributions like Mint etc, just not sure how to check driver compatibility upfront - in particular I would like the WiFi and webcam to work.

 

[whm2074]

I did give Linux mint a try and the performance was slower and games wouldn't start or play right. Way too many services at start up or something. On the other hand Mint on my Laptop works but I don't use it for much. Need to update that.

 

[wfmwxl]

Linux Mint has a version based on Debian instead of the standard Ubuntu base that's supposed to be even more stable.

 

[koala]

I'm thinking of installing ChromeOS Flex, but I would love it if there was CentOS/RHEL compatible distro that was compatible as I'm really familiar with RedHat due to server side work.

I'd try throwing EL9 (I'm using Stream on my laptop, Rocky/Alma should be equivalent. You could try the free RHEL developer subscription... and try opening a ticket if the installer doesn't work). It might work. I've seen guides explaining how to install EL8 on MacBooks, but maybe EL9 works OOB for some chance?

Fedora of course is also very similar to EL, and you might find better instructions for installing on Apple hardware.

(I use EL9 for my personal laptop, and EL8 for the work laptop. I'm quite happy on both, esp. on EL9 as PaperWM works flawlessly.)

 

[malor]

A Macbook that old will probably be pretty well supported by almost any distro; the kernel will probably recognize the hardware. Probably. RAM could be an issue if you haven't expanded it from the default 2GB. You'd want at least 4, and 8G should be most comfortable for pretty much any workload you'd be likely to throw at it.

If you've got at least 4G, I'd just pick something that sounds good and offers a LiveUSB image of some kind, and see how that runs before committing.

 

[zelmak]

I'm looking for the best/good fit for a server system. I essentially need a NAS with light container and VM use, Plex/Jellyfin and a straight-forward, non-proprietary backup mechanism. I'd also like to stick to ZFS for my file storage needs, not necessarily ZFS root.

I've tried

• OMV - was decent, but the UI felt janky and hard to figure out at times
• TrueNAS Scale - too locked down; I'd like to install a few command line tools but they don't seem to like that; also setting up custom Docker containers is a chore
• Synology NAS - Their Docker setup is super straight-forward and probably the best I've seen; HyperBackup sucks
• Proxmox - Doesn't NAS but I do like Proxmox a LOT; doesn't really support Docker at the machine level, requiring LXC/VM to host it

I haven't tried (in a long time, anyway)

• UnRAID - proprietary, no ZFS (that I know of), non-free

Right now, I'm running Debian with Samba and Docker/Docker Compose on the raw metal, using rsnapshot to backup everything to an external USB. Once its set up, its find, but its a bit complicated and a more turnkey solution would be nice. I'd like to get on using systems rather than tweaking them.

Is there anything out there that I've missed?

 

[malor]

I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu, but I think they're the only Linux that includes it out of the box. I use ext4 root, and then a raidz1 for data. You can definitely do root ZFS, but Ubuntu sets it up in a weirdly complex way, with multiple filesystems with complex names, and I haven't determined why. There are probably benefits to their method, but I'm not sure what they are, so I went with a nice straightforward ext4 boot on SSD, with one data pool on spinning drives, carrying a few simply-named filesystems.

Docker is definitely supported on Ubuntu. I was using it a few weeks ago to do some cross-compiling for ARM. It was easier to boot a virtual ARM system than it was to set up actual cross-compiling. I was surprised at how zippy it was.

edit: note that nothing here is particularly easy or aimed at NAS use. I've done everything myself from the command line. I don't typically use GUI programs on my server, except for fwbuilder. If you're interested in KVM virtualization, "virt-manager" is a nice GUI for talking to libvirt, and apparently also containers and Xen, although I don't use those. No idea about Docker GUIs.

I just use scripted rsync for backups. Wrote the scripts myself, but doing that is easy if you have even trivial shell and cron knowledge. It would be better to use ZFS send, but I haven't started doing that yet.

 

[steelghost]

I'm looking for the best/good fit for a server system. I essentially need a NAS with light container and VM use, Plex/Jellyfin and a straight-forward, non-proprietary backup mechanism. I'd also like to stick to ZFS for my file storage needs, not necessarily ZFS root.

I've tried

• OMV - was decent, but the UI felt janky and hard to figure out at times
• TrueNAS Scale - too locked down; I'd like to install a few command line tools but they don't seem to like that; also setting up custom Docker containers is a chore
• Synology NAS - Their Docker setup is super straight-forward and probably the best I've seen; HyperBackup sucks
• Proxmox - Doesn't NAS but I do like Proxmox a LOT; doesn't really support Docker at the machine level, requiring LXC/VM to host it

I haven't tried (in a long time, anyway)

• UnRAID - proprietary, no ZFS (that I know of), non-free

Right now, I'm running Debian with Samba and Docker/Docker Compose on the raw metal, using rsnapshot to backup everything to an external USB. Once its set up, its find, but its a bit complicated and a more turnkey solution would be nice. I'd like to get on using systems rather than tweaking them.

Is there anything out there that I've missed?

As things stand I have a TrueNAS Core system with a few jails, but nothing that isn't basically just the equivalent of an "app" on Synology (Duplicati, Syncthing, etc), and a Proxmox system that runs a virtualised router, Home Assistant VM and PiHole, plus a few other containers for stuff I'm playing around with - my periodic thought experiment is how would I combine the two if I needed / wanted to. The answer for me
were I in your shoes would be to do Proxmox on ZFS, pass through a drive controller to a VM with TrueNAS Scale for your storage, and then run another VM or container for a Docker host.

You could look at XCP-NG maybe? Still basically a hypervisor though, not fundamentally changing the calculus vs Proxmox.

 

[Baenwort]

Is there anything better than Pop_OS! For a gaming Linux boot if your laptop has a nVidia card?

This is just for gaming. It will have its own SSD so not worried about dual boot.

 

[malor]

I've had good luck with my Pop install on my 5800X/3070. The Steam launcher is built in, and you get all the 32-bit libraries you need without having to do anything extra.

There certainly may exist better distros for Steam, so pay attention if anyone recommends anything. I can say that Pop seems to do quite well.

 

[Baenwort]

I've had good luck with my Pop install on my 5800X/3070. The Steam launcher is built in, and you get all the 32-bit libraries you need without having to do anything extra.

There certainly may exist better distros for Steam, so pay attention if anyone recommends anything. I can say that Pop seems to do quite well.

The one that turned up in my search was Drauger OS but no one I trust has reviewed it or commented on the install difficulty.

It would be nice if secure boot could be left on but none of the gaming OSes seem to support it.

 

[wonn]

Looking for a good mid-to-lightweight distro for a laptop that's turned into just a Zoom platform (plus browsing the web while not paying attention to Zoom). It was a decent gaming laptop when I got it like eight years ago, but with Pop_OS! on it now it's... definitely not the snappiest - the CPU gets maxed out fairly frequently. i7-4500U (1.8 GHz but boosts to 3 GHz) and 8GB RAM shouldn't be that low-end - I suppose it's possible that Pop_OS! doesn't know how to use the boost function - but it's proven just as slow as the old Windows install I replaced a year or so ago, and I'm looking to get something that's a bit of a smoother experience.

I've enjoyed Manjaro on my desktop and like the rolling update idea, but I'm not sure if there's a comparable lighter-weight idea. MX Linux seems like a potential first choice. Any other thoughts?

 

[Oddabe19]

If you like Manjaro, you'll really like EndeavourOS. Not quite as complete, but that's intentional. I have it running on a 2007 core2duo laptop, 4gb with zero issues.

Otherwise, MX is solid, as is Mint if you want to stick on the Ubuntu/Debian platform and don't really care about rolling releases (for that matter, nothing wrong with straight Debian).

 

[wonn]

Hmm, EndeavourOS plus Plasma seems like a pretty enticing option, then. I might give it a whirl when I've got a few days lined up with no Zoom calls when things can go wrong

 

[steelghost]

I have a Core M3 Chromebook here with only 4GB RAM, and I was pleasantly surprised how well KDE Neon ran on it. And KDE straight from the devs is a very pleasant experience these days.

(NB Chromebook has been unlocked and Coreboot-ed, so it's effectively just a low powered laptop now - just a straight install)