software:suggestion
wiki.livingcartoon.org
Skipping those I've already used

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/42673820

Looking for suggestions besides Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Debian, Arch Linux, or Kali.

Would be on a modest Dell Latitude with i5, 14" 1080p display with intel graphics, and maybe 16gb ram. I have previous experience with XFCE, Ratpoison, Openbox, KDE Plasma. Recently started trying out LXQT.

  • Cricket@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    7 hours ago

    openSUSE. Either Tumbleweed (rolling) or Leap (stable). A few reasons for this:

    • Their snapshot system is awesome (they develop snapper) and configured by default when you install it. It takes a snapshot of your system before and after updates and at other times as well. Uses minimal space because they use BTRFS and also have maintenance jobs by default. This is the main factor that made me settle on it. To me, it was the best of both worlds between the stability but restrictive nature of atomic/immutable distros and the freedom but potential for breaking your system of the traditional distros.
    • They’re reputed to have one of the best KDE integrations of any distro. I’m not sure what this means in practice because I’m still a newbie, but I’ve seen this mentioned by others a few times. Other major DEs are also options at install time.
    • They’re one of the traditional big distros. SUSE has been around since the early days of Linux. SUSE is also a commercial corporation, similar to Red Hat.
    • The rolling distro, Tumbleweed has a reputation for being one of the most stable rolling ones because they apparently have an extensive automated testing system for updates.
    • Their system configuration tool (YaST) is also supposed to be awesome and one of the best around, minimizing the need to resort to the command line, but I also haven’t used this too much.
    • Their community is supposed to be really helpful as well. I haven’t experienced this myself, but have heard it.

    Edit: it’s probably best to avoid their “SlowRoll” distro for now. It’s rolling but with less frequent updates than Tumbleweed, which many may thinks is a sweet spot. However, it’s still in beta and I’ve heard of people having issues with it occasionally.

  • witness_me@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 hours ago

    I recently went back to fedora workstation (gnome) after using Arch (Manjaro) with kde and hyprland for the last 3 years.

    Got tired of things breaking with hyprland and Manjaro every other month. Had a few issues with AUR packages too (I know I’m supposed to carefully read release notes to figure out what breaks, but how many people actually do that?)

    With fedora at least, I won’t have to worry about packages breaking and not working together. Gnome isn’t my favorite but I’m sticking to it for a while to give it a fair chance.

    • kiol@discuss.onlineOP
      0·
      9 hours ago

      Cool, I’ve tried Nix twice for a week at a time. Still have my configs. Struggling with lots of missing packages and the docs being frustrating, but love how it works once configured.

  • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 day ago

    i noticed you havent tried fedora atomic cosmic. if youre just looking to run the gamut of DEs its probably the best cosmic distro right now. bonus points its fairly easy to rebase between each fedora atomic distro so you can DE hop without too much pain

    • kiol@discuss.onlineOP
      0·
      1 day ago

      Sounds fun. I did try Cosmic some time ago on a live disk and it had almost no features at that time, but was very snappy.

  • br3d@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    I’ve just switched to Pop_OS and so far I’m really impressed. Very fast, and Cosmic desktop has a totally different design and aesthetic to any other DE

  • GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    NixOS and Guix System! I’m currently using Guix System + Nix (via home-manager, mostly) but you can also do it the other way around.

    NixOS uses systemd, but Guix System does not. They are both awesome though. Absolutely my favourite distros. Incredibility flexible, and reproducibility and “declarativeness” are core concepts. The only negative is that they both have quite a steep learning curve, compared to other distros.

      • bradboimler@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 hours ago

        If you’re new I suggest not using flakes. You can always switch to them when you learn how to maintain NixOS.

      • GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, it’s been an ongoing debate whether the old Nix style or the newer Flakes are a better approach. I don’t really know that much about it, but thus far I definitely like using Flakes more

          • GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml
            0·
            1 day ago

            No no, Nix has two ways of handling configurations, where Flakes are the new style, but still experimental. Guix just have one way of handling configurations.

  • Dran@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    Ubuntu server (headless)

    Install pulse, x11, awesomewm.

    Building the gui stack yourself on top of Ubuntu server gives you all of the debian/Ubuntu stability and issue searchability with none of the gnome/canonical cruft.

    • kiol@discuss.onlineOP
      0·
      1 day ago

      The only issue with this is it is Kubuntu, which is exactly what I already use. The theme and icon pack can be added onto any other distro, so that works.

      • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
        0·
        1 day ago

        there’s a stable release 15.0 released in 2022 and -current rolling release that’s up to date for everything. i recommend -current for desktop/laptops.

        there’s not much automated tools like other distros, but the system itself is extremely simple and well documented. many tools in the system (package manager, init, etc) are all simple shell scripts.

        there’s also distros that are based on slackware like salix, could be easier as it comes with apt-get afaik

        • kiol@discuss.onlineOP
          0·
          1 day ago

          Cool, so you are on the rolling release. Does it do everything you want as a daily driver?

  • Luffy@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    Fedora.

    Its not new, its not special with some big changes or special kernels, it has sane settings.

    It has releases every 6 months, and updates about as much as arch

    • kiol@discuss.onlineOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      This was the first thing recommended: Fedora with default Gnome. I’ve never even tried Yum, so would be interesting.

      • TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        2 days ago

        me and my homies are using fedora KDE, which we can greatly recommend. we use it not just for personal gaming, creative tools, and software development but also (especially) on our work machines.

  • Dzheyk@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 days ago

    I’ve been dipping my toe into CachyOS, decent so far. Running Bazzite on my main gaming PC and…yeah, is nice but does lack some freedoms by being locked down a bit. Works well enough for what I use it for 99% of the time.