What are people daily driving these days?
What are people daily driving these days?
I'm between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?
I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)
Debian with KDE works great for my needs.
i'm on manjaro kde, will switch soon to nixos if i understand how it all works :)
otherwise arch
Until a couple of weeks ago I used Fedora Silverblue.
Then, after mostly using GNOME Shell for about a decade, I (reluctantly) tried KDE Plasma 5.27 on my desktop due to its support for variable refresh rate and since then I have fallen in love with KDE Plasma for the first time (retrospectively I couldn't stand it from version 4 until around 5.20).
Now I am using Fedora 39 Kinoite on two of my three devices and Fedora 39 KDE on a 2-in-1 laptop that requires custom DKMS modules (not possible on atomic Fedora spins) for the speakers.
Personally I try to use containers (Flatpaks on the desktop and OCI images on my homeserver) whenever possible. I love that I can easily restrict or expand permissions (e. g. I have a global
nosocket=x11override) and that my documentation is valid with most distributions, since Flatpak always behaves the same.I like using Fedora, since it isn't a rolling release, but its software is still up-to-date and it has always (first version I used is Fedora 15) given me a clean, stable and relatively bug-free experience.
In my opinion Ubuntu actually has the perfect release cycle, but Canonical lost me with their flawed-by-design snap packages and their new installers with incredibly limited manual partitioning options (encryption without LVM, etc.).
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's been great having a rolling release distro that I don't have to worry about breaking with updates
I like Debian with GNOME
Manjaro kde on 3 computers in the ham shack, manjaro KDE on the media center, and guess what's on the two lap tops..you got it...manjaro KDE. Most have windows 10 dual boot on a separate drive. I haven't spent the time to figure out radio control and antenna switching on Linux so windows is still needed for radio contesting.
I have tried many and keep going back to manjaro, everything just works. The Arch wiki is awesome, and the aur has multiviewer to F1, ready to go.
I’ve never tried NixOS, but it looks really promising.
I usually use Fedora or OpenSUSE, which have good software availability (unfortunately not as good as the AUR). Fedora provides selinux by default, and has profiles for basically everything. SUSE uses AppArmor, but Arch doesn’t provide convenient configuration for either, and only supports x86_64 (which is why I switched away from it).
I’ve been running Fedora for years. I tried out Arch and OpenSUSE a bit this year just to see if I was missing anything, and went right back to Fedora afterward.
Not as fussy as Arch and better package availability than SUSE (for my needs at least). Also dnf is my favorite package manager despite being relatively slow.
EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop side of things.
Acura MDX
Arch with Wayland and Pipewire. Running SwayWM and have never been happier with my setup.
When it comes to distros, I am a boring man with a boring POV: I just want the thing to work with as little fuss as possible. Consequently, I'm on Kubuntu. KDE is rock solid, and Ubuntu is what I'm used to.
If/when my OS ever breaks down hard enough to reinstall, I'll probably install Fedora Workstation.
Nobara these days. It's based on Fedora 38.
Endeavouros on Laptop and main PC. Loving it.
Pop!_OS on my desktop and laptop since 2020.
After years of Manjaro (and I still use it on most of my computers), I'm trying out Nobara KDE to see how it keeps up for gaming. It has a number of optimizations that Glorious Eggroll has compiled and seems pretty fast compared to Manjaro on the same hardware. I imagine I could do all the changes on Manjaro, but I also wanted to see how Fedora runs these days, it's been a long time since I used it on the daily.
So far, so good.
I've been using OpenSuse Slowroll basically since it released and so far am very happy with it.
NixOS and Debian. Probably just NixOS in the near future.
Arch on my "desktop PC", Armbian on my rpi 4, Dietpi soon (tm) on my Orange pi zero 3.
void linux (glibc) + swayfx + waybar + foot terminal + nushell
I'm about ready to hop back in and daily drive Linux again after the nightmare that was attempting debian w/KDE plasma and Wayland. I have a Nvidia GPU on my laptop and for some reason I did not have luck at all after moderate success daily driving opensuse tumbleweed and kubuntu for a while.
I'm admittedly looking to onboard myself to the gnome workflow and leave the comfort of the windows style desktop environment experience. Gnome seems a bit more polished and stable than KDE plasma but it's interface isn't intuitive to me yet.
Ideally I'll be using Debian or Arch when the time comes for me to dive back into desktop Linux.
I've been using OpenSuse Slowroll basically since it was released and have so far been very happy with it.
Currently driving Fedora 39
For my main computers, I've moved them all to Arch from Manjaro & EndeavorOS within the past 4 years. Though been meaning to try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed eventually. Haven't used OpenSUSE in over 10 years.
I have a laptop running Proxmox for my servers, which is debian-based but uses a modified Ubuntu LTS kernel. Great to use to try out other distros in VMs as well.
I was using Fedora for about a year and it was great. Nice and stable, almost everything worked out of the box. Then I goofed up an update and had to install something new, and I chose Arch. Arch is working mostly fine, of course I had to learn a thing or two about how some subsystems worked but the Arch wiki is a wonderful resource. We’ll see how long this install lasts, it’s been smooth sailing for about a month now.
Arch Linux with i3wm
Fish, Alacritty, Rofi (dmenu replacement)
Garuda Linux. In just love arch, but I'm too lazy to do it myself. One day maybe
Fedora. I've been looking into fedora silverblue and vanilla os as well but I'm chilling with regular fedora for now
Desktop: Arch KDE Laptop: MX Linux KDE
I daily drive Fedora because RHEL is what my industry uses and it's good to stay on top of the technology.
Pretty happy with Debian Testing. Frequent updates but still very stable and rock solid.
kubuntu
kde connect wasn't working on endeavouros with sway and i wanted something easy and debian based
Arch + XFCE on my desktop. Have been for a while now, and everytime i try something else, I always come back to it. For my laptop, I've been using Gnome + extensions (Arch as well. That way I don't gotta switch gears and remember two different sets of commands) before i had to take it in for repairs. Was pretty good because of the mousepad gestures IMO.
Fedora immutable (ublue kinoite) has been so bulletproof. Moved from Arch, which is now on distrobox, so painless. Now ~ 1 year... 2 laptops + desktop, other is destined for NixOS...
Arch + gnome but it doesn't matter at this point
I've been using Mint Cinnamon for a while now. It runs beautifully with fewer firmware issues than Ubuntu on my XPS. Even though it shipped with Ubuntu.
Laptop and Workstation run Fedora. Servers run Proxmox.
Can't say that there is anything new and exciting. Big change for me has been that I have accepted flatpacks. I've gotten to the point where I don't care about being a purist, don't care about customizing and theming everything. I just want to use my computer.
Debian for a while, now Mint (I'm a Cinnamon freak)
Nobara because I am a beginner that uses his PC primaryly for gaming
I'm a Mint Cinnamon guy.
- Laptop: Opensuse slowroll with Sway
- Home PC: Arch with KDE
- Home server: Debian 12 (headless)
Q4OS, for five years
I recently switched my laptop to Garuda, it's an Arch based gaming distro. It seems to mostly work right out of the box, but I did have to tweak a few steam games to force them to use my dedicated graphics.
I guess I could go in and force steam itself to use the graphics card via env... But I only have a handful of large games at the moment. It's just as easy to set the requirement per game right now.
Garuda on my gaming desktop, fedora bazzite on my gaming laptop. Loving both to be honest.
Zorin OS for now. Old kernel and stuff, but it's stable, and I like the looks more than I did PopOS!. Maybe PopOS! is cooler now with their Cosmic thingy.
Debian Testing and Arch with KDE on the PC/Workstation.
Debian Stable on the server.
Devuan (Debian without systemd), stable (Daedalus) with backports. Been running Debian since 2000, Devuan since 2018. I am at a point where I just want consistency and familiarity in my setup.
Edit: as far as cool new things, I have moved to pipewire for audio and leveraging a selfhosted nextcloud for web based file storage. For a personal setup (limited users) I just installed Nextcloud office which is basically Libreoffice in a browser like Google docs. I am also using mythtv with an hdhomerun for broadcast tv. None of this is really "new" but new to me. The setup of these functions has been fairly straightforward for me and I appreciate all the work these projects have put to make the setup and maintenance fairly painless.
I run Guix System on my personal laptop and Project Bluefin on my work machine.
Guix is even easier to get started with now thanks to the Guix Packager , a web UI for writing Guix package definitions.
Project Bluefin auto-updates thanks to its use of container images deliver system updates. It's also just a great platform to get started writing containerized apps, since it ships with rootless Podman by default and you can easily add new developer tools using
justcommands.cachyos
Fedora is what keep getting back to every time I get distro hopping fever. Either gnome or KDE It's wonderful!
I dual boot Qubes and Linux Mint (kinda two ends of a spectrum, I know).
Accidentally wipes out Mint last week, but have been meaning to try out Fedora 39 Plasma. So far, I love it. I have been really busy recently, but it has been a great system so far. My SteamDeck really made me fall in love with Plasma.
The answer's always Debian. I use guix for packages, though it doesn't have as much stuff on it as nix.
Qubes OS
Neon is my daily driver. Planing on pop os after their new de
Had been on pop for a while. But lately gnome shell was using a ton of ram and performance was trash, so I moved to fedora with KDE. Been great so far.
I'm rocking two dailys right now. Tumbleweed and Nixos. I jabe tumbleweed on my work laptop as well as one laptop at home. Rock solid go to that I trust for all the things. I started using nix on a number of other machines at home a few months back, and I'm really really enjoying it!!
@blotz trying out kubantu for now just swapped from gnome manjaro.
Another one for the endevour os team. Not looking to distro hop anytime soon.
Nobara on my gaming desktop, Fedora Kinoite on one laptop, Debian 12 on the other.
Neon and Arch in a distrobox container. I've found the holy grail of Linux setups. Latest KDE and AUR on a stable ubuntu base.
nixos + xmonad + xfce-no-desktop here. Its not for noobs perhaps but so stable and confidence inspiring.
Linux Mint with a secondary partition running EndeavourOS
Manjaro KDE
Mint for my daily driver, PopOS for my gaming machine. Happy with both.
I daily Windows 11... though I use Ubuntu for servers and Mint for my linux desktops (older hardware that doesn't W11).
