You know, every Linux distro has its own unique charm, and I love that about the Linux ecosystem. But there's something incredibly rewarding about being able to build your operating system, piece by piece, tailored to your needs, like fitting together pieces of a puzzle. And that's exactly what Arch lets you do!
Arch Linux comes with a 'bare minimum' base and allows you to add on top of that. It means no bloatware, no unwanted apps. It's like building your dream home, starting from the foundation, and adding only what you love and need. You are in full control, and there's no 'standard' package set that determines what your system should look like.🏗️
Then comes the famed rolling release model, which means updates are continuous, and you never have to reinstall or jump through hoops to upgrade to the latest and greatest. It's like being on a river that's constantly moving, keeping you on the cutting edge of software development. ⏩
The package manager, Pacman, is another gem, making package management simple and efficient. And did I mention the AUR (Arch User Repository)? It's a treasure trove that contains pretty much every piece of software you could need, and if it's not there, you can package it yourself and share it with the community! 📦👥
I know, some people might say Arch can be demanding, especially for beginners. And yes, there's a learning curve, but isn't that true for anything worth doing? With the Arch Wiki by your side (it's nothing short of an encyclopedia, really! 📚), the learning becomes a journey, an adventure!
In a nutshell, Arch Linux gives you freedom, full control, keeps you at the forefront of software releases, and offers you a vibrant community to learn from and contribute to. So, why not take the plunge and give it a try? It's an experience I wouldn't trade for anything else. 🚀
But in all seriousness I'd reccomend fedora, I don't have the best experience with it but my friend owns it and raves about its UI. I use Linux mint personally and I'm not changing for these reasons:
1)my Acer laptop and Acer in general make it a pain to install Linux on, the only operating systems I can practically install on my laptop are Ubuntu based and even that was a pain, I had to dig through many Linux forms to solve my problem (the awnser very hidden and not many upvotes probably about 7) maybe I'm an idiot idk I'm not an expert.
2)I don't like change I like the user interface of windows 10 but I don't like the adware and bloatware. I CBA dealing uninstalling candy crush soda again. So I'm unlikely going to change.
Hope that helps! use fedora BC my friend raves about it, sorry I don't have any other info about it.
Garuda is beautiful. It is arch based using the original arch repos. It uses btrfs with automated snapshots which is pretty handy. It runs awesome on my two laptops.
EndeavourOS is so amazing!
Imagine Arch Linux with all the great things that come with it, like the AUR or the Arch wiki.
Now imagine that without all the hassle installing everything and writing config files to every little program. That's EndeavourOS. It's basically Arch linux extremely well set up. It doesn't hold back updates like Manajaro.
It also has very friendly community that can help you with any problems and isn't toxic.
I second this comment, though I'd like to point out that the Arch community isn't as toxic as people make it seem. Yes, there are a few very problematic people who think you should read the entire source code for every package possibly involved in your problem before asking for help, but there are a lot of helpful people too. They just have low tolerance for help vampires.
I get where the #Arch communty is comng from with regard to the help vampires thing, because I deal wth it on a daily basis.
People just tend to prefer to ask instead of lookng things up, which won't get you far when trying to learn something.
However, if you cannot find the answer, ask, and I almost guarantee someone will help. I never had issues with arch, but with #gentoo, I had a few really obscure issues that the forums helped me solve.
A lot my issues regard gentoo were just me not reading ALL of the documentation...
You can't expect everyone to remember single bit of the documentation, so some tolerance should always be expected, especially if that issue cannot be solved by searching the title of it on google
@spacesweedkid27
Debian, is definitly good to substitute Ubuntu. Although as mentioned flatpak/appimg is a must. Example: waterfox installed from outside repo made for Debian bookworm complains about dependecy issue, Ubuntu drivers just works Debian had a discussion about non free drivers in standard repo. Repo is named non-free-firmware, and still broadcom is not in standard repo you need to add repo. In the end you'll have low maintenance distro, setup is more engaging for some hardware.
Any Arch-based distro because of the rolling release model, the excellent pacman package manager and the AUR.
Especially EndeavourOS. It's Arch Linux with a Calamares installer. Not that the Arch Linux setup process is hard, but it's a pain. I did it once and never again. EndeavourOS uses the Arch repos plus its own tiny repo with stuff like the Welcome screen, some themes and yay, so it's pretty much Arch with different branding.
Let's see, Debian 12 is impressive. I got that running on my ancient PC in my home office. For a long time, Mint was my go-to recommendation for a new Linux user and I ran it on my main PC for years. Although, with Canonical (Ubuntu) going the way they're going, I'd have probably switched from MInt to LMDE by now if I stayed with it. For that matter, MXLinux is an excellent Debian based distro but, Debian 12 being as good as it is, I think I'd still go with Debian 12 today. If I were setting up PCs for use by students or some other group, I think I'd go with Fedora (assuming the whole kerfuffle with RHEL doesn't impact it).
.
....these days, on my personal "daily driver" PC, I run EndeavourOS. It's basically Arch but easy to install and very nicely set up out of the gate. Friendlier community than Arch as well. It's basically Arch for people who don't need to go minimalist on the install and/or flex about installing Arch.
Let me offer a different direction. FreeBSD has been around since the mid 90's. Is damn featureful. Has a wonderful package management system. Full disclosure, I use Linux on my personal machines but FreeBSD is my server install of choice.
okay so we have LINUX FROM SCRATCH or LFS and it will eat all your time and if you don't get it like me then your kinda out of luck.
but in all seriousness I use Arch for everything and freebsd for my school laptop I know this is for Linux but I feel the need to say that other os can be more beneficial depending on the use case (btw I use bsd because it's harder to run steam games on and it keeps me on task) but I archinstall because I have done it so much manually with Kde for beginners because of discover it helps some newbies that aren't comfortable with the terminal but if you are use what you're comfortable with and I recommend not using Arch install for your first use of it
If you're not aquatinted with distrowatch yet, you should pop on there. It gives overviews of many distros. Asking for recommendations is fine too, but DW is a great resource.
On an older machine that needed something light, Sparky Linux was fun. I didn't use it for it's particular bundling but still felt smooth and solid. I'm assuming you want lightweight since you mentioned a destroyed laptop? There's things like Puppy Linux but that feels almost too light to me and maybe didn't feel finished to me either.
Normally Id just straight up suggest Mint but you said you didn't want that.
Arch Linux using arch repositories and aur only with no flatpak or snap on Gnome Desktop pamac for software store
we have tested most major distros on several hardware setups and arch uses the least amount of resources hands down and is able to be installed on dual core using the same install script as our ryzen 7 4k arch linux media desktop
Arch uses the least resources and you choose what software store to use or not use and what packages you want to populate your system with
Need a package but in a different flavor either with patches or maybe an older or newer version etcetera the aur repositories more than likely will have what you are searching for such as mutter-dynamic-buffering or a reverse engineered port of Space Cadet Pinball
With Arch Linux the World is Yours
In our experience arch has been the easiest to install albeit not a traditional install
Arch Linux OS is a container full of Legos you get to pick from and choose how and what to build like
Yes, reading is involved but at the end of the install you will have a better understanding of operating systems both Linux, Microsoft, Unix, or any of them and why it is important to you as a user
Other distros choose for you and leave no explanation
As long as the hardware requirements were met for the games Arch has been able to run it even newest of games
Some games do require a separate run script to play but most custom run scripts are already available somewhere on the web for download
All operating systems have pros and cons but at least with Arch Linux at the helm you can be sure your voyages will be full of adventure and exploration
Arch has the best package management to be sure. For a "Daily Driver" setup, I'd recommend EndeavourOS. It's basically Arch with much easier setup, some useful tools (that you can choose to use or not), and very well set up for a daily use PC out of the gate. I've used both. Arch is nice, but EndeavourOS is what I run on my "Daily Driver" PC.