Latest ver of Ubuntu.

I've used Debian since hopping to it from Mint around the middle of Debian 10. Was happy to see when 12 released and they integrated non-free firmware by default and a ton of new people came over to just plain Debian as their desktop system.

Distro: Linux Mint Cinnamon

What I like:
- apt
- Cinnamon

The main reason I switch distros has always been either the package manager/packages ( eg. being unable to install software because of outdated dependencies in the package manager ) or the desktop environment - I dont react well to changes in my desktop environment :P

What I don't like:

- Cinnamon

Yeah as nice as it is to have a desktop environment that keeps it's visual style and doesn't embrace "new fangled trends" it's also frustrating when they apply the same ideology to the underlying tech and refuses to embrace wayland, pipewire, latest kernel etc.

Which become even more frustrating when more and more google queries ends with 'only possible with wayland/pipewire/etc'

I bought a new laptop last year and been on Linux Mint for the past 11 years but for installing it I wanted pipewire above all, so the 21.2 didn't cut it out. So I decided to install Linux Mint Debian Edition 6.

What I like

• Things work


• It has the stability of Debian plus the stability of Mint


• It's a rolling release


• I can run my old games and emulators

What I don't like

• Cinnamon, I'm starting to get more used to it, but I miss XFCE


• Slow implementing some stuff like wayland

Been using the same Debian 9 install all the way since 2017.

For the past 7 years I have self compiled and updated hundreds of packages from source, including Dependencies, Wine, Mesa as well as the Kernel and Xorg server.

I've started to hit a few walls recently and it's requiring me to learn new stuff. Might be my last year of doing this and then I'll start fresh with Debian 13.

I like Debian stable cause it's easy to setup a fully offline repo and I'm fully in control what gets updated or changed.

I've been using Manjaro for I don't know how many years.

To be honest, I still don't understand why its usage has dropped so much in recent years.
I just... haven't had any issues with it.
And feature-wise, Plasma has to be the best desktop interface I've used (not that you need Manjaro for Plasma, of course, but it is the default).

But clearly, it went from like 20% to about 5%. So something must be driving people away.
I'd really be curious about what that is.

The only thing I know about is that certificate issue they had with their package server (I think). Like... three times or so. Which I agree is absurd and shameful, but I don't think that alone would drive so many people away.

Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 31 July 2024 at 7:01 am UTC

I moved from Manjaro to Arch a long time ago after I couldn't find a way to report an Arch bug to Manjaro team (I wasn't searching good enough probably)
Funny thing, when I moved to Arch and started reporting bugs, I didn't like the lack of attention to those, then got tired of system breaking so often and continued distrohopping

I've been using Manjaro for I don't know how many years.

To be honest, I still don't understand why its usage has dropped so much in recent years.
I just... haven't had any issues with it.
And feature-wise, Plasma has to be the best desktop interface I've used (not that you need Manjaro for Plasma, of course, but it is the default).

But clearly, it went from like 20% to about 5%. So something must be driving people away.
I'd really be curious about what that is.

The only thing I know about is that certificate issue they had with their package server (I think). Like... three times or so. Which I agree is absurd and shameful, but I don't think that alone would drive so many people away.

I believe part of the reason might be that sometimes Manjaro holds back packages from Arch for too long. If you then happen to use the AUR (not that's recommended) you may be left with broken packages.

Also as a none Arch / Manjaro user who's completely out of the loop there seems to be two types of Manjaro users. One for which the system is exceptionally stable and those for whom it is exceptionally broken. At least online you seem to see very few ppl in-between.

So it could be that the one group just goes with Manjaros defaults and what they've tested. They have a good experience while others mistake it for the easier Arch Linux, then doing Arch Linux thing and it breaks.

At least these are my thoughts on the matter.

Last edited by Vortex_Acherontic on 31 July 2024 at 10:36 am UTC

Been using the same vanilla Arch with KDE Plasma installation for the last approx 6 years now, installed """by hand""" (before the archinstall script, but not "by hand" in the way veterans seem to remember Arch). I had just tried Proton and decided it was time to get rid of my Windows partition. I hated having to boot into Windows and dealing with it breaking every few months was a nightmare. I came from a MacBook Pro dual-booted with Linux where I primarily used Linux over OS X, and hadn't used Windows on a machine I owned since Windows XP. The partition was very much only around for gaming, and Proton killed it back with Proton 3.16.

When I was dual-booting Windows, I was using Antergos at the time but it became defunct around that time iirc, so I planned to try out endeavourOS, but its installer kept crashing, so I went with vanilla Arch (fwiw endeavourOS works flawlessly these days, the problems I had were literal years ago!!). I had installed Arch on a laptop for school some time before so I had an idea of what I was getting into. I had every intention of continuing to distro hop at my usual pace, but I never did. Now, Arch is my go-to for new hardware.

I think I really just like Arch because it's familiar to me and I know how to configure it the way I like. The AUR is fantastic, just gotta be careful about what you install and manage your dependencies.

As for something I don't like about Arch, minor breakages can be annoying, although they're almost always my fault. A package I installed 4 years ago suddenly broke controller support and I had to spend a long time figuring that out. Also, while I love the flexibility pacman, I still need to look up the flags for less-common actions after all these years. They just don't stay in my head.

The biggest issue I had with this installation was that a few years back, the kernel package went missing and Arch wouldn't boot, so I had to install the `linux` package again from a live session (I think I had to use arch-chroot? I don't remember the details). The Arch Wiki helped immensely. I have had the same issue on other distros (Ubuntu GNOME back in the day broke for me) and while there was probably an equally straightforward way to fix it, I felt like the Arch wiki docs made it much easier. Then again, it all comes down to your search-fu.

I like my Arch install, I have become very fond of it.

Last edited by sonic2kk on 2 August 2024 at 2:34 am UTC

For the past year, I think, I've been using ChimeraOS, mostly because it was immutable, so less chance of me screwing it up. However, I occasionally try to migrate to vanilla Arch, every time with KDE, hoping that I'll like it, but I quickly get reminded that some things in Plasma are done in the most unintuitive way possible. Like, in order to enable autologin, I have to go to Appearance & Style, then Colors & Themes, then Login Screen (SDDM), then Behavior... Long story short, I'm installing Arch GNOME right now, gonna see how long it'll last.

I've started to hit a few walls recently and it's requiring me to learn new stuff.

Do you have some examples?

I've started to hit a few walls recently and it's requiring me to learn new stuff.

Do you have some examples?

The Nvidia NVK driver comes to mind where it requires a more recent version of Rust than my system does. Another example would be the OpenMW engine requiring a modern version of Qt. Both of these 2 examples require me to compile the Rust and Qt toolchains themselves before attempting to compile the projects depending on them. I'm yet to succeed with these 2

For the most part it's just a matter of integrating newer libraries into the system before compiling the actual project. Getting newer Mesa drivers on this system was probably the biggest of them all. I had to compile (LLVM toolchain, newer GCC, newer Python as well as some small libraries which Mesa depends on). As of recently I had to learn how to properly compile, configure and integrate a newer version of Xorg server as it was too old to run the Zink driver.

I could do away with all of this by installing a modern distro or a rolling release version, however I wouldn't learn much doing so.

Last edited by Avehicle7887 on 3 August 2024 at 11:19 am UTC

As a noob that used Linux since June 18 i use Fedora Linux KDE Plasma. Because it looks like Windows and it's up-to-date and stable at the same time. It's same as Windows for me.

I'm still on Gentoo since my switch a year ago. But.. I have to say.. it is the best distro I have ever used, so flexible. I really love this thing and it's genuinely given me back my enthusiasm for the technical aspects of linux (that kind of faded off a bit due to all other distros very hand holding these days).

I Gentoo.

My best memories with Linux come from Mandrake. But that was years ago.

This is what it looked like:
!link

Currently I'm using Fedora KDE on my desktops and laptops.

My SteamDecks are running SteamOS of course.

I recently built a custom retro machine using a Raspberry PI 5. I added a cooling solution to it and a m.2 ssd adapter so I could run Raspberry PI OS / KDE from it.

I put it in a transparent Amiga 500 case from a1200.net and cabled it up with a1200's accessories kit and some bits from Amazon.

From icomp.de I got a custom Keyrah board which allows original Amiga peripherals to be connected as USB devices. This way I could use an original Mitsumi keyboard from an Amiga 500 which fits the case. Also original joysticks can be connected now. I replaced the beige key caps with black ones from, again, a1200.net.

That's all I've got running at the moment.

Last edited by tfk on 4 October 2024 at 8:58 am UTC

I never had an Amiga but boy do those cases look cool! And the fact that they engineered them to take a Pi as a replacement CPU and be able to use the native keyboard is awesome.

I never had an Amiga but boy do those cases look cool! And the fact that they engineered them to take a Pi as a replacement CPU and be able to use the native keyboard is awesome.

Yeah. It was a nice project. You have multiple options of what to put in the case. Others put an actual a500 main board in. I choose a PI.

I have been using Gentoo for many years on several devices: my main desktop, laptop, and raspberry pi (the latter two via my own binhost), and my main server. (Though I do have some VM servers that are a mix of debian, alma, and arch, for friends who are learning linux (and server development) with them.) Before using Gentoo, I grew up with slackware and Red Hat Linux (pre-RHEL), the moved and contributed to Ubuntu when it was the new distro on the block. At some point I decided to try out gentoo since a father figure in my life had always been using it and it fascinated me when he'd tell me about things.

Gentoo has spoiled me thoroughly. I have tried several times to use another distribution on my laptop but seeing binary distros pull in packages I could easily avoid with `USE` flags makes me unreasonably grumpy. I've lost my tolerance for installing packages that are generically built for wide use-cases.

Lately I've been 'shopping round' looking for friendlier distributions for people in my life who are new to linux. So far it's been OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Pop_OS, Vanilla, and EndeavourOS, depending on the person and situation.

Gentoo has spoiled me thoroughly. I have tried several times to use another distribution on my laptop but seeing binary distros pull in packages I could easily avoid with `USE` flags makes me unreasonably grumpy. I've lost my tolerance for installing packages that are generically built for wide use-cases.

Genuinely agree. I was used to distributions largely not being that way. But, once you dig into gentoo and start using these features (USE, SLOTs, custom profiles, etc) and all the other things... trying to use another distribution again just feels so restrictive, even Arch. I mean, one thing I love about it is you can set it up with say for example systemd and then just rip out systemd entirely and swap it with openrc and reboot to a working system. Take it back to systemd again after if you want, too all within the same installation - good luck doing that with any other distribution.

It also has a different mentality it's not "Oh? it's broken, well just reinstall." It's more "Oh? you broke it? Well chroot into it do this and that, reboot you'll have it working again.".

Like yourself, I manage many distributions for other reasons (servers, etc). But gentoo is definitely my go-to for my own usage now . I love this thing, I really do.

Suffice to say, Gentoo is great.

I'm going to stop fanboying now.

Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 11 October 2024 at 3:06 pm UTC

BTW i use arch haha