Hey fellow Linux enthusiasts! I’m curious to know if any of you use a less popular, obscure or exotic Linux distribution. What motivated you to choose that distribution over the more mainstream ones? I’d love to hear about your experiences and any unique features or benefits that drew you to your chosen distribution.
Manjaro.
It does what I need it to in a way that is convenient and accessible to me.
I agree with pretty much all of their design decisions and am just looking for a preconfigured Arch.
Been running it exclusively for the past 3 years and have no inclination on switching.
There was definitely a time when I would have considered Manjaro a less mainstream distro, but I’ve been running into fellow Manjaro users everywhere!
I wipe & reinstall on my phones and computers more than the average user. I like it fresh and I like it fast. Manjaro stays fast and this install of mine is a year or two old now! Any other distro would have been reinstalled a few times now or I would have gone distro-hopping searching for better functionality.
I love the control I get when it comes to sources. AUR, flatpacks, and appimages are all good for me, but no snap shall touch this computer of mine. I have a few minor annoyances with my setup, and am really curious to see how the next plasma update effects things.
I use Ubuntu, which is apparently the least popular distro around.
I use Manjaro and based on the downvotes I received when mentioning it around here, I can assure that you are excused and you can give me this crown.
I understand the criticisms of manjaro, and don’t recommend it to people, but it seems to be the only distro to work with my hardware/software without issue. So for now, here I am.
Lol same. When I installed Manjaro it was a popular choice, but in the past couple years sentiment has really turned against it. I haven’t experienced any of the problems people claim it has, so I can’t be arsed to distro hop again.
Not OP, but as someone using Ubuntu LTS releases on several systems, I can answer my reason: Having the latest & greatest release of all software available is neat, but sometimes the stability of knowing “nothing on my system changes in any significant way until I ask it to upgrade to the next LTS” is just more valuable.
My primary example is my work laptop: I use a fairly fixed set of tools and for the few places where I need up-to-date ones I can install them manually (they are often proprietary and/or not-quite established tools that aren’t available in most distros anyway).
A similar situation exists on my primary homelab server: it’s running Debian because all the “services” are running in docker containers anyway, so the primary job of the OS is to do its job and stay out of my way. Upgrading various system components at essentially random times runs counter to that goal.
Yeah, I use Ubuntu LTS on my server because updates make me nervous. I can’t just update it all willy-nilly. If something goes wrong during an update, I must stop what I’m doing and get it up ASAP.
A few months ago I accidentally deleted grub the morning before I went to an all day concert, and I had lots of unhappy people that were using services that I host. Luckily that was an easy fix.
My laptop, though? I use Opensuse Tumbleweed. I’m fine with the rolling release for my laptop. Just not my server.
Why are people still using anything other than Debian and Redhat tho?
Arch and its derivatives (and once, NixOS) are the only distros that provide me with the range of software I need. But guess what? NixOS has some issues if you don’t want to go deep into it, and for me they mostly stemmed from the immutability of it. And Arch and derivatives are all rolling release, when I don’t want a rolling release. I want a machine I can keep running for 10-15 days or more and not have to bother with the idea of updates.
“for me they mostly stemmed from the immutability of it” 😱 😱 someone saying that immutably OSes are crap. I can’t believe what I’m reading 😂 Related discussion: https://lemmy.world/comment/4571828
For some things, they suck. Even NixOS, with its incredible flexibility compared to something like Silverblue, sucks for some things. For example, a Linux-only piece of software I need for University. The supported way to install it, is to download the archive from the university website and unpack it into your root directory, where it will install itself and its dependencies under /usr. You can’t exactly do that on an Immutable distro. And I tried to make it work locally, but then in the end, after it didn’t, I just gave up.
I just like the rolling release/quick updates of Endeavour(Arch) and SUSE Tumbleweed. So those are the ones I pick between for my gaming laptop (both with Btrfs for easy rollback though I’ve never needed it). For my servers I use Debian and Ubuntu.
Manjaro.
I wanted a rolling distro that had up to date software because I got tired of Ubuntu’s 6 month upgrade cycle. But I also didn’t want to deal with source packages because I value my time.
Don’t get me wrong, I still use Xubuntu, CentOS and RHEL at work, but for my home system I want something that does not give me any major problems so I can unwind after work.
I know about the issues with the site certificates and sometimes the package certificates. He who never messed up big time can cast the first stone.
Manjaro has been on my games machine for nearly 3 years and it has been a smooth experience.
It gets a lot of hate round here, because it can be finicky. So in that sense it’s unpopular. I also tried to install it once but quickly got fed up.
The intention of this post was probably to find new distros that not many people have heard of.
Manjaro is one of the most popular (well known) distros especially for gaming. Not complaining though; some people think that your device will self destruct if you install Manjaro, so I don’t mind people showing their good experiences with it.
