I have a 1TB harddrive on my desktop computer that isn’t doing much of anything, so I’d like to dual-boot something “interesting”. Suggestions are greatly appreciated, so let me know what y’all find intriguing/interesting/frustrating/innovative.
The logo is just for attention, but EFF is a great cause that we should all support.
It’s really hard to go wrong with Debian.
That’s my safe answer.
If you share more about your interests, hobbies, I might have other ideas.
I suppose, when in doubt, there’s always Linux From Scratch. It’s a very interesting experience.
Qubes - an OS that compartmentalizes system functions (including userspace) into separate VMs, with the intent of keeping them secure from each other. Kind of an internal zero-trust approach. Complicated to use.
Alpine Linux - stripped down to create a reduced attack surface, with the intent to provide only packages which have been vetted for security. Fairly straightforward.
Redox OS - a Unix-like OS written in Rust (not actually Linux). Limited, still kind of a prototype.
Damn Small Linux has been revived with a new version recently, which is nice to see.
HoloISO - a community built reimplementation of the Steam Deck OS.
freedoss 9front Uxn(more an emulator but still interesting to check out its by 100 rabbits) openbsd netbsd dragonflybsd etc…
I haven’t had an opportunity to test it myself yet, but I’ve heard very good things about NixOS. The basic premise is that all of your system state, every config file in /etc, every package you have installed, everything, is defined by a single configuration file called configuration.nix. If you back up just your home directory and that file, you can plonk it into a brand new copy of NixOS, run a single command, and have it redownload and re-set-up everything else exactly how you left it.
It’s even better with flakes. I barely touched the surface but I just run nix run . boot all and rebuilds all systems with the same build / versions. This the run . Part executes a python script that loops through each host and runs nixos-rebuild. I run my k3s cluster with it.
I’ve been running NixOS on my framework laptop for almost a year now. I’m a huge fan.
The only thing I couldn’t get working was a flake + home-manager-as-a-module + sway setup, but I haven’t tried for 6 months or so.
Currently running flake + home-manager-as-a-module + COSMIC and it’s fantastic.
I’m running Nobara on my gaming PC, and was originally planning to switch to Bazzite if anything broke, but now I’m working on prepping my NixOS config for gaming.
Speaking of, how is NixOS for gaming? I remember trying it a while ago but not being able to get the Nvidia drivers working. I’ve since switched to a machine with AMD graphics though.
So far it seems just fine! I’m finding a few bugs here and there, but I think that has more to do with COSMIC than NixOS. I’m going to do some more testing on Plasma to narrow down where the issues are. You can see my config here:
https://github.com/thejevans/nix-config/blob/main/nixosModules/gui-applications/gaming.nix
For something interesting, I suggest Qubes OS.
For a reliable workhorse, I would suggest Debian.
For a regular user, I’d suggest fedora workstation over Debian. Debian is old reliable, but the out of box experience for the user is clunky and missing some utilities and features. I had a tech friend of mine transition from windows and there were many small things that I hadn’t noticed would cause problems.
I still run Debian on many different devices, I like it quite a bit especially when distromorphed with Kicksecure.
There is also Linux Mint Debian Edition which switches the base OS used by Mint to Debian. Out of box experience with LMDE is much more user friendly.
