The more time I spend with Linux the more I realize that Distro doesn’t matter, GUI doesn’t matter, experience doesn’t matter.
Distro doesn’t matter because you will inevitably come across something that you need that doesn’t work on your distribution.
GUI doesn’t matter because no matter what you do you will %100 have to use the terminal and if you can do it once you can do it again.
Experience doesn’t matter because if you’re inexperienced you have to go outside your Comfort zone, if you’re experienced you got there because you like going outside your comfort zone and you will constantly stay in that state.
Arch is the distro that did hold the longest against my torture yet, maybe because everything is from the same repo 🤔😂
I wish gentoo was more explored, I felt the same way and then it finally scratched the itch of things working (perhaps even too many options). I actually ended up using gentoo because it was less of a headache to just get things to work in a way that does not feel hacky
I moved to Arch about 20 years ago because I wanted Gentoo but I didn’t want to wait hours for compilation. I remember it fondly though. emerge was kind of a killer feature.
Though I gotta say, I’m a bit more curious now that we have better processors. And I’m curious what I’ve missed over the years.
I tried out Gentoo for a while, and just using binaries for the web browser and office suite made the compile times a complete non-issue. The problem I had that made me give it up was that when there is software you want that isn’t in the official repos there are a thousand different ways of getting it, and all of them suck. Overlays are supposed to be the solution for that, but man that experience was just awful.
I tried all kinds of things, but in the end all the options basically boiled down to risking breakage, maintaining my own packages, or not using emerge at all, which just feels like it’s defeating the whole purpose of being on Gentoo in the first place.
That huge chunk of learning required for arch when you’ve never used Linux before is really hard to imagine when you have years of experience working Linux under your belt. That does not mean it doesn’t exist for new users though.
That shit’s complex and long. Much as I appreciate the sentiment of “the distro doesn’t matter” I really can’t agree.
I realised the same thing.
When I was switching from Windows to Linux on my PCs (both at home and at work), I originally wanted to use Debian because I’m most familiar with it and have been running it on servers for 20+ years.
I have to use Fedora at work though - it’s a lightly-modified version of Fedora that runs some automatic configuration on first boot and first log in for things like ensuring disk encryption is enabled (including adding randomly-generated secondary keys for IT support), 802.1x certificates for Ethernet and VPN auth, Chef, endpoint security, etc.
Anyways, I started using it and love it. I’m running it at home now too. I realised the difference between distros is much narrower than it used to be.
WTF are you guys doing with your PCs??? I’ve been running Mint for over a year now and the only time I’ve used the terminal was to open a port for Chromecast. I browse, I game, I watch shows, etc. maybe I’m just really lucky, idk, it’s been nothing but smooth sailing.
I personally use it to run a headless docker on fedora 40 server with containers holding jellyfin, filebrowser, pia, qBittorrent a desktop in noVNC a pfsense server, and probably some stuff I forgot.
Why is that not a standard use case?
But in all seriousness I guess I get your point.
Not exactly advanced, but I missed the super+P shortcut when switching from desk and monitor to sofa and TV. Made a couple of one line shell scripts that call Xrandr then bound them to keyboard shortcuts.
Meh, don’t worry about it. If you are happy with how it’s going for you - enjoy the ride! Not everyone needs to be bothered by the terminal. But it IS there if you need it or want to use it.
Besides, if Arch users wanted to be be real gurus they’d be running EMACS and not Arch.
Yes and no for me
Distro doesn’t matter because they only differ in package manager and initial configuration, you can always compile things if you really need it.
GUI doesn’t matter because you’ll end up with all KDE and gnome dependencies installed anyway because your applications need it.
Experience probably matters, but if it doesn’t, it may be because there is just so much there to know.
Experience doesn’t matter because if you’re inexperienced you have to go outside your Comfort zone, if you’re experienced you got there because you like going outside your comfort zone and you will constantly stay in that state.
I was experimenting a lot during my early Linux months but then I found what works for me and settled with it. I don’t leave my comfort zone much anymore.
And I fucking soared
(Btw)
Gentoo and Slackware are for no mortals
The only people I know who are still running Slackware are doing it via Unraid (which is built on top of Slackware)
Yes, Debian packages are old. Tell me again when your arch install breaks for the 4th time this week.
I also use Debian and Fedora on different computers so I’m curious, how do they compare in your opinion? Any interesting differences or reasons to use one instead of the other?
I’m not the person you were replying to, but I was dual booting Debian and Fedora for around a month, and ended up sticking with Fedora.
The main benefit of Fedora is that packages are much newer than Debian (even if you run Debian unstable/sid). Some examples I hit:
KDE Plasma 6.0 was released in February this year, and Fedora got it shortly after release. Debian sid still doesn’t have it - it’s in experimental but isn’t in a fully working state yet. Debian doesn’t focus on completing large upgrades like that until it’s closer to the deadline for the next release.
Until last month, the AMD graphics firmware (and in fact, all non-free firmware) in Debian stable, testing, and unstable was a version from over a year ago (June 2023) that had a bunch of bugs and didn’t support newer GPUs properly at all. See the version numbers here: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-nonfree/news/. On laptops like the Framework 16, you hace to manually download firmware from a repo on kernel.org and place the files in the right spot. Fedora comes with the latest firmware in each release.
Fedora also has some niceties, for example it comes with Plymouth (graphical boot-up and shut-down screen) installed out-of-the-box instead of showing a bunch of scrolling text.
The Debian approach is fantastic for servers. Servers have hardware that generally doesn’t change during its lifespan, and need to be stable. A server you set up today still needs to be working the same way 2 or 3 years from now, without worrying about major breaking changes. You can install unattended-upgrades and get automatic security/bugfix updates with very little risk of anything breaking.
On the other hand, for a desktop environment, running the latest versions can have some benefits. Hardware and can change often (especially GPUs and their drivers), desktop environments fix bugs and add new features weekly, etc.
I don’t mind Debian on desktop, but IMO Fedora is better. I’ve been running Debian on servers for over 20 years though, and I’ll continue doing so.
One thing I can’t stand about Fedora is the installer. It might be because I’m more familiar with debian-installer, but I find partitioning in Fedora’s installer much more difficult. I was trying to set up a fairly standard layout on my laptop (EFI partition, /boot partition, LUKS encryption partition with LVM in it, then / and /home ext4 LVs) and I got so frustrated that I set it up in the Debian installer then rebooted into the Fedora installer lol
I think Fedora requires less configuration because a lot comes working out of the box. I haven’t had any issues yet
and you have a choice with Debian. You can run:
- Stable if you want stability, meaning it doesn’t change often (minor updates only).
- Testing if you want newer packages that have at least gone through some level of testing. They’ve been in unstable for at least 3-10 days with no major bug reports.
- Unstable/sid if you want to assist the Debian project by reporting bugs (which is always appreciated!), or want the “breaks all the time” experience of other distros.
Debian unstable doesn’t break all the time, tho. There’s only been a handful of times in my 27 years of using it that something got truly borked.
(That’s not counting times when two packages have the same file and there’s a conflict. That’s trivial to resolve once you’ve seen it a few times. Even that is relatively rare.)
Arch doesn’t break all the time either, but it’s a meme and therefor 100% true.
I’ve never had Debian or Arch completely break, but have had my share of annoying bugs with both of them. Biggest issue I kept having with Debian is it’d just get stuck and wouldn’t update. Think it was 12.4 I had this problem with. Way more annoying than anything Arch did to my system. I’m using Fedora now days.
Same issue as this person: https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=156345. That’s not even mentioning the 12.3 debacle which I was thankfully spared of.
The amount of uninformed, stereotyped memery in this comment section is actually unreal
The fact that most people assume Arch is a broken mess because of a meme is wild. Same people would think Linux is impossible to use if they used Windows still.
