Why is everybody so shy about liking Fedora? You don’t have to name lesser distro’s first to make them feel good, you can just outright say Fedora is the best…
Joking. Whatever floats your boat is fine.
It isn’t so much that fedora is the best distro, just that all the other distros are worse.
Using it is just common sense, not something anybody would feel proud about.
This is basically my view as a Fedora user.
My top five Linux distros:
- Debian: It may not be exciting but its rock stability is what makes it good for the vast majority of people (aka what I would genuenly reccomend to people)
- Alpine: Not the easiest or most stable but very lightweight
- OpenSuse: Stable yet up to date, very good defaults and themeing is amazing (especially on Sway)
- Arch: Ignoring the community or documentation you get a distro with up to date packages and not much else to seperate it
- NixOS: Way too advanced for me but I love the way it works, seems amazing for a select type of people
Of course my opinion is objectively correct and if you disagree im going to burn your house down with combustible lemons (made by my team of scientists ofc) /s
Debian: It may not be exciting but its rock stability is what makes it good for the vast majority of people (aka what I would genuenly reccomend to people)
debian is what windows wishes it could be.
Yeah Windows is not stable at all :3
i have historically had more stability issues on windows, than on my bleeding edge archlinux workstation. Sure shit changes, sometimes things break, but i can fix them, or find alternatives/workarounds if i really need to.
Windows, uh. Good luck.
based, alpine is really fun for running on obsolete hardware
antiX is a pretty user friendly and light distro. Plus it’s Debian based.
Honestly when it comes to Debian derivatives Devuan is the only one I would reccomend (still doesnt get in my top 5)
I’ve yet to try Devuan, but I quite like the fact antiX has a bunch of stuff setup, like the WM with Rox and a bunch of apps etc
Devuan is like Debian but without SystemD and much lighter. Like Debian however you set it up yourself so feel free to use whatever WM you want (I personally like Sway).
antiX doesn’t use SystemD, so that works for me. A nice balance between lightweight and being lazy and not having to set it up from scratch, but it doesn’t feel quite as janky as Puppy Linux.
Why wouldn’t you like systemD? It’s easier to learn than most distributions
I guess its commands are a bit long
Imo when it comes to lightweight distros theres a reason why you set it up manually, when 100mb is the difference between a usable system it makes sense for the user to customize it to their needs.
I get that. It depends what you’re after. I just wanted something that’d run on old hardware without too much effort.
College-aged me would have loved Arch. Maybe retirement me will have to play with it for fun in the vaults.
Present-day me however, in middle age with a growing family and a full time job already working on Linux-based software all day, is a total slut for Linux Mint.
It installs and gets running easier and faster than Windows, and is based on widely used and tested stuff from Ubuntu and Debian. It’s not the “learn how operating systems work” distro for sure, but there is a lot of practical use in the world for the “plug the installer drive into your busted old Windows 10 machine and in 15 minutes have a responsive useful Linux PC where your parents can find the Internet browser” distro!
I am very interested to see if SteamOS makes a big push into desktops, though. A whole lot more of the desktop Linux world could become Arch based.
There’s always Bazzite, if you have gamers you want to get into Linux. It would be nice if SteamOS got bigger than it already is, but I don’t know if that’s the direction Valve wants to take it anymore. It seems more to me like they gave up on desktops, and are focusing on the mobile market with the Steam Deck, since that’s someplace where they quickly distinguished themselves.
Linux mint is the Toyota Camry of Linux distros.
I like to call it the Sweet Brown distro cause “Ain’t nobody got time for that”
Arrays start at 0, which leaves plenty of room for SCO Linux powered by UnitedLinux
Wait, I think there was an underflow error…
Is this a scaldera joke?
It’s ancient, but I couldn’t think of a worse distro
“Linux heals the heart, no matter the distro”
- Someone.
Recently started using openSUSE Tumbleweed after 15 years of on and off Linux experimentation. I think I’ve finally found the distro to make me stay. :)
I’ve recently switched from Debian to openSUSE Tumbleweed (edit: with KDE) and am extremely impressed, it’s just so polished. German engineering at its finest.
@wzl my top distros are arch & gentoo, i use arch for desktop and gentoo for my server
i’ve a gentoo install for a raspberry when raspbian (now raspberry os) didn’t have support for aarch64 binaries in their repos, but beside that it is fun to customize your install using portage
-1. WSL.
If 3 is worse than 1, -1 is better. So I don’t agree with you. WSL is at +∞
Any distribution is better
Because everything to do with WSL is negative
For a purist like me, arch IS the best distro.
However, best for me doesn’t mean best for thee.
Vanilla Ubuntu (boo! hiss!). It gets the job done and is out of the box usable with easy flatpak installs. It is 2025, there is no need to tinker with a desktop distro unless you’re deploying on ancient or exotic hardware.
I love Ubuntu’s default yaru theme, and gnome extensions. It seems currently the best distro on my Thinkpad which is unfortunately pretty incompatible to most linux distros due to the shitty Qualcomm WLAN drivers.
Plus Ubuntus package repository is pretty robust.
The only negative thing IMO is snaps being kind of iffy. I don’t think they are that bad but they seem a little too forced on the user.
Like Flatpak is kind of default on Fedora but they almost never force them on you.
Hardware isn’t the only thing worth tinkering though. Coonfigur coonfiguring DE and WMs might actually be more productive and efficient in doing things
I’ve used Arch for years now but I recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed to a friend recently
I have a computer using Windows because it needed a windows store app and the drm on those thwarted my attempts on Linux
first place is tied with arch and debian, second might include RHEL.
everything else is non deterministic.
I’ve got a feeling that I leave arch, just to come back to it… Almost a year without Arch.
I presume you know that your account is marked as automated, as a bot
Honestly it’s usually the Arch Cultists that don’t want opinions
Part of me wants to main Gentoo just to neutralise any arch smug I come across.
But then I remember I don’t really want a 2nd job
Gentoo, that’s fun. Brings back a lot of memories from Kindergarten. Let me know when you’re ready to build LFS with the big dogs.
I’m surprised LFS is still around. I used that on my main computer back when Linux kernel versions started with 2.4. it was my third distribution after red hat and Debian
I imagine telling an Arch user you use Gentoo is like telling a Texan that if you cut Alaska into two halves Texas would be the third largest US state.
It’s only a second job if you ever want to add a new app
Actually, only if you want to tune stuff, like selecting from hundreds of USE flags and some may cause trouble, but who can resist.
This thread once again proving that complaints about arch elitism are 1000x more common than actual arch elitism
This guy uses arch btw.No seriously, there’s plenty of arch elitism in this thread alone, And other distros too. You really don’t need to be preemptively defensive about it though.
I just scrolled the whole thread and can’t find any at all, what are you talking about?
Elitism isn’t „I like arch and I think it is good for some stuff”, it’s „I’m smart because I use arch, you’re dumb if you don’t, and any problems you have with it are your fault.”
This would have been the perfect comment if you were from a slightly different instance
Edit: wait there is (was?) an “I use arch btw” instance right? I’m not imagining it?
I’m literally in the process of switching my main from Arch to Gentoo now. (Yes it’s taking a while.) And I intend to be even more smug. Bwahahaha!
Gentoo is not that bad. Its just arch with a longer install. You still got to read the wiki when installing something and still have to follow the news.
IMO Arch’s defaults (especially w.r.t. audio and fonts) are a little nicer than Gentoo’s, but that’s a pretty minor inconvenience all things considered.
Arch’s defaults haven’t always been good and I’d argue they are still not good enough for users to rely on. As an arch user (im not an arch user) you are expected to not just plug and play everything without checking its configuration matches your system and needs.
Just main NixOS.
I just need to learn Diet Haskell first…
I don’t get that ‘Gentoo takes forever’ argument. With todays hardware it’s really a non-issue. Just let the updates compile in the background while you do other stuff. My Arch install broke several times, not so my Gentoo. Also, the Gentoo community is really kind and don’t treat you like an idiot for not knowing something.
On the other hand, what’s the benefit of running Gentoo on modern hardware?
The ability to patch packages with little effort ( https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/patches ) is the main reason I’m currently considering switching to gentoo.
