- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/42673820
Looking for suggestions besides Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Debian, Arch Linux, or Kali. I have previous experience with XFCE, Ratpoison, Openbox, KDE Plasma. Recently started trying out LXQT.
Would be on a modest Dell Latitude with i5, 14" 1080p display with intel graphics, and maybe 16gb ram.
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This is blog post is several years old now, but the points to consider when choosing a distro are still quite relevant.
Choosing Your Desktop Linux Distribution
TL;DR - Probably Fedora Workstation
Nice article
Debian XFCE
I specifically listed Debian as a no, just because I have tons of experiences with Debian XFCE. Spoiler, it is great. Haha.
Oh, I didn’t see the cross post thingy. I guess then something like slackware would be fun. All of those stable distros make the most sense in my opinion, because you can always grab new software for them, while with something rolling everything gets update no matter if you want it or not.
Slackware absolutely interests me
I went with fedora bluefin.
It’s an atomic/immutable type OS, based on silverblue, but with a bunch of drivers and software bundled in.
Atomic is not for everyone, but I love it. I tried it on a whim when I got my framework 13 over a year ago, and it’s been on there ever since.
I’ve been using Linux on and off for a couple of decades now, mostly Ubuntu, but some others (OG DSL anyone?).
Really though I’ve never been able to ditch windows until bluefin. My problem has always been that after a year or two, my system starts to get unstable. And you can forget about complete version upgrades. Out of the question. They never fail to always fail. I just can’t stop tinkering with things.
But bluefin? It has everything I want and need in a daily driver. And it’s very nature FORCES me to not tinker with the inner gubbins. Thusly, it just works. Every day. Every update. Solid.
I use distrobox for tinkering. Or I spin up a Windows VM in proxmox if I need to get crazy. And I’ve still got a Windows computer gathering dust in the corner for when Windows on metal is required, but that’s only happened once since I started this party.
So yeah, if you haven’t given it a try, I highly recommend it.
KDE and Xfce Ubuntu spins have been great last few LTS, just leaving them alone. I’ve also run DSL.
That’s fair. I had 24.04 installed because I needed a Linux de for something, and it eventually became the base of my Plex install for awhile.
I purposely did very little to it, besides periodically update it.
Almost immediately I had display issues where the monitor would shimmy back and forth about 10 pixels, rapidly. No rhyme or reason. I figured it was a Wayland thing.
Then the updater started hanging. That’s when I started learning proxmox to properly replace the whole setup.
By the time I got it moved over, you couldn’t restart the machine unattended, because it would kernel panic unless you used grub to revert to an older kernel.
I swear I didn’t tinker with this thing, it just… Died.
Of course that’s just my experience 🤷♂️ Glad things have been solid for you. I still recommend poking at atomic distros, I think they’re the future for a lot of less experienced users. It’ll be good to have knowledge of how they work.
I’ve got my very non-techy buddy running it right now. There are a couple of issues with flatpaks not having extended permissions, but otherwise, smooth sailing.
Upstream or Mint. Meaning Fedora or Mint, since you ruled out Debian and Arch.
Devuan if you want something solid and boring. Gentoo if you feel adventures and want something that’s fun and solid!
PikaOS has been decent.
Debian with newer packages and CachyOS-style optimisations baked in.
Personally, I can’t stand using anything but GNOME on a laptop (the touchpad experience on GNOME is much better than KDE), so my personal recommend would have to be something like Fedora Workstation. I find the ~6 month version release cycle very nice, it’s a good balance between rolling and stable.
AntiX is fun
CachyOS is pretty popular right now :)
Okay. Window manager or other software preference?
I haven’t tried anything other than KDE plasma, but Niri looked interesting. CachyOS has Limine as a boot manager option, and I liked it
The distro has a lot of desktop environment options in general
Okay
I bought an old laptop to install libreboot on and I’ve been messing with Gentoo. I see the appeal now that I’ve tried it. It took me a couple days to compile librewolf but assuming your laptop isnt from 2013 I imagine things would build a lot faster for you
Well… alright, added it on the wiki. So far I’ve heard Gentoo, or Fedora w/ Gnome
Not a recommendation but this is currently a Linux Mint Debian Edition household for the most part. Just never had a reason to swap yet, I’m sure there will be. Careful with the wifi cards look up your specific model. As long as it has an ethernet cable you shouldn’t have to worry tho
I’m in the same boat, but I’m starting to look around again. I’m curious about Wayland, so I started looking at Debian KDE last night, but I get hung up on choosing between stable, testing or unstable. Also the download page wasn’t working for me.
Do you want to actually have a rock solid (albeit, boring) computing experience? Mint or Debian (I know you said no Debian but everyone always come back to the big D eventually)
Do you want a neat flavor-of-the month distro that you’ll tinker with for a while and ultimately move on from? Void is pretty cool
Honorable mention: NixOS. It’s different but when it clicks for people, they never use anything else
We, yes we, all go back to the big D eventually…
Eventually they end up with Debian.
MX Linux
Someone else asked for it as well. Been curious about it since trying AntiX
All of them. Put home in a separate partition and just rename /home/kiol to /home/kiol2 before installing the next one and be careful not to format that partition. Also keep a space separated text list of all of your needed programs to paste into whatever package manager command in a file somewhere in your home dir. Go into distrowatch and try the most niche ones nobody has ever heard about too. Become THE distro hopper.
I have a Lenovo Flex 2 15, which has an i3, 1080p display with intel graphics (although it’s a 15" display) and upgraded to 16 GB of RAM
I use AntiX/MX Linux bc they’re made with lower spec/older systems in mind. I started with AntiX-core to keep everything as lightweight (not a ton of background processes = low memory usage, low cpu usage) as possible
I use Sway bc 1. It’s more lightweight than a full DE, and 2. Keyboard navigation is a must for laptops (trackpads only exist to inflict pain and misery on the world)
A couple great things about this setup is that it rarely overheats (as long as I keep it to a couple tasks at a time), and the battery can last for a 2 hours if I forget to plug it in
Even if you don’t end up going with any of these suggestions, please take this to heart: never stop tweaking your system. You end up learning so much about it, and every little change makes it feel all that much more special to you
Added to the list. I’ve been considering mxlinux, but went with lubuntu’s lxqt for experimenting recently. I make a podcast called Linux Prepper, where I’ve been exploring such setups.
