Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.

My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.

  • enemenemu@lemm.ee
    71·
    5 days ago

    I used the big ones, ubuntu, arch, opensuse and (atomic) fedora. Fedora had the nicest out of box experience. Morover, I moved to podman, systemd, selinux, etc. And the atomic version showed me a new workflow with flatpak and distrobox (nowadays, I use nix oftentimes).

    The best part about it is that I do not care about the system anymore. I do not even interact with it. I don’t install packages (besides the base layer and minimal modifications that are long lasting like installing openssl for GNOME iirc)

    I use mainly flatpaks, if I need aur, I fire up distrobox, or use nix if I want to. And the best part is, I’d have the exact same workflow even without the atomic version. Even on another distro. I do not interact with it much.

    Moreover, I am happy with all the choices fedora made with the base package and images. I do not have to do an informed choice like on arch. It just updates whenever I boot my pc. I do not need to read updates, they are just there, somewhere. I do not need to disable snaps or work around weird choices. I just start firefox, vscodium, a terminal and do whatever I want to do.

    Edit: I actually wanted to switch back to opensuse just to support it but I guess I’d rather move to nix some day. Maybe with niri and cosmic.