Hey ~~fellas~~ friends. Sorry to create yet another post on this topic (maybe we should have a sticky for this?).
About 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to move on from Windows and installed Manjaro. I would consider myself a newbie-intermediate level linux user.
Though I've used Windows most my life, we use Linux servers (no GUI) at work, managing them is part of job description. I also own a late 2011 Macbook Pro with vanilla Arch Linux. I barely ever use it but boy, Arch really brought it back to life!
I've been reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive to use but the community has made me aware that Manjaro is maybe a questionable choice. Since I don´t plan on distro-hopping a lot I want to get it right sooner rather than later.
Here's what I'm looking for:
- Rolling distribution, preferably. Though this machine is also used for work, our environment depends mostly on remote servers anyway. I'd rather have a distribution that provides the most recent packages for whatever I want
- I don´t mind running a distribution that forces me learn new things or do things in a different way, I kinda embrace it. I just don´t enjoy complexity for complexity's sake.
- KDE is my preferred Desktop Environment so far, though I guess that's not very relevant. I'd love to run Hyprland, but you know.. Nvidia :(
- I play games on Steam but from my understanding this doesn´t matter either. Everything I tried worked great, I don´t think I want a ¨gaming focused" distro or anything like that
- No Ubuntu, please.
My hardware, in case you feel is relevant!
OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
Kernel: 6.5.5-1-MANJARO
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440
WM: KWin
Terminal: konsole
Terminal Font: MesloLGS NF 10
CPU: 12th Gen Intel i7-12700K (20) @ 4.900GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate
Memory: 23313MiB / 64087MiB
This rolling release thing was just a terrible time in my Linux life. It's like you are scared of the "you have to start from the ground, erase everything, thing if you want to install win7 or winXP" but the price for a rolling release is a hell of updates every day.
I am done with this annoying updates. Debian has both world's, the stable side just updates if your security is at risk and the unstable branch is near the same like a rolling release and what Debian calls "unstable" is more stable than any arch-based distro. Btw a change between stable and unstable can be done at every time after install.
I personally prefer fedora because its as stable as Debian but has mostly actual packages like rolling releases. And would be my advice for op. BTW. Try out kinoite. Undestroyable Linux is the hot shit actually.
https://fedoraproject.org/kinoite/
And don't be scared about not rolling release, a version change is just a big update. Nothing got destroyed like in the good old windows time.
Immutable distributions and/or NixOS is definitely something I have considered. Mostly as a learning experience, maybe NixOS is something that could be really useful for work. As an everyday desktop experience, I'm not sure it's the right fit... Maybe I'll replace the Arch Linux on my Macbook Pro. I barely use it anyway, something not rolling definitely makes a lot more sense.
I like using NixOS on my desktop, and it does have a rolling release channel, but it can be pretty complicated to learn. Messing around on the Macbook would be a good way to learn and try it out, and then copying your config to your pc would be easy.