I used to use Arch btw.
Now I am on Nix, I just love shell.nix files. I haven't spent much time on my configs yet, but once I finish them, they'll be super easy to set up again, thats cool.
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I used to use Arch btw.
Now I am on Nix, I just love shell.nix files. I haven't spent much time on my configs yet, but once I finish them, they'll be super easy to set up again, thats cool.
NixOS because it's the only usable stab at sustainable system configuration.
All that follows is my personal opinion, but for ease of writing, I'm gonna present it as facts.
Once you have grasped the advantage that Nix offers, all the fundamentally different solutions just seem s o inferior. When I first tried NixOS on a decommissioned notebook, the concept immediately made sense. Granted, I didn't understand the language features very well – I mostly used it for static configuration with most stuff just written verbatim in configuration.nix
, though I did use flakes very early on because of Lanzaboote. But just the fact that you had a central configuration in a single language that was able to cross-reference itself across different parts of the system absolutely blew me out of the water. I was a very happy and content Arch user, even proficient enough to run my own online repository that built from a clean chroot for AUR packages (if you use Arch with AUR packages on multiple systems, check out the awesome aurutils!), but after seeing the power of NixOS in action, I switched over all my machines as soon as I could - desktop, virtual servers (thanks nixos-anywhere!), main notebook and NAS.
People often praise the BSDs for their integrated approach – NixOS manages to bring that approach to Linux. Apart from GUIX System that I never tried because Secure Boot was a requirement when I last looked at other distributions, none of them have tackled the problem that NixOS solves, and it's not even certain if they actually understand it. Conceptually, it plays on a whole different level. No more unrecoverable systems, even with broken kernels – just boot the previous configuration. Want to try changes without any commitment? nixos-rebuild test
got you. Need an app quick? nix shell nixpkgs#app
it is.
Plus the ecosystem is just fantastic. The aforementioned nixos-anywhere
really helps with remote provisioning, using disko
to declaratively setup filesystems and mounts, you have devenv
which is a really good solution for development environments, both regarding reproducibility and features, and many more that I can't mention here. There is nothing comparable, and the possibilities are unlike in any other ecosystem.
It's not perfect for sure though, and documentation is sparse. The language concepts which allow one to "unlock" the most powerful features are different from what most people know.
I was lucky enough to have some downtime at work to get into the system a bit deeper (this was still for work though, just not my core skillset) by implementing a "framework" for our needs which forced me to not just copy and paste stuff, though I definitely did get inspired from other solutions, but to actually better understand the module system (I think?), thinking in attribute sets, writing your own actual modules, function library and so on. But in the end, it was definitely worth it, and I'm unaware of any other system that would allow what Nix and NixOS allowed me to build.
100%. Took me a good year to learn it well enough to be confident with what I was doing but I've now got it on everything with a single flake for all my hosts. I love that my user profile is configured the same everywhere. I can add a new tool or config or alias or whatever and it's the same on every computer.
I've now written a module to define all the services I self host and from that it generates both nginx config and DNS config on different hosts.
The main advantage for me though is I only have to solve problems once. Once it's there in the config I'm confident it's solved and I won't need to worry about it again. My previous server was 10 years old and there was stuff configured I'd long forgotten about how it worked or even why I did it.
I use Fedora simply because I got a Framework and the fingerprint reader didn’t work in (K)Ubuntu so I tried Fedora as a little test. It worked, so I just stuck with it - everything else worked as I wanted, and it gave me the opportunity to try a completely new distribution.
I use Bazzite so that it matches with my Steam Deck since SteamOS still isn't an actual distro to play with yet...
I use EndeavourOS Xfce because it's Arch with pacman and not Flathub or Snap. Plus, I love the simplicity and the performance boost you get with Xfce (even if it's a small boost with a modern gaming PC).
Bazzite for personal stuff because it looked neat and just worked after installation with a small learning curve. Due to interia I went with bluefin on the work computer for the same reasons
Arch.
Because of pacman. Building and writing packages is simple and dependencies are slim. Also packages are recent. And most likely "there is an AUR package for that". Also stack updates arrive early, like pipewire.
Also let's not forget Arch Wiki, i bet you have read it as a non Arch user.
I administer Arch on 8 machines including gaming rigs, home server, web server, kids laptop, wifes gaming desktop, audio workstation and machine learning rig. I also use ArchARM on RPi for some home automation.
Never considered switching since I switched from Ubuntu over 15 years ago.
I do have experience with several other rpm and apt based distros.
Fedora Kinoite. I like KDE, atomic distros and the fact that Fedora is the only (at least that I know of) distro that has proper SELinux implementation.
I also play games on this system, so having newer kernel and Mesa versions help.
2 flavors of Fedora with KDE on it:
Unfortunately, had to keep Windows on one other machine (fuck you KORG for not providing anything working on Linux), but that's limited to being a glorified music player now 😄
I'm currently using bazzite due to its really solid out of the box support for gaming hardware and peripherals.
I'm really surprised everyone uses arch. I have three theories as to why:
(This is mostly a joke jsyk I'm sure arch is a great distro)
I use Debian on my server and Arch on my gaming PC and laptop. Both distros offer minimal installs so I can just add the packages I need and avoid the ones I don't. Debian offers a nice stable base for running my services with minimal downtime and Arch has the most up to date packages for all the cutting edge features I want on desktop.
Fedora.
I've tried them all but found it's the most reliable. It's upgrades are even more reliable than Macos and Windows.
Packages are very up to date but also well tested. Sometimes even newer than Arch for short periods.
The community is awesome.
I love Gnome, I've found it's more consistent than even MacOs in its design. And it has perfect keyboard shortcuts.
MX Linux. It is Debian with setup and tools I really want but would be too lazy to prepare in one go. Love it as much as I love Debian.
Fedora because it's stable and effective.
Fedora Silverblue. It does what I need so I can get on with my life.
OMG I use cachyOS too, for the same reasons, plus I love how much I can tinker with it.
Yeah i kinda like it lets you install desktops that is in arch repos, well because its arch based.
NixOS for most things, Debian on some servers as a docker host
Interesting. I’ve using NixOS many years on servers but recently also started using it as a base for docker hosts. Before that I used Ubuntu or Debian for docker hosts, but I figured out I still like the declarative approach even for simple servers like docker hosts. There’s your basic security config, ssh keys and monitoring setup that I used to do imperatively, but I much rather have declaratively now, no matter how small. And enabling docker on NixOS is just a virtualisation.docker.enable = true;
anyway.
Linux sub, post with 40 comments under 1 hour
Is this the year...
Damn, not a single pop-os enjoyer here?!
I tried PopOS on my laptop but found it fucky so I tried Fedora KDE and it works. Too many steps Debian -> Ubuntu -> PopOS.
LMDE. It really does just work.
How does it fare compared with the standard Mint?
I've been considering try it but because of the focus on Cinamon I keep delaying it.
PCLinuxOS.
Stable and rolling for regular people OS.
Haven't used it in a few years, but if it is still like it was, I highly recommend it for regular users. Solid, good choice of packages (for regular people). Don't remember ever having any problems with PCLinuxOS.
(I switched away only because I'm not a "regular" user.)
Kubuntu, because when I got my Vega 56 GPU on release day (August 14, 2017), I had to download the proprietary driver straight from AMD to get it working, and Ubuntu was the only distro supported by both it and Steam at the time. (Otherwise, I would've picked Debian or Mint.)
I don't love Ubuntu (especially how they push Snap), but I can't be bothered with the hassle of reinstalling my OS.
Arch, pacman is why
mint cinnamon because on my system it has no major issues and everything is easy to configure. i don't have a lot of spare time so i can't spend hours or even days troubleshooting why something won't install or run. most other distros have been annoyingly buggy or too difficult to set up.