this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
40 points (80.3% liked)

Linux

10822 readers
651 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)

Also, check out:

Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Original question by @POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 2 days ago

BedrockLinux is the best because it has the features of any and all of the other distributions listed here. ;)

[–] crankyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 5 months ago

I use Arch, btw, but I don't consider it the best (yes I do.) I could easily transition to Fedora, for example (I would never do that,) and be completely happy (I would rather continually hit my head with the metal stapler gun on my desk.)

[–] traches@sh.itjust.works 24 points 5 months ago

Does what I want and gets out of my way.

[–] uss_entrepreneur@startrek.website 22 points 5 months ago (3 children)
[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 day ago

What made Hannah Montana Linux so good (as a joke, and as a distro), was that it was actually good. XD Good fun. Good stuff. :D

[–] DivineDev@piefed.social 10 points 5 months ago

No further arguments needed.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] UNY0N@linux.community 19 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Bazzite just works, it runs every game I have with zero fuss, it's easy to run Windows programs / emulators / local LLMs, AND it's basically unbreakable.

[–] statler_waldorf@sopuli.xyz 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I can't claim it's the best, but it's the best for me right now.

[–] anzo@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

On a gaming laptop I'm using Aurora because KDE Plasma btw (:

[–] OnfireNFS@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bazzite has a KDE version too. I think it is more popular then the GNOME version of bazzite actually. At least according to the results of the latest steam survey

[–] PolarKraken@programming.dev 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yep I use KDE-flavored Bazzite and actually forgot GNOME was even offered! It works deliciously. Came over from Windows last winter finally and boy, the UI alone is just so much nicer.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I had avoided KDE for years due to some multi-screen resolution issues back in the day.

I'd be running gnome, and install a half dozen plugins to make it look and feel closer to Windows It was just a personal preference. Every other update some plugin I was using would be broken. I'd replace it with another plug-in or uninstall it and wait for a fix. Fight fight fight fight fight fight. Some number of years later I tried KDE again, and I realized that it did exactly what I was trying to do in Gnome but it did it out of the box.

I don't have anything against Gnome. The same way I don't have anything against OS X's "window manager" or even Windows 11's "window manager" they're just not my preference.

Bottom left navigation, thin, stacked app indicators, bottom right tray. Fractional scaling, widgets.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mint is Ubuntu minus everything that makes Ubuntu annoying. That's why I like it.

I considered to go back to Debian but... eh, I'm too old and impatient for that. Nowadays I mostly want things that work out of the box.

[–] DesolateMood@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do things not work out of the box on debian?

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

From what I remember*, there was always some rough corner. Such as the wi-fi, or the graphics card. Sure, Stable was rock solid, but you always needed something from Testing; and Testing in general was overall less stable than Ubuntu or Mint.

*This was years ago, so it might be inaccurate as of 2025.

[–] reseller_pledge609@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Linux Mint has a Debian Edition (LMDE) if you ever wanted a Debian that Just Works.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I did use the first LMDE for some time, and I loved it, it's a great distro. I don't recall why I went for the Ubuntu-based Mint later on, I think it was the PPAs?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It isn't, it is the least bad

[–] reseller_pledge609@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Which technically makes it the best, doesn't it?

[–] fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No because best implies it's good. Least bad doesn't transmit the same message as best.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

NixOS. My entire config is source-controlled and I can easily roll back to a previous boot image if something breaks like cough Nvidia drivers. I also use it for my home router and all self-hosted services.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

maniacally laughs while trying to avoid eye contact with 19k lines of nix config

[–] dwt@feddit.org 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Out of all the ways that I have tried in the past, to reproduce not just the initial state, but also the ongoing changes of a disto (ansible, saltstack, chef, bunch of Shell scripts) — nix is by far the shortest. With all of these technologies I would never have dreamed to do this for a single Maschine. But now it’s not only possible, but actually gasp enjoyable!

Mind you, if that is not the problem you want to solve, maybe install just the nix package manager in addition to your distribution, and learn to enjoy it without having to run your whole distribution this way.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 3 points 5 months ago

You misunderstand! It has also turned into basically a hobby (and recently, a job, lol) to manage nix configs.

Those 19k lines are clean, well-structured and DRY, and do describe every little thing about ca. 30 machines.

[–] leraje@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 5 months ago

I don't know that it is objectively the best - but its the best fit for me right now (LMDE).

[–] dhampirdamsel@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago

I've been enjoying EndeavourOS over the past three years. It works wonderfully out of the box at default settings, and was really easy for me to use and set up to my liking with minimal know-how needed.

It also works really well on the variety of machines I have in my home. My desktop, modded Chromebook, and my husband's laptop.

It's allowed me to get more familiar and confident with the command line, and enough so that I've switched to Sway from XFCE (and previously KDE).

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 8 points 5 months ago

I'm convinced it isn't.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago

Mine's the best, because it fits with what I want. Might not be your best, but it's mine.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

This week alone I've used Arch, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, and Fedora. Its Arch. By a short way, and mostly thanks to the wiki. Tbh they are all converging, and I go with KDE variants when I use a GUI and no distro does too much to customise it

[–] HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 months ago

Because it was my first distro that got me away from Windows. And yes, it's Mint.

[–] randomwords@midwest.social 5 points 5 months ago

Void made Linux fun again for me. It gets so much right with the rolling release model.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 5 points 5 months ago

It works, has the packages I need and they are up-to-date

[–] Beanie@programming.dev 5 points 5 months ago

Because I like compiling everything from source for a 0.2% speed improvement

[–] poinck@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

For a long time I considered Gentoo the best, because I know my things around there. A month ago I said goodbye to my last Gentoo installation in favour for Debian trixie (the next stable release). Gentoo was too time consuming despite the binary repo.

If it would be my job to maintain a Gentoo system I would gladly accept, but there should be a need for it by the users. Otherwise I would just recommend Debian stable or Fedora.

My favourite is Debian over Fedora, because I often don't need the latest versions of a software. And there is flatpak.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Tried CalculateLinux or any of the other Gentoo respins?

Toorox was the best Gentoo respin. Nothing more than a pure straight gentoo respin. Sabayon was superb before they started to try too hard. Redcore started to try too hard too. Calculate did a little bit of try-hard, but managed to retain enough modest sanity to remain good (at least, still true of the last few times I saw it). Even Funtoo started to go a little wonky.

But if you ever start to think Gentoo's too easy and not taking up enough of your time, you can always go the other way, and jump ship to Exherbo.

[–] poinck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have seen at least one person moving from Gentoo to Exherbo. Would I leave Debian behind for it? No, not currently, but maybe there is time for an experiment in the future.

I've tried Sabayon briefly, but not seriously. At the time, it was interesting to have more pre-built binaries. Looking back now, the Gentoo binrepos are the better solution, I think.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh, and also...

Would I leave Debian behind for it?

No need to leave. There's BedrockLinux, or just distrobox.

~ for the latter of which I was shown this article (titled "I stopped distro-hopping because this tool lets me run everything at once") earlier today on libera.chat from someone who know's Bedrock's been my daily driver for over a decade, with Bedrock being how I ended my distro-hopping, and DistroBox being another way to end distro-hopping. ~ We're now ((at least) two ways) past the days of having to pick just one distro. ;D

[–] poinck@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

I should generally make more use of things lile podman and systemd-nspawn. Thx!

I guess running Bedrock Linux inside podman wouldn't work, I guess. Not sure how well nesting works with containers.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 20 hours ago

Hrmm. While I've never bothered with containers, I don't see why bedrock wouldn't work in a container. Could be easy to test... set up a container with whichever distro, and try run the BedrockLinux hijack installer script on it... Don't blame me if somehow it escapes the containment and eats your whole system ... (~ I don't see why/how it would ~ should be safe ~ but like I say, I don't have experience with containers.)

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 day ago

I've tried Exherbo more times than I can count, but never managed to make it my daily driver. It really needs that kind of commitment to make the best of it. With Exherbo, you've really got to go from 0 to >9000, with nothing between, becoming a developer of it straight away.

And yeah, +1 Gentoo+binhost. Though I do miss the USE="-*" approach to gentoo (like I did in 2011(ish)), adding things only as needed, per package. Great education. And keeps the system very tight to just meet needs, and no more.

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today 4 points 5 months ago

It's extremely stable, and countless other distros are derived from this.

[–] Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

Because I can hit "next" a couple of time and have a working install

[–] Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 months ago

openSUSE Slowroll and Secureblue are my favorites ATM. Slowroll for gaming, Secureblue for mobile device. Both are hardened for security because that matters to me.

[–] axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I use NixOS, btw (don't you see that glorious gif?). It's the only distro that is actually different compared to other distros. It's not just another package manager, another ubuntu skin, or a different desktop environment. If you learn how to configure it, you can easily redo breaking changes or install an exact copy of your system on a different device. You can configure all you want and you will never ever have to worry.

Also has better flex than Arch users.

cons

  • burj khalifa learning curve
  • arch documentation * -1 doc quality (dogshit documentation)
  • doesnt work outta the box
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] jakeCubes@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago

Can't say it's the best, but I love Alpine. It's light, fast, versatile and easy to use, runs on anything, and despite it being used mostly in containers and VMs, it makes for a great desktop distro aswell. :)

load more comments
view more: next ›