I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't consider different Linux distros to be different OSes. I was expecting to read people trying out Haiku, ReactOS, Solaris, any of the *BSDs, or something I've never heard of.
If you want something obscure barely anyone heard about try eComStation. Unfortunately you'll have to pirate it, but its really easy to find.
If you're not the pirating type, you can buy a license for ArcaOS to get something still supported.
It's a bit pricey though.
Wow, I am definitely getting old if OS/2 is “obscure”
Good point. I should have worded my question differently.
I mean even Solaris and the BSDs are just different flavors of Unix
... and Linux is not Unix. BSD and Solaris are, in my opinion, much better than any Linux. The problem is that BSD suffers from hardware incompatibility, and there are very few application programs for the current Solaris.
You are not the only one. Haiku is getting close to daily driver capability.
You cannot practically use it on real hardware yet but one to watch is SaerenityOS.
It is unfinished enough to be a pipe dream but RavynOS is cool.
I am not sure there is anything outside the POSIX space that is really usable as a desktop on current hardware.
I remember how much I loved using Solaris in the 1990s in the computer lab at college. People still use Solaris? I never saw something as elegant and intuitive as Solaris in those old days.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because i really like that its rolling release, new software and stable. Im using it as a main distro now. It has everything i need.
OpenSUSE is one of the distros that I have never tried. If Alpine ever fails me, I think I'll give it a try.
I distro hopped a lot and i always had a reason to switch. With OpenSUSE i still didnt find a reason.
I'm usually an Arch person (btw) but I've been playing around with NixOS in a VM and I'm tempted to try daily driving it...
I was tempted to give NixOS a try as well. It seems to be highly recommended on the fediverse.
I finally got fed up with Windows 11 when an update broke itself during an update. Apparently it was a pretty widespread issue. Defender got disabled because the update renamed several files.
I moved to PopOS and have been happy ever since. I couldn't believe that almost everything on my Lenovo Flex 5 just worked, including the touchscreen, pen, and 360 degree hinge. The only thing that doesn't work is the finger print sensor apparently due to lack of available drivers.
I really like how modern PopOS feels.
opensuse kalpa - the KDE version of its immutable desktop. Pretty neat combination of rolling core and applications separated out primarily into flatpak and other containers.
I've been using Pop_OS! for most of the year, but recently switched to kUbuntu to try out the latest KDE beta with tiling managers, among other reasons.
I'm thinking of trying out Blend OS for my next hop!
GrapheneOS and Arch Linux. Both amazing. I'm staying indefinitely.
I gotta get into Arch someday. How's your experience so far? Easy to use? (I'm sure it is, the wiki is very detailed) Glad to see you like GOS
PopOS. Pretty satisfied.
I'm not particularly militant about Linux distros, but Alpine is one distro I disapprove of in particular. The reason is that it isn't GNU/Linux -- it strips out (copyleft) GNU libc and coreutils and replaces them with permissively-licensed alternatives. I think that (whether intentional or not) it caters too much to corporate interests that exploit "open source" without truly respecting the users' freedom, and therefore its popularity is potentially harmful to the Free Software movement in the long run.
Linux Mint Cinnamon. It's been good, no complaints. Very helpful for easing into Linux by having a GUI, and I've been learning CLI and bash scripting.
I'm running Linux Mint Debian Edition after years of being biased against Mint for their early security missteps. I'm not in love with the cinnamon desktop but it is very definitively acceptable
I have been using Debian for the last 20 years or so. I also had a brief encounter with Gentoo which was a big help to dive into compiling, specially kernels adjusted to low performant and old hardware. I have been using Debian for my servers (web mostly) but discovered FreeBSD and jails for myself this year. It didn't take long to convet my primary webserver to FreeBSD. Until now, no complains. I have an easy way to isolate websites and services in their own jail allowing users to access theirs without conpromising host security.
I played with plan 9. It was pretty neat, and was able to setup a remote drawterm session.
Windows 11. Once you remove the ads and restore the old Taskbar/Start Menu, It's a decent modern OS. AutoHDR is so good. I never have to worry about toggling it on/off, nor calibrating it for each and every game. Just set it once and forget it.
If you care about HDR, then there's no better OS ATM.
I tried PopOS finally after many glowing reviews... and it was beautiful, snappy and had lots of unique features. But while it was very friendly, I had trouble finding my way around. I think still aimed at linux users who are a little more knowledgable. (Not me.)
Ultimately I am too basic and went back to Mint.
Interesting. I haven't used Pop, but I had always been under the impression that it was meant to be as easy as Mint.
Oh I think it is! You should definitely give it a try, I think it's just me. I tend to do pretty poorly with OS that aren't extremely windows-like.
I have hopped around using VMs in the past, however this year my HDD was dying (bad sectors after about 8-ish years of use), so got an SSD and decided to install Linux instead of cloning my Windows 10 Pro.
I tried going on Debian 11 testing, but there was some issue with the installer displaying any text (as you can imagine this makes it almost impossible to install the OS...) So I hopped to Fedora for a bit -till it broke while I was trying to figure out how to run Windows games, and then to PopOS.
I'm wondering to go to Debian 12 Testing, but need to figure out how I want to partition my SSD otherwise I am currently having to keep erasing everything which of course means I am having to copy data after each new install. This will work till such time that my HDD is alive.
Any suggestions?
Debian 12 is stable now. Testing doesn’t really have a version, it is rolling. What is currently testing will eventually become 13.
Tried Windows 11. Ran back to Win 10 a few days later.
I’ve tried it before but this year I really committed to trying Mint as a daily driver. Was going well until I ran into a weird issue with wine and text to speech integrations in a game.
Ubuntu has been my daily driver for about ten years; but I've also had rendezvous with OpenSUSE, Linux Mint, RedHat, Arch, and Zorin. Nix has been on my mind, but I always come back to Ubuntu.
I started fiddling with NixOS and it quickly became my Docker host and my virtual desktop. I don't know if I'm going to put it on my physical desktop but the idea is tempting.
I don't know if NixOS is going to take off but it seems like something the enterprise IT world may adopt and I want to be on that train.
It was time for me to return to Linux, which I've been using on and off for two decades. This time I wanted to give Nobara a go, with its optimizations for gaming. But alas, the LiveUSB is unusable. The default options lead to a black screen (I guess when the kernel framebuffer kicks in), and the "troubleshooting" option gives me a desktop that crashes in a few minutes, when still setting up the options in the installer. I guess Wayland is too unstable.
So I returned to Gentoo and am now in the middle of installing that (again). Its LiveUSB system is stable and giving me no problem.
I did the exact opposite, and set up a virtual machine with Windows 3.1 yesterday.
Now if only I had my old apps…
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