this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
85 points (85.1% liked)

linuxmemes

29113 readers
2241 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
  • Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
  • Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
    • 5. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Language/язык/Sprache
  • This is primarily an English-speaking community. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
  • Comments written in other languages are allowed.
  • The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
  • Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
    • 6. (NEW!) Regarding public figuresWe all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations.
  • Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
  • We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
  • Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed.
    • Β 

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.

    founded 2 years ago
    MODERATORS
    poopsmith@lemmy.world
    zephyr@lemmy.world
    rtxn@lemmy.world
    85
    My Linux distro tierlist (pawb.social)
    submitted 21 hours ago by callyral@pawb.social to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
    67 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     

    I labeled some of the lesser known logos. The criteria are arbitrary and I made this based on how much I liked using it.

    Note that Fedora Sway Atomic isn't bad, but I had a bad experience because I was trying to install NIri on it and it clearly wasn't meant for that. Basically, it's just not for me.

    I wanted to rank Manjaro low because I heard bad things about it, but I think I used it for like a few minutes because I wanted to try Gnome, and I didn't like Gnome after trying it and didn't want to deal with uninstalling all the Gnome stuff manually, so I just hopped to another distro.

    top 50 comments
    sorted by: hot top controversial new old
    [–] jim3692@discuss.online 14 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

    [–] Morph9@lemmy.zip 8 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

    In all honesty i don't get it the E for endravourOS on my old ass laptop everything works just fine, even the nvidia card.

    [–] synapse1278@lemmy.world 10 points 9 hours ago

    I was getting really mad, the I realized what you did there.

    load more comments (1 replies)
    [–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

    Here is mine:

    Mint

    Haven't really tried anything else or it was 10+ years ago.

    [–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

    Haha! You beat me to it! Great ranking. I 100% agree with where you've places each/it.

    [–] juipeltje@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

    Void and NixOS in S tier is based, my two favorite distros. Because of me using void though i kinda miss using Runit when i want to use a declaritive system like nix. I'm working on a gnu guix config in a vm now to see if i can use that as an alternative instead. It's not runit per se, but who knows, maybe i'll still like shepherd better than systemd.

    [–] lefixxx@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

    If you can handle nix why bother with other distros

    [–] callyral@pawb.social 1 points 48 minutes ago* (last edited 36 minutes ago) (1 children)

    I can handle it but I wanted a more traditional package manager so I could search the repos from the command line without relying on external tools, so I went back to Void Linux after a year and a half of using NixOS. Also, I tried a lot of those before even knowing about NixOS.

    [–] lefixxx@lemmy.world 1 points 21 minutes ago* (last edited 21 minutes ago) (1 children)

    you mean like nix shell -p tldr ?

    [–] callyral@pawb.social 1 points 16 minutes ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago)

    I mean like apt search or pacman -Ss

    NixOS also doesn't show what packages were updated after an update, and doesn't show which version they changed to, which is slightly annoying.

    [–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 20 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

    I use fedora workstation but it’s so boring because it just does what I need and I never have any problems πŸ₯²

    I might give Debian a spin at some point

    [–] sunstoned@lemmus.org 2 points 13 hours ago

    Debian + nix home-manager is hard to beat. Confining my bleeding edge software to be rootlesson top of a bulletproof distro is very much the same -- boring (in the best way). Plus the latest apt in debian 13 just feels nicer than dnf to me somehow.

    [–] mal3oon@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

    Why is debian S tier, and Arch A tier? They both use systemd. For me I would switch Artix and Arch tbh. I had lots of issues with the artix repo because of hidden systemd dependencies. Void, probably was the smoothest experience I ever had. Shout out to Luke Smith back in the days who had great rice for void.

    [–] callyral@pawb.social 1 points 42 minutes ago

    The answer is simple: when I used Debian, I was just starting out with Linux and didn't mess with systemctl at all. It was an ok beginner experience (I'd already used Mint before trying Debian, so I was at more of an intermediate level) but I probably wouldn't like it as much nowadays.

    I like the idea of using different software for different things, why do systemd timers exist when there's already crontab, for example?

    Meanwhile, I mostly used Arch on my server where I had to deal with all the systemd stuff, which was rarely useful for my purposes.

    [–] olenkoVD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago

    Void, Debian and Artix being in S tier is just based.

    [–] Lazer365@feddit.nl 2 points 10 hours ago

    Nobara is the way!

    [–] ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

    I enjoy linux mint a lot

    [–] drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 15 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

    I've been recommending it as the beginner's distro for years. Default DE is very windows familiar, install is easy, out of box experience is great, built on Debian so it's stable as fuck. There's nothing really wrong with it unless you need newer drivers or something

    [–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

    Only Linux Mint Debian Edition is built on Debian. Linux Mint (main) is built on Ubuntu.

    [–] drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

    Ubuntu is a Debian distro too. Either way mint is a Debian distro.

    [–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

    There's the Linux Mint main distro build off Ubuntu and a separate Linux Mint Debian distro build directly from Deb.

    Specificity is useful, especially in the context that you said "Mint is built on Debian so it's stable as fuck" - well actually, not directly. It's built on Ubuntu, which a lot of people complain has a more bloat and thus less stability than Debian.

    Personally I've not had issues with any of the three, they're all good, but there are differences. Mint includes a number of packages that Debian does not (PPAs, Snap, Wayland infegration), because it's inherited them all from Ubuntu. Mint is 64-bit whereas Debian supports 32/64 and other architectures, because again.. Mint (standard) is based on Ubuntu, which is 64-bit only.

    [–] Sivecano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

    Artix is so buggy tho

    [–] hellfire103@lemmy.ca 31 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (10 children)

    Here's mine:

    • Note 1: This tierlist only includes distros I've tried.
    • Note 2: Slackware would rank higher now; I made this about month ago.
    • Note 3: The "noob" tier doesn't mean the distro is bad. If it weren't there, Mint would rank higher.
    [–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago

    Gentoo is good only if you got a powerful computer.

    [–] mal3oon@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

    The only list I get behind. It is missing NixOS for S tier, but otherwise very logical.

    [–] msage@programming.dev 1 points 10 hours ago

    Gentoo in the top tier, checks out

    [–] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 8 points 17 hours ago

    CachyOS in S, based.

    [–] albbi@piefed.ca 4 points 15 hours ago

    Damn, you've tried a lot of different distros. I've been using Linux for 15 years but only been on like 8 different ones. Installed personally about 5.

    [–] exu@feditown.com 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

    Why try so many distros? It's not like most of them are gonna be substantially different.

    [–] juipeltje@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago

    You never know, the grass might be greener elsewhere. I will say though, to me that only applies to independent distros. At this point i only bother trying distros that are actually different at their core. Arch- or debian-based distros are all kind of the same to me.

    load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] porkloin@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

    If you want Fedora atomic Niri, use https://github.com/zirconium-dev/zirconium

    [–] nil@piefed.ca 4 points 13 hours ago

    I switched from Arch to Fedora recently and so far I like it. Faster than any distro I've ever run on this laptop.

    [–] _NetNomad@fedia.io 22 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

    no hannah montana linux??

    [–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 3 points 10 hours ago

    So high it wouldn’t fit on your screen

    β€œHigh” in every sense

    [–] laurelraven@lemmy.zip 9 points 14 hours ago

    That's at least two tiers above S, obviously

    [–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago

    Void for low power desktop/laptop

    Fedora for regular desktop/laptop

    Ubuntu server for servers

    [–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago

    Hot take

    [–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

    I wish I was competent enough to install and maintain void πŸ₯²

    Maybe someday

    [–] Lembot_0006@programming.dev 9 points 20 hours ago (9 children)

    Why did you try so many different distros? For me it was RedHat first, then I switched to Debian(because "no corporations" sentiment, technically RH was ok) somewhere 20 years ago and use it since then.

    [–] twinnie@feddit.uk 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

    I thought this was pretty normal for Linux nerds. I’ve tried loads but I keep coming back to openSUSE.

    load more comments (1 replies)
    [–] rtxn@lemmy.world 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

    Why do hikers travel to different mountains to conquer?

    [–] Lembot_0006@programming.dev 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

    Because hiking is the goal for hikers, changing scenery is just to make things less tedious.

    What's the reason for changing distros? (Except of course for the distros that offer completely different approach like switching Debian-Gentoo-LFS might be of some interest)

    [–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

    I think for some its fun, and they get to see different ways things can be set up

    [–] callyral@pawb.social 5 points 20 hours ago

    I was curious

    load more comments (6 replies)
    [–] librekitty@lemmy.today 8 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

    artix mentioned!!!

    as an artix/gentoo user, where would you place gentoo?

    load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] GutterRat42@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

    What about LMDE?

    load more comments
    view more: next β€Ί