Original question by @POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com
I get to say “I use arch btw” :P
How’s that working out for you? :)
It works well enough for now. Some things were surprisingly simpler than I expected them to be (e.g. gaming thanks to Heroic Launcher and Steam).
Note for the Linux-curious potentially reading this: I had sufficient experience with Linux Mint and Ubuntu as well as test runs of Arch before committing to it. DO NOT SWITCH DIRECTLY TO ARCH LINUX FROM WINDOWS. Try Mint first (or Bazzite, I hear that one is great for gaming but have yet to try it myself), and preferably using VirtualBox before committing to a switch.
It works well enough for now. Some things were surprisingly simpler than I expected them to be (e.g. gaming thanks to Heroic Launcher and Steam).
I was thinking more with regards to the multiple recent AUR malware attacks. I hope you’re staying safe, staying on top of the situation, not letting Arch bite you.
Note for the Linux-curious potentially reading this: I had sufficient experience with Linux Mint and Ubuntu as well as test runs of Arch before committing to it. DO NOT SWITCH DIRECTLY TO ARCH LINUX FROM WINDOWS. Try Mint first (or Bazzite, I hear that one is great for gaming but have yet to try it myself), and preferably using VirtualBox before committing to a switch.
Note for the linux-curious potentially reading this: You’re Linux curious, that means you have what it takes to try any distribution of Linux. Curiosity. YOU CAN SWITCH DIRECTLY TO ARCH LINUX FROM WINDOWS. It’s rare, but it does happen. Some now famous linux youtubers did just that. It will take a bit more reading to be able to get up and running, but you’ll be running all the more fast and sure-footed from the education the experience gave you.
;)
Oh heck, Arch isn’t even that hard and involved to install any more. Go for Gentoo. :) Come, windows refugees, all! Skip the Ubuntus, Mints, Suses, Fedoras, PopOSes, AntiXes, Zorins, elementaryOSes, LinuxLites, PCLinuxOSes, Soluses and whatever windows refugees flock to these days, and shoot for the moon! Heck, even try LFS! (Okay, don’t. I’ve gone too far now. LOL).
I make a backup of my project on an external hard drive twice-ish a week and pacman-Syu twice-ish a month. If anything serious happens, I’ll just reinstall and restore.
I could keep an up-to-date install USB ready, tho - but I have enough other options at the moment.
Thanks for the concern.
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.
maniacally laughs while trying to avoid eye contact with 19k lines of nix config
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.
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.
You mean my distros?
Different distros are the best for different purposes.
My Fedora is the best for my laptop because it just works and all the hardware is supported.
My Arch is the best because it’s a super fine tuned setup that prevents distractions and doesn’t waste memory or CPU doing things I don’t care about.
My mint is the best because it’s simple, stable, beautiful out of the box.
My debian is the best because servers are no nonsense.
My puppy Linux was the best when I was a developer for the distro because it was the smallest lightest and fastest distro I’ve ever used.
Etc.
It works, has the packages I need and they are up-to-date
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
It’s super cool to be able to copy a single or maybe two configuration files from one box to another, sync thing your home folder and have an exact copy.
It’s super cool to temporarily install things with nix-shell. I have little environments set up where I write python or rust or edit videos and if I’m not in that environment none of those commands even exist.
Updating in vanilla is pretty straightforward. Update your base channel, rebuild. But if you install say home manager as a flake that doesn’t update the same way. And then if you do it as an environmental install it doesn’t update the same way. And then it’s totally possible to do an update get a new version of your web browser, But your auto starts or your PWA’s point to the old version of the web browser. My personal favorite is when I update signal. It upgrades the database. Field binary is no longer capable of running but is still the default for some reason. I have to look up the command expunge it from the store, simply finding it in the store isn’t trivial.
Most distros have gotten easy to the point of being boring. We don’t suffer that fate in Nix.
CachyOS, cause its Minimal and “Fast”(maybe) ik i can try out normal Arch but I dont wanna rebuild my system everytime I mess something up + Arch based distro its better then Arch Install(in my opinion)
Me linux distro is not the best. “The best” varies from person to person and also in accord to different positions in time.
Yup. To me, IRIX was the best, until I found GNU+Linux in late 2003 and becoming a windows refugee, not to IRIX, but to, not just GNU+Linux, but all freedom respecting operating systems and their distributions, and the potential of what they could become, as I and many others attempt to learn them, and help contribute to them. Many more itches to scratch yet. The best is yet to come, for each and all. :) Or so the philosophy inspires and aspires.
[PS… Oh I so would love a FOSS IRIX… a free software [“open source”] multi-arch IRIX revival though… beyond just NekoWare and whatever else is scattered around.]
[PPS, oh, and varies computer to computer too… I don’t use the same distro everywhere. Sometimes even several distros on the same computer. Quite right to point out the folly of the notion of there being a one-true-way “best”.]
https://uwuntuos.site/ obvi?
But seriously though, Arch all the way, because it teaches me about Linux and computers, because I can customize all the packages at OS install (without the need for lengthy compiling like Gentoo) and because my Steam games work flawlessly on it.
FYI, Gentoo has official binhost now, so emerge does not have to compile the package for you any more. But you still can, if you want. Like if you want to choose different useflags, use saved configs, apply patches, etc.
Because I can hit “next” a couple of time and have a working install
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Debian (stable)
Stable, secure, it just works, has one of the, if not THE largest software package repo of all Linux distros, has lots of third party support for proprietary software and drivers that are available as .deb files or through official PPAs. It also is not backed by any corporation, but is a community developed distro. You can install it on pretty much everything.
The only downside I would say is their shift into using Systemd. They shouldn’t have done that. It was forced through undemocratically and I think that was a big mistake, even though they are trying to limit software dependencies to it. There’s a fork called Devuan that I’ve been considering where you can pick your init system. (SysVinit/runit, etc) I honestly miss SysVinit. It was simple, easy to understand and easy to maintain.
CachyOS with NiriWM. Cachy is Arch with none of the install drama. The performance tuning makes it blazing fast on older hardware. Installs with no bloat.
Niri is superior to Hyprland in my opinion because it’s a scrolling tiling WM that is super intuitive and fast.
For server workloads, however, not much beats pure Debian. It’s stable, well supported, and has a huge package library.
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. :)
Really? I guess everyone was 15 at some point and hadn’t heard that distro wars are useless 🤣
There is no best. Period.
There is no best. Period.
But there are bad ones. For example Ubuntu and derivatives broke Flatpak support in 25.10. This was known ahead of release but because only Snap matters, the fix will only roll out after release.
So, it’s the worst for you and still the best for others, right?
Arch is the worst because… And the best because…
Same with every other.
In fact I’d argue that every single distro is the best for at least one person.
