Hi all, Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives.
Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It’s a solid distro until it’s not. I’d go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I’m kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues.
It’s like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they’re always major. Most of the time I’d just reinstall, and I hate that. It’s so much work for me.
I set things the way I like them and then they’re ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that’s how much I don’t want to be fixing my system.
I’m tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back — and it’s probably silly to some of you— is the AUR. I love it.
It’s the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there.
So, what do y’all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup “distrobox” on it if I wanted the AUR.
I’ve never tried this “distrobox” thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games).
So, I don’t know what to do. I need y’all’s suggestions, please. I’ll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don’t care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it.
I’m planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don’t know. I currently can’t upgrade my system, as I wouldn’t be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in.
I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I’ll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.
One of ublue’s offerings are probably best. Immutability is great for resiliency and updates are easily rolled back if something were to go wrong. Bazzite is great for gaming, otherwise checkout Aurora and Bluefin.
I installed aurora and distrobox got me a bit confused, so it is now on the back burner until I read more about it.
Been using Linux almost 30 years, went from Redhat to everything else, and now I’m back on Redhat to stay. Fedora KDE for a nice, boring, up to date, and bulletproof OS.
Debian stable. It’s been here for 30 years, it’s the largest community OS, it’ll likely be here in 30 years (or until we destroy ourselves). Any derivative is subject to higher probability of additional issues, stoppage of development in the long run, etc.
If you’re extra lazy, Ubuntu LTS with Ubuntu Pro (free) enabled. You could use that for 10 years (or until Canonical cancels it) before you need to upgrade. Ubuntu is the least risky alternative for boring operation since it’s used in the enterprise and Canonical is profitable. The risk there is Canonical doing an IPO and Ubuntu going the way of tightening access like Red Hat did.
I’m in complete agreement with this post. Debian is pretty meticulous with their releases and Ubuntu LTS has a predictable release cadence if that’s more important than “when it’s ready”
Ubuntu? Never. I have had longer less problem free with Arch than Ubuntu. Last time I tried it for a project it was broken on install.
I am all for Debian, love it. But Ubuntu has been crappy since day one.
Interesting. We use it for work since 2016 (high hundreds of workstations) and I’ve used it since 2005 on variety of machines and use cases without significant issues. We’ve also used it to operate a couple of datacenters (OpenStack private clouds) with good results. That said I’ve been using LTS exclusively since 2014 and don’t use PPAs since 2018-20 and it’s been solid. My main machine hasn’t been reinstalled since the initial install in 2014.
Seriously? You have successfully managed to upgrade Ubuntu since 2014? Just to be clear, on desktops?
So you went through 3 desktop environment changes, systemd changes, snap environment changes, and it all worked? I am shocked.
Like I said the last time I even tried Ubuntu a default out of then box feature was broken by default.
And with desktops, it’s always some thing: the snap needs editing and is missing dependencies, a ppa is required, etc. On the server it’s fine but the desktop environment usually requires effort every other update.
Like I said, even at ububtu 4 I broke it in a week and went back to Debian.
I’ve updated my gaming rig twice with no issue using Ubuntu
20.04 to 22.04 to 24.04
Your experience is very different from mine. I usually have to dig in and fix crap that shouldnt be wrong in ubuntu long before I even get to the upgrade phase! Lots of circular problems: oh this snap doesn’t have the full dependencies. Thats ok, I know how to edit them. Except that didn’t work, so lets add the PPA. But that was out of date, lets build from scratch… and so on.
Edit: Let me add something: Glad it worked for you. And Ubuntu is Linux, and we have that in common, and I want to make sure this type of discussion is always framed under “SAME TEAM!”
On desktop, yeah. Unity > GNOME, upstart > systems, snap. I don’t fuck with snap, I just use it as intended, I don’t try to remove it. I think I started actively using it in 2016. As a software developer I understand that only the happy path is reasonably tested so I try not to go too far out of it. 😂
I typically wait for the LTS point release before upgrading. I check the release notes. I check if anything is broken after the upgrade, fix as needed. I’m sure I’ve done some stuff when the migration to GNOME happened. But that’s to be expected when a major component change occurs. If you had some non-default config or workflow, it might require rework. E.g. some custom PulseAudio config broke on my laptop with the migration to Pipewire in 24.04. But on that legendary desktop install, the only unexpected breakage was during an upgrade when the power went out. Luckily upgrades are just apt operations so I was able to recover and finish the upgrade manually.
I think a friend is running a 2012 or 2010 install. 🥲
And I’ve also swapped multiple hardware platforms on this install. 😂 Went AMD > Intel > AMD > more AMD. Swapped SSDs, went single to mirror, increased in size.
I mean… once you kick the Windows-brain reinstall habit and you learn enough, the automatic instinct upon something unexpected becomes to investigate and fix it. Reinstall is just so much more laborious on a customized machine.
Wow, that is impressive. I have been using Linux full time since around 2003. Have had it on a lot of machines in a variety of flavors. Ubuntu was always the one that did something stupid that I had to figure out to fix, and by stupid I mean Canonical’s choices more than anything else. Your example gives me hope at least.
I am using an Arch rolling now that was installed about 5 years ago, and it has been far easier to maintain than anything else. Maybe that is because change is incremental, instead of all at once. My laptop has Fedora for a couple of years and that too has been painless. I have not done a single thing except click update on that machine.
The other desktops/laptops are a variety of Debian, Suse, and Slack just to keep things interesting, but are not used nearly as frequently, so dont get updated as often.
I’ll second Debian. I run it on backports and it’s reasonably stable, but if you want it rock-solid, don’t do that.
You might want to keep your browser more up to date than the rest of your OS. That’s up to you as the user. Mozilla has a deb you can add to Apt manually, should you choose.
apt broke my entire computer
A few paragraphs would do wonders for the legibility of your post.
ubuntu LTS is like this for me, but i can’t recommend snaps. use it if you plan on uninstalling it and using flatpaks instead. i had a brief stint with mint and fedora and they seem good too.
in general, regardless of distro, i wait for the .1 releases after a big update, doing this has saved my ass before.
Snaps, flatpck and app images, everything works ok usually on Ubuntu (if you have plenty of drive to store them all)
I’ve been distro hopping for years. After each time trying a few distros, I always find myself coming back to Linux Mint (cinnamon desktop environment). It has everything I need, and just works beautifully out of the box. It might not be flashy or have the latest cutting edge features, but it’s stable.
I’m currently running the Debian edition of Mint (LMDE), and wishing I was back on standard Mint. Nothing major, but a few minor persistent issues that never happened on Mint.
I did try NixOS (immutable OS), but it didn’t seem to have support for all the apps I wanted. I gave up fairly quickly, so you’ll probably have more success.
I want to use mint, but they don’t have plasma. I know I can install it, but I’m not sure about the support and updates and all that.
Installing Plasma should be as simple as “apt install kde-plasma-desktop”, then log out and select plasma from the login screen. I’ve tried other DEs but not Plasma, so I can’t say for certain it will work.
You can always try distros in a VM almost completely risk free. It won’t tell you everything, but it’s an easy way to get first impressions without losing your main OS.
Edit: This forum thread says you can install and use Plasma, but it’s not a great experience. Mint will probably not be the right option for you then.
:(
This sucks. I’m going to look into one of those immutable distros and use distrobox
I was thinking of switching from Mint to LMDE because why not go straight to the source right? Can you share what minor issues you’ve had with LMDE?
I think I have graphics driver issues, but it could just as easily be a failing graphics card without testing. Mint has a great driver manager from Ubuntu, but LMDE didn’t seem to have any driver GUI.
The main symptom is about 30 minutes into almost any game the fps drops from 60+ to ~10. Only restarting the game seems to fix it.I don’t remember the other minor issues, so they’ve either been fixed, or so minor I stopped noticing them.
I think LMDE is good enough to use as a daily driver. The installer is quite nice too.
My favorite distros are Gentoo and Debian.
I can say with confidence that Linux Mint is what you’re looking for.
OpenSUSE Leap is the way to go my dude. It’s been formulated by pedantic Germans and you can’t go wrong with YAST/zypper for package management.
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Fedora. Ubuntu lost the crown.
If you want AUR specifically then you can only use Arch. That’s the Arch package manager, and every distro has its own. Fedora has DNF, Debian/Ubuntu has apt…etc
AUR isn’t the Arch package manager. It’s a user-contributed package definition repo.
Debian. I’ve had installations which went trough several major version upgrades, I’ve worked with ‘set and forget’ setups where someone originally installed Debian and I get my hands on it 3-5 years later to upgrade it and it just works. Sure, it might not be as fancy as some alternatives and some things may need manual tweaking here and there, but the thing just works and even on rare occasion something breaks you’ll still have options to fix it assuming you’re comfortable with plain old terminal.
I was actually thinking of that. How’s testing and unstable, are they good, too?
They are the opposite of “set it and forget it”.
Probably the most maintenance-heavy distros out there.
They’re like Arch, if the Arch maintainers didn’t care about keeping the system working.Damn. Lol. Ok then, will let that go
They are excactly what the name implies. Testing is generally pretty good, but it’s still testing. And unstable is also what the name implies. People, myself included back in the day, run both as daily drivers, but if you want rock stable distribution installing unstable revision might not be the best choise.
I can’t speak for the desktop side, but for my server it’s been running without interruption for years. About once per week I do something stupid and use all available memory, but it hasn’t crashed once. It just runs a bit slow until I free up some RAM, then Docker comes back to life once I free up some disk space. I definitely recommend it for anyone who wants a server OS that just works.
Fedora Workstation has been really good in my experience. The available software is shockingly up to date and I haven’t run into much breakage of any kind in the year or so I’ve been using it across 2 systems (despite my best efforts every few months when the urge to tinker hits me). I do occasionally run into issues caused by the default SELinux policies, but they’re not especially difficult to work around if you’re comfortable using the terminal.
I do share your sentiment about the AUR - I definitely miss it at times. That said, Flatpaks and the fact that pre-built RPMs are so commonplace have both softened the blow a lot.
Came from Arch and OpenSuse. Fedora has been such a great switch. As I’ve gotten older and became a dad, my computer time at home is limited and I don’t have endless evenings to troubleshoot shit. Fedora has been stable for me for the last 4 years. I use the KDE spin.
Thank you. I’ve run Fedora for a long while, too. Albeit, it was a while ago (not sure how good it is now), but I’ve never had any luck with its kde version. It was always broken (for me at least). Also, hunting for apps was kind of a big issue. Then come copr repos. But I guess we have a good case with flatpaks now. Even thought I couldn’t use them before due to storage constraints, but now, that’s not an issue. So, I’ll keep Fedora in mind. I appreciate you
It’s currently the most simple to use and “just works” option.
I reckon that mantle should go to Fedora Silverblue over Fedora Workstation.
Personally found an immutable distro to be too restrictive at the moment when it comes to installing non flatpak software. If all your apps are flatpaks then everything just works and its great and super stable however some apps I just couldn’t get working with distrobox. Switch to fedora workstation from ublue aurora and have loved it. Been super stable and everything just works
Look. I’ve been there. I started my Linux journey with Arch based distros, then distrohopped a lot, and finally found the best for me, and what I personally consider the best either for normal users or those that don’t want to do any maintenance.
It’s the Universal Blue family of distros: Bazzite (gaming / KDE / gnome) Aurora (standard / development / KDE) Bluefin (standard / development / gnome)
Set it and forget about it. It just freaking works. For GUI apps install from the Discover app store (which uses Flatpak), for cli apps use Homebrew (brew install whatever). If you can’t find something, open Distrobox (already included) create an Arch container, install whatever you want from the AUR, and use it like you’re used to. It works like freaking magic.
If somehow you manage to brick your installation, when you reboot you’ll be able to boot to a past snapshot.
You just can’t fail with this. It’s the best of the best IMHO.
You absolutely can fail. I daily drive bazzite but many things have been pretty rough:
Any coding apps that will use an external device -> you can’t use flatpak. You have to use distrobox that constantly freezes your entire mouse for 3-5 seconds upon any sort of dialog, settings, saving, anything where it has to access the filesystem. Then you have to add udev rules to directories that in the documentation says not to write to, and reloading the rules doesn’t work for testing, you have to fully restart with every minor change or it will seem like the change didn’t work.
Luckily most device drivers seem to work in the provided arch distrobox but holy dependency hell. Things will fail to install because they need a package that exists on the host but not the container so you get an unsolvable “file exists” conflict. When installing a package, it will sometimes just try to grab an old version of a dependency specifically that will 404 out instead of just grabbing the most recent version (never happened on arch itself to me)
Setting up a plasma vault with gocryptfs was not fun figuring out how. Also ran into tons of dependency problems and the fact that fedora just abandoned it specifically. Ended up just having to stick the binary in a random folder and point to it.
Any sort of document authentication/signing -> doesn’t work and will not work in the future for a long time.
You absolutely have to install rpms still for corectrl, any external devices, like drawing tablets, etc…
Some games inexplicably use <50% GPU and <40% CPU with terrible framerates and will not go any higher (or lower) no matter what, switching between low and high settings and resolution results in 0fps change.
When I have my config set and don’t have to change anything, it is super super nice to never have to manually update, but anything outside of very basic usage is weaving through nonstandard undocumented territory.
Bazzite trades maintenance headaches for configuration and installation headaches. For me, that is worth it.
I’m sorry Bazzite didn’t work out for you.
Your use case sounds like a better fit for Arch, since you have very specific needs like adding uncommon device drivers, gocryptfs, udev rules, etc. For anyone else, wanting to try Bazzite, I’ll answer the rest of the topics:
Flatpak apps with external devices
All apps I’ve tried support external devices just fine, in the event the app you need doesn’t support external devices out of the box, try adding USB device access through the app’s permissions in the System Settings app.
Distrobox Freezes & dependencies
I have an all AMD desktop PC, and an intel laptop, Distrobox runs perfectly fine. Every package will rely on dependencies inside Distrobox.
Edit: after writing this post, I realized I needed someway to de-drm my Audible books, so I installed the Libation RPM in my Fedora Distrobox, it failed to launch because it needed libicu or something like that, so I opened the Fedora Distrobox terminal and typed sudo dnf install libicu, done. Launched perfectly like it was installed on my base Bazzite installation. But all the dependencies remain isolated, unable to crap all over my system if something happens. My system remains shielded from dependency apocalypse.
Encryption
Bazzite supports LUKS full disk encryption.
corectrl
Use LACT, you can install it through the Bazzite Portal (that’s Bazzite 1st run app, you can run it anytime though)
RPMs are needed for any external devices, like drawing tablets, etc…
Any external devices would be a great overstatement. I have the standard PC Peripherals, then I have: xbox 360 controllers, xbox series X controllers, Thrustmaster Wheel, Logitech x56 Flight Stick, none of them require any RPM and just work out of the box, unlike on Windows. For drawing tablets, there are tons that are supported right out of the box without any additional driver, for example Wacom.
For any developers out there wanting to customize Bazzite to fit your particular use case, you can even easily fork the distro and build your own and still get auto-updates, with any additional device drivers, RPMs, and whatever else you want to fulfill your edge use case. Follow this link here.
Wow, what a wall of text. I’m sorry but I’m sure I skimmed some parts.
Look. The bulk of the replies you’re going to get will be like “this is my favourite distro and here’s how it works for you” not “this is the best distro for your criteria.” It’s important to understand the deep level of bias you’re going to get.
But your cause is a noble one. I use a particular style of distro because it can be trusted to install well, back out well, do both safely, and allow validation at every stage. I think it’s a good candidate, and it’s already been mentioned as a really great ‘set it and forget it’ distro.
Good luck.
And what distro might that be?
Bazzite
I use Bluefin myself, and it’s honestly been game changing. Using an immutable distro has been the greatest quality of life upgrade in my 15 years of using Linux.
Also, if you use distrobox (automatically installed with Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite, etc.) you can even setup an Arch container and continue to use the AUR. I use Steam installed from within an Arch container and it doesn’t feel any different from a natively installed app. It also means I don’t have to use the Steam flatpak which I had a couple issues with.
OP, another vote for this one.
It addresses your concerns in a wonderful way:
- Reliability; While it’s far from unique in this regard, I’d argue that the uBlue distros are one of if not the most reliable desktop Linux experience that’s currently out there. You know most of the drill already (read: built-in rollback functionality, clean base system). But, the uBlue project has some aces up on their sleeves that (to my knowledge) are pretty unique:
- “Ninety (90) days of image archives allowing for flexible rollback options.” The images are stored online, so they don’t even take space on your device.
- Shared community maintenance, i.e. even if upstream has a rare fuck-up, you can trust on uBlue’s maintainers to deal with it without you even noticing. For a recent example of this, we got this.
- Access to the AUR; while Distrobox can be installed on any distro, uBlue projects come with perks that make the whole experience better than it’s found elsewhere. From quadlets that have been properly setup from the get-go so that you don’t have to (additionally) maintain those distrobox containers, to even minor things like including Boxbuddy OOTB to make the transition as easy as they come.
- Setup for Gaming; It goes without saying that Bazzite is excellent for gaming. It’s gaming-ready OOTB and includes (almost[1]) all the performance tweaks you’d wish.
- Setup and forget; I (almost[2]) don’t know any other distro that better embodies this than Bazzite (and its other uBlue-relatives).
All in all, I think Bazzite is definitely worth a look. Consider installing it and setup to your heart’s content. If -at any time during or after that process- you come across an insurmountable[3] issue caused by its atomic/cloud-native/‘immutable’ nature, then you can check it off your list and look elsewhere.
- CachyOS is still superior in this regard by doing a better job at inching out (literally) every performance gain out there.
- Perhaps Endless OS does an even better job at this, but that would be a bad recommendation for all the other reasons.
- Before giving up, if you wouldn’t have done it by then, at least consider contacting the community through their Discord server. They’re very helpful. FWIW, Bazzite has pretty excellent documentation as well. (Even if it ain’t as exhaustive as the even more impressive ArchWiki. Granted, it doesn’t have to be as expansive.)
- Reliability; While it’s far from unique in this regard, I’d argue that the uBlue distros are one of if not the most reliable desktop Linux experience that’s currently out there. You know most of the drill already (read: built-in rollback functionality, clean base system). But, the uBlue project has some aces up on their sleeves that (to my knowledge) are pretty unique:
Seconded, I moved my gaming rig is on Bazzite and has been trouble free and maintenance free ever since.
I installed Bluefin on the laptop I gave my father, and it’s been happily running trouble-free every single day since August without a single intervention. And my father is the kind of man who can conjure up unknown bugs, weird failures and random crashes by simple hand contact.
Literally said they don’t want immutable.
You are confidentially incorrect. I suggest you actually take the time to read the post again.
I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that’s how much I don’t want to be fixing my system.
Literally said they don’t want immutable.
At best, they might have implied it. (But I don’t think they do.) Here are the (relevant) snippets:
I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that’s how much I don’t want to be fixing my system. I’m tired, I just want to use my system to get work done)
I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup “distrobox” on it if I wanted the AUR.
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You’re literally incorrect and have problems reading words directly in front of you. They literally say in their post that they are looking at immutable distros.
Log off if you’re unable to provide anything of value to this thread.
Nowhere did they say that those statements mean immutable to them. Just that your claims that OP “literally said they didn’t want immutable” is not based in reality.
Basically every distro is based on either arch or debian (some exceptions). I’ve been perfectly happy with debian, even as a gamer.
Debian stable? You don’t have issues since it has older packages? All of your hardware works just fine?
Stable yea. My PC is a bit older (7 years) and I’ve never had any issues with hardware, even with my nvidia card.
If you want stability, Debian Stable is the way to go (Servers, mission critical tasks). Even Debian Sid works great on my Legion Go.
I recommend Testing or Sid for desktops.
