What Is Your Distro?

hhh · Yesterday 02:02:30

I'm curious what makes one choose a distro. I use Debian, either stable or forky/sid, because I think apt/dpkg is the best package manager and stable is stable and forky/sid is brave enough. I had to go 5 months without updates once, everything broke when I finally upgraded and I'll always use Debian stable as my daily driver as a result. It's familiar, it's light but solid, it has a crap-ton of solid packages, and it has gotten a lot better about getting upgraded packages in earlier. If I wanted to use Openbox, I'd use BunsenLabs carbon because it's all configured and great.

@PackRat posts a lot of Void Linux scrots, @Döbbie03 has gone from Arch to NixOS to building his own packages on Gentoo, and Colonel Panic has been attempting to install every distro ever released, it seems. What's the reason? What made you settle on a distro?

Döbbie03 · Yesterday 02:37:03

Gentoo. Why? Because I was bored of Arch. I wanted a challenge.

I have this voice in my head that has come about since my ArchLabs days that if I haven't done it myself then I can't call myself a real Linux user. Using pre-made distros like Endeavour just don't cut it for me.
I don't judge anyone else's choices, this is something I judge myself by.

hhh · Yesterday 03:06:49

Good explanation. I should mention that @Sector11 is "X11, please." and several forum members have been loyal to sysvinit via Devuan.

WizardofCOR · Yesterday 03:58:57

For me, it's all about purpose & usability, really.
I'm not beholden to any particular underpinnings, although I'll readily admit that I do prefer Debian-based distros over others.

darknetmatrix · Yesterday 05:20:20

Always have a debian or debian-based (forky-sid)distro because it just works for me. I'm also happy to use Arch or Arch-based distributions, since they've become quite stable in recent years.

happycamper · Yesterday 09:47:20

My last one was Linux Mint Cinnamon, which came with the starlabs laptop I bought some years ago, but I had such fun with crunchbang some years ago on my home desktop that I opted to put bunsenlabs on it a year ago - macbook is set up with multiple screens in my office and is rarely moved and I regularly use the little 12 inch linux laptop on the go ... sharing to my mac: code via guithub and docs via dropbox

Colonel Panic · Yesterday 11:20:09

Thanks for the excellent question! Hope you've got the patience to read my
answer.

I have an old computer (a Dell Vostro 460 desktop) that I want to keep
running as long as I can; and that largely limits my choice of distros to
lightweight ones.

I lean heavily towards Debian-based distros, especially Debian Stable,
because compared to others I've used they're very simple to update and
maintain (they are also in my experience very stable and reliable)

I also have a liking for non-SystemD distros, though it's not a deal
breaker for me if one does have SystemD.

I've got a couple of editions of antiX on my hard drive, and I appreciate
the way I can make a snapshot ISO of each of them and burn this off to a
DVD so that I can preserve my settings from the moment in time when
everything worked as it should.

Similarly, I have MX 23 on my hard drive, which I installed from a
magazine cover disk and prefer to the latest version of MX (25) as I find
it more reliable. MX has a good and very comprehensive toolkit which I
find I often rely on.

I also have Spiral XFCE, which is based n a very old version of Debian
(11, Bullseye). I really should upgrade it to Debian 12 (Bookworm), but as
it's working flawlessly at the moment I see no need to. It's the one I'm
currently posting from.

I keep Slackware Current on my hard drive too, as unlike most distros I've
tried I've never had any problems with the internet connection in
Slackware and I know more or less how Slackware works (the first distro I
used was based on Slackware 3.5, over 20 years ago). Because Slack also still
allows you to log in as root, it's the main distro I use when I want to do
any admin (file copying / moving, partition changes etc.) on my computer.

I sometimes think I should try one of the BSDs again, but the last couple
of times I've tried GhostBSD I've run into major problems - either the
sound or the internet connection doesn't work.

Similarly, I used to use OpenSuse Leap because I found it very stable and
reliable, but I ran into problems the last time I tried it (in its defence
it was one very early in the release cycle).

I sometimes use Manjaro or Mabox, but I don't have either installed at the
moment. Likewise, Ubuntu or anything based on it.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (Yesterday 13:59:38)

ratcheer · Yesterday 11:44:14

I've mostly been on Arch Linux for more than a decade. I have dabbled with Fedora and Gentoo, but always gone back to Arch.

I try to keep it "light". I run the Awesome window manager. I don't run a filesystem manager nor a network manager. I was brought up with UNIX way back in the day (early 80s), and I like the old ways of doing things. Actually, Arch is getting a bit too new fangled for my tastes.

Sector11 · Yesterday 12:47:15

Since #! I've been an OpenBox fan. I like, need stability, stability. Two of us use this computer, I lose my wifes stuff I'm dead meat. I switched from BL to BearDog, LilyDogs bare essentials. But that's coming to an end. So I see my selfgoing back to BL OR a Debian Net Install with OB.
I ran SID years ago and at the time I was convinced as were many that Sid is more stable than testing if done right and it was a User Error that FUBARed that setup.
So I'm thinking when I have to move it will be Debian Net Install or BL without the BL Repos.

12 - Bookworm
2023-06-10 - Release Date
My install:

   $ stat --format=%w /|cut -c1-19
2023-12-19 12:21:58
 
2026-07-11 - End of Life (EOL)
2028-06-30 - End of LTS
2033-06-30 - End of ELTS

The ELTS might just outlast my EOL.

chroot · Yesterday 14:45:14

I basically run two distros, Arch (CachyOS) and Debian. I have been using Arch (converted to CachyOS recently) on my laptops and Debian stable on my home desktops/servers. I started my Linux journey by using Redhat, and actually learned Linux from the Slackware days. Had used Gentoo for some time and eventually gave up compiling from source. I like Arch because of its simplicty and rolling nature. CachyOS is optimized for new CPUs and has some packages I use in their repos. I try to elimite my AUR installations as much as I can. I only use Debian stable, because it's stable.

Last edited by chroot (Yesterday 14:47:17)

WolfeN · Yesterday 15:06:49

Bunsenlabs Boron on desktop.

I have an old laptop that was running Crunchbang++, very good distro with similarities to BL. I recently installed Debian Cinnamon on it and was really surprised how quick and refined it is.

I have used and tried many distros over the decades (Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu, and many more derivatives), and have settled on Debian-based ones for stability/reliability, and familiarity.

Martin · Yesterday 15:16:57

Debian based at home since CrunchBang. Currently SpiralLinux.

Other distros only for test/play and hardly that. FreeBSD has been the most interesting one so far.

/Martin

#1 Yesterday 02:02:30

What Is Your Distro?

#2 Yesterday 02:37:03

Re: What Is Your Distro?

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#5 Yesterday 05:20:20

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