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.
Bazzite, I use it as my daily driver, distro box allows using the aur easily, it is really simple to use.
Another Debian suggestion here, including for gaming and even VR. It basically just works.
I would say fedora silverblue. Have been using it for a while. All updates, app and os, are distributed via app center so reasonably foolproof.
And a benefit is that it has podman out of the box so you can run docker images without fiddling with the terminal.
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. problem-free after that.
i had a brief stint with mint and fedora and they are 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)
NIXOS, set and forget. It will not change unless you ask it to. Occasionally things might get renamed, but they set up warnings and don’t deprecate old naming for a long time
NIXOS has been really great so far for me. very stable and mostly easy to figure out. my only problem has been getting SSBM netplay working.
Pls format your posts it’s so much easier to read
Says the comment without punctuation ;-)
I recommend void. It’s rock solid, “stable rolling release”, no systemd, amazing package manager. The installation is a bit more “advanced”, but I guess coming from Arch that should not be a problem for you.
I put Fedora on a laptop as a whim almost 2 years ago.
My main computers are arch, but. I had an iso handy and hadn’t used anything from based in years.
I am surprised at how quickly it gets updates. Gimp was at 3 before arch stable.
Anyways, I just keep updating the laptop and it just keeps working. I have yet to actually do anything for maintenance on it.
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.
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’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”
A few paragraphs would do wonders for the legibility of your post.
distrobox will give you access to the AUR and should be installable on any distro but the immutable/atomic approach might be worth looking into. I’ve been running bazzite on my personal machine and bluefin on my work machine for about a year now and it’s been great. the only snag is learning the order of operations for installing things without a reboot.
I am just one data point but both distros have been rock solid for me and half the time I don’t even realize updates had been run unless I see a new feature or something like that.
good luck on your journey!
Thank you. I’m in the process of looking into Aurora DX. I’ve read their documentations and it seems to almost have everything I need. Illegal dig more into it and see. I currently am unable to access my PC. It never logs in. Lmao.
Edit: forgot to ask, is installing osprober a straightforward process on these immutable distros? I dualboot with windowsi am unfamiliar with osprober but if you’re installing it from the AUR, it should be as easy as creating a distrobox container with arch as its base and running the installation command(s) from there, then a single line to export the command to your base system if you want to use it outside of that container.
I’ve been wanting to try out NixOS for this very reason lately (although I don’t break my system often). If everything works for me there, I’ll switch to it.
I’ve thought about nix, but it looks like it has a somewhat steep learning curve, and I honestly don’t even have the time for that :/
For run of the mill sys admin stuff, you don’t need to dive too deep. Even my reasonably complex needs of containers and mixed workstations is, imo pretty parsable from an intuitive perspective. I was reluctant at first but once I saw how a general sys admin would use it, it made my life so much easier.
Highly recommended.
Yep, this is the answer. Set it, forget it, accidentally have your hard drive destroyed irrecoverably, and re-set everything up to the exact working state you were used to in under 15min.
It’s a fair bit of initial setup and learning, but afterwards, the word “stable” takes on a new meaning.
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?
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.
Stable yea. My PC is a bit older (7 years) and I’ve never had any issues with hardware, even with my nvidia card.
Ive been a long term windows user. Almost 80% of my life. Tried macos and linux but always went to windows. Last year, i decided to move away from big tech in general. Ive moved away from most of it except windows, which is windows 10 LTSC. I tried ubuntu, kubuntu, fedora gnome, fedora kde, kde neon, arch (failed hard), arctix, endeavour and lastly i settled with linux mint cinnamon. A couple of tweak and a few hours. It feels like home. Goodbye windows, you will not be missed. I do dualboot windows 10 whenever i need to use program that only support windows.
I’m now debating between mint and kalpa suse. I went KDE and mint doesn’t have it
You can install KDE on Mint.
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 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.
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.
