Questions to Answer when Choosing a Linux Distro

[@savagepro9060]

DJ Ware: "Questions to Answer when Choosing a Linux Distro"
AI: "I have no fkin clue"

[@CyberGizmo]

That's a good question, but AI is a deep (no pun) intended field. What interests you about it?

[@savagepro9060]

@@CyberGizmo Just that it 'threatens' natural creative artists, it's nice for many things though, for example I can experience Frank Sinatra singing with Bob Marley as near real as possible . . . but with an AI-Watermark

[@yep596]

I use Slackware because the power of Bob compels me to

[@theplaymakerno1]

My favorite UA-camr coming back with another very useful video! Stay blessed!

[@LinuxenCasa]

05:05 I do believe it because this is the best Linux Channel. And what is even more interesting is that you never stop learning. You deserve one million subs and beyond.

[@CyberGizmo]

Thank you very much. I would be very surprised indeed if that happened.

[@drakemallard6100]

Ubuntu based because of stability, ease of use and huge, helpful community.

[@CyberGizmo]

Sounds like you found the distro you want, awesome

[@drakemallard6100]

​@@CyberGizmoMy daily driver is Fedora and Garuda 😊

[@walter_lesaulnier]

For me, the biggest things were reliability and the distro being as cutting edge as possible without denting reliability much. The reliability part meant Arch was out. I was torn between OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Fedora. I had them installed on 2 different computers for a few months and fell in love with Fedora Plasma. In almost a year and a half, I haven't had a single problem that I had to manually fix.

[@savagepro9060]

So many penguin species🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

[@knoxduder]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@lolikpof]

Gecko Linux vs Fedora vs Nix OS? I want to use KDE as my desktop environment, which is why I'm currently leaning towards Gecko (which is basically OpenSUSE with a few things preconfigured for noobs such as myself). Ideally, I'd really like to try out Nix, but it doesn't have the best synergy with KDE, as far as I know. Fedora has a proposal of making KDE the default and moving Gnome to a different spin, which would be great for me if it were accepted, but whether that'll ever actually happen is unknown. Currently I use Windows 11 with WSL (Ubuntu) for programming. Never used a full Linux distro before, but I am familiar with basic terminal commands - nothing advanced tho

[@CyberGizmo]

Sounds like you paired down the distro choices to one that works for you...good job!

[@user-dz3ph7dl4m]

you can pretty much install kde on any distro. Kubuntu / KDE Neon / Debian / Fedora / PikaOs all good options

[@mercster]

Picking a distro based on what desktop you want to use is probably not what you wanna do... most distros will have fairly up to date KDE packages. What's more important is a) the breadth of software available in the repos, b) the quality/functionality of the package manager, and c) the distro's release strategy (cutting edge vs. older and more stable.)

[@trajectoryunown]

If you're choosing a full desktop environment, really any OS will be about the same for the average end user.
My advice to new users is just to keep away from nightmarish Debian-based distros, but it seems you've already figured that out.
If you don't have a problem handling things yourself but don't want to build up your entire system, I'd say to go with Arch. It's not nearly as bad as people think, I swear. If you've had experience with Ubuntu, Arch will be a breeze by comparison. With Arch, things just work, and there's a plethora of reference materials unrivaled by any other community except maybe Gentoo. It's also got an unrivaled variety of software available through the AUR. I've been running Arch for many years and using KDE for somewhere around 6 months now.
That being said, the Arch Wiki isn't completely comprehensive and a good portion of the community is frankly awful. Unfortunately, that's where Arch gets its reputation from. Just a bunch of elitist jerks who think they're superior because they installed an OS from the command line... which isn't even necessary now that the 'archinstall' TUI exists. If you ignore them, Arch is the best IMHO.
But if you're more social and prefer having community support then Fedora is great, especially considering their somewhat recent trend toward user-friendliness. Lots of new users over there. And like Arch, things almost always just work. The Fedora team's direction remains good in spite of the fact it's based on RHEL. They've also got a lot of software available if you enable RPM Fusion. Not quite as much as Arch, but it still dwarfs the repos of most other distros.
OpenSUSE sounds like another user-friendly distro based on what the community says. I can't recommend it myself because I never tried it but I can tell you it's been gaining a lot of popularity.
I can't comment on Nix besides the fact its package management system sounds better than any I've seen. Though, I'm not sure it actually appeals to end users. Seems more like a solution for businesses, schools, or any other organization that needs to rapidly deploy homogenized systems.
Based on what on what you've said and what I've learned, I'd suggest either going with Arch or the KDE spin of Fedora. (Spins are supplied by Fedora on their website, but not "officially" supported because it's not their default desktop environment. I've never encountered a problem with them with my admittedly limited use.)

[@mercster]

@@trajectoryunown Arch is a rolling release distro, in that there aren't really "versions"... upstream packages are ported over early on. Many newer people like Arch especially for gaming, which usually benefits from having very up to date packages. But it also means the software is tested less rigorously, and the building and distribution of packages is more community supported. I don't know what you mean by "nightmare distros based on Debian", many very popular distributions are based on Debian/Ubuntu, including Kununtu, Mint, etc. For some reason the younger generation of Linux hobbyists are vehemently opposed to Ubuntu, for what reason I can't quite suss out (probably the urge to "go against the grain".)

[@savagepro9060]

Also Linux 🐧 has a beautiful cousin called . . . FreeBSD👿

[@knoxduder]

Yes.

[@entelin]

If you can manage to get it to run on the hardware you have... FreeBSD I think can make sense in server environments, but I've never had it working sufficiently successfully on the desktop.
I like that it has built in support for ZFS and NFS4 ACL's, this makes it potentially a better choice than linux for windows domain / samba integration. The lack of NFS4 ACL's on linux is a constant pain point for me in that use case.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Manjaro is poor man's Arch. Arch is poor man's Gentoo.

[@johanb.7869]

And Gentoo is poor mans Linux from Scratch?

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@johanb.7869 My definition of a distro is that it has to have package management.
LFS is an amazing learning tool and everyone serious about Linux should build it at least once - but when you've done it, it's a case of "so what do I do now?"
I went to Gentoo in 2003 because I had nowhere else to go with LFS - LFS isn't a distro, it is just "raw GNU/Linux" with great documentation explaining how to build it from source.

[@StaffyDoo]

@@johanb.7869😂

[@StaffyDoo]

And then, one day Gentoo started shipping pre-compiled binaries. Oh, the irony!

[@yep596]

All roads lead to Gentoo

[@rc2276]

I think kubuntu or linux mint is a good choice for most people moving from windows. Easy with driver manager etc. Works on most hardware.

[@AkivaB]

5:13
Is finding the answer on the internet considered 'by myself' though?

[@telepolo]

I’m running linux mint cinnamon and I need video drivers for Intel Xeon E3-1200 V2 / 3rd Gen Core Processor Graphics Controller --- anybody know where to download them ??????

[@leetucker9938]

another masterpiece of info

[@The-Other-Mario]

Hey DJ Ware! Apologies for veering off-topic here, but I'm curious about your take on Lennart Poettering's recent proposal to replace sudo with run0. Most discussions I've stumbled upon either come from anti-systemd zealots or delve into intricate details about suid and sudo vulnerabilities that honestly go way over my head. Me, I just find it kind of ironic that Poettering, a Microsoft employee if I'm not mistaken, makes this proposal a few weeks after the announcement of sudo for Windows (and I understand that windows sudo is not a port of *nix sudo).
A reasonable and accessible discussion of the subject seems to be sorely missing, so, if I may make a suggestion, maybe this would make for a good video on your channel.

[@CyberGizmo]

sounds like a good idea for a video to me too...anytime someone says a safer replacement for something, my warning bells start sounding. I believe we already have 4 replacements for sudo already, I guess we need a 5th one. hahaha

[@jean-francoisaubry]

Manjaro did not listen to Torvald's wise advice: never break user space

[@johnbowles4754]

Again, a fantastic video, many thanks from an old English man 👨 👍

[@Masonicon]

whatever distro that Steam Deck uses are fit me well

[@knoxduder]

Do you prefer a Linux distribution or a BSD, and why? What’s your daily driver?

[@CyberGizmo]

I use FreeBSD in my two of my servers, one is running pfSense, the other is a VM which I keep some of the things I have written over the years. I used to have a ZFS pool on FreeBSD but moved it to Linux once that version reached the same version number as FreeBSD. I suppose I like Linux because I can get it working on different ranges of hardware, the BSD's also support wider ranges of hardware, but I have not taken the time to learn how ARM works with them, maybe one of these days I will. My daily driver is EndeavorOS and Fedora for workstations and I use Debian for servers (although I have a few Ubuntu servers as well, not by choice but because the hardware requires Ubuntu (ARM) for the machine.

[@itsasecrettoeverybody]

Your experience with manjaro was the same i had with arch. Every update was a Russian roulette.

[@knoxduder]

@dj I’m trying to learn as much as possible, mostly FreeBSD, but don’t have a use-case or “reason” . I’m getting familiar with BASH and terminal. I compiled my first program and got it running. I’m not sure I understand Jails just yet. Do you have any taskers , lessons, lesson plans, or anything you can assign to help this hobbyist/ enthusiast learn ? I plan to learn up and down (C , python) eventually .

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks awesome here are some resources for you on FreeBSD, some of these you may have seen already but I am including them in case you haven't.
Free stuff
FreeBSD Handbook - docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/
Beginner's Guide to FreeBSD - www.fosslife.org/beginners-guide-freebsd
Books - hope you don't mind i used my Amazon affliate links, won't change your price.
The Complete FreeBSD - amzn.to/3JI17Rg
Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD - amzn.to/3w6NbNE

[@knoxduder]

I seem to fall towards Fedora and FBSD, but I do have a TrueNAS Scale (core was giving me issues) that’s working great, save I can’t get Tailscale past “deploying” .

[@knoxduder]

@@CyberGizmo thank you sir. I have 3 of the 4 of these and a few more. Do you have a suggestion to get some lesson assignments?

[@TheAltair033]

Distro chooser is pretty good: I've dailyed 3/4 of the top results (for me) and liked all of them

[@Paul-yh8km]

The option not mentioned is to dump the hardware and move on.
I'm pulling the plug from Microsoft.
I'll fit in with alternative os and hardware.

[@sativagirl1885]

Dear Windows Victim, are you into pain, bondage, discipline, humiliation?

[@CyborgZeta]

Yep, very satisfied with Kubuntu. It's very stable for me, and provides a great KDE and Plasma experience. The only change I make is removing Snaps and installing Flatpaks.

[@ridcomics9364]

Zorin or Mint for new users they work well and look pretty good out of the box try them out learn them then move on if you feel you understand enough !

[@n.m4497]

This bro is turning straight into a lumberjack

[@CyberGizmo]

LOL and I'm not singing that song though.

[@dragonballjiujitsu]

Been using Manjaro as a daily driver on two machines for 4 years without issues. Pure arch breaks every third round of updates. Zorin is amazing.

[@SouthFacedWindows]

Ya may vanilla Arch broke after KDE 6.0 upgrade and Manjaro remained fine.

[@dragonballjiujitsu]

@@SouthFacedWindows Same here

[@wiremanibew]

Where can I find instruction to make a install flash for mint

[@CyberGizmo]

here you go linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[@leemanwrong]

You could also put ventoy on your flashdrive then you can just copy iso's onto the drive to boot them.

[@user-mr3mf8lo7y]

I have been looking for easy replicating the OS across multiple PCs in the office. Thanks for letting me know about NixOs. Has 32-bit version as well. Cheers,.

[@CyberGizmo]

Cheers!

[@peterjansen4826]

Step2: questions to answer when choosing a desktop-environment or windowmanager. I used all the common desktop-environments and I ended up using dwm in the last years, I have no intention to switch and it is one of the main reasons why I won't be using Wayland in the foreseeable future.

[@vladimir_fomin90]

I have already chosen - this is Manjaro.

[@entelin]

Are you totally new to Linux? What caused you to choose Manjaro?

[@vladimir_fomin90]

@@entelin I'm not a newbie. I tried all known distributions. Manjaro is more convenient out of the box than Linux Mint and Zorin OS. In Manjaro, kernels are installed in one click. Manjaro is a rolling distribution, the AUR has everything you want. This is of course my opinion, your opinion may differ.

[@entelin]

​@@vladimir_fomin90 You tried the major distros I assume? Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSe? What was the reason those didn't work out? Why Manjaro instead of Arch?

[@vladimir_fomin90]

@@entelin Manjaro is unique, it has 3 branches, choose which one you want. I was on Arco Linux for some time, the system crashed 2 times after updates, I am coding, on Arch Linux I was not coding, but was solving problems. I remember how I spent 2 evenings to understand that php version 8.2.9 is broken and does not work like version 8.2.8. I would not have received such an update on the stable Manjaro branch.

[@n.m4497]

Lmao. Choose a serious distro ffs

[@bhargavjitbhuyan9394]

Fedora kde. The best distro for most people.

[@CyberGizmo]

I'll say one thing KDE 6.0 is awesome, maybe we will get it for the Asahi Linux platform (that's where my Fedora KDE is running, but its 5.27 atm).

[@leetucker9938]

when i started with home pc win 95 i just wanted the os to work so I could do games etc or whatever application I decided to run . Windows never worked, there was always a new update that brought new bugs . it was just years of disappointment and constant re installing . Then Linux ? a free os that just worked , wow . why couldn't Microsoft make a working os , they made obscene amounts of money

[@CyberGizmo]

Good question, I would guess it goes something like this: Ok programmers how long will it take to do this new feature: Answer 9 months. Management: ok, you have 30 days.

[@leetucker9938]

@@CyberGizmo My Imac was really good , it just worked but Apple wont support older tech. My 2009 imac still works like a new pc with Linux Mint . So Linux is reducing E waste as well as being awesome

[@qdsmith]

Hmm.... Distro Chooser pointed me to a slew of distros that I wouldn't have considered. Guess I'll be standing up a few VMs to do test drives. It did _not_ recommend Mint which is odd given that it's my daily driver.

[@CyberGizmo]

Curious why it didnt recommend it to you...

[@qdsmith]

The number of default applications, I believe. I did get a chuckle out of the "requires less computer knowledge than answered" footnote.

[@qdsmith]

@@CyberGizmo To follow up.... Distro Chooser recommended Arch, and we may have a winner. Spun it up tonight and so far, I'm not displeased.

[@rodfer5406]

Fedora is gggggrrrrreeeeaaat! :)

[@MarkConstable]

CachyOS... no contest.

[@fatoldhikki4837]

Best distro to start is a slackware.

[@JohannesDavidsen2024]

Windows 10 EOF 😝

[@OnE61811301]

Linux, any distro, is veeeery far away still from being able to be a useful everyday OS for everyday people. Sadly. Been using Linux since 98 for server stuff, and been trying to switch to almost every year since. Everytime, at least once a month there is something that "just breaks" and wastes half a day of your time reading through forums and docs to try and fix. The time will come when you can install the OS and just forget that it's there. A good OS is one that you don't even notice that it exists.

[@FraterSorax]

Called timeshift dont update if its not needed. If it works leave it dont chase new futures when it works out of the box. Im using mint debian going strong had zero crashes and everything works.

[@OnE61811301]

@@FraterSorax that's a ridiculous statement - very few people are ok to live 10 years behind on their work computers. I might as well install Windows XP - it's stable :)))

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

9front
never look 8ack