Yes, but at the same time, if a Distro focuses on a Desktop Environment (not just a Window Manager but a full-blown DE) and you do not like it, well, there should be something in the distro that justifies going against the flow and using another DE over it. In my case there wasn’t. I ended up with the philosophy of using a distro that has a default DE if I want to use that DE, if not then I prefer to use a distro that has no default DE and when I need instruction on how to solve some problem people will not assume the default DE and give me instructions using it (i.e., say the basic troubleshoting with NetworkManager when I do not use NetworkManager).
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You aren’t really “going against” anything in most modern distros. It is really just a choice.
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Grew up on Windows, and still forced to use Windows at work, but have been transitioning all my private computing to Linux for the last 3 or so years.
After mostly sticking to Ubuntu originally as it was an easy gateway given how much effort they put into making life easy for new users, I’ve now been using Manjaro on all my machines for about a year. Still definitely not a proficient Linux user, but it’s been a great experience - zero problems so far, and definitely far fewer hardware issues than I had with Ubuntu (where eg my WiFi connection was always super patchy on my oldest laptop).
My understanding is that it brings the benefits of Arch and rolling release (getting updates/fixes more quickly, and not having these big and scary system wide updates like with Ubuntu) while reducing the downsides for users like me (i.e. installation is a few clicks and not really different from Ubuntu, plus there’s a pre-testing period I believe where updates get checked by the Manjaro team before going into the rolling release). My experience so far has been that this seems to be largely the case, so I’m quite happy!
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I can second the recommendation of Manjaro + KDE. Been using that for a few years now and never had any major problems with anything.
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I disagree. In my experience, if a distro have a default DE, then their wiki, blog posts, and fellow users answering in forums will offer help using the DE, also, if you have a problem with a non-default DE, you will find less people to help you in a distro that has a default DE, in comparison to one that has no default.
It is a big thing? No, it is not. But it is sufficient to tip me over to try a new distro instead of staying with the previous one, if there nothing else holding me back.
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Sure, but
- DEs, especially niche ones like the
xmonadyou like, also have a community and documentation independent of distros. - docs and other resources carry over to other distros. Eg as an Ubuntu user, I simply love the Arch wiki — they are so thorough and organized.
You distro, whichever it is, is just framework for config and software management (and a few themes 
). Software availability and docs are pretty much orthogonal to these.
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Guys, no need to argue about Linux distros. You have better things to do.
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I agree with Tamas. I don’t think the distro matters very much. I don’t spend much of my time installing packages, where using apt, dnf, pacman/yay, or swupd might make some small difference. Naming conventions like “dev” vs “devel” don’t really matter either, since I just use the search functionality to find what I’m looking for.
Plus, there’s things like flatpak common to many distros.
In terms of day to day, choices like which window manager and shell you’re using make a much bigger difference. I like fish, for example.
But you can easily choose your favorites in whatever distro.
But when I Google for help, I normally search for command line solutions, rather than series of point-and-click steps, so the help I’m looking for is either independent of the desktop environment, or specific to it.
Case in point, I’ve been using Clear Linux for a couple years on one computer, and it’s been almost entirely mundane. In that time, only the issues come to mind:
- I haven’t gotten around to getting the GR backend to be able to display plots (but it can save them, letting me open them).
- There was some fontconfig issue (also with plotting, IIRC) fixed (IIRC…it’s been a while) by setting an environment variable to a path.
- Doesn’t support ROCm. I could probably look at the AUR build script to figure out how to install it, but I’d need a real use case first (and already have it working on another computer anyway).
- I have to add
FCOMPILER=GFORTRANto OpenBLAS’s compile flags when compiling it (e.g., if not using Binary builder’s OpenBLAS, I have to edit “steps/blas.mk”). This is because of a bug in OpenBLAS’s build script, causing it to misidentify gfortran as ifort on Clear Linux (they check for “Intel” showing up in$(FCOMPILER) --version).
It just rather uncommon in my experience for which distro you’re on to make much difference.
That’s all the more reason to decide on the basis of the little things. E.g., stock with what you’re using currently, or decide on the basis of thinks like “I don’t want to upgrade every six months”, or “I want it to be easy to find help with GUI interfaces”.
If you want to try something new, try switching desktop environments instead of distros. Or give emacs or vim a go.
These matter much more in your day-to-day.
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Thanks. Clear looks quite interesting in the benchmarks. I have settled on emacs+evil and use it mostly for R coding and org mode.
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i was using Debian and switched to Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu)
i don’t even remember why i switched, i was pretty happy with Debian.
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Debian stable for a long time, but after Debian switched to systemd, my computer did not want to start anymore. I could not fix that problem, so I switched to Slackware a few years ago, because (so far) it does not come with systemd. Slackware is a stable, simple and unobtrusive distribution that works well for me. Build scripts and slackbuilds.org are a standard way to obtain third-party software from source.
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I use Linux Mint, pretty much for its Cinnamon DE. I did not like any other DEs like gnome, mate, kde, etc. I can say that I have not had any other problem with using this distro.
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Mint as well, the interface is simple and fast.
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I use Arch as well. I used to use Manjaro but was put off by the actions of the maintainers regarding the treasury issues, and also the fact that Manjaro is actually using a duplicate of the AUR.
Installing was a good learning experience, but tbh from reading forum posts about it, the lack of an installer seems to just be gatekeeping on behalf of the community. IMO once you understand the install process, just use one of the many install scripts.
I like arch because of the community, the AUR, being constantly up-to-date, and the fact that I know exactly what is on my system, but tbh I don’t think distro matters too much.
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I’ve been using Manjaro for some years now. i3 for work laptop and KDE for home desktop. I very much enjoy having access to Arch User Repository.
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One thing to think about (that I might have missed if it was mentioned) is whether or not you need/want all the latest updates for the packages you use the most. Any distro that touts is “stability” as a major feature (CentOS, Debian, etc.) will have older libraries/packages in its repos.
I was using MX Linux, which is based on Debian, and loved it (reliable, fast, low-resource use). But it was still based on Debian, and I ran into an issue where I needed a package updated and couldn’t do it because of unsatisfiable dependencies. So I made the switch to Ubuntu 20.04 and it’s been nice, though it is very laggy on my ~7 year old computer in comparison to MX Linux.
The great thing now though is that nearly all distros offer Live USB builds, so definitely try them out first to see how they run on your hardware, and take a look at their package lists to see if there are any issues there.
FWIW, I’ve never had a problem running Julia on any Linux OS.
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I’m on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS I really like its ability to make most of the exciting stuff works,and I keep the boring but needed work for good old Windows 10…
I think the best strategy is to pick a distro with a 6 month release cycle or a delayed branch like Debian testing, and compile (or install from tarballs) the <10 pieces of software you really care about being recent (for me this is Julia, mu, Emacs, and Stan).
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Yeah, though I have never had recency issues even 2 years into an Ubunu LTS release. In my specific case, I couldn’t even compile from source because the system libraries were too old.
I’ve been using Debian since … 1998? (I have zero Windows on any personal machine since before that). I install Debian testing on each new computer I buy… I upgrade individual packages whenever I need them… probably do a dist-upgrade about 2x… and by then I need a new computer and install testing from scratch.
I never feel like I’m missing the latest and greatest, since testing always has what I want or I pull a few items from unstable, like maybe latest Firefox, Thunderbird, or chromium…
if I need something truly bleeding edge I compile it myself, like Stan.
Debian can easily support Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc etc. I use Gnome and find it fine.
My 70+ year old mother finds Gnome on Debian understandable, and I completely manage her personal computer remotely via a VPN, doing upgrades remotely that she never has issues with.
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