What are people daily driving these days?

I’m between distros and looking for a new daily driver for my laptop. What are people daily driving these days? Are there any new cool things to try?

I have been using linux mint recently. I have used nixos and arch in the past. Personally, linux mint uses flatpacks too much for my liking. Although, I might have a warped perspective after using arch. (the aur is crazy big)

WalrusByte,
@WalrusByte@lemmy.world avatar

Gentoo. Been using it for over 3 years now, and I haven’t found a reason to leave yet.

velox_vulnus,

What systems do you use? I mean boot, init, home and all of that…

WalrusByte,
@WalrusByte@lemmy.world avatar

I just use the defaults for everything, haha! Just grub2 for the bootloader, openrc for the init system.

By “home” do you mean DE/WM? If so, I use dwm for my laptop and sway for my desktop.

velox_vulnus, (edited )

I meant alternatives to systemd-homed, systemd-machined and the likes. Since I’m on NixOS, I’m restricted to most of the systemd stuff. I’m not even sure if I need all of them.

WalrusByte,
@WalrusByte@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t even know what that stuff is, so I guess my answer is that I just don’t use it 🤷‍♂️

velox_vulnus,

Now I’m being dragged into the anti-systemd ideology. I have a bunch of CLI utility that I have never ever touched since the three years I’ve been on Linux. I just came across homectl, machinectl and timedatectl, and I’m convinced that the part about “bloat” does make a lot of sense now.

WalrusByte,
@WalrusByte@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t really care either way. I like things to be more minimal, but I’m not really anti-systemd or anything like that. I’ve just been using openrc for a few years now, and haven’t used systemd enough to learn about the homed stuff I guess

Nukken,

Acura MDX

const_void,

Why is everyone saying “daily drive” all of a sudden?

Thorned_Rose,
@Thorned_Rose@kbin.social avatar

Where is that a new thing? I've been using Linux since early 2010s and people were using that term back then (and it wasn't a new term then either)

markkdark, (edited )

Arch + Hyprland on my Notebook, Endeavor OS + Gnome PC (11years old PC), 2x Khadas VIM3L + Kodi (Coreelec), home server Odroid + Armbian.

pelotron,
@pelotron@midwest.social avatar

<3 Hyprland

Pat_Riot,
@Pat_Riot@lemmy.today avatar

Threads like this are exactly what keeps a good few of us from ever getting started. Lol. Good fun to read through though. One day I’ll pick a distro and give it a whirl. Till then, thanks for the entertainment.

elia169,

Aren't people just responding to the question being asked though?

homesweethomeMrL,

Lots of aficionados maybe

Pat_Riot,
@Pat_Riot@lemmy.today avatar

Some of us really just want the computer to work. It’s mostly just a fancy tape recorder to me.

Pat_Riot,
@Pat_Riot@lemmy.today avatar

They are. They didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just frustrated.

xohshoo,

what’s the problem? Happy to help if I can

these days it’s pretty easy to just pick one and go, but you can still run into issues, and for people new to linux it can be frustruating for sure. When I started using linux, I didn’t even really know what a terminal was, so a lot of the stuff I would read on forums etc (it was a long time ago) I couldn’t even put into practice. I once got insulted for asking a dumb question with both RTFM and PEBCAC but didn’t even know I had been insulted. Just kept plugging away and eventually got it going. I think PCLinuxOS was the first distro I ran seriously as a “daily driver” and I think that stuck because the community on the forums was the friendliest

kpw,

You sound like those people that "can't use Mastodon" because they have to choose a server first and that's too complicated.

Pat_Riot,
@Pat_Riot@lemmy.today avatar

You sound like those people who bitch about Microsoft having a monopoly on home computer operating systems while gatekeeping the fuck out of Linux. Get fucked, man.

kpw,

Where am I gatekeeping Linux?? Also I don't care what other people use that's entirely their problem.

Thorned_Rose,
@Thorned_Rose@kbin.social avatar

I would just move on. Some people have a bee in their bonnet and can't look past their own problems and see why other folks might find certain discussions useful.

Personally, when I was first looking at switching to Linux (and then through distro hopping) I found discussion like these great as I could see other people's reasons for choosing the distro they did.

blotz,
@blotz@lemmy.world avatar

Not sure why people are downvoting this person. They aren’t wrong that Linux enthusiast threads can make it scary for new users to try Linux out. Unfortunately, I did want to see what Linux enthusiasts are running and why they picked it, which is why I made this thread.

If you are a new user trying to get into Linux, I wouldn’t recommend some suggestions in this thread as advice for picking a distro. When I was getting into Linux, I attempted to go straight into DWM/arch because another Linux enthusiast thread said it was great. Needless to say, I had a terrible time.

It doesn’t actually matter distro what you pick, so long as you have fun with it and it is useable! :)

Pat_Riot,
@Pat_Riot@lemmy.today avatar

I hurt them in their safe space. I don’t know why. My comment was made lightly. I read all the threads. This one read just like the last “where do I start” thread, and that was all I was saying at the time. It got me in a fight with one guy. Whatever. I’m just trying not to have a rough time when I finally pull the trigger so I read. My mistake was chiming in. Lesson learned. I’ll come back when I blow up my machine i guess and let everyone tell me how stupid I was to try whatever it is I finally try. All I want is something that works and software that does what I want. I’m afraid I may be asking too much.

beeng,

If you want the cool new thing, it’s Nix

blotz,
@blotz@lemmy.world avatar

I tried nix actually. Personally, I think it would make a great server os, but I do not enjoy it as a daily driver. I didn’t like the fact that I was forced to install everything through nix and couldn’t compile software from source.

musicmatze,
@musicmatze@lemmy.ml avatar

Nix is a source code package manager and compiles everything from source, except when there’s a binary substitute available.

Zyansheep,

And binary caching can even be disabled if you want a gentoo-like experience!

Barbarian, (edited )
@Barbarian@sh.itjust.works avatar

When it comes to distros, I am a boring man with a boring POV: I just want the thing to work with as little fuss as possible. Consequently, I’m on Kubuntu. KDE is rock solid, and Ubuntu is what I’m used to.

If/when my OS ever breaks down hard enough to reinstall, I’ll probably install Fedora Workstation.

noisypine,

NixOS and Debian. Probably just NixOS in the near future.

wolre,

I’ve been using OpenSuse Slowroll basically since it released and so far am very happy with it.

dramaticcat, (edited )

I will get hate from everyone over this, but I daily drive Manjaro because I can!

I know how to install Arch, I choose to use Manjaro.

WitchHazel,

I don’t hate you for it but I did the same thing until Manjaro broke itself

LeFantome,

I also used Manjaro and it broke on me multiple times. I did not realize how badly it was messing up the AUR until I switched. I use EndeavourOS now.

May I ask why you use Manjaro?

zxqwas,

In my case it was because Ubuntu broke on me for whatever reason (and the threat of snap packages looming).

I did not feel like putting anymore effort into getting the computer back to working so I just switched to something not Ubuntuoid at semi random to anything that promised an easy installation.

A year later and it’s still working. I’ll notify you when it breaks so you can tell me “I told you so”.

Discover5164,

me too, but i will switch to arch or nix soon. not because it broke, just to have a frash start. after 3+ years i have a shit load of stuff i don’t really need anymore

atmur, (edited )

I’ve been running Fedora for years. I tried out Arch and OpenSUSE a bit this year just to see if I was missing anything, and went right back to Fedora afterward.

Not as fussy as Arch and better package availability than SUSE (for my needs at least). Also dnf is my favorite package manager despite being relatively slow.

ikidd,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

After years of Manjaro (and I still use it on most of my computers), I’m trying out Nobara KDE to see how it keeps up for gaming. It has a number of optimizations that Glorious Eggroll has compiled and seems pretty fast compared to Manjaro on the same hardware. I imagine I could do all the changes on Manjaro, but I also wanted to see how Fedora runs these days, it’s been a long time since I used it on the daily.

So far, so good.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

I’m using Mint, but I’ve avoided using flatpaks (generally downloading DEB packages directly, or adding ppa sources). It’s worked pretty well so far.

I do have a handful of AppImages, but they’re a bit easier to work with.

WeLoveCastingSpellz,

Why avoid using Flatpaks if you don’t mind me asking

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

Two reasons: they’re big, and they’re sandboxed.

I was on a 5Mbit connection until recently, so a lot of flatpaks being 1GB+ was frustrating (especially when their native packages were <100MB). And I was using a 250GB SSD, which filled up rather quickly.

And it turns out I wasn’t a fan of the sandboxing aspect. In theory it should be a good thing, but turned out to be frustrating.

WeLoveCastingSpellz,

Thanks for the answer, I bever relized that they were larger

derrg,
@derrg@lemmy.world avatar

Pop!_OS on my desktop and laptop since 2020.

nezach,

Endeavouros on Laptop and main PC. Loving it.

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