"Must Try" distros and DEs?

Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in breadboard, and other hardware hacking fun.

On the OS, I’m planning to try NixOS as a baremetal hypervisor (KVM/QEMU) and run my “primary” OSes in VMs with hardware passthrough. If perf is horrible, I’ll probably switch back to baremetal after a bit. But, I’m not likely going to be gaming on it so, I’m not likely to have much issue.

Once the hypervisor is working in a manner that I like, I should have an easy time backing up, rolling back, swapping out my “desktop” OS. I’ve been using Linux as my pretty much my only OS for over a decade (I use MacOS as a glorified SSH client for work). Most of my time has been on distros in the Debian or RHEL families (*buntu, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, CentOS, etc) and I pretty much live in the terminal these days.

With all of this said, I am coming to you folks for help. I would like you folks to share distros, desktop environments, window managers that you think I should give a try, or would like to inflict on me and what makes them noteworthy.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll get through suggestions, as my ADHD has been playing up lately, but I’ll give it an attempt. Seriously. If you want me to try Hannah Montana Linux, I’ll do it and report back on the experience.

EDIT: Thank you all for your fantastic suggestions. I’m going to start compiling them into a list this weekend.

pelotron,
@pelotron@midwest.social avatar

Hyprland DE is the new hotness

nickwitha_k,

That’s one that I’ve been that I’ve been meaning to give a shot.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

Hyprland would look so sick on a cyberdeck

Falcon,

It’s great but still really unstable. I’ll be sticking with Sway / DWM for a bit longer.

However, it looks promising.

kelvie,

If you’re a tinkerer it’s kind of addicting. I thought I’d give it a try just to see what it was like, and ended up staying up all night customizing it, and now about a month later I don’t really want to go back to KDE (been using KDE for almost 20 years)

pelotron,
@pelotron@midwest.social avatar

Agreed, it really makes me excited to use my PC.

noodlejetski, (edited )

just steer clear from the community drewdevault.com/2023/09/…/Hyprland-toxicity.html

…or the dev fosstodon.org/

TheGrandNagus,

“yes, I do believe that there could be arguments to sway my opinion towards genocide.”

Wow.

Aties,

Would you not consider genocide during a zombie apocalypse?

TheGrandNagus,

I genuinely don’t know whether this comment is a joke or not

umbrella,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

that means the joke is on point i hope?

TheButtonJustSpins,

This sounds like pro-zombie propaganda.

const_void,

Yikes. What is it about Hyperland that attracts these kinds of people?

noodlejetski, (edited )

from what I’ve read it’s rather the lack of moderation (due to the dev’s views) that doesn’t reject them. similar situation to the Nazi bar.

Cwilliams,

It’s like Arch, but x10. People think Arch > Any other distro, Wayland > Xorg, Hyprland > any other DE, Rust > C, etc

Hawk,

Yeah, I’ve been wanting to try Hyprland but have been holding off for that exact reason.

Currently on i3, maybe I’ll give sway a go.

Ramin_HAL9001,

Must try distros: Fedora, Mint, Void. But seriously, if you are using Nix to begin with, why use anything else? Nix is as good as it gets. If you really want to do a combo, I would recommend Fedora or Mint using Nix as just the package manager and not the hypervisor. All distros are basically the same nowadays.

Must try desktop environments: Xfce, Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE Plasma

nickwitha_k, (edited )

I’ve never really Fedora or Void. Will definitely try those.

Of your DEs, I think KDE is the only one that I’ve not used significantly. I need to fix that. I think MATE deserves a place there too.

ETA: As for why not just Nix or Nix as a package manager? I’ve become accustomed to being in VMs all of the time and really like the way that doing so impacts how I interact with a system and extra capabilities provided.

dis_honestfamiliar,

Try those but also wanted to say enlightenment. I don’t even know if it still exists. If it does, give a try.

Pacmanlives,

Why do you say Nix is good as it gets? I am an old graybeard mostly( SuSe, Debian and FreeBSD)

Ramin_HAL9001, (edited )

In short: Nix tracks all installable software and dependencies using a Merkel tree data structure to ensure fully reproducible builds of software. This Merkel tree also provides properties similar to that of a C.O.W. filesystem where you can snapshot and rollback system software build configurations in O(1) time, it just rewrites a fixed number of symbolic links to the root of the desired Merkel tree. In my opinion, it is the most technologically advanced package manager currently in existence.

Every input that goes into building a piece of software on Nix OS (or in the Nix package manager in general) is hashed and placed into a database on the system. These hash IDs become dependencies for everything they are used to build. By tracing the chain of hash IDs you can guarantee that every single bit that goes into the build of the system software is accounted for. If two separate computers with the same ISA are running the same tree of packages verifiable by their hash IDs, you are guaranteed that both computers are running the exact same software. All dynamic libraries, shared libraries, executable files, and even the config files in the package database refer only to other files in the database.

When you use Nix OS, not just the package manager, the C compiler, boot loader, and kernel are themselves build inputs. You can even roll back to a snapshot of a working system from the bootloader menu if you accidentally break your system (as long as the package database is not corrupted).

Finally, the system itself is both built and configured using a declarative programming language. So you install software by declaring that it should exist, and the package manager computes precisely which dependencies must be installed to realize what it is you have declared in the system configuration files. Making a change to what is installed requires simply altering the lines of code in the system configuration file. You can also use these configuration files to easily construct Docker images or Flatpacks.

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

TempleOS

nickwitha_k,

You know what? Yeah. I’ve wanted to try that product of schizophrenic mania for a while.

maness300,

Manjaro KDE.

tkk13909,

I’m really looking forward to Plasma 6 and Cinnamon just had a pretty good release do there’s a couple for you :)

nickwitha_k,

I am so glad that Cinnamon has been going strong. It made Gnome 3 a lot less painful.

Kidplayer_666,

Hopefully by the time OP gets his laptop, the wayland session will be almost complete

nickwitha_k,

They’ve got time. Shipment isn’t due until Q2.

const_void,

What Plasma 6 features are you looking forward to?

tkk13909,

There’s not really anything specific but it’ll be the first time I experience a full plasma upgrade since I started using Linux in 2022. From what I’ve seen of it, the interface is going to be a lot cleaner though so I guess I’m looking forward to that.

mlg,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

XFCE with Compiz as the compositor

Or just straight Compiz

Make sure you enable all the funny effects like the cube, cube animations, 3D windows, advanced window animations, transparency effects, sky box, etc.

All easy to do with compiz config manager.

nickwitha_k,

That’s a name that I’ve not heard in a long time. Wasn’t aware that Compiz was still active. It was my favorite compositor until the Gnome 3 switch.

mlg,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah I’m surprised it doesn’t show up as much anymore despite being both a performant and highly customizable platform.

Lots of the effects aren’t available on other DEs, and the team behind has so far actually maintained all the plugins.

BlanK0,

If you are an advanced linux user then I would suggest giving a try to the following distros: arch, void, gentoo and (like you said in the post) nixOS.

The reason behind is that this distros are focused on the tinkering aspect of linux, the experience of setting up everything the way you want.

If you want to give a shot to WMs I would suggest i3, sway, dwm, dwl, river, bspwm, Qtile and hyperland (maybe focus more on the Wayland ones if you want to try the latest software).

node815,

For a totally different experience, and if you ever want to spin up a distro in a “container” there’s BlendOS blendos.co

I’m an Arch user so I’m sort of staying where I am but am always open to ideas, so I tried Blend a while back. As said on this page for the distro: itsfoss.com/immutable-linux-distros/

“In other words, you can install any package on the distro (RPM, DEB, etc.) while getting the immutability and update reliability as one would expect.”

That pretty much describes it and I recall, it did well. I also tried this one which is touted to be AI enhanced and feels more like they are making good progress: www.makululinux.comlinuxinsider.com/…/new-makululinux-release-brings…

To get the AI to the max, you need to pay a fee, but It’s all in the name of supporting development.

nickwitha_k,

Intriguing. I do have reservations about “all-the-package-types” but need to give that a try, for novelty, if nothing else.

octopus_ink,

Wow, I don’t pay as much attention to developments in the space as I did a few years ago and I can see I should start to again. These are some pretty interesting distros you’ve linked.

dotslashme,

I wouldn’t recommend specific ones, but I would recomnend you try out distros with unique features. Such as an immutable one, one that is built from source, one with packages, one with snap, one with flatpack, etc.

This will help you understand and evaluate what you like.

iopq,

Apparently you can already try Cosmic on NixOS

mvirts,

Lol I vote for nixos on nixos 😹

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Don’t know if it is a must-try, but LXQt has come a long way. The file browser is excellent. Everything is fast and snappy and very traditional (start button, system tray, etc.). Runner up I guess.

You can run Alpine as a desktop. The Edge branch. New software, got what you need, installs and updates fast.

nickwitha_k,

Alpine as a desktop? Now that’s weird and I’ll have to give that a go.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

It’s easy. After running setup-alpine and rebooting with a bar install there is built-in script setup-desktop that lets you install Gnome, Plasma or Xfce.

You can find install scripts like Alpine Suck around the web git.sr.ht/~bt/alpine-suck

Or check out the wiki for other inspiration wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Category:Desktop

If you use Edge, I would recommend subscribing to the user mailing list though, just in case.

Bitflip,

Forget a DE, sounds like you need a WM. Definitely check out some tiling options like i3 or sway, especially since you spend so much time in the terminal.

makeasnek, (edited )
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Every linux enthusiast should try Qubes at least once. The architecture is totally different, vastly more secure in many ways than most Linux distros. It’s definitely not for everybody, but if privacy and security rank high on your priority list it’s worth a look. It never ends up in Linux top ten lists for some reason, but it’s an incredible OS.

noorbeast,

What is your actual personal use case, all you mention is a terminal, which every distro will support, likely with many different choices as to terminal options?

nickwitha_k,

Beyond the usual browsing I’ll mainly be doing tinkering with hardware, gateware, firmware, CAD, art, projects that I may or may not finish, and the like. It’s going to be my “everything but playing video games” machine.

just_another_person, (edited )

I’m assuming you’re running a Ryzen 7040 series then. No kernel support for the FPGA yet.

Also, Linux is great for gaming. Not sure why you’d limit yourself there.

nickwitha_k,

I’m assuming you’re running a Ryzen 7040 series then. No kernel support for the FPGA yet.

Honestly, I wasn’t aware that they had included a fabric. That’s really awesome, whether it is supported yet or not. I have a couple of dev boards and intend to build a board with a previous gen Xilinx chip that can fit in the expansion bay.

Also, Linux is great for gaming. Not sure why you’d limit yourself there.

100% agreed. However, I already have a Steam Deck and console, so, it’s more that gaming is already covered by other devices than thinking the system is not capable. I’m intending to take advantage of the modularity to turn the laptop into a platform more physically spacialized for tinkering.

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