(Constructively) What is your least favorite distro & why?

I’ve been distrohopping for a while now, and eventually I landed on Arch. Part of the reason I have stuck with it is I think I had a balanced introduction, since I was exposed to both praise and criticism. We often discuss our favorite distros, but I think it’s equally important to talk about the ones that didn’t quite hit the mark for us because it can be very helpful.

So, I’d like to ask: What is your least favorite Linux distribution and why? Please remember, this is not about bashing or belittling any specific distribution. The aim is to have a constructive discussion where we can learn about each other’s experiences.

My personal least favorite is probably Manjaro.

Consider:

  • What specific features/lack thereof made it less appealing?
  • Did you face any specific challenges?
  • How was your experience with the community?
  • If given a chance, what improvements would you suggest?
Poik,
@Poik@pawb.social avatar

Hannah Montana Linux. Do I have to explain?

Chadus_Maximus,

Yes.

mvirts,

You can’t have the best of both worlds

01189998819991197253,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

I hate that I understood this joke. Take my angry upvote.

01189998819991197253,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

Is it because it came in like a wrecking ball?

dingus,

Sorry, I think you meant to post this in the “best distro” thread

danielquinn,
@danielquinn@lemmy.ca avatar

Ubuntu. They’ve managed the worst of both worlds: like Debian, everything is old (though admittedly not as old), but unlike Debian, everything is broken/buggy/flakey. It’s the old-and-busted distro that I’m routinely told is “the only Linux we support”.

AbidanYre,

Also, support is only provided for 18.04LTS.

astraeus,
@astraeus@programming.dev avatar

If Debian is not great as a desktop distro, it’s at the very least remarkably stable as a server distro. The sentiment extends somewhat to Ubuntu LTS. It could be better, but in terms of uptime and just working I can’t fault either distro.

TCB13, (edited )
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Debian is a great desktop distro if you get your software using Flatpak, as anyone should be doing in every distro.

nik282000,
@nik282000@lemmy.ca avatar

Whats wrong with apt?

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing at all, the main issue is that with graphical applications developers have an hard time to package things for all the useless distros out there and some other distros like Debian on stable will only haver older versions of software. Flatpak solves both of this issues.

ursakhiin,

I just now discovered why people are hating on Ubuntu pro by receiving a note that Ubuntu will not provide security updates for some apps it came with unless you activate Pro.

I think I’m done with Ubuntu on any personal machines.

astraeus,
@astraeus@programming.dev avatar

Yeah I didn’t offer much input on personal devices because I did use Ubuntu for awhile as a personal environment and it’s fine, but could use work. I think personally I like Debian better, but if I want a clean GNOME experience Fedora is probably the move.

Pacmanlives,

Currently using Bookworm and KDE as my desktop right now. Works really well! If I need more up to date software I use Distrobox and run whatever distro’s version of software I want. I have both Debian Sid and Arch Firefox versions installed on my machine right now just to see if it worked and it’s flawless. I mostly just run apps from SID container and it exposed the app to my desktop wonderfully. Really the only way I will fly these days.

drndramrndra,

Don’t forget that Ubuntu was the first distro to both sell user data to Amazon, and show you ads in the terminal. But it seems like everyone forgets about it as soon as canonical goes “whoops, our bad, we didn’t think you’d mind, it’s opt in/out now”.

On top of that I’ve seen allegations that they’re illegally collecting data from Azure Ubuntu users to send them spam about Ubuntu enterprise.

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

I don’t have many issues on Ubuntu like you imply. It’s the reason why I stick with it despite snaps.

dingus, (edited )

I was an Ubuntu fan many moons ago. Then I fell in love with Mint when it was just all around a better version of Ubuntu.

Then I ended up with a new Windows laptop for years and forgot about Linux entirely. But this year, I’ve actually returned to Ubuntu. I like how it has a fresh and different look and it still performs well on my now aging laptop. Mint is always my go to recommendation to others, but I just wanted a different look than your standard Windows-like look that Cinnamon has. I was initially turned off way back when, when Ubuntu switched to Unity, but now a difference in look appeals to me. We’ll see if I get annoyed with Snaps or not. So far, everything has been running smoothly.

If there was a GNOME fork of Mint, I’d likely be using that. I get that you can technically install whatever desktop environment in whatever distro you want, but for compatibility sake, it’s best to roll with what your distro comes with.

isVeryLoud,

Manjaro always broke on me. I can’t even trust them to keep their SSL certs up to date.

Sorry Manjaro devs, no hate, I just got burned way too many times by this arch-not-arch frankendistro.

tcrash,

Been on it for the last two years. Never broke. Idk what’s going on

maness300,

Fedora. It doesn’t really add anything and is just more stuff for people to get distracted by.

Also, red hat is responsible for shilling a lot of bullshit.

JustARegularNerd,

I tried Fedora aswell and couldn’t get behind the package management or GNOME. I’m sure it’s trivial to change the DE to something more sane (my tastes lie with Xfce and/or KDE) but I used it for a month and I just went straight back to Manjaro until I could find something better, and ultimately settled on EndeavourOS.

jerrythegenius,
@jerrythegenius@lemmy.world avatar

You could try the KDE or XFCE spins

pathief,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

After spending a ton of time migrating CentOS machines I have to say anything red hat related.

luca,

Also Fedora too: really polished Desktop experience, great choice of DE’s, many Spins for every taste, the installer is somewhat insufferable, overall a great distro, but I just can’t get myself over Red Hat (and the logo makes me feel like I’m working on Facebook OS).

Oha,

Manjaro. Its just Arch but worse

CrabAndBroom,

Yeah I was gonna say Manjaro too. I used it for a while while I was heading towards Arch but wasn’t feeling fully confident to go full Arch as a daily driver yet, and it was nothing but trouble for me. I found that it tried to prevent me from breaking things, which is not necessarily bad, but it would also break things by itself and then this feature would prevent me from going in and fixing them.

I much prefer it when the OS just gets out of my way and lets me do what I want, even if it’s dumb lol

someonesmall,

I’m using Manjaro daily for +5 years and had one or two package conflicts, never any boot problems. I don’t understand where all the Manjaro hate is coming from…

Joe_0237, (edited )

Ubuntu: For shilling all kinds of profrietary garbage by default. If I wanted that I’d be on Windows.

Also the changes they make to GNOME make it worse, they take away what makes it good, the flow.

genie,

Exactly what I came here to say.

Prompt me for Ubuntu Pro once (in the GUI on first login)? Shame on you, but I’ll move past it.

Put an ad in the terminal every time I update my system though? Straight to jail.

CrabAndBroom,

Someone already said Manjaro, so my second pick would be ElementaryOS. In the past they’ve had this weird attitude about open source things being free (I get supporting devs for projects you like of course, but I don’t agree that it’s “cheating” to not pay for every single piece of open source software you use), and they seem to get a lot of hype and praise for what’s essentially just Ubuntu painted up to look like MacOS IMO.

leopold, (edited )

I very much don’t care for ElementaryOS, but I really don’t think it’s fair to paint it as “Ubuntu painted up to look like MacOS”. It’s not just GNOME with some extensions. They made a whole desktop environment and suite of applications for their distro. That’s a ton of work. I think any distro that does that deserves some amount of respect.

ILikeBoobies,

I always confuse it with Sugar

captain_aggravated,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’m going to mention two:

Manjaro. I’ve attempted to use Manjaro a few different times, and outside of a VM it just didn’t work properly; on my laptop it would boot loop for reasons I don’t understand, it had poor hardware support and optimization on a Raspberry Pi, and it didn’t last long on my desktop. It’s had its chances, I’m done trying.

I really did not hitch horses with Pop!_OS, and it’s almost entirely because Pop!_OS started at Gnome and kept fucking going. Just thinking about the two miserable weeks I spent trying to get Gnome to do anything is making me physically angry. Words like disobedient and belligerent come to mind when I think of what it’s like to use Pop!_OS. Linux Mint is designed to feel familiar to anyone coming from Windows. Pop!_OS feels like it’s designed to be the opposite of that, it deliberately doesn’t work the way you think it does. YOU have to conform to IT. And I FUCKING hate it. It is never welcome on my hardware ever again.

lseif,

yep. i dont see a reason to use Manjaro when EndevourOs is basically the same, but better (and a nicer color theme!)

maness300,

Why does endeavor OS describe itself as a terminal-centric OS?

That alone turns me off from using it. I try to avoid the terminal at all costs.

lseif,

im pretty sure you can get by pretty well without the terminal, for the most part. although, it is arch based, and its kind of the point. no distro is for everyone.

its besides the point, but why dont u like the terminal?

maness300,

its besides the point, but why dont u like the terminal?

Because it’s way harder to remember and use text commands than it is to navigate a GUI.

I also don’t like taking my hand off the mouse if I can avoid it.

lseif,

fair enough.

mikesailin,

NIXOS. It has a very steep learning curve without acceptable documentation and once I climbed the learning curve, I realized that it was very different from the Linux that I love.

fogetaboutit,

I hope you dont give up on it for too long, I think it’s a great OS once you get the hang of nix. To this day, its the only OS I trust where I could install anything I want and can still rollback without worries. Also I can make sure that my installation is the same as others, which means other people can literally just copy paste my config to test.

Joe_0237, (edited )

OpenSUSE, awfull default software selection on desktop, and pushing users hard to use an “everything configuration tool”.

tslnox,

I tried Tumbleweed on my old main PC. When I finally got around to upgrade it, I immediately wiped it and got back to my beloved Gentoo (for which the old PC was getting a bit too slow)

Now I have Leaf on the family PC, because they pretty much only need Firefox and occasional LibreOffice and I’m lazy to try to find a different distro.

Snoopy, (edited )
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Unpopular opinion :

  • Arch, i installed it long ago so i can’t remember anything except that i spent lot hours for its installation.
  • Reason : spend a lot time reading the wiki without an easy installer…even Ubuntu was better but i wanted a challenge and a better uderstanding on linux.
  • Some AUR package didn’t work.
  • Why Arch ? To get the lastest os and package as i had a recent gaming laptop.

So I changed and prefered manjaro with its ui for linux os, graphic card…but some thing were broken…than i settled Pop-Os for 3 years and distrohopped again for immutable os : Vanilla OS and Fedora Kinoite. :)

Another distro :

  • Ubuntu
  • reason : snap and various decisions.
Falcon,

I enjoyed arch for how straight forward the install was.

Gentoo however, every time I do that from scratch it’s with X, Westland is NetworkManager that give up (my recommendation is oddlamma installer)

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Yeah Arch is straight forward but is require an amazing amount of focus and concentration. :)

I should try gentoo as my next challenge, i guess i won’t like it but in fact, i enjoy those challenge and trying new stuff. ^^

wuphysics87,

You need to learn how bullets work, my friend.

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Bullets in markdown ?


<span style="color:#323232;">* like this ?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">* or like that ?
</span>
wuphysics87,

As in what does it mean to itemize. In this case to make an unordered list.

Snoopy,
@Snoopy@jlai.lu avatar

Sorry, my english comprehension is rusty. It is an unordered list. I used it to improve readibility on phone and separate topics.

If the topic is mixed in a paragraphe i would have a harder time to quickly retrieve informations. Here you can read Arch and ubuntu and why in a single glance.

zloubida,
@zloubida@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t get the hate for Manjaro, TBH. I never had any problem with it, and I used it as my main OS for a few years now.

ikidd,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

It’s fine. People like to shit on it, usually people that have never even tried it.

I’ve run it for years on many systems and had no issues, which I can’t say with most other distros I’ve tried on and off.

TheGrandNagus,

People dislike it because:

  • There’s no real reason to use it over Arch/EndeavourOS
  • Their holding back of updates for 2 weeks is stupid and can cause breakage/dependency issues when you also have stuff installed via AUR (which doesn’t get held back for 2 weeks)
  • They hold back packages for 2 weeks, citing stability and that they can check for issues then patch before they push, but then they just… don’t do that. Known issues still get pushed.
  • Manjaro repos have had issues with malware in the past
  • Manjaro has on multiple occasions had their SSL certificates expire, with their advertised “fix” being to roll your system time back. This is a job that can be automated, or at the very least should have a reminder for someone in Manjaro to sort out. The fact it happened once is an embarrassment, but the fact it’s happened more times is absolutely inexcusable.
zloubida,
@zloubida@lemmy.world avatar

Once, I listened what some people said on the Internet, and I tried Arch. I came back to Manjaro, but I learned a lot so I’m not unhappy with the experience.

However, to say that there’s no reason to use it over Arch (I don’t know about Endeavour, I never actually used it) is just wrong. Maybe you don’t like the differences, but they are important and useful for someone like me. When I installed Arch, I needed to tinker it for hours before having something usable. I don’t want to tinker, I want my OS to work, even if it means other people made choices for me, as long as I can revert them; that’s what Manjaro offers. For example, I love GNOME, but only with some plugins, like dash to dock. When I installed Arch, GNOME made an update which broke a lot of plugins, included dash to dock; while Manjaro waited for dash to dock to work to push the new GNOME. Some issues may be pushed, but a lot of others aren’t. I prefer to have one big update twice a month instead of having to update and tinker again my OS possibly every day.

Manjaro is far from perfect, no distro is, but for people like me, it works very well, and better than Arch.

Father_Redbeard,
@Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml avatar

Any DE that looks remotely like Windows. My journey to Linux began with a seething hatred of the way Microsoft does pretty much anything. Including the Win10 UI. So when I jumped ship I wanted something completely different. I tried Gnome on a couple distros but ultimately landed on Pop!_OS and really like it!

gianni,

I agree with this the most. People obsess over the start menu paradigm simply because they like it in Windows. I desire more open mindedness when it comes to looking into alternative ways to interact with your computer, so I align with GNOME.

kugmo,
@kugmo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ubuntu when it introduced snaps, anything red hat, anything immutable

areyouevenreal,

What are your reasons? This is a fairly broad amount of things to hate.

gianni,

“Anything immutable” is bold. Any bad experiences, personally? I don’t think they’ve negatively impacted the desktop Linux landscape as a whole…

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