(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?
lseif,

Evil Linux Suprise™

idk why people even use it. too scary for me.

KarnaSubarna,
@KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml avatar

RHEL - for obvious reasons

MiddledAgedGuy, (edited )

TL;DR: Ubuntu. Because I want choices.

Ubuntu. And I’ve felt that way for a long time, so it’s not something recentish like snaps.

I don’t want my distro to decide what DE and software I’m using for me. They used to have a minimal iso which gave you, as the name suggests, a very minimal install. But now their minimal image is meant for containerized stuff and if memory serves comes with some extra cruft for that purpose.

I got annoyed and I left. And every distro I’ve tried since, even if I didn’t stick with it, I liked better.

To add some constructiveness, as that’s just complaining. That can be a good thing, just depends on the user. If they want the crafted experience Ubuntu provides, then it’s a good pick. It’s just not for me.

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

I use Fedora as my primary desktop distro. It’s a sturdy base with relatively up-to-date packages from the repos. It doesn’t really push technology I consider undesirable, like Snaps. Even though I have to rely on RPMFusion for a number of proprietary parts, due to Fedora’s free software stance, I don’t have any particular qualms about that. I also increasingly use Flatpaks anyway.

When I used to use Reddit the /r/fedora community was helpful and welcoming.

One downside is because the kernel changes frequently, and I (sadly) own a Nvidia GPU, akmods runs very often. Another downside is sometimes that frequently changing kernel can cause issues. I think in the past year or two I’ve had two distinct occasions where a kernel upgrade caused my mounted shares to not mount correctly. Reporting an issue to upstream also takes quite some involvement, as I discovered when I had to create some Red Hat account to report an issue about the packaging of some software in a beta release of Fedora.

So all-in-all I would say Fedora is a strong distro. It is probably not the most beginner-friendly one, though, given how you have to dip your toes into RPMFusion and related challenges. It used to be worse, since DejaVu used to be the default font system-wide and you had to install a fonts package from COPR to make the system actually look pleasant. Since then they switched to Noto, which makes the font situation MUCH better.

On servers and VMs I use Debian because I do not have the patience to maintain a faster moving Fedora multiple times over. This is exacerbated by the awful defaults of Gnome, which I have to bend into shape with extensions. When Fedora 40 releases later this year I fully intend to reinstall from scratch since KDE Plasma 6 will be available.

edit: i misread the prompt and just talked about my favorite distro that i actively use. whoops.

My least favorite distro could be Manjaro if I actually used it, but it is Ubuntu because of how close it is to being a great distro. Snaps really soured me to that deal. Snapd and Snaps make it difficult to use in VMs, too, because now you have to over-commit resources for something that could and should be smaller and simpler. Debian stays winning, as usual.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

The distro I came here to mention has been hated on already. My dislike goes to the distros that start off fine, and somehow screw it up.

Honestly, I remember using Manjaro ages ago. It had an official Openbox spin (not a community thing). I had already used Arch but I didn’t even check to see what it was based on when I tried. I thought, “green is nice” and it was. It very quickly became less nice. I didn’t use it after that, but I’ve heard plenty of hate since then.

I’m going to put another one out there just for fun.

Distrowatch’s n°1… MX Linux

Nothing wrong with it, but the fact that it is number 1 (I know their ranking is just for fun and based on page hits) and doesn’t deserve it is the issue. It works great, when I used it I didn’t like how there was a second application for installating certain software. I think I used the Xfce setup. Again, it’s fine, but if a first-time Linux desktop user sat down and installed that, it might not be the best initiation.

Popular and highly ranked distros give Desktop Linux a bad name sometimes is what I’m saying.

THE_ANON,

(Mod) Ubuntu shit breaks more than half the things i want to use.

joeyjr,
@joeyjr@mastodon.online avatar

@gianni Perhaps Fedora and parent. Just because...

Spectacle8011,
@Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

I don’t really have a least favorite distribution. I mean, I guess between Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, openSUSE, Manjaro, and Gentoo, the least appealing choices to me are Manjaro and Gentoo. Manjaro is just Arch but worse, because the packages are old and likely to cause incompatibilities with AUR packages that need really up-to-date system packages, and I…don’t trust the maintainers to have configured everything better than I could have myself. Just based on history.

Debian has ancient packages. That’s the only reason. I’d just end up using Flatpak packages or compiling from source.

Any other distribution I could use, including Gentoo, but Arch is the sweet spot for me.

kzhe,

VanillaOS looked really promising but it was terribly buggy when I used it.

EponymousBosh,
@EponymousBosh@beehaw.org avatar

My least favorite is Linux Lite. It’s supposed to be a lighter, simpler version of Ubuntu but I don’t think it accomplishes this at all. It’s very slow for something that’s supposed to be lightweight, and still includes Snaps, which are also very much not lightweight. Plus its software center is just bad, which is not great for something that’s marketed at Linux noobs. Linux Mint XFCE or SpiralLinux are better options for a Linux noob who needs a lighter distro, IMO.

An improvement I’d suggest: obviously, ditch Snaps. Another would be to take a look at what Bodhi Linux does and have the “software center” run in the browser. I don’t know how good this is security-wise, but it definitely speeds things up from the UX side of things.

taladar, (edited )

RHEL and other extremly long term support distros that have a significant user base because they hold back a lot of software features, network protocol features and moves to new dependencies that are required to work on the oldest and the newest supported distro for any given upstream software project.

Also, any time I have to learn something about a quirk in a version of software in use there it is basically wasted life time because the knowledge is already outdated by the time I obtain it.

jerrythegenius,
@jerrythegenius@lemmy.world avatar

My least favourites are probably ubuntu and manjaro, not so much because of the distros themselves but the organizations behind them being a bit dodge.

akincisor,

I never figured out why, but I couldn’t get any version of suse to work properly on my computers. I’ve been with Debian (sid) for about a decade now, so not the most up to date criticism here.

sirico,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

I’d agree with Manjaro, It was my first I kinda know Linux distro after brown Ubuntu and Mint at the time it really worked well, but then package desyncing started affecting my installation followed by the first of many controversial behaviours from the team. It’s one of many Linux distros that hasn’t progressed much in the last few years, like elementary, and the idea it is easy to arch is false when you end up having to babysit updates because testing isn’t as up to par as something like Fedora or Mint.

Garuda is a distro that has swung from a do not install to prob the best “Welcome to arch” distro for me. Their focus on tooling is getting up there with Mint & Suse BTRFS manager being a shining program of the project. More so, shows how utterly pointless Manjaro has become and badly managed the project is.

aniki,

Ubuntu / snaps

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