6mo ago

Sell us on your favorite exotic/niche distro

The Linux ecosystem is vast and diverse, offering a multitude of distributions to suit every need and preference. With hundreds of distros to choose from, it's a pity that most are rarely mentioned while the popular ones are constantly being regurgitated.

This thread aims to celebrate this diversity and shine a light on smaller projects with passionate developers. I invite you to pitch your favorite underappreciated distro and share your experiences with those lesser-known Linux distributions that deserve more attention.

While there are no strict rules or banlists, I encourage you to focus on truly niche or exotic distributions rather than the more commonly discussed ones. Consider touching upon what makes your chosen distro unique:

What features or philosophies set it apart?
Why do you favor it over other distros, including the popular ones? (Beyond "It just works.")
In what situations would you recommend it to others?

Whether it's a specialized distro for a particular use case or a general-purpose OS with a unique twist, let's explore the road less traveled in the Linux landscape. Your insights could introduce fellow enthusiasts to their next favorite distribution!

108 comments

Haha nice try. If everyone starts liking it then it won't be niche anymore. So I won't share it! /s
- It's Puppy Linux, isn't it?
  
  Nah I just posted this as a joke. I am on Fedora + KDE. Mainstream and boring as they come. Rock solid and stable though.

I think nixos is still niche, but seems to be gaining momentum. It has some unique features:
Every package has its own dependencies, so you can install a 7 year old firefox alongside the latest, and have no interference.
Packages with dependencies in common still share them (for space savings).
Abandons the HFS, but can still fake it for apps that need it.
Can make dev environments that are exactly reproducible across machines, and only exist within a specific shell session. So you can have a project that relies on an out of date version of a compiler, and another that uses the latest, and run both at the same time.
Make your own packages that other people can install using a git repo address.
The package language can also describe a machine's configuration; systemd services, default packages, user accounts, etc.
You can build and remotely deploy a machine config in one line.
You can cross compile a machine config for another cpu architecture, like ARM.
OS upgrades are atomic, and reversible. If it doesn't work out, you can go back to the previous config.
No reason to ever reinstall. Recently upgraded a machine that had sat in a closet for 5 years to the newest release. Flawless upgrade.
Nixos boasts more packages than any other distro, over 100,000.
There are certainly downsides - poor docs, confusing core language. Instructions for installing something on say debian will not work on nixos. I do think this style of package management is the future, if perhaps not this specific implementation. It can be a pain but its also super solid.
- I use NixOS on my workstations, and I'm slowly migrating many of my server VMs over to it.
  NixOS w/flakes + home-manager + impermanence on zfs + disko w/ nixos-anywhere is amazing and gives an insane amount of declarative control over your system.
  That said, the current state of the leadership gives me pause to recommend it to anyone, and I do have a few devil's advocate responses to some of what you said:
  Every package has its own dependencies, so you can install a 7 year old firefox alongside the latest, and have no interference.
  Unless the dependency is Qt, then it better all be the same version.
  Abandons the HFS, but can still fake it for apps that need it.
  Using ldd and nix-alien to patch in dynamic libraries still sucks, and often doesn't work without a lot of extra effort. If what I want isn't in nixpkgs, and I can't get nix-alien to work on the first try, I just end up not using whatever I was trying to run.
  
  I hear you, its great for most cases, but when a package isn't available or downloads binaries that depend on hfs it sucks. I've been going through hell with android dev lately and am currently doing my compiles on debian, lol.
- Obligatory GNU Guix mention

Alpine. The Linux, not GNU/Linux joke aside, Alpine's kinda great. Light, fast, stable, great package manager. I've daily driven it on both a server and as my main distro and it's pretty nice for both... Unless you're on Nvidia.
- My first intro to it was with postmarketOS, and I have to say it felt super light and stable
- Huh, I'd never actually considered that Alpine Linux existed as something other than a base for docker containers.
  
  Yeah, that's many people's impression of it.
- Want there a post I saw just the other day about Nvidia starting to make open source releases with one of the upcoming driver updates? I just saw it yesterday and didn't even think I checked it out yet but it's somewhere here on my "look at better later" lists here.
  It would be fine then if that was true.
  
  Just the kernel module, which still interacts with the proprietary driver.

I'm not sure if it's niche but openSUSE Tumbleweed isn't as popular as it deserves to be. If you are looking for more niche, back in my distro hopping days I enjoyed Kaos and Solus
- More niche? Opensuse Kalpa.
  I started running it and their are some pains like figuring out which layer to install tablet driver software, undervolting software, and kde connect. Seam flatpak still sucks dick and the tray icon for it doesn't work at all and it needs a ton of modifications to get things to where the native steam runtime just works, but still a fun experiment.

Void is my favourite distro, although I haven't used it for a while. Extremely fast package manager, rolling release but not bleeding edge, super simple, very fun to tinker with (more than Arch imo). I stopped using it because I wanted something more popular for easier troubleshooting. But if I ever get a secondary PC/laptop I'll probably start using it again.
- take a look at Alpine Linux – Alpine, Void, and Gentoo all grew out of a similar “Linux plus BSD” attitude – Alpine’s package manager is as fast or faster than Void’s – Alpine is pretty under-represented (but not absent) on the desktop side of things while being rather over-represented in the container, VM, server side of things (meaning the small community tends to be rather admin heavy)
  
  If that is what you are looking for, try Chimera Linux. It was created by a Void maintainer.
  https://chimera-linux.org/
  
  Underrepresented at best, at worst it’s arguably too easy to forget that Alpine is more than just container images.
  Not sure how to solve that problem, it’s my go to for rolling an image but wouldn’t normally make the shortlist for standalone machines. In a prod env, that’s basically Deb, RHEL derivatives, etc. In a personal env for me, Arch derivs tend to win out on non-critical services if only because I invariably learn something useful that I wouldn’t want to learn in prod.
  
  Oh I know about alpine, sadly it didn't "click" the same way void did and felt more like a distro to use in embedded systems or similar space constrained situations. Gentoo on the other hand I like, but the initial setup + waiting for stuff to compile put me off of it. Maybe I'll try it again sometime with all precompiled packages.

Not a distro but Qubes. Incredible security and privacy out of the box. Not for everyone but absolutely one of the most interesting developments in the OS world in the past decade or two.
- Qubes isn't a distro?
  
  Not the person you asked, but they might have referred to the fact that (technically) Qubes OS is not a Linux distro because it's based on Xen instead. Though, even then, we might refer to it as a Xen distro (if anything).

Guix - It's basically an abstraction over software compilation and distribution. It uses guile lisp language as glue to bind it all together. (Full programming language to configure with)
The beauty arises if you want to get a minimal os running with a single application and package it either as a full iso or a docker container you can. Or if you need to get an OS to run as your router.
It's also highly encourages free software to the point, that proprietary software actually feels like huge downgrade to include. (Compilation from source is always available)
I've been using this only for 11 months. I've barely scratched the surface on what is possible. So I'm pretty sure I'm not making it justice on what a gem it is. For example: Only recently I started to use programs in an immutable way.

Is Bazzite still niche?
- The atomicity probably counts as an interesting feature, but it does seem to be getting more popular.
- I installed it on my Desktop, replacing LMDE. Unfortunately I have trouble running the one game that I play even though it works on Linux with Steam. It worked in Linux Mint, but for some reason it won't start in Bazzite. Surely it's because I have an Nvidia graphics card, but that wasn't a problem with Linux Mint.
  Another problem that I ran into was Firefox (flatpak) crashing all the time. Luckily you just have to disable wayland using Flatseal, but I still get graphics glitches with it.
  I'm thinking of restoring my Linux Mint backup.
  I don't know why I'm responding to your comment, I just wanted to share my experience, I guess.
  
  Out of curiosity, what game?

Not niche, but surely exotic: NixOS, a distribution that is configured via a purely functional language. There is no such thing as installing or uninstalling packages, you add or remove things from your configuration and then simply apply that configuration.
- I really wanted to like NixOS (and I do, theoretically), but I couldn't dedicate more than 5 full days over Christmas to learn how to get to a working development system.
  
  May I ask what the issue actually was? Was it about "working system" or about "working development system"?
  I don't recall needing more than two days for getting a system up and running for the first time, and in fact it worked so well that I switched all my machines to it by now; granted, I have changed a lot about the configuration ever since and there seem to be a lot of paths to take in the beginning and it's not always clear which one to take. But getting a working system, even one suited for development (personally, I'd recommend a nix development shell for that), shouldn't really take that long.
  
  I couldn’t even get the installer to work. Tried a couple times but it just wouldn’t install so I gave up on it - still want to try it though
  
  It's very good for servers. I wouldn't use it on desktop.

I like TailsOS, which is an amnesiac system that runs entirely in RAM and boots from a USB hard drive. The goal for the operating system is to be a safe operating system for people who are in compromising situations - from international reporters to survivors of domestic abuse, it is a way to highly reduce your ability to be tracked.
The downsides of amnesiac systems are obvious - without enabling the setting for permanent storage, effectively everything you do on the OS is lost every time. And if you do enable persistent memory, well, that's not exactly entirely safe if you are caught out.
What I like the OS for though is as someone who is not compromised or in a situation where I need these privacies (despite appreciating them), my usage of it makes it safer for others who are using it (since internet is through Tor), and I feel more comfortable using computers in the wild when needed, since I'm not logging in on the public operating system that will be used by everybody else.
Many people give these projects flack or diminish their values as a "daily driver", but I think often times forget the important aspects of them. They may not be a daily driver for you or I by nature of our needs, but they are certainly important daily drivers for others. In addition to that, supporting a project that helps people in compromised situations and becoming another node to bounce off of (again, Tor, not inherent to the usage of this OS) is a nice additional benefit.
Tl;DR amnesiac operating systems because they're simple, straightforward, and make you feel more like whitehat hackerman when you've done nothing at all.

https://www.crunchbangplusplus.org/
Crunchbang was one of the first Linux experiences I had and then found ++, I stopped using it recently to try out pop!os but the idea of crunchbang++ never leaves me. It was great on my little thin client laptop
- My first linux install was crunchbang. I don't remember why I picked it. Perhaps i liked the minimalistic look. Ended up not really liking openbox and I vaguely remember running into some problem with debian's old packages, though I honestly can't remember what. So I switched to ubuntu, which was great for me as a linux noob.
- I started using Crunchbang because it was so lightweight and ran great on Virtual Box on Windows 7. I stopped using it, when they stopped developing it. I wasn't aware of ++. I will be installing it this evening.
- I know this might be asking for trouble, but how does BunsenLabs compare to CB++? I know they both came out of Crunchbang but I went with BL when that died.
  These days I'm on EndeavourOS, but I still use Openbox instead of DEs and customize it to look as much like Crunchbang as possible 😄
  Edit: also, I feel naked without Conky on my desktop.
  
  how does BunsenLabs compare to CB++? I know they both came out of Crunchbang but I went with BL when that died.
  Also interested. Same scenario.

May as well contribute my own 😜.
I'm an absolute sucker for exquisitely hardened distros. Hence, distros like Qubes OS and Kicksecure have rightfully caught my interest. However, the former's hardware requirements are too harsh on the devices I currently own. While the latter relies on backports for security updates; which I'm not a fan of. Thankfully, there is also secureblue.
Contrary to the others, secureblue is built on top of an 'immutable' and/or atomic base distro; namely Fedora Atomic. By which:
It's protected against certain attacks.
Enables it to benefit from more recent advancements and developments that benefit security without foregoing robustness.
If security is your top priority, Qubes OS is the gold standard. However, secureblue is a decent (albeit inferior) alternative if you prefer current and/or 'immutable'/atomic distros.
- What, you don't have 64 GB of RAM?
  Jokes aside, the hardware reqs for Qubes are about on-par with Windows, so its not too bad.
  
  Unfortunately my 8gb RAM (for which 2gb is dedicated for the iGPU) isn't enough. FWIW, this system could technically run Windows (11) without any troubles.
- Qubes is great, but TAILS is def the gold standard for security
  
  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't compartmentalization through virtualization the best solution we currently have?

Not so much a niche distribution, but I would like to recommend Chimera Linux, because it combines musl with BSD userland.
- Same as a Chimera Linux user I'd definitely recommend trying it. I was a Void user beforee and was Swithering whether to go full BSD when I stumbled across Chimera which gives me the best of both worlds.
  
  I finally got fed up with my Windows machine and upon seeing symptoms of motherboard failure, I've ordered all the parts for a new rig and intend on installing Linux as my primary OS.
  Haven't decided on a distro yet. I'm a DevOps engineer with a few passion projects, so I plan on setting up a couple of kubernetes clusters where I can play. I do all the usual things (word processing, gaming, web browsing, multimedia, etc), plus some AI stuff (stable diffusion, local LLMs, OpenCV). Ideally don't want to have to fuss with drivers too much, but I don't mind getting my hands dirty every now and then.
  Is Chimera the kind of distro I should be looking at, or should I pick something else for my first go at full-time Linux?
- Not to be confused with ChimeraOS

Devuan - it's like debian, but without systemd.

Dietpi for me. It is meant for sbc's, but it can (also) be installed on x86 pcs. And its focus is on minimalism -- as much as possible.
- I love dietpi. The entire software install is a huge 1000 line bash script. If that sounds horrific, it's genuinely well structured and readable
  
  It does sound horrific, but mostly because it would be poorly executed by many devs.
  Well, and the seeming trend towards install commands that look like curl $file.sh | sh
  But if they’re not actively encouraging that, I see no issue with a well maintained install tool, created from well maintained toolsets that work on essentially any platform.

hannah montana, nuff said!
- RebeccaBlackOS

CyclopOS I haven't use it but apparently it has its own Remote Desktop app on play store
- That app just looks like reskinned KDE Connect.

Hannah Montana Linux

Not gonna lie, I thought elementaryOS was gonna take off and I guess it never did. I used it on my school laptop when I was in college for most of the time there. It was fine but mostly just a sleaker looking Mint basically.

TAILS for security

Three days and nobody mentioned TempleOS? If attempting to build The Third Temple in the form of an OS isn't niche and exotic, I don't know what is. 🤣
- For anyone unfamliar:
  TempleOS (formerly J Operating System, LoseThos, and SparrowOS) is a biblical-themed lightweight operating system (OS) designed to be the Third Temple prophesied in the Bible. It was created by American programmer Terry A. Davis, who developed it alone over the course of a decade after a series of manic episodes that he later described as a revelation from God.
  Davis began developing TempleOS circa 2003. One of its early names was the "J Operating System" before renaming it to "LoseThos", a reference to a scene from the 1986 film Platoon. In 2008, Davis wrote that LoseThos was "primarily for making video games. It has no networking or Internet support. As far as I'm concerned, that would be reinventing the wheel". Another name he used was "SparrowOS" before settling on "TempleOS". In mid-2013, his website announced: "God's temple is finished. Now, God kills CIA until it spreads [sic]."
  Davis died after being hit by a train on August 11, 2018.
  TempleOS was written in a programming language developed by Davis as a middle ground between C and C++, originally called "C+" (C Plus), later renamed to "Holy C", possibly a reference to the Holy See. It doubles as the shell language, enabling the writing and execution of entire applications from within the shell. The IDE that comes with TempleOS supports several features, such as embedding images in code. It uses a non-standard text format (known as DolDoc) which has support for hypertext links, images, and 3D meshes to be embedded into what are otherwise standard ASCII files; for example, a file can have a spinning 3D model of a tank as a comment in source code. Most code in the OS is JIT-compiled, and it is generally encouraged to use JIT compilation as opposed to creating binaries. Davis ultimately wrote over 100,000 lines of code for the OS.
  From Wikipedia
  
  This is at the very least super interesting.

Is Alpine Linux obscure? Well, using it as a desktop is obscure, I guess. The decision to use musl libc is the main limiting factor for desktop usage, but thanks to the existence of runtime package managers like flatpak and/or static linking, you can run basically anything that requires glibc on Alpine these days (at the expense of extra disk usage for glibc libs).
If you don't know much about Alpine, it is an extremely lightweight Linux distro designed primarily for containers and virtualization, that ships with busybox and musl libc. It's basically the closest you can get to GNU/Linux without the GNU. The main appeal to me is the simplicity of the tooling and installation, it's the only Linux distribution I've used that gives me a similar vibe to OpenBSD. The defaults are almost perfect, but the first thing I would do when installing it is install the docs metapackage (otherwise you have no manpages), and optionally replace busybox with coreutils and friends (personally can't stand how non-posix compliant busybox is). I'd also replace the default busybox ash shell with a nice kornlike such as oksh, a clone of the OpenBSD shell.
- I had PostmarkedOS, which is Alpine with some extra phone stuff
  We need more arm packages..

Rhino Linux! A rolling release Ubuntu distribution. It uses the Ubuntu devel repos + pacstall.

I have HoloISO running around on mini PCs because they just work as remote steam machines, can play games in their own right, and I can use them as media boxes if I want. I don't necessarily recommend it, but it was super easy to install and configure except for the Bluetooth issue that cropped up occasionally where I had to unload and reload the Bluetooth module. Now I just have a script that automatically does that on boot because I can't give a shit about fixing it.
I also have a couple of Slax USBs running around. They used to be relatively popular with folks who fixed computers. I like building from modules and I'm familiar with Slackware so it was a good fit for a live environment.
- I did not know about Slax. Thanks.

Red Star OS!

108 comments