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  • I'm running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

    99% happy, once in a blue moon there is a library issue during an update, I have to wait a few days, that's it.

    Very solid KDE experience, all of the things I wanted to do worked out of the box. Very solid.

  • Fedora fees like a nice and tightly integrated distro. I'm no apple fan but I can appreciate consistent UX, I feel like Fedora for now is the closest to that level of experience, whilst pioneering in desktop-centric technologies.

    I have this looming fear that IBM will somehow fuck everything over someday, but as far as I understand, the Fedora project still operates with the same level of autonomy as they did pre-aquisition.

  • I am 100% happy. I use a rolling distro, secure (firewall+apparmor), stable (snapshots tested through openQA) and easily revert to a previous snapshot (snapper). Yes, I am using openSUSE Tumbleweed and in my opinion there is no rolling distro that offers all these features.

  • EndeavourOS. Arch, but easy to install. I'm thrilled with it, although I suspect I'd be even happier if I'd have tried one of the convenience installers for the base. Endeavor is has prettier defaults, so less fussing with basic stuff.

    Otherwise, I'm thrilled. I have Artix on my laptop, and while I like not having systemd on it, some things are a bit more kludgey, and I spend more time on maintenance and working to fill gaps. Like, there are not dinit entries for every service, and I have to write them myself; which is absurdly easy, but still. Maybe in a couple years Artix will be less of a chore; in the meantime I'm preferring EndesvorOS.

    I do not like the frequency of reboots necessitated by kernel upgrades. I know that I could mask it, but IME that eventually causes problems with packages than make .ko kernel modules; it's just more things to fail, and it makes me really wish Linus would have just based Linux on MINIX.

    Anyway, I have 4 computers I deal with which are Debian based, and I never love Arch more than when I have to do something on Debian. Two are Mint, which are infected with flatpack, and I really hate those.

    • I do not like the frequency of reboots necessitated by kernel upgrades. I know that I could mask it, but IME that eventually causes problems with packages than make .ko kernel modules; it's just more things to fail, and it makes me really wish Linus would have just based Linux on MINIX.

      Here's a tip that you might not be aware of: Arch has an LTS kernel. It may seem counter intuitive to run Arch and not have the latest, bleeding edge kernel, but the upside is that you get a stabler, less breakage-prone system.

      • I didn't know about the LTS kernel. How does that interact with module packages, like the fscking Broadcom support packages, or bcachesfs (before it for mainlined)? That's where I've historically run into issues with pinning the kernel.

        I will absolutely look into this, though. If it prevents the "you need to reboot or else" messages after every Syu, I'm in. On Arch, when you get a message like that, it's best heeded.

  • Bluefin, very happy. Nice toys on top of an atomic Silverblue base. Love the concept.

  • Recently tried Kubuntu. It was able to successfully connect to my docking station with double 4k monitors connected too, which some other distros failed at. So pretty happy with that I suppose.

    All in all, I still find most distros to be hit and miss with issues. There's always something that makes it meh. Like missing features or inconveniences.

    Sometimes I think the Linux community should try to consolidate more to focus on a few well-working distros rather than the large amount of distros that are currently there, each with their own set of issues.

  • I've settled on Manjaro for this computer, and I'm pretty happy with it (I've stooped distro-hopping, I just don't have the energy, nor the time to entertain that on my only laptop), though I'm considering changing to base Arch for my next one (which I hope is still 3 years or so in the future; this machine is only 4 yro still). Why? Because the version wait on Manjaro seems a bit arbitrary sometimes and that lag often doesn't play nice with the AUR (which I love). Sometimes I think of switching to more esoteric distros, such as the neat Alpine (which I've been using on servers for a while) and reproducible NixOS, but then I question the day to day usability and pain points, which are quite relevant to me atm.

    Why do I like Manjaro though? I like the Arch made easier, the mhwd tools, the support forums (which I know people have mixed feelings on, but my experience has been nothing other than very pleasant).

    Feel free to discuss my points!

    • If you want to learn about Arch, I recommend you to use ArcoLinux, a distribution that uses the direct Arch repositories (unlike Manjaro) and serves to acquire knowledge about Arch.

      • Thanks for the suggestion! However, I'm more than comfortable going with Arch now, something that wasn't true when I first picked up Manjaro (over 6 years ago).

  • I was quite satisfied with Debian Stable for a few years on at least two different laptops, and felt I had found my "forever distro", until I got a Framework laptop whose AMD graphics were quite buggy on it. In order to get rid of all the issues, I had to upgrade to Testing and install a mainline Liquorix kernel (and along the way, I briefly made a Frankendebian and fiddled with kernel parameters). While my years of experience with Debian and derivatives has prevented me from breaking anything, I do wish I didn't have to use all of this beta-quality software just to prevent games from freezing and crashing constantly, just because I bought "new" (about a year old) hardware.

    I still want to keep Debian, because I've found nothing else that works quite as elegantly or stably, but I'm hoping to find ways to get the performance I need without Liquorix, and if something forces me to reinstall between now and the time Debian Trixie becomes stable, I'll probably give Fedora or KDE Neon another try.

  • I'm on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and I'm not quite satisfied, but I think it's a "me" problem. The distro is fine. It's great! It has practically all the things I was looking for in a distro when I came back to Linux. I have had no major issues that I can recall and updates have never broken anything. The only small nag I have is that Zypper sometimes wants to install patterns that I never installed to begin with when updating, but there are ways around that. I'm just annoyed that that's the default behavior.

    But I'm not happy. I'm constantly weighing my options and thinking of different distros/DEs and I don't know why. The current setup serves me wonderfully but it's not perfect, what ever that means. I think I'm looking for a combination of attributes that doesn't exist, possibly can't exist. TW and maybe Debian sid get the closest and I try to tell myself that's good enough, but there's always this feeling of dissatisfaction I can't quite shake and it's annoying.

    On my phone I run postmarketOS and on my Raspberry Pi I have Raspbian and those are great.

  • I’ve been using NixOS for the past few months and it’s been great. Before NixOS I was using Fedora Silverblue so immutable distros aren’t a new thing to me. I like that NixOS has a configuration I can keep backed up. I can copy different options from my desktop to laptop easily. I’m still learning about flakes and the nix language to be able to do more advanced things, but overall NixOS is a great distro if you want something you can configure once and be done.

  • I've been using EndeavourOS for a few years now, which is effectively a "good sane defaults" Arch out of the box. I've attempted to use numerous distros in between (including plain Arch) but there's always something I feel is missing or just isn't right (for me).

  • Because of all the nice feedback about OpenSUSE:
    SUSE was my first (bought) Linux distribution, at a time when I would have spent days downloading an ISO, SUSE was available with a manual in store. That was nice.

    But then I had an AVM Fritz! ISDN card and it was a complete shit show to get this working. Especially as YAST(2?) didn't support the configuration I needed, but every time you opened it, it would overwrite your manual changes in some configuration files.
    (Edit: I'll probably need to add, that this was like 25 years ago. So besides "fuck, I'm old", my perspective in SUSE is very probably not up-to-date)

    After that I hopped through a few distros and mostly stayed with basic Debian.

    Nowadays I'm mostly using Manjaro (or just Arch itself, if I don't need X), because I like the Arch package system and actually also the whole system architecture... Don't exactly know what it is, but I feel much more at home.
    With apt I sometimes found myself in situations, where a fresh install will resolve things faster than trying to restore/save the system. With Arch I always was somehow able to restore everything.

    Can someone tell me how Tumbleweed differs/excels?
    Thanks in advance!
    Currently waiting for my new laptop (Framework 16 :-D) and that would be a nice opportunity to try something new.
    But as I need my device for work, it's important to me, that I really have it under my control and am not depending on some half-baked configuration utility like YAST was.

    Edit: I'm also playing with the thought of moving to something immutable. NixOS looked nice in concept, but the more I read about it, the more I see that it's more suitable for more server than my laptop - but maybe I'm wrong here, as I don't have any hands-on experience

    • The main difference between Arch and Tumbleweed, apart from the package type, is the update system. Tumbleweed does it through snapshots, which allows you to use the openQA automatic test to test the snapshot before sending it to the community. Arch upgrades on a package-by-package basis, regardless of the other packages that are part of the system.

    • My Framework 16 is arriving Monday! And I use Tumbleweed on my desktop. I currently use clonezilla every couple days and am starting to mess around with some other distros, but I keep coming back to Tumbleweed. My desktop is mostly for gaming, and it has pretty new hardware, so I like to have more leading edge packages.

      I keep trying NixOS, and while I like it and it's cool, I have a mouse capture issue in World of Warcraft that I just can't solve, so it's taking a back seat. Also tried Bazzite, but had some issues during install, so didn't try it much. Currently trying endeavour, I've been using Arch off and on since 08, it's nice.

      But Tumbleweed just works. It has sane defaults, updates frequently, has snapper just in case something goes wrong (but other distros can do that too), has yast for people that like it, but I've been trying to run some benchmarks between endeavour and Tumbleweed and I can't really tell a difference.

  • I was early on Silverblue but went to Workstation. The Fedora Anaconda UEFI shim on enthusiast edge class hardware is flawless. The ability to roll back if there are any issues is default config. Encrypted drives are easy. NVME is managed. Nvidia kernel modules are built lightning fast in the background. I have a dozen distrobox container environments each with layers of Python containers within. I occasionally have a minor issue, like upgrading to F40 put me on Python too far ahead for some projects, but it was an easy fix for me.

    Unfortunately I must be on a shim, so only Fedora and Ubuntu exist on my main.

  • OK-ish. I use Manjaro. It's a pretty good idea to read Announcements before updating: https://forum.manjaro.org/c/announcements/

    It may have instructions on how to update without borking your system. For example, the February update broke Plymouth, causing systems using it to be unbootable. Sort of. It would actually boot, just to a black screen. On one of the threads someone reported being able to SSH into his PC just fine.

    Or the May update bringing Plasma 6 to stable. The recommendation was to reset Plasma to defaults, log out, stop SDDM and update from TTY. I tested doing exact opposite of that in VM, and it still went fine, except for missing icons, but still a good idea just to be safe.

    But I had some other problems too.

    February update: Booting to black screen. I found threads mentioning the same stuff for this update. Cool. "Remove Plymouth or just don't use splash". I... already disabled splash (and quiet to make boot-up cooler).
    Fix: Updating Linux 5.15 LTS to 6.6 LTS. Something changed in 5.15 making it break on my laptop, I guess. I couldn't even get to TTY without nomodeset.
    Furthermore, the animations became choppy after resuming from sleep.

    May update: Turning on Bluetooth may cause system crash. It would show as "ON", but actually be inactive while shoving already paired devices. This couldn't be reversed. Logging out and back in would lead to only the welcome screen and yakuake showing up. Trying to reboot from both yakuake and plain TTY would stop mid-way. After issuing reboot, the system would be mostly dead, but still kinda running. Linux still responded to magic SysRq.
    Fix: Upgrading Linux 6.6 LTS to 6.9.

    So, I can deal with it, and it definitely taught me to use Timeshift. Oh, and the brightness buttons sometimes stop working.

  • Debian 12. It just works, except for buggy Wayland, thankfully KDE still supports Xorg.

  • Love Gentoo. Being using it for 20+ years and never looked back.

    Using also CentOS for work, and would switch to Gentoo if I could.

    Really, gentoo for everything (from laptop to headless server), but not for where a rolling release distro is not suitable (configuration control and such needs).

  • I'm still rocking my 2011 Arch install, immediately ended my distro hopping for over a decade and still going strong.

  • Arch. ~3 y/o installation and I never had any significant problems with it. And yes, I have broke my installation a few times (I think only 2 times) but that is totally my fault (changing repositories, downgrading packages, changing critical system files, etc) and not something that would apply for every arch user.

    • My experience with Arch+Gnome has been problematic with Gnome version changes. When I upgraded to Gnome 46, the system wouldn't boot. I have had several problems related to grub and aur, so a few months ago I decided to abandon Arch for good. I need a distro that works for me, not me for the distro.

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