I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I’m learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?

RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.

  • mat@linux.communityEnglish
    311·
    2 days ago

    I (maybe) ended distrohopping last year when I gave NixOS a shot. I can’t recommend it for beginners but once you understand generally how things work on Linux (and have an interest in programming) it’s a superpower to be able to define your entire setup as a single git repository. If something ever breaks, I can reboot into an older commit and keep using my computer, or branch off in a different direction… I’ve only scratched the surface of NixOS and yet I can already make a live USB containing my setup with a single command, or deploy it (“infect”) to another machine and manage e.g my work desktop and my personal laptop sharing most settings. Also it taught me about Nix (the package manager, which also runs on any distro and macOS independent of NixOS) which I now use to set up perfect development environments for each of my projects… if I set up dependencies once (as a flake.nix shell), it’ll work forever and anywhere.

    • thenose@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      Nixos Is my first distro I use on desktop. I’m not sure why but I guess the fact that it won’t build till it checks Is a huge plus for me. I love to f up things to learn from them but I don’t like broken things and oh boy. Nix keeps me in the clean, safe. Don’t get me wrong im doing stupid stuff all the time but just cus i have a few configs written down i can learn a lot. Or a little that amazes me lol

      • mat@linux.communityEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        NixOS is indeed probably the safest way to run an “unstable” distro. No matter what you do or mess up you can always reboot back.

    • hallettj@leminal.spaceEnglish
      51·
      2 days ago

      Some more points about Nix:

      • It’s a fast way to get to a specific setup, like a particular DE or Vulkan gaming support, thanks to abstraction that NixOS modules provide
      • There are tons of packages
      • Because packages are installed by adding a config entry you don’t accumulate random software you forgot you installed
      • Immutable updates and rollbacks - this is similar to benefits of atomic ostree distros, but the nix solutions are more general, so you have one system that does more things with a consistent interface
        • in addition to updating the base system, rollbacks also roll back user-installed packages, and configurations if those are managed via Nix
        • devshells provide per-directory packages and configuration using the same package repos as the host system, without needing to manage docker images
      • Nix is portable - much of what it does on NixOS can also be used in other distros, or even on Macos or Windows with the Linux subsystem
        • Configurations often combine NixOS and Home Manager parts. The Home Manager part can be used à la carte on other OSes is a way that is fully isolated from the host OS package management. For example on Macos this is a much nicer alternative to Homebrew.
        • devshells also work on other OSes
      • similar to Guix - but NixOS uses systemd, and is (from what I understand) more tolerant of non-free software (whether these are pros or cons is up to individual interpretation)
    • a14o@feddit.org
      81·
      2 days ago

      Same for me. I distro-hopped for about 20 years with OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Fedora being the most memorable desktop setups for me. While all that was a valuable experience, NixOS feels like graduation.

      For the Nix-curious: I wish someone would have told me not to bother with the classic config and build a flake-based system immediately. They’re “experimental” in name only, very stable and super useful in practice.

      • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
        1·
        3 hours ago

        Same for me, I stopped distro-hoping 2 years ago when I moved to NixOS.

        It was tough at first, setting it up took a while and i genuinely felt stupid like i haven’t felt for a while; but now I love having the same config on my two laptops. I have one that stays at work and another one for traveling. With one word/line added into my config I can as a software, configure the VPN, change the wallpaper on both my laptop, or not. Some stuff like gaming goes only on the traveling laptop.

        Also, another big thing for me is the feeling of having a cleanly built system all the time. I haven’t felt the urge to do a clean reinstall since I started with NixOS.

      • mat@linux.communityEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        Absolutely +1 for flakes. It’s got some annoying UX sometimes (make sure you git add any new files before building!) but absolutely makes up for it by its features.