If you make a new dedicated video on this specific topic on the main channel(with the kind of polish that's on your videos there) it would be great! Just make sure its noob friendly so its sharable to someone just getting in.
100% agree. Another thing that cooks my noodle is reinventing the wheel. Forever developing new installers and package managers. There are many other areas to push our community forward.
Well, SUSE is so obscure, that it's directly supported by hardware and software vendors (e.g.: nVidia literally hosts a zypper repo). Leap is getting a little bit old, but Tumbleweed is literally Arch in terms of shipping new software, but it doesn't break (because it's a base for enterprise products).
I believe opensuse has more users in Europe, and not as many solutions online. I find that in using opensuse, I need to tweaks troubleshooting solutions I read online before I can apply it to my opensuse. On an unrelated note, I hate using rolling release due to the huge amount of downloads on every update.
@@benjy288depends on hardware compatibility... I tried to used tumbleweed last month but it freezes every time I try to shutdown or restart after a few boots😅 I tried 7-8 times with different combinations (changing filesystem, separate/combined home, proprietary/opensource nvidia drivers, kde/gnome) I never had those issues in manjaro kde & mint cinnamon, (although fedora with btrfs has same issues, but ext4 was fine)
@@benjy288 opensuse is a different project, SUSE on the other hand is obscure in the sense that you rarely see it. i could throw a dart in a dark room filled with the percentage of distros used and hit ubuntu 100% of the times
I went from 2 years on Sid, 6 months on Arch, and almost a year on Tumbleweed. I don't foresee myself ever hopping on bare metal ever again. Everything just *works* And Yast will take a moment to get the feel for but it's powerful. Some things I'll configure without YAST but it's the one stop shop either way. Also I prefer zypper. It's slower than pacman but what are ya gonna do
@@DominikZogg Fedora is a distro I just have never got on with, I also do not like Gnome really (PopOS is ok). I have installed every single version to check it out (except 38 yet)
Opensuse is close, but it's just a worse version of fedora. Also zypper just the slowest package manager And it will easily break your system if you ever decide to remove the wrong random package
@@no_name4796 to be fair with btrfs enabled by default you can easily rollback to before breaking your system. Also I believe the "zypper is slow" argument, which is legit I admit, comes mostly from outside of europe since I'm in Italy and it's not that bad to be honest.
I have quite liked NixOS lately. The declarative model does seem to be a bit different than most other distros, and the "one config to rule them all" makes it easy for me to avoid loosing my random little changes I normally make to config files spread throughout the etc directory. So far I haven't yet removed it from any of the systems I have put it on, and normally I do reinstall every time a system feels the least bit "crufty" to me.
I think you might fall in love with home-manager and impermanence, basically a fresh start every rebuild. I’m gonna setup impermanence for the home directory myself, I think it’s a pretty cool feature.
Debian forks are due to people disagreeing with Debian's policies. Fedora is the testing branch of Red Hat. Arch is because some people figured they could make a distro even more impractical than Slackware.
what makes you say Arch is impractical? i guess i can see the argument bc it takes a lot more work to set up, but it’s not any more work than trying to make the same sort of customizations in a more plug-and-play distro like Debian (would also say that the setup is part of the fun, but that has nothing to do with practicality) really hope i don’t start a flame war with this comment
@@kxtbit setup is fun until you just have something you want to do. Then you're better off just being ready to go. Sure if you're going to do the same kind of setup it takes the same amount of effort. If you need to customize everything. But there's a lot of defaults that are good enough for most. I do very little in the way of setup customization myself. The personalization I do is more of a home directory thing beyond what distros offer. I've learned to not muck around outside of my home directory.
@@kxtbit Let this guy just speak for himself. I always feel some difficulty when people act like their personal opinion is a universal truth. For me, as a technical person, Arch Linux is the system where I get most things done, because of how I can customize everything, the availability of software, and the excellent Arch Wiki which is one of the most valuable sources of information you can get. Which still does Not mean that I recommend Arch for everyone, it just works for me, very simple. And I am also still not exclusively using it, I also run other systems.
@@1pcfred yes, agree with you. With great power comes greater responsibilities. I don't want all these responsibilities. Just some. So give me some power. Not everything. 😂
I'm a Slackware user. I appreciate that it's the most Unix-like distro, also the oldest and most stable of the bunch. Slackware -current is as up-to-date as anything else as still more stable than most distribution's "stable" versions.
I too use slackware, although not on my main rig, as I'd probably screw something up. I love how you really get to dig into anything you feel like. Just wish it was less annoying to install grub and it could just be an option in the installer, along with lilo/elilo. It also just doesn't like one of my laptops, just refuses to boot, idk cause I do nothing different while installing.
@@member.x.from.sai-teiki But OpenBSD isn't Linux. Slackware reminds me of how Linux was when it was new, in the early '90s when we were still looking forward to the version 1.0 kernel.
I tried a bunch of Linux CDs from magazines around 2000. Mandrake was the sweetest but I had to switch back to W2K (THE best windows ever, with that clean 9x look) each time I felt stuck. Then I got an integration job in an association checking and setting donated computers up with debian. It came with a qualifying training in network management, which occured in the workshop, on our debian computers. I never quit debian and aptitude since 🥰 (although I'm a piano tuner now 😅)
How much does ChromeOS cost? What is Chrome OS and who is it for? - Android Authority Chrome OS is an operating system developed and owned by Google. It's based on Linux and is open-source, which means it's free to use.Jan 21, 2024
If many developers dedicated themselves to writing scripts to customize Debian/Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora instead of making forks, life would be much simpler: you download your new DistroScript, all the installation and configuration is done automatically and if you don't like how it turned out, you run another Script that leaves the system as before deleting all the new packages and repeating the cycle
That's what the Macbuntu installer did for Ubuntu for a while. Twister OS does the same thing for some PC based Linux distros. It comes as a compete distro on ARM, eg. Raspberry Pi, but not Intel.
This is basically what NixOS forces you to do. Many users even go on to publish their own custom DistroScripts publically, essentially giving NixOS one of the highest fork-per-user ratios of any distro.
There is something to be said about having a distro ready for use with the tools and interface you require ready for use. The "just pick a base and do it yourself" disconsiders the fact that many people do not want to deal with this hastle.
Yeah, that's a lot of time to expect an adult to have to spend on something that should just work right out of the box to meet the needs of said adult.
@@fakecubedDo you take a ceiling fan out of the box and it just magically assembles itself into your house? Do you take food out of the package and eat it raw? I think you're mistaking "adult" with "lazy child". It is expected that you work for the things that matter to you.
@@Atmatan Aww, I hurt your feelings because you don't have any adult responsibilities and can afford to spend countless hours tinkering with your operating system; I'm sorry. As an adult, I do have more important things to do with my life, and I have a computer to get work done, it's not a toy I bought to play with.
It all boils down to, what is the starting point you want to use for your computer? Even people who run Windows change at least some settings to suit their needs from cosmetic stuff like wallpapers or connecting to their wireless printer or installing their browser of choice and any software they need. Nobody runs a general purpose OS on their computer without adding/removing/customizing something on it. Distros just offer more starting points from which to choose for setting up a desktop/laptop. The rest is up to the owner of said desktop/laptop do with it what they want for their needs.
yep. there are many people who want to custumize every detail in their distros. that can take a very long time after every install. others just want something that is already customized so they can just take an iso install and be done. in theory those customizations could also be applied through a simple script after run, but most is done through different distributions.
@@willi1978 if someone wants to change every last detail thats fine, make it avalable to do so through terminal, but linux needs a full fleshed out distro with easy to manipulate, non terminal settings like windows and MacOS has
BTW I use Gentoo. Gentoo is stable as rock, rolling release and a mix of source based and binary based. If you want to keep your Linux instalation for decades, Gentoo is your only one.
Not exactly true. I ran Gentoo as my primary OS for over ten years across several hardware installations on several laptops, but eventually I was always faced with the choice of having to buy a more powerful machine so that I could keep running it and ditching an otherwise well functioning machine, or keeping what I had, but dealing with the lag of having to be constantly compiling in the background, or worse, dealing with trying to make work outdated unsupported hardware, particularly graphic cards. Plus there's the added issue of dealing with workarounds and having to patch things to make them work, especially when running "~" unstable. Switching to Arch got me another 3 years use out of my laptop, before I finally retired it. Once it was set-up it was almost like running on auto pilot by comparison. I seldom if ever need to intervene in fixing my system and things just work as they should. Now I'm sold on Arch and wouldn't think of running anything else.
@@bionic-beaver arch is worse for maintenance because is bleeding Edge. Their rolling release model doesn't fit with maintenance burden. On Gentoo you have overlays. It is like AUR but made but community or yourself. Having Gentoo well configured, with distcc and with your own overlay its way better than arch from the maintenance standpoint. Remember, ChomeOS is based on Gentoo because of flexibility and stability.
@@bionic-beaver Gentoo is way easier to maintain than Arch, there are often little (or sometimes big) things that brake on Arch, Gentoo is way more stable.
Hey Titus, I loved your video on how you showed finding and installing Plain Debian Just like you install Windows or any other Operating System, doing a clean install and then one can add anything to it. And I liked how you poked at Debian people making it a challenge finding the install file. Good Work... You got my support.
Even for gaming you can choose Debian. Either you go with SID or Testing for newer packages. Or you can use Debian Stable as the base, backports for an advanced kernel, and Flatpak for up-to-date apps. Love Debian.
Here are some unique linux distros: debian fedora arch linux NixOS alpine linux Easy os (and maybe puppy linux have also some unique behaviours) Gobo linux Gentoo Void linux OpenSUSE And I am not sure if I should count them but maybe also thinghs like VanillaOS or BlendOS Edit: maybe also, tinycore linux...
@@peacemekka to be honest when I was writing this comment i was thinking about unique distros, not necessary desktop ones. I am not sure if you can use alpine linux as desktop distro easily. I guess you should be able to configure everything like you can in arch linux but I don't know. But you definitely can install desktop enviroments.
@@skelebro9999 I don't know current state because I didnt used it, but I know that in video covering linux news created by "the linux experiment" posted on 2023.04.22 there was announcment that solus have some plans and they are trying to do some more seroious changes
Titus is objectively wrong about this, if these distros didn't have use cases they wouldn't exist. And the fact that people use them means that they would notice if they disappeared.
The only significant difference between distros is the package manager, of which there are only actually a few "grandfather" distros that all others inherit from. Everything else is universal.
You described me, though I would like to know more about the differences, but don't seem to be able to find clear distinctions between the versions/distros. In the video he described the three versions/distros/roots (debian/fedora/arch). But he described them in terms of the stability-to-cutting-edge spectrum, which does not help me to understand the "mechanical" difference between them, for want of a better word. Given your comment, you are presumably quite experienced. Got any tips for we "the GUI is the OS" folks to learn what the real differences are, if indeed there are any? Thanks.
Am not going to get technical cause am on my phone. The primary difference between distro is what they catered to and what they are preconfigured with. Kali for security, Ubuntu for everyday users, hardware support, and philosophies. GUI is just a visual layer on top all this, you don't need it if you use the terminal, XFCE is a GUI that most distro support.
@@a13xw71 Right? Thanks for getting back to me. I guess, then, I have just realized, a better question would have been: Do Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc, all have the same kernel, and is the user's interaction with, say, the terminal the same for each? I am trying to figure out (currently as a user of Mint 21 on an old mac, which is pretty good) whether I need to focus on one "branch" / "build" of Linux before I start trying to learn how to configure it. I suppose there'd be nothing wrong in just learning what to do with Mint for now, in the same way I learned basic motorbike maintenance by doing jobs on my current bike, and then trying to learn what is what, generally.
To say they are pretty much the same all Linux mint is just debian is to completely throw out all their hard work. It would take you weeks to do the same with a stock install of debian and it still wouldn't be as good. Some of us have other things to do. Same with other distros. I get it, I've been using Linux much longer than you. In theory you are correct. In practical application you aren't. Not everyone wants to do their Linux up from scratch and some sane defaults, background tweaks and themes (Nice IU) are nice for people who have lives but still want to run Linux.
Yeah, most adults have too much other stuff going on in their lives to have to spend however long customizing their operating system and installing some long list of packages. The opinionated distros downstream of one of the big three are really just there to provide something that's good enough for a segment of users that they'll be happy out of the box. We should take it as a good sign that there are so many distributions now. It's indicative of how large the Linux community has grown and that there are enough users and maintainers to support so many distros.
This. The effort is often cumulative. That is Debian does a pile of work in setting up the packages, then Ubuntu, adds a few extra packages and polishes the install process, then Linux adds their own modifications and tweaks. The result is an extremely polished distro. If Linux Mint had to do everything from scratch, it would certainly be a rough and hacky distro, More likely, it would be essentially impossible to produce the same distro from scratch.
Mint doesn't do much they just get Ubuntu and add cinnamon and add apps by default while canonical does the heavy lifting through Ubuntu. There's 2 teenagers who make zorin which just like mint just builds off Ubuntu. Don't overrate mint, it's just uglybuntu
I’ve been dabbling with Linux for about a year now and I am just now getting to the point of understanding that I have basically just been playing around with varying styles of debians my entire time. Went from Pop!_OS to Ubuntu LTS to mint and back to Pop. All just reskinned Debian
The 4 distros roots from which other distros tend to be built can be seen as Slackware (such as Suse), Debian, Gentoo (such as Pardus), and Fedora-RedHat. A great thing about Suse is that it can be purchased for the home _(without need to buy a "meant primarily for Server OS")_ with X-Amount of years support _(and multiple peole have bought it on a Disk as an OS)._ It also means there is a different entry-level for Slackware so people who wish to set up a home server _(or even desktop if they then feel confident enough to do the tweaking)_ and want to go through the Slackware manual can do so and yet can use their other computer for (Open) Suse. People want to fun linux distros in different ways (such as a simple Suse purchase), even of they are seeking to contribute money to Slackware and Debian via the make-contribution route. Another thing that is so great about Slackware is the kernel versions which stand the test of time. Also this affects dependency trees if people so wish to use software that way. One must be mindful of containers which, whilst good, are really _"another part of security"_ and not a replacement for security. Another thing to appreciate about Slackware is the way it does not do 32bit WINE out of the box without changing things when you run a 64bit version. Some people like that known-quantity approach. Not every NIC will work without something like NDISWrapper or similar added software (wrapper-class or otherwise), and thereby in lighter weight systems of Slackware a benefit of using an older 100Mbps NIC RJ45 ethernet card _(and yes, specifically that, and not talking about a 1Gbps NIC)_ is the smaller driver size of a 100Mbps NIC one tends to find. there is of course nostalgia and it is OK to use a distro for it being fun. Using Slackware and (Open) Suse over the years hits the spot in that regard and it is older after all. The new Microsoft online Linux instances a person can rent is an example of how one might use that deliberately to link and somewhat replicate a Microsoft server (e.g. 2012 or 2016) online as a Linux system but also a person might still ,nonethless also have a RHEL server online hosting space rented so as to have contingency, and also because it is overtly nostalgic to link a MSwindows desktop home PC (and linux box) to an online Red Hat server because much of the internet ran that way. And there might be some CGI and perl despite some people finding it hard to read. Nostalgia can be a temporal disparity where dispairty is a motivator. As soon as people might try to say they regard Linux solely for the meritocracy of technical solutions, if pressed on the issue as to whether they "love linux", they'd often have to agree with that alliteration. There seems to be a prevalent dichotomy posed that Linux is used instead of MSWindows for either meritocratic reasons of philosophical (potentially political) reason so as to socially engineer an agenda, but in reality many people use Linux for the reason that they hold an affectionate fondness for it. It is a way of thinking, such that a mentality burgeons from coding style and system set-ups, motivating learning. Yanks largely didn't "get" the Commodore Amiga, and yet here ins the British Isles and Europe we kept saying _"We love your computer"._ Escaping into the registers reading the magazines to _"improve your hex life"_ for coding tutorials or awaiting with a friend the next envelope stuffed with demoscene floppy disks and a note from the coders compels decisions to have emotions in them wanting to interogate yet more data or find new ways to relive it. People don't always remember facts (like homework) of what a person said but they tend to remember how a person made them feel. I'm not alone in knowing that when I can commit something to memory, and when I can remember, finally I can feel again. That is what escaping to the registers does. That is what they linux server linked to a desktop PC can do too. When something lost is regained, disparity can be a motivator. It is of that insatiable hunger craving for more knowledge. A distro is not just a different take on a kernel either but also a different with a shell. It is perhaps even more helpful to impart this concept to a person when describing how one might use BSD without using the Bourne Again Shell. People sometimes are shy to admit their emotive rationale behind their desire for Linux, and, at that, Linux makes people bashful. Be honest, Linux users, to the questions, _"Why are you here?"_ So the answer can easily include sentiment, _"For I long to be"._
Gentoo probably does not have many spins. I don't know where they use it or if they even use it out in the real world. I used to run it as my main working machine and I like the appeal of tailoring packages to your hardware and 'minimal' system but eventually felt the compilation was getting tiring. The resource usage on the system was very good though. One day it broke because there was this dependency bug in one of the package trees and I got stuck in a very bad dependency hell. I switched cause I was bored. But had a good time and can confidently say that I did like it. But its not for me. Its a very good Distro for learning though. Just a layer above LFS.
@@peacemekka I had the same issue with Gentoo, since then I use it with BTRFS and Snapper Tools. After 10 years of Linux I just came to this "big brain move" a few years ago xD But I could f... every dependency hell by simply reload the past system state and check out what was/is the reason. This snapper tool is a godsent!
MX Snapshot is one tool that makes MX Linux legitimately a different distro from Debian. (It’s funny to say that, because it’s actually very close to being just Debian in every other way.) The other MX tools are easier to get working, from what I have heard. Of course, there was the issue of non-free drivers, but Debian has finally made that easier in their latest stable release. But anyway, the MX Linux users who use MX Snapshot are justified in using MX Linux.
Not only that, but their AHS (advanced hardware support) flavors are great -- allowing you to run current hardware that might not have even booted Debian. Bought a Framework laptop when they first came out and MX KDE ran fine from day one.
Coming from window 10 , i have tried Debian and it was the most logical choice for me. Music production and Video edit are my mainpoint , so i need stability in my main desktop. Ubuntu Studio LTS is so great!.
I largely agree. I technically "distro hopped" by switching my Fedora Workstation to a custom build of uBlue (basically a more customizable Fedora Silverblue), but that's just a slight change so I can get the atomic updates of OSTree.
Great video.🎉🎉❤❤Thank you for publishing it for all the Linux lovers and for the people who are deciding to watch the straw to hop in order to get the stability of work.❤❤
It drives you nuts? How about taking some things into consideration: A distribution might be just a post install configuration and the choice of a package manager but this is just the technical side of things. Linux, like every OS which is out there and able to be used as a desktop OS, is for human beings and humans make experiences, considering a distribution as a look and feel and a determined collection of experiences will make it clear why they are more different than they are by just technical means. A bit of a feeling might soot through considering close forks like Debian to Ubuntu or Ubuntu to Linux Mint but in general there is a ton of background work on any distro which just didn't poof away but is determining the experiences constantly. This isn't a super deep thought big brain philosophical take but a rather pragmatic one which can be done pretty easily with a tiny bit of thinking about the questions and why they are appearing all the time and everywhere. Something you can't unsee and something you're talking about in this video, there is that. Based on that reason I'd bet that many ppl would have issues with "you can get rid of most Linux distros...". Many would blink an eye and many might get turned away from Linux after such a nightmare.
Titus doesn't really understand Kali. The point is that when you're on a pentest or something like that there are numerous reasons that it's not ideal to start downloading a bunch of tools.( time, footprint, etc) You want your pentesting setup to be ready to go. It's just not for the same purpose as these daily drivers he's talking about so comparing them doesn't make sense.
SUSE has been around in some form for like three decades. Not sure how it can be classified as obscure or niche, unless you're going based purely on perceived popularity and trying to pit it up against Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat-based and Arch. openSUSE is one of those distros that I don't think gets enough respect.
I agree. My first experience with Linux was buying a copy of SUSE Linux in a box at Best Buy over twenty years ago. I still use openSUSE, just recently switched to Tumblweed. I love it. Never have any problems with it and my wife uses it for gaming.
you have to include gentoo as well because you have really high level control over every piece of the install! its likely just a highly customized Debian but still deeper than stock!
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Best Linux distro? The one you have currently installed! Just customize that one. But yeah, I feel like bleeding edge packages work much better for desktop and gaming use. I really only use "stable" repos for servers. OpenSUSE makes me nostalgic, that what was like the 2nd distribution I tried back in 2006 when they put a CD in a computer magazine. Kali Linux for production use? No. That's like running your production website on XAMPP. Totally agree on the distrohopping. It's like people are looking for the best defaults instead of customizing their system.
There are maybe a dozen viable desktops and a couple hundred science projects. That's a bit reductionist, but it's the mindset I have when recommending Linux. And when recommending - if I'm not dealing with a gaming or tech enthusiast, Mint or Pop OS. Given how little difference there is under the hood between so many distros, the community HEAVILY overcomplicates things. It's rare you have a distro that does something so unique with their own customizations or toolset that it will matter to the average user (or even most niche users).
For the partially tech literate or tech illiterate, I usually recommend Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, or EndlessOS (OSTree immutable distros that use Flatpak) as they are basically desktop Linux packaged the same way as AOSP-x86. For the situation you described, Mint and Pop OS are also my go-to recommendations, along with MX Linux. Speaking of, for people who need something more like ChromeOS, PrimeOS or BlissOS (both full desktop android-x86) are my go-to. I have other specialized use distros for people just doing one or two things, but otherwise any distro can be molded to fit any use case or general need. These are the easiest to get rolling.
I started out on Ubuntu and Linux Mint (like most). Once I got the hang of things and wanted something more up to date, I used Arch for a while (Manjaro). But got frustrated with their bad updates. I tried a few other Arch distros, but still had issues. I tried Fedora and that seems to be the happy medium between stable and bleeding edge. Infact it was Fedora, then Nobara (but there was a couple things I that didn't work for me), back to Fedora then Ultramarine when they put out a KDE version. Other than their funky layouts, I like it (but you can switch layouts pretty easy in UM). And its basically just Fedora with non-free repos enabled for you and non free drivers.
I've spent the past couple years distro hopping, trying to find a distro that works for me. What I've discovered is that most are the same core with a different face. My personal take is that what I need is Debian and to just install the packages I need.
OpenSUSE is like a weird hybrid of Fedora with some of the functionality and stability that is closer to Debian. There are other oddball distro branches like the Mandriva/Mandrake, which is itself a fork of SUSE. Some of the forks from there get... bizarre. PCLinuxOS is a good example of something strange. I actually kinda like it, but it would never be my daily driver. It uses RPM packages, but then uses APT and SynapticQT for package management (Default DE is KDE).
openSuse is rather nicely put together, it has the best behaved graphical installer, and a very nice default KDE if you want KDE. It also seems to keep a good selection of packages thanks to its enterprise sibling. I'd certainly recomend OpenSuse to new users before many other distros. (And I stopped recommending Ubuntu 10 years ago. Canonical just went down a strange rabbit hole and doesn't cooperate with the rest of the community.) Debian is great once its setup, this is being typed on a 5 year old Debian install, but a lot of things are not included out of the box and need to be set manually, you don't even get sudo on a fresh Debian; this is not a flaw, Debian has very good reasons for this barebones configuration, but it does not suit all use cases and would be a deal breaker for many new users. (eg I don't use it as my standby liveusb.)
My first distro was Kubuntu for like 3 months back in 2005, then i switched to VectorLinux and i been using primarily Slackware based distros since then.
Ngl garuda Linux and nobara is so far my top fav and is the best so far no matter distro i try i always come back to either one of these two Garudas snapper is something which i like the most the great and awesome looks default integration of wayland being the rolling distro and that too arch based garuda is the best and nobara is like fedora but on steriods and a bit easier to set up
Agree and writting this comment from a Garuda dragonized KDE computer. It is my main and daily driver, for almost one and a half years, no issues yet. And in case of something bad happens I've got my snapper tools at hand thanks to btrfs ^^
Linux Distros are not the same. You are saying that they share components and that makes them the same but that is very far off. Yes they share the same kernel but even different versions of the Linux kernel makes a vastly different experience. Which package managers are used is a big difference but are many more differences between distros. Fedora had Pipewire long before any other distro. Wayland is used by default in some distros, whereas others use Xorg. There are many more differences that cause a different experience. I think it is possibly dangerous for users to be told it is all the same because if it is all the same, why do users have different experiences between distros? The point is, just because Linux distros have similarities and share components does not make it all the same thing. A Linux distro should be looked at as a single product not a sum of parts. Side note: Why are you promoting Debian & Arch as options for new users? Neither of those are good for new users, for vastly different reasons.
I do still like the odd distro hop. It's looking at these sets of decisions that brings the value. There's my hacked up sketchy idea and then there's trying something someone has dumped a few years of their life into. That comparison leads to the "nailed it" version that I incorporate into my own workflow. I've come full circle back to just using emacs and a browser these days but maybe that foray into qubes can influence the way I set up my vms and containers next round... What can we learn from the immutable distros that we want to implement on our vanilla debian and arch builds? Yes you can make your own but the top distros are the best recipes perfected over time by master linux chefs.
I've been installing several different Linux distros on my computers; Ubuntu, Pop OS, Fedora, Mint and now Garuda. I've came to the same conclusion you did. I just wish I came across this video sooner.
Came upon this video very late. I no longer use any RH distros. I also avoid the SuSE distros only because of the overall situation with them. I like Debian and at work I use Ubuntu since that is the selected distro there. But I have used Slackware for 31years and still love it. Slackware was the first Linux build I ever did in 1993.
I've started with Mandrake because it was easy (It had a graphical installer). I've been using Debian since Woody. Around 2009, I started using Fedora (Sulphur), and around 2010 or so, I started using Arch. Of course, I've tried more distros than I can remember, but I've always stuck to those 3. About 4 or 5 years ago, I changed Arch to Manjaro, just because I am lazy.
lindenhawthorn4761 Exactly, if you know how to write BASH is like speaking to your Operating System. It is a very powerful language to know. And you can make your Computer do almost anything you imagine...
I agree with this. It's also important to spread this message because it is confusing for those who are new to linux. Seems like there is an insurmountable amount of choses you have to make. If I understand it right though there is some distributions that actually does something different like fedora silverblue and vanilla os.
2010 windows 7 64 bit, 6 ram, hard drive 500gb. Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz, 1600 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s) Which free distro should i use, I'm using windows 10 right now not into gaming? Do I remove windows 10, how to install?
Sometimes it's a matter of which battles you're willing to fight. When I first started using Linux I couldn't get my AMD GPU to work on anything outside of Ubuntu or Pop OS. Pop OS bakes in the AMD drivers and the drivers available on AMD's website work specifically with Ubuntu (or at least they did at the time). There were supposedly other ways to install those drivers but I could never get it to work on any other distros. So yeah at the end of the day distros are just different ways of doing the same thing but some of them do a good job of taking some of the heavy lifting out of stuff that may not be trivial to everybody.
Felt the same. Pop was my distro for several months, but I got new hardware, and it broke more than once after that. Went back to Ubuntu. I do miss Pop, though.
@@usoppgostoso I still use it. In fact, I've installed it on my dual GPU laptop and my Microsoft Surface and have pretty much eliminated any semblance of Windows in my home. I've learned to troubleshoot most issues and having backups is useful. I will say if you're using Nvidia, as I was on my dual GPU, I ran into a lot of problems getting the GPU to do any actual acceleration but eventually realized you want to run the latest stable drivers.
I've said for a while that Linux Distros are like different trim levels in cars. Most of them use the same base (Debian, Arch, Fedora), but then the included options and stylings are different.
Kinda, but some of them are just literally the same trim with a different coat of paint. Coats of paint become kind of redundant when you can easily paint the car whatever color you want, and even customize it. It's not quite as easy as changing the car paint in a video game car editor, but certainly a lot easier than a real life coat of paint on a real car.
Yeah at the end of the day the real difference in distros is the package manager. I like fedora's dnf sadly, otherwise i would have left fedora to avoid all redhat bs
I mainly agree with what you say. It's mainly those basic flavors... although Ubuntu does give you the simplicity of Debian with more up-to-date software, and then I don't know I'm not a fan of Arch, it kinda defeats the purpose. Arch is basically a precompiled Gentoo-made-easy. Either you wanna build a system the way you want it, or you want it ready made and precompiled. Arch is like trying both, as if standing in the middle. Not unlike what you said for Kali linux, which I agree - why not do this in Debian? Sounds like someone wants to be a security expert and has no idea on what he needs - preinstalled packages won't help you, try reading first. In the same way, Arch users wanna have a system exactly the way they want it, up to every aspect of it, yet they want everything ready made and served - again, this won't help them, why not try reading and actually do this themselves using Gentoo or even LFS if they wanna make their own distro. Having said all this, I'm actually a long time user of Hannah Montana Linux.
2010 windows 7 64 bit, 6 ram, hard drive 500gb. Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz, 1600 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s) Which free distro should i use, I'm using windows 10 right now not into gaming? Do I remove windows 10, how to install?
Dear Titus: It seems everyone says that Debian based distros have old packages. This is true when it comes to Debian stable. However, do you think that you could do a legit comparison between ARCH and a Debian version that is more in alignment with ARCH (i.e. ??Debian Experimental, Debian Unstable, Debian Testing or Siduction). It gets a little old when the ARCH fanboys crap on the granddaddy of them all: DEBIAN. BTW thanks for having the stones to speak your opinion - I really enjoy the channel - and most of the time I agree with you.
Great points. As much as all this is fascinating, since I’ve a job and a life, I can’t afford to have my SO break and look for workarounds all the time. After getting new pieces of hardware, I found myself using Ubuntu again, since my Pop broke twice in the process. Imagine having a system break while tweaking screen brightness. As for Debian, it’s my choice for servers and containers, but I just can’t be bothered to get my Desktop to just work as it should by putting hours into that. Doesn’t make me an expert, just a fool. I’d love to try Arch, if I ever get more time to waste on fun stuff like that. But I wonder if I can be productive with such a system.
The thing is, I realize Mint and MX Linux and Zorin are forks, but using Debian is harder for me because I do not know enough to add in the things that Debian is missing that come with Debian forks like Linux Mint. (I haven't really tried out any Arch based distros or Fedora, etc.)
I just have some slight disagreements, more specifically about PopOS. It has a recovery partition, and that's something that makes it different. Overall, all of what you said is true, I'm just commenting on the topic. Also, OpenSUSE, while a bit niche, actually makes for a pretty good desktop. And I'd say the only distros, other than the main 3 (Debian, Fedora and Arch) that can ever be considered for a desktop system (pretty much niche and/or enthusiast only) are: OpenSUSE, NixOS, Gentoo non-systemd distros (Void, Artix and Devuan), and FSF distros (Only Guix, Trisquel and Parabola imo). That's it. There are no other desktop distros, in my opinion that are worth ever considering.
Unless you're getting paid to use or develop a user only needs the distro which best serves their use case. Nearly everyone distro-hops but nowadays VMs make hosting any or many OS trivially easy while keeping a stable boring reliable host.
A lot of people don't seem to understand you can have Gnome AND KDE AND anything-really installed at the same time and just pick whatever at login time.
I mostly agree with Chris, I do want to add two distros to the mix though. 1. RHEL based Linux (Alma Linux, Rocky Linux etc.) has a 10 years release cycle. Viable as a desktop system with EPEL, RPM Fusion and Flatpak enabled. 2. Nobara Linux. While it is a fork of Fedora, it comes with many kernel patches and patches for xorg, mesa, xwayland etc. for a better gaming experience. Not everybody is capable of maintaining and patchig their own software. ;-)
There is Devuan Linux, Artix Linux that are forks but aren't just "some fork with different packages installed" you can't just intall debian and transform it into Devuan the same is for Artix... There is void linux, it is not a fork, it's great, very minimalistic and it does not depend on gnu libc. Gentoo and Slackware are linuxes that still to this day very appealing for learning more how does linux works.
It's about the arrangement of packages. Imagine if macOS came without all that technology. Most Linux distros don't focus on home users, just the office desk. So projects like Pop OS and Nobara become vitally important for a number of people who aren't as tech savvy but don't want Windows. Let's not discount the value of the age old law: in order for technology to be easy for normal people, it has to be more and more complicated under the hood. There's a reason I run Fedora, and not because "I could have as easily used Debian". It's because no one knows the professional environment more than they. There's also a stark contrast between the user base: Fedora users seem more chill, and they're pretty much in the same crowd as the Suse and Debian users in that regard. Watching Ubuntu users and Arch users go at each other is like watching clowns make fun of jugglers. Like, just enjoy what you're using and don't worry what others are using. No one's standing to become the new Microsoft, so take a seat, ya know lol. Anyway, good video, though a little contradictory. To err is to human, as they say. But I prefer off the cuff honest contradiction over scripted nonsense with no attachment.
I've ran lots & lots of distros through the years. Now I always use KDE spin of fedora for desktop & use CentOS stream for servers (because its a stable rolling release which i love). I really missing AUR from arch because EVERYTHING you want to install is available but i just don't want to deal with the flakiness of arch anymore .
True. I backed out of Arch cause I couldn't deal with updates breaking my system. Hell I have even had kernel breaking after an update and having to maintain an older kernel just so I can boot it up and get stuff done. It was really messy. Needed a stable working environment(with good package support) but felt like I was running a test lab or something.
You are mostly right, there is far too much focus on distributions and their tiny differences. But you forgot to mention the immutable distros. That is a different kind altogether and absolutely can work for a lot of use cases. And if you can live with the few limitations it is really superior in my opinion. I use tumbleweed on my Laptop, as it is as up to date as arch and as reliable as Debian. Okay, not exactly but good enough, for me at least.
@@A_G420 Okay, maybe my "normal user" is different from yours. For me the normal user is someone who uses his PC to do office stuff, surf the web and maybe use some progs to exit pictures, whatever. Maybe also gaming a bit. And for that I think immutable distros work awesome. My daughter does exactly that...
The only Linux distro i have ever successfully daily drove was DSL back in the day. I was forced to use it because my laptop would throw a BSOD during any Windows installation and i happened to have a 64mb flash drive laying around. Fell in love with it but they stopped updating applications for it years ago. Thinking about giving Ubuntu Studio a fair shot. Not sure im comfortable with all the unsolicited AI Microsoft is shoving in my computer without me asking for it.
I'm a debian sid user...I use debian for the cutting edge. I specifically do this for apt and other debianisms that don't translate to arch. I tried arch, I'm too familiar with the debianisms to move and it just isn't worth it to me.
I'm starting to learn linux myself. My 70 year old mother has an old mac that is over 15 years old. It's slow and the hardware is too old to update now. She isn't intellectually invested in it, but it's what she's familiar with. I have a small intel NUC that I have tested a number of distros on and landed on mint. My biggest needs were mac look and feel for familiarity and the ability to run Ledger Live. I could not, for the life of me, get Ledger to install on debian 12. I'm sure it can be done, but I gave up and moved on.
Great video Chris... So true !! I've distro-hopped so many times in the past until as late as 2020 and have settled with Fedora as my main workstation. I still have a fondness and miss Solaris which was my first jump into the realms of non-windows systems. My backup pc runs Ghost-bsd of which I only use maybe 3 - 4 times a year and haven't updated it for almost 5 years.... If it ain't broke, don't fix it !!!
How much different is BSD from a typical Linux? I love my linuxes but the only exposure I've ever had of BSD has been with a Mac which is not really a BSD. I was interested in giving it a shot but stepped back cause I heard it has not so great support for laptop drivers especially Intel WiFi cards.
Someone told the truth. Linux became complicated to the average Win user because this gigantic amonut of forks. I know, I know, frorks the same of liberty to create something but it came to be a problem for an average user. Debian, Arch, OpenSUSE and Fedora are the real players.
100% agree but some forks are good. For example MX. It just has really nice tools and for some reason runs better than pure Debian on absolute potato machines. Even a 2 thread toaster feels like it rips on MX.
🧑🏽💻I'm finally doing my Indiana Jones step of faith in my learning thus far by building from the base up using tinycore as my host..1week in I have accomplished writing & debugging some scripts to automate grabbing basic packages & partition format & make basic directories....😂😂😂so much fun especially when doing all this from a 27year old gateway solo 5350....yes call me extreme 😂😂😂😂I needed a real challenge & oh Boi I got 1 too😅😅...Thankyou chris for all the knowledge you share🏆...at some point I'll be able to teach what I've learned....linux is really fun & also pretty efficient definitely better than Microsofts commercial bullying...🙌🏽💗
I use Mint. But since my box has removable SATA bays and I put my system and my HOME folder on separate HDDs, I'm gonna create a Debian system disk and alternate between Mint and Debian each day and see which one I like better over the long term.
Actually any distro that's is correctly maintained and isn't for a specific use will cover all the needs for Linux, it's a matter of convenience if you want either a rolling release or a more stable distro, but in the end all of them are pure Linux
After all the Redhat drama... I'd revise this clip - "You Only need 2 Distros"
1. Debian for stable environments
2. Arch for cutting edge
Fedora for stable and sorta bleeding edge. You're only jumping on the RHEL bandwagon for clicks/money.
Nice to know I haven't been wasting my time, they are the two Distros I use the most. Arch is great, being up to date and having a great wiki are W's.
gentoo if your swag
Suse....
If you make a new dedicated video on this specific topic on the main channel(with the kind of polish that's on your videos there) it would be great! Just make sure its noob friendly so its sharable to someone just getting in.
100% agree. Another thing that cooks my noodle is reinventing the wheel. Forever developing new installers and package managers. There are many other areas to push our community forward.
Meanwhile no dev managed to get a scroll wheel speed adjuster into the mouse settings of any distro
Probably because most Linux dev are also power users who rarely use the mouse.
It's just a floating point number somewhere. You could probably implement it yourself in two second such a slider lol
@@_Veracwow, such a gatekeeper mindset there. Lmao
@@_Veracwow ok
that is not because of the distro, it's the desktop environment
Well, SUSE is so obscure, that it's directly supported by hardware and software vendors (e.g.: nVidia literally hosts a zypper repo). Leap is getting a little bit old, but Tumbleweed is literally Arch in terms of shipping new software, but it doesn't break (because it's a base for enterprise products).
Yep, opensuse is one of the major big name distro's, I don't know know why he would call it niche or obscure.
I believe opensuse has more users in Europe, and not as many solutions online. I find that in using opensuse, I need to tweaks troubleshooting solutions I read online before I can apply it to my opensuse. On an unrelated note, I hate using rolling release due to the huge amount of downloads on every update.
@@benjy288depends on hardware compatibility...
I tried to used tumbleweed last month but it freezes every time I try to shutdown or restart after a few boots😅
I tried 7-8 times with different combinations (changing filesystem, separate/combined home, proprietary/opensource nvidia drivers, kde/gnome)
I never had those issues in manjaro kde & mint cinnamon, (although fedora with btrfs has same issues, but ext4 was fine)
@@benjy288 opensuse is a different project, SUSE on the other hand is obscure in the sense that you rarely see it. i could throw a dart in a dark room filled with the percentage of distros used and hit ubuntu 100% of the times
I went from 2 years on Sid, 6 months on Arch, and almost a year on Tumbleweed. I don't foresee myself ever hopping on bare metal ever again. Everything just *works*
And Yast will take a moment to get the feel for but it's powerful. Some things I'll configure without YAST but it's the one stop shop either way.
Also I prefer zypper. It's slower than pacman but what are ya gonna do
Yes, an Arch based one (for gaming), a Redhat based one (for enterprise work) and a Debian/Ubuntu based one (for workstation)
Fedora with testing packages is as up2date as arch if you use a desktop environment like gnome and install desktop applications as flatpak.
@@DominikZogg Fedora is a distro I just have never got on with, I also do not like Gnome really (PopOS is ok). I have installed every single version to check it out (except 38 yet)
there are many spins, not only gnome which seemed to be well maintained
my workstation uses Gentoo lol
and my server
and my other workstation
@@andymorin9163 gentoo is unique as well, but some of us (even developers) do not want to spend their time with compiling software ;-)
Everytime I distro hop, I always end up coming back to Fedora. It feels the most complete and has worked with most hardware I've thrown at it.
Sadly there’s no compatibility with nix home-manager so it’s a no go for me
@@javi___ nix is the worst distro lmao
Opensuse is close, but it's just a worse version of fedora. Also zypper just the slowest package manager
And it will easily break your system if you ever decide to remove the wrong random package
@@no_name4796 to be fair with btrfs enabled by default you can easily rollback to before breaking your system. Also I believe the "zypper is slow" argument, which is legit I admit, comes mostly from outside of europe since I'm in Italy and it's not that bad to be honest.
I have quite liked NixOS lately. The declarative model does seem to be a bit different than most other distros, and the "one config to rule them all" makes it easy for me to avoid loosing my random little changes I normally make to config files spread throughout the etc directory. So far I haven't yet removed it from any of the systems I have put it on, and normally I do reinstall every time a system feels the least bit "crufty" to me.
I think you might fall in love with home-manager and impermanence, basically a fresh start every rebuild. I’m gonna setup impermanence for the home directory myself, I think it’s a pretty cool feature.
Configuration files... No thanks. NixOS - is written for the next generation of the Neck Beards. No thanks.
@@unclefester9113is just one config file. Imagine it like docker, but for your whole system
@@unclefester9113so no config files and just repeat yourself every time or write a script that only works once?
Debian forks are due to people disagreeing with Debian's policies. Fedora is the testing branch of Red Hat. Arch is because some people figured they could make a distro even more impractical than Slackware.
what makes you say Arch is impractical? i guess i can see the argument bc it takes a lot more work to set up, but it’s not any more work than trying to make the same sort of customizations in a more plug-and-play distro like Debian (would also say that the setup is part of the fun, but that has nothing to do with practicality)
really hope i don’t start a flame war with this comment
@@kxtbit setup is fun until you just have something you want to do. Then you're better off just being ready to go. Sure if you're going to do the same kind of setup it takes the same amount of effort. If you need to customize everything. But there's a lot of defaults that are good enough for most. I do very little in the way of setup customization myself. The personalization I do is more of a home directory thing beyond what distros offer. I've learned to not muck around outside of my home directory.
My Arch installs have always been stable.
@@kxtbit Let this guy just speak for himself. I always feel some difficulty when people act like their personal opinion is a universal truth.
For me, as a technical person, Arch Linux is the system where I get most things done, because of how I can customize everything, the availability of software, and the excellent Arch Wiki which is one of the most valuable sources of information you can get.
Which still does Not mean that I recommend Arch for everyone, it just works for me, very simple. And I am also still not exclusively using it, I also run other systems.
@@1pcfred yes, agree with you. With great power comes greater responsibilities. I don't want all these responsibilities. Just some. So give me some power. Not everything. 😂
I'm a Slackware user. I appreciate that it's the most Unix-like distro, also the oldest and most stable of the bunch.
Slackware -current is as up-to-date as anything else as still more stable than most distribution's "stable" versions.
I too use slackware, although not on my main rig, as I'd probably screw something up.
I love how you really get to dig into anything you feel like. Just wish it was less annoying to install grub and it could just be an option in the installer, along with lilo/elilo.
It also just doesn't like one of my laptops, just refuses to boot, idk cause I do nothing different while installing.
If you use Slackware because it's Unix-like the most then why not use *BSD? I, as Arch user, like OpenBSD
@@member.x.from.sai-teiki But OpenBSD isn't Linux.
Slackware reminds me of how Linux was when it was new, in the early '90s when we were still looking forward to the version 1.0 kernel.
Here are 100 Debian-based Linux distributions:
1. Linux Mint
2. Ubuntu
3. elementary OS
4. Zorin OS
5. Pop!_OS
6. BunsenLabs
7. KNOPPIX
8. BackBox
9. Kali Linux
10. KasperskyOS
11. Knopperdisk
12. CrunchBang
13. NeoKylin
14. HydrantOS
15. GNewSense
16. Qimo 4 Kids
17. NimbleX
18. SparkyLinux
19. Cyclotron
20. Devuan
21. Parsix
22. BunsenLabs Linux
23. GendBuntu
24. Trisquel
25. Bear
26. GhostBSD
27. Linux Deepin
28. FreeNAS
29. Voyager
30. Emmabuntüs
31. Wifislax
32. Siduction
33. Ekaaty
34. OSGeoLive
35. NuTyX
36. Peppermint
37. CUbuntu
38. Fuduntu
39. SimplyMEPIS
40. Skolelinux
41. antiX
42. Hannah Montana Linux
43. StarLinux
44. Liberte Linux
45. Dream Studio
46. Cumulus Clouds
47. SliTaz
48. Münt
49. Kurumin
50. EPIC5
51. PLD Linux
52. GeexBox
53. gNewSense
54. Archbian
55. Apricity
56. FrancesinhaOS
57. Austrumi
58. BOSS
59. Damn Small Linux
60. JacqueLinux
61. KDE neon
62. FeatherLinux
63. Finnix
64. GParted Live
65. Gobolinux
66. Goobuntu
67. Instabuntu
68. Lakka
69. LinuxLite
70. Linspire
71. LliureX
72. Maestro Linux
73. MEPIS
74. Puppy Linux
75. tinyCore Linux
76. Ubuntu Studio
77. Xubuntu
78. LXLE
79. PiCRUST
80. Proxmox VE
81. Q4OS
82. Raspbian
83. Robolinux
84. Sabayon
85. Salix OS
86. Smoothwall
87. Storm
88. Trinity Rescue Kit
89. UberStudent
90. UltraLinux
91. Ultimate Edition
92. Vector Linux
93. Wyliodrin
94. Yellow Dog Linux
95. Zenwalk
96. Cloverleaf
97. Grafpup
98. Hellix
99. Itzjosua
100. LinEx
Holy crap! I figured there were around a dozen or 20 debian based...didn't think it was a fully Benny's worth.loo
I think its Truenas scale that’s on Debian and freenas on openBSD
Isn't GhostBSD based on FreeBSD?
101 you forgot Spiral Linux, a good one 😊
I prefer distros with a minimal installation. Then you gradually build it up to what you want.
I tried a bunch of Linux CDs from magazines around 2000. Mandrake was the sweetest but I had to switch back to W2K (THE best windows ever, with that clean 9x look) each time I felt stuck. Then I got an integration job in an association checking and setting donated computers up with debian. It came with a qualifying training in network management, which occured in the workshop, on our debian computers. I never quit debian and aptitude since 🥰 (although I'm a piano tuner now 😅)
How much does ChromeOS cost?
What is Chrome OS and who is it for? - Android Authority
Chrome OS is an operating system developed and owned by Google. It's based on Linux and is open-source, which means it's free to use.Jan 21, 2024
Mandrake and Windows 2000
*YES!!!*
If many developers dedicated themselves to writing scripts to customize Debian/Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora instead of making forks, life would be much simpler: you download your new DistroScript, all the installation and configuration is done automatically and if you don't like how it turned out, you run another Script that leaves the system as before deleting all the new packages and repeating the cycle
That's what the Macbuntu installer did for Ubuntu for a while. Twister OS does the same thing for some PC based Linux distros. It comes as a compete distro on ARM, eg. Raspberry Pi, but not Intel.
This is basically what NixOS forces you to do. Many users even go on to publish their own custom DistroScripts publically, essentially giving NixOS one of the highest fork-per-user ratios of any distro.
Enter the void...
Why would i when opensuse works fine
There is something to be said about having a distro ready for use with the tools and interface you require ready for use. The "just pick a base and do it yourself" disconsiders the fact that many people do not want to deal with this hastle.
Yeah, that's a lot of time to expect an adult to have to spend on something that should just work right out of the box to meet the needs of said adult.
@@fakecubedDo you take a ceiling fan out of the box and it just magically assembles itself into your house?
Do you take food out of the package and eat it raw?
I think you're mistaking "adult" with "lazy child".
It is expected that you work for the things that matter to you.
@@Atmatan Aww, I hurt your feelings because you don't have any adult responsibilities and can afford to spend countless hours tinkering with your operating system; I'm sorry. As an adult, I do have more important things to do with my life, and I have a computer to get work done, it's not a toy I bought to play with.
@@fakecubed 😂😂😂😂
I can tell I don't even need to read that
@@Atmatan I think cooking food and installing a fan in the house is much more important work to do than tinkering with operating system.
I was falling in love with Slackware in the early 1990s....and I am still in love. That's it.
It all boils down to, what is the starting point you want to use for your computer? Even people who run Windows change at least some settings to suit their needs from cosmetic stuff like wallpapers or connecting to their wireless printer or installing their browser of choice and any software they need. Nobody runs a general purpose OS on their computer without adding/removing/customizing something on it.
Distros just offer more starting points from which to choose for setting up a desktop/laptop. The rest is up to the owner of said desktop/laptop do with it what they want for their needs.
yep. there are many people who want to custumize every detail in their distros. that can take a very long time after every install. others just want something that is already customized so they can just take an iso install and be done. in theory those customizations could also be applied through a simple script after run, but most is done through different distributions.
@@willi1978 if someone wants to change every last detail thats fine, make it avalable to do so through terminal, but linux needs a full fleshed out distro with easy to manipulate, non terminal settings like windows and MacOS has
BTW I use Gentoo.
Gentoo is stable as rock, rolling release and a mix of source based and binary based.
If you want to keep your Linux instalation for decades, Gentoo is your only one.
Not exactly true. I ran Gentoo as my primary OS for over ten years across several hardware installations on several laptops, but eventually I was always faced with the choice of having to buy a more powerful machine so that I could keep running it and ditching an otherwise well functioning machine, or keeping what I had, but dealing with the lag of having to be constantly compiling in the background, or worse, dealing with trying to make work outdated unsupported hardware, particularly graphic cards. Plus there's the added issue of dealing with workarounds and having to patch things to make them work, especially when running "~" unstable. Switching to Arch got me another 3 years use out of my laptop, before I finally retired it. Once it was set-up it was almost like running on auto pilot by comparison. I seldom if ever need to intervene in fixing my system and things just work as they should. Now I'm sold on Arch and wouldn't think of running anything else.
@@robertcabrera6232 you can setup distcc on your bigger machine. Is what I do to compile on my old laptop.
Arch is better for maintenance, plus you have access to the AUR and never needs to bother with a specific app
@@bionic-beaver arch is worse for maintenance because is bleeding Edge. Their rolling release model doesn't fit with maintenance burden.
On Gentoo you have overlays. It is like AUR but made but community or yourself.
Having Gentoo well configured, with distcc and with your own overlay its way better than arch from the maintenance standpoint.
Remember, ChomeOS is based on Gentoo because of flexibility and stability.
@@bionic-beaver Gentoo is way easier to maintain than Arch, there are often little (or sometimes big) things that brake on Arch, Gentoo is way more stable.
Hey Titus, I loved your video on how you showed finding and installing Plain Debian Just like you install Windows or any other Operating System, doing a clean install and then one can add anything to it. And I liked how you poked at Debian people making it a challenge finding the install file. Good Work... You got my support.
Even for gaming you can choose Debian. Either you go with SID or Testing for newer packages. Or you can use Debian Stable as the base, backports for an advanced kernel, and Flatpak for up-to-date apps. Love Debian.
I love Sparky Linux (testing) for Debian Testing. Spiral is great too. I've had a few problems with Siduction though, but I think I got it stable now.
Good point. Containers on the desktop seem like an acquired taste to me but they certainly solve this problem.
Here are some unique linux distros:
debian
fedora
arch linux
NixOS
alpine linux
Easy os (and maybe puppy linux have also some unique behaviours)
Gobo linux
Gentoo
Void linux
OpenSUSE
And I am not sure if I should count them but maybe also thinghs like VanillaOS or BlendOS
Edit: maybe also, tinycore linux...
Is alpine really usable as a desktop?
I use it so much for my LXC stuff cause its insanely lightweight but never even considered it for a desktop.
Solus too. Only if it was more alive today...
@@peacemekka to be honest when I was writing this comment i was thinking about unique distros, not necessary desktop ones. I am not sure if you can use alpine linux as desktop distro easily. I guess you should be able to configure everything like you can in arch linux but I don't know. But you definitely can install desktop enviroments.
@@skelebro9999 I don't know current state because I didnt used it, but I know that in video covering linux news created by "the linux experiment" posted on 2023.04.22 there was announcment that solus have some plans and they are trying to do some more seroious changes
@@Daniel_VolumeDown nice
There can be only one, Slackware (I kid, I kid) but it was the first distro I ran for any time back in the early 2000's.
Titus is objectively wrong about this, if these distros didn't have use cases they wouldn't exist. And the fact that people use them means that they would notice if they disappeared.
The only significant difference between distros is the package manager, of which there are only actually a few "grandfather" distros that all others inherit from. Everything else is universal.
For most users, the GUI is the OS. They have no idea. I understand your frustration.
You described me, though I would like to know more about the differences, but don't seem to be able to find clear distinctions between the versions/distros.
In the video he described the three versions/distros/roots (debian/fedora/arch).
But he described them in terms of the stability-to-cutting-edge spectrum, which does not help me to understand the "mechanical" difference between them, for want of a better word.
Given your comment, you are presumably quite experienced.
Got any tips for we "the GUI is the OS" folks to learn what the real differences are, if indeed there are any?
Thanks.
Am not going to get technical cause am on my phone.
The primary difference between distro is what they catered to and what they are preconfigured with. Kali for security, Ubuntu for everyday users, hardware support, and philosophies.
GUI is just a visual layer on top all this, you don't need it if you use the terminal, XFCE is a GUI that most distro support.
@@a13xw71 Right? Thanks for getting back to me. I guess, then, I have just realized, a better question would have been: Do Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc, all have the same kernel, and is the user's interaction with, say, the terminal the same for each? I am trying to figure out (currently as a user of Mint 21 on an old mac, which is pretty good) whether I need to focus on one "branch" / "build" of Linux before I start trying to learn how to configure it. I suppose there'd be nothing wrong in just learning what to do with Mint for now, in the same way I learned basic motorbike maintenance by doing jobs on my current bike, and then trying to learn what is what, generally.
I've been running GENTOO since 2004! Couldn't be happier:)
To say they are pretty much the same all Linux mint is just debian is to completely throw out all their hard work. It would take you weeks to do the same with a stock install of debian and it still wouldn't be as good. Some of us have other things to do. Same with other distros.
I get it, I've been using Linux much longer than you. In theory you are correct. In practical application you aren't. Not everyone wants to do their Linux up from scratch and some sane defaults, background tweaks and themes (Nice IU) are nice for people who have lives but still want to run Linux.
Exactly. This is basically a trope in the Linux community at this point, that distros are worthless
Yeah, most adults have too much other stuff going on in their lives to have to spend however long customizing their operating system and installing some long list of packages. The opinionated distros downstream of one of the big three are really just there to provide something that's good enough for a segment of users that they'll be happy out of the box.
We should take it as a good sign that there are so many distributions now. It's indicative of how large the Linux community has grown and that there are enough users and maintainers to support so many distros.
This. The effort is often cumulative. That is Debian does a pile of work in setting up the packages, then Ubuntu, adds a few extra packages and polishes the install process, then Linux adds their own modifications and tweaks. The result is an extremely polished distro. If Linux Mint had to do everything from scratch, it would certainly be a rough and hacky distro, More likely, it would be essentially impossible to produce the same distro from scratch.
Mint doesn't do much they just get Ubuntu and add cinnamon and add apps by default while canonical does the heavy lifting through Ubuntu. There's 2 teenagers who make zorin which just like mint just builds off Ubuntu. Don't overrate mint, it's just uglybuntu
Mint and Zorin are both developed in Ireland. Perhaps the two would merge or at least work together.
I’ve been dabbling with Linux for about a year now and I am just now getting to the point of understanding that I have basically just been playing around with varying styles of debians my entire time.
Went from Pop!_OS to Ubuntu LTS to mint and back to Pop. All just reskinned Debian
The 4 distros roots from which other distros tend to be built can be seen as Slackware (such as Suse), Debian, Gentoo (such as Pardus), and Fedora-RedHat. A great thing about Suse is that it can be purchased for the home _(without need to buy a "meant primarily for Server OS")_ with X-Amount of years support _(and multiple peole have bought it on a Disk as an OS)._ It also means there is a different entry-level for Slackware so people who wish to set up a home server _(or even desktop if they then feel confident enough to do the tweaking)_ and want to go through the Slackware manual can do so and yet can use their other computer for (Open) Suse. People want to fun linux distros in different ways (such as a simple Suse purchase), even of they are seeking to contribute money to Slackware and Debian via the make-contribution route. Another thing that is so great about Slackware is the kernel versions which stand the test of time. Also this affects dependency trees if people so wish to use software that way. One must be mindful of containers which, whilst good, are really _"another part of security"_ and not a replacement for security. Another thing to appreciate about Slackware is the way it does not do 32bit WINE out of the box without changing things when you run a 64bit version. Some people like that known-quantity approach. Not every NIC will work without something like NDISWrapper or similar added software (wrapper-class or otherwise), and thereby in lighter weight systems of Slackware a benefit of using an older 100Mbps NIC RJ45 ethernet card _(and yes, specifically that, and not talking about a 1Gbps NIC)_ is the smaller driver size of a 100Mbps NIC one tends to find. there is of course nostalgia and it is OK to use a distro for it being fun. Using Slackware and (Open) Suse over the years hits the spot in that regard and it is older after all. The new Microsoft online Linux instances a person can rent is an example of how one might use that deliberately to link and somewhat replicate a Microsoft server (e.g. 2012 or 2016) online as a Linux system but also a person might still ,nonethless also have a RHEL server online hosting space rented so as to have contingency, and also because it is overtly nostalgic to link a MSwindows desktop home PC (and linux box) to an online Red Hat server because much of the internet ran that way. And there might be some CGI and perl despite some people finding it hard to read. Nostalgia can be a temporal disparity where dispairty is a motivator. As soon as people might try to say they regard Linux solely for the meritocracy of technical solutions, if pressed on the issue as to whether they "love linux", they'd often have to agree with that alliteration. There seems to be a prevalent dichotomy posed that Linux is used instead of MSWindows for either meritocratic reasons of philosophical (potentially political) reason so as to socially engineer an agenda, but in reality many people use Linux for the reason that they hold an affectionate fondness for it. It is a way of thinking, such that a mentality burgeons from coding style and system set-ups, motivating learning. Yanks largely didn't "get" the Commodore Amiga, and yet here ins the British Isles and Europe we kept saying _"We love your computer"._ Escaping into the registers reading the magazines to _"improve your hex life"_ for coding tutorials or awaiting with a friend the next envelope stuffed with demoscene floppy disks and a note from the coders compels decisions to have emotions in them wanting to interogate yet more data or find new ways to relive it. People don't always remember facts (like homework) of what a person said but they tend to remember how a person made them feel. I'm not alone in knowing that when I can commit something to memory, and when I can remember, finally I can feel again. That is what escaping to the registers does. That is what they linux server linked to a desktop PC can do too. When something lost is regained, disparity can be a motivator. It is of that insatiable hunger craving for more knowledge.
A distro is not just a different take on a kernel either but also a different with a shell. It is perhaps even more helpful to impart this concept to a person when describing how one might use BSD without using the Bourne Again Shell. People sometimes are shy to admit their emotive rationale behind their desire for Linux, and, at that, Linux makes people bashful. Be honest, Linux users, to the questions, _"Why are you here?"_ So the answer can easily include sentiment, _"For I long to be"._
Uuuuugh, please have more paragraphs...
Gentoo probably does not have many spins. I don't know where they use it or if they even use it out in the real world.
I used to run it as my main working machine and I like the appeal of tailoring packages to your hardware and 'minimal' system but eventually felt the compilation was getting tiring. The resource usage on the system was very good though. One day it broke because there was this dependency bug in one of the package trees and I got stuck in a very bad dependency hell. I switched cause I was bored. But had a good time and can confidently say that I did like it. But its not for me. Its a very good Distro for learning though. Just a layer above LFS.
my brother in Christ, you wrote a whole blog post 💀
@@peacemekka I had the same issue with Gentoo, since then I use it with BTRFS and Snapper Tools. After 10 years of Linux I just came to this "big brain move" a few years ago xD
But I could f... every dependency hell by simply reload the past system state and check out what was/is the reason. This snapper tool is a godsent!
@@BruceCarbonLakeriver that is a good idea. I didn't know much about snapshotting back then. Maybe I'll give it a try one day.
MX Snapshot is one tool that makes MX Linux legitimately a different distro from Debian. (It’s funny to say that, because it’s actually very close to being just Debian in every other way.) The other MX tools are easier to get working, from what I have heard. Of course, there was the issue of non-free drivers, but Debian has finally made that easier in their latest stable release. But anyway, the MX Linux users who use MX Snapshot are justified in using MX Linux.
Not only that, but their AHS (advanced hardware support) flavors are great -- allowing you to run current hardware that might not have even booted Debian. Bought a Framework laptop when they first came out and MX KDE ran fine from day one.
@@nordicbastard2328 Yeah, it's a nice feature. Since I have an older device, I do wish that their KDE edition came with a non-AHS option.
Coming from window 10 , i have tried Debian and it was the most logical choice for me. Music production and Video edit are my mainpoint , so i need stability in my main desktop. Ubuntu Studio LTS is so great!.
I largely agree. I technically "distro hopped" by switching my Fedora Workstation to a custom build of uBlue (basically a more customizable Fedora Silverblue), but that's just a slight change so I can get the atomic updates of OSTree.
Great video.🎉🎉❤❤Thank you for publishing it for all the Linux lovers and for the people who are deciding to watch the straw to hop in order to get the stability of work.❤❤
It drives you nuts?
How about taking some things into consideration:
A distribution might be just a post install configuration and the choice of a package manager but this is just the technical side of things.
Linux, like every OS which is out there and able to be used as a desktop OS, is for human beings and humans make experiences, considering a distribution as a look and feel and a determined collection of experiences will make it clear why they are more different than they are by just technical means.
A bit of a feeling might soot through considering close forks like Debian to Ubuntu or Ubuntu to Linux Mint but in general there is a ton of background work on any distro which just didn't poof away but is determining the experiences constantly.
This isn't a super deep thought big brain philosophical take but a rather pragmatic one which can be done pretty easily with a tiny bit of thinking about the questions and why they are appearing all the time and everywhere. Something you can't unsee and something you're talking about in this video, there is that.
Based on that reason I'd bet that many ppl would have issues with "you can get rid of most Linux distros...". Many would blink an eye and many might get turned away from Linux after such a nightmare.
i went from linux mint with cinnamon de as my first distro to arch with dwm after using mint for like 2-3 days and i'm loving arch so far
By that logic, LFS is the only distro that matters.
Titus doesn't really understand Kali.
The point is that when you're on a pentest or something like that there are numerous reasons that it's not ideal to start downloading a bunch of tools.( time, footprint, etc)
You want your pentesting setup to be ready to go.
It's just not for the same purpose as these daily drivers he's talking about so comparing them doesn't make sense.
I daily drove slackware for a couple of years, and quite liked it. I've been away from linux for a few years now though.
SUSE has been around in some form for like three decades. Not sure how it can be classified as obscure or niche, unless you're going based purely on perceived popularity and trying to pit it up against Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat-based and Arch. openSUSE is one of those distros that I don't think gets enough respect.
I agree. My first experience with Linux was buying a copy of SUSE Linux in a box at Best Buy over twenty years ago. I still use openSUSE, just recently switched to Tumblweed. I love it. Never have any problems with it and my wife uses it for gaming.
you have to include gentoo as well because you have really high level control over every piece of the install! its likely just a highly customized Debian but still deeper than stock!
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today
Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven
There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today
Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell
Come to Jesus Christ today
Jesus Christ is only way to heaven
Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void
Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today
Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today
Romans 6.23
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus
Best Linux distro? The one you have currently installed! Just customize that one. But yeah, I feel like bleeding edge packages work much better for desktop and gaming use. I really only use "stable" repos for servers. OpenSUSE makes me nostalgic, that what was like the 2nd distribution I tried back in 2006 when they put a CD in a computer magazine. Kali Linux for production use? No. That's like running your production website on XAMPP. Totally agree on the distrohopping. It's like people are looking for the best defaults instead of customizing their system.
There are maybe a dozen viable desktops and a couple hundred science projects. That's a bit reductionist, but it's the mindset I have when recommending Linux. And when recommending - if I'm not dealing with a gaming or tech enthusiast, Mint or Pop OS. Given how little difference there is under the hood between so many distros, the community HEAVILY overcomplicates things. It's rare you have a distro that does something so unique with their own customizations or toolset that it will matter to the average user (or even most niche users).
For the partially tech literate or tech illiterate, I usually recommend Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, or EndlessOS (OSTree immutable distros that use Flatpak) as they are basically desktop Linux packaged the same way as AOSP-x86. For the situation you described, Mint and Pop OS are also my go-to recommendations, along with MX Linux. Speaking of, for people who need something more like ChromeOS, PrimeOS or BlissOS (both full desktop android-x86) are my go-to. I have other specialized use distros for people just doing one or two things, but otherwise any distro can be molded to fit any use case or general need. These are the easiest to get rolling.
Arch for cutting edge, Redhat for production servers, Debian for stability, and Nix has it all.
I started out on Ubuntu and Linux Mint (like most). Once I got the hang of things and wanted something more up to date, I used Arch for a while (Manjaro). But got frustrated with their bad updates. I tried a few other Arch distros, but still had issues. I tried Fedora and that seems to be the happy medium between stable and bleeding edge. Infact it was Fedora, then Nobara (but there was a couple things I that didn't work for me), back to Fedora then Ultramarine when they put out a KDE version. Other than their funky layouts, I like it (but you can switch layouts pretty easy in UM). And its basically just Fedora with non-free repos enabled for you and non free drivers.
@liquideternity8692 Manjaro has access to the AUR.
Void linux
I've spent the past couple years distro hopping, trying to find a distro that works for me.
What I've discovered is that most are the same core with a different face.
My personal take is that what I need is Debian and to just install the packages I need.
OpenSUSE is like a weird hybrid of Fedora with some of the functionality and stability that is closer to Debian. There are other oddball distro branches like the Mandriva/Mandrake, which is itself a fork of SUSE. Some of the forks from there get... bizarre. PCLinuxOS is a good example of something strange. I actually kinda like it, but it would never be my daily driver. It uses RPM packages, but then uses APT and SynapticQT for package management (Default DE is KDE).
openSuse is rather nicely put together, it has the best behaved graphical installer, and a very nice default KDE if you want KDE. It also seems to keep a good selection of packages thanks to its enterprise sibling. I'd certainly recomend OpenSuse to new users before many other distros. (And I stopped recommending Ubuntu 10 years ago. Canonical just went down a strange rabbit hole and doesn't cooperate with the rest of the community.)
Debian is great once its setup, this is being typed on a 5 year old Debian install, but a lot of things are not included out of the box and need to be set manually, you don't even get sudo on a fresh Debian; this is not a flaw, Debian has very good reasons for this barebones configuration, but it does not suit all use cases and would be a deal breaker for many new users. (eg I don't use it as my standby liveusb.)
Poor OpenSuse getting looked over. Such a great distro.
Missed opportunity for an astronaut meme:
Wait, its all forks? Always has been...
Or a warner brothers meme:
Well, that's all forks!
My first distro was Kubuntu for like 3 months back in 2005, then i switched to VectorLinux and i been using primarily Slackware based distros since then.
Ngl garuda Linux and nobara is so far my top fav and is the best so far no matter distro i try i always come back to either one of these two Garudas snapper is something which i like the most the great and awesome looks default integration of wayland being the rolling distro and that too arch based garuda is the best and nobara is like fedora but on steriods and a bit easier to set up
Agree and writting this comment from a Garuda dragonized KDE computer. It is my main and daily driver, for almost one and a half years, no issues yet. And in case of something bad happens I've got my snapper tools at hand thanks to btrfs ^^
Linux Distros are not the same. You are saying that they share components and that makes them the same but that is very far off. Yes they share the same kernel but even different versions of the Linux kernel makes a vastly different experience. Which package managers are used is a big difference but are many more differences between distros. Fedora had Pipewire long before any other distro. Wayland is used by default in some distros, whereas others use Xorg. There are many more differences that cause a different experience. I think it is possibly dangerous for users to be told it is all the same because if it is all the same, why do users have different experiences between distros? The point is, just because Linux distros have similarities and share components does not make it all the same thing. A Linux distro should be looked at as a single product not a sum of parts.
Side note: Why are you promoting Debian & Arch as options for new users? Neither of those are good for new users, for vastly different reasons.
The major thing that distinguishes Nobora from Fedora is how much it integrates stuff like ProtonGE or an easy nvidia installer.
I use lx for desktop environment, i went from Red Hat to OpenSuse about 2005 then to Mint abt ten years ago. Still using it.
I do still like the odd distro hop. It's looking at these sets of decisions that brings the value. There's my hacked up sketchy idea and then there's trying something someone has dumped a few years of their life into. That comparison leads to the "nailed it" version that I incorporate into my own workflow. I've come full circle back to just using emacs and a browser these days but maybe that foray into qubes can influence the way I set up my vms and containers next round... What can we learn from the immutable distros that we want to implement on our vanilla debian and arch builds? Yes you can make your own but the top distros are the best recipes perfected over time by master linux chefs.
I've been installing several different Linux distros on my computers; Ubuntu, Pop OS, Fedora, Mint and now Garuda. I've came to the same conclusion you did. I just wish I came across this video sooner.
Came upon this video very late. I no longer use any RH distros. I also avoid the SuSE distros only because of the overall situation with them. I like Debian and at work I use Ubuntu since that is the selected distro there. But I have used Slackware for 31years and still love it. Slackware was the first Linux build I ever did in 1993.
I've started with Mandrake because it was easy (It had a graphical installer). I've been using Debian since Woody. Around 2009, I started using Fedora (Sulphur), and around 2010 or so, I started using Arch. Of course, I've tried more distros than I can remember, but I've always stuck to those 3. About 4 or 5 years ago, I changed Arch to Manjaro, just because I am lazy.
All the time people waste distro-hopping could be spent learning shell. Being a shell wizard is what really unlocks the power of a computer.
lindenhawthorn4761
Exactly, if you know how to write BASH is like speaking to your Operating System.
It is a very powerful language to know.
And you can make your Computer do almost anything you imagine...
I agree with this. It's also important to spread this message because it is confusing for those who are new to linux. Seems like there is an insurmountable amount of choses you have to make.
If I understand it right though there is some distributions that actually does something different like fedora silverblue and vanilla os.
Debian, Redhat, Slackware, Arch = main distros.
Nutyx, Void, Slitaz = exotic distros.
Basicly, if distro is not a fork, it's from scratch
2010 windows 7 64 bit, 6 ram, hard drive 500gb. Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz, 1600 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Which free distro should i use, I'm using windows 10 right now not into gaming? Do I remove windows 10, how to install?
Forks just save time for people who don't want to dip too deeply into the how it works, as long as it works.
And Gentoo for learning. Don't forget that.
(But not for any kind of realistic usage unless it's gonna be a system that almost never changes)
LFS for learning.
Sometimes it's a matter of which battles you're willing to fight. When I first started using Linux I couldn't get my AMD GPU to work on anything outside of Ubuntu or Pop OS. Pop OS bakes in the AMD drivers and the drivers available on AMD's website work specifically with Ubuntu (or at least they did at the time). There were supposedly other ways to install those drivers but I could never get it to work on any other distros.
So yeah at the end of the day distros are just different ways of doing the same thing but some of them do a good job of taking some of the heavy lifting out of stuff that may not be trivial to everybody.
Felt the same. Pop was my distro for several months, but I got new hardware, and it broke more than once after that. Went back to Ubuntu. I do miss Pop, though.
@@usoppgostoso I still use it. In fact, I've installed it on my dual GPU laptop and my Microsoft Surface and have pretty much eliminated any semblance of Windows in my home. I've learned to troubleshoot most issues and having backups is useful.
I will say if you're using Nvidia, as I was on my dual GPU, I ran into a lot of problems getting the GPU to do any actual acceleration but eventually realized you want to run the latest stable drivers.
I've said for a while that Linux Distros are like different trim levels in cars. Most of them use the same base (Debian, Arch, Fedora), but then the included options and stylings are different.
Kinda, but some of them are just literally the same trim with a different coat of paint. Coats of paint become kind of redundant when you can easily paint the car whatever color you want, and even customize it. It's not quite as easy as changing the car paint in a video game car editor, but certainly a lot easier than a real life coat of paint on a real car.
Yeah at the end of the day the real difference in distros is the package manager.
I like fedora's dnf sadly, otherwise i would have left fedora to avoid all redhat bs
I mainly agree with what you say. It's mainly those basic flavors... although Ubuntu does give you the simplicity of Debian with more up-to-date software, and then I don't know I'm not a fan of Arch, it kinda defeats the purpose. Arch is basically a precompiled Gentoo-made-easy. Either you wanna build a system the way you want it, or you want it ready made and precompiled. Arch is like trying both, as if standing in the middle. Not unlike what you said for Kali linux, which I agree - why not do this in Debian? Sounds like someone wants to be a security expert and has no idea on what he needs - preinstalled packages won't help you, try reading first. In the same way, Arch users wanna have a system exactly the way they want it, up to every aspect of it, yet they want everything ready made and served - again, this won't help them, why not try reading and actually do this themselves using Gentoo or even LFS if they wanna make their own distro. Having said all this, I'm actually a long time user of Hannah Montana Linux.
2010 windows 7 64 bit, 6 ram, hard drive 500gb. Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz, 1600 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Which free distro should i use, I'm using windows 10 right now not into gaming? Do I remove windows 10, how to install?
@@AnthonyManzio Use Hannah Montana Linux. She comes to your house and installs herself.
@@StupidusMaximusTheFirst lol
Dear Titus: It seems everyone says that Debian based distros have old packages. This is true when it comes to Debian stable. However, do you think that you could do a legit comparison between ARCH and a Debian version that is more in alignment with ARCH (i.e. ??Debian Experimental, Debian Unstable, Debian Testing or Siduction). It gets a little old when the ARCH fanboys crap on the granddaddy of them all: DEBIAN. BTW thanks for having the stones to speak your opinion - I really enjoy the channel - and most of the time I agree with you.
Great points. As much as all this is fascinating, since I’ve a job and a life, I can’t afford to have my SO break and look for workarounds all the time. After getting new pieces of hardware, I found myself using Ubuntu again, since my Pop broke twice in the process. Imagine having a system break while tweaking screen brightness. As for Debian, it’s my choice for servers and containers, but I just can’t be bothered to get my Desktop to just work as it should by putting hours into that. Doesn’t make me an expert, just a fool.
I’d love to try Arch, if I ever get more time to waste on fun stuff like that. But I wonder if I can be productive with such a system.
The thing is, I realize Mint and MX Linux and Zorin are forks, but using Debian is harder for me because I do not know enough to add in the things that Debian is missing that come with Debian forks like Linux Mint. (I haven't really tried out any Arch based distros or Fedora, etc.)
I just have some slight disagreements, more specifically about PopOS. It has a recovery partition, and that's something that makes it different. Overall, all of what you said is true, I'm just commenting on the topic. Also, OpenSUSE, while a bit niche, actually makes for a pretty good desktop. And I'd say the only distros, other than the main 3 (Debian, Fedora and Arch) that can ever be considered for a desktop system (pretty much niche and/or enthusiast only) are: OpenSUSE, NixOS, Gentoo non-systemd distros (Void, Artix and Devuan), and FSF distros (Only Guix, Trisquel and Parabola imo). That's it. There are no other desktop distros, in my opinion that are worth ever considering.
I’d add Slackware just for historical nostalgia
@@billeterk Fair enough. Slackware is the oldest maintained distro, after all
I wonder how good alpine linux would be for desktop
@@Daniel_VolumeDown Alpine is incredibly minimal and has quite a lot of packages, so I'm guessing it would make a pretty good desktop
Unless you're getting paid to use or develop a user only needs the distro which best serves their use case. Nearly everyone distro-hops but nowadays VMs make hosting any or many OS trivially easy while keeping a stable boring reliable host.
A lot of people don't seem to understand you can have Gnome AND KDE AND anything-really installed at the same time and just pick whatever at login time.
You can even run Gnome and KDE at the exact same time. You just have to start up another X session.
Recently I understood that its the DeskTop environment that makes them stand out from each other for NewBies.
I mostly agree with Chris, I do want to add two distros to the mix though.
1. RHEL based Linux (Alma Linux, Rocky Linux etc.) has a 10 years release cycle. Viable as a desktop system with EPEL, RPM Fusion and Flatpak enabled.
2. Nobara Linux. While it is a fork of Fedora, it comes with many kernel patches and patches for xorg, mesa, xwayland etc. for a better gaming experience. Not everybody is capable of maintaining and patchig their own software. ;-)
There is Devuan Linux, Artix Linux that are forks but aren't just "some fork with different packages installed" you can't just intall debian and transform it into Devuan the same is for Artix...
There is void linux, it is not a fork, it's great, very minimalistic and it does not depend on gnu libc.
Gentoo and Slackware are linuxes that still to this day very appealing for learning more how does linux works.
It's about the arrangement of packages. Imagine if macOS came without all that technology. Most Linux distros don't focus on home users, just the office desk. So projects like Pop OS and Nobara become vitally important for a number of people who aren't as tech savvy but don't want Windows. Let's not discount the value of the age old law: in order for technology to be easy for normal people, it has to be more and more complicated under the hood.
There's a reason I run Fedora, and not because "I could have as easily used Debian". It's because no one knows the professional environment more than they.
There's also a stark contrast between the user base: Fedora users seem more chill, and they're pretty much in the same crowd as the Suse and Debian users in that regard.
Watching Ubuntu users and Arch users go at each other is like watching clowns make fun of jugglers. Like, just enjoy what you're using and don't worry what others are using. No one's standing to become the new Microsoft, so take a seat, ya know lol.
Anyway, good video, though a little contradictory. To err is to human, as they say. But I prefer off the cuff honest contradiction over scripted nonsense with no attachment.
I've ran lots & lots of distros through the years. Now I always use KDE spin of fedora for desktop & use CentOS stream for servers (because its a stable rolling release which i love). I really missing AUR from arch because EVERYTHING you want to install is available but i just don't want to deal with the flakiness of arch anymore .
True. I backed out of Arch cause I couldn't deal with updates breaking my system. Hell I have even had kernel breaking after an update and having to maintain an older kernel just so I can boot it up and get stuff done. It was really messy. Needed a stable working environment(with good package support) but felt like I was running a test lab or something.
You are mostly right, there is far too much focus on distributions and their tiny differences.
But you forgot to mention the immutable distros. That is a different kind altogether and absolutely can work for a lot of use cases. And if you can live with the few limitations it is really superior in my opinion.
I use tumbleweed on my Laptop, as it is as up to date as arch and as reliable as Debian. Okay, not exactly but good enough, for me at least.
"But you forgot to mention the immutable distros."
He said, "Normal users".
I hear you though! :)
@@A_G420 Okay, maybe my "normal user" is different from yours. For me the normal user is someone who uses his PC to do office stuff, surf the web and maybe use some progs to exit pictures, whatever. Maybe also gaming a bit. And for that I think immutable distros work awesome. My daughter does exactly that...
@@matthiasbendewald1803 no, I agree with you.
The only Linux distro i have ever successfully daily drove was DSL back in the day. I was forced to use it because my laptop would throw a BSOD during any Windows installation and i happened to have a 64mb flash drive laying around. Fell in love with it but they stopped updating applications for it years ago. Thinking about giving Ubuntu Studio a fair shot. Not sure im comfortable with all the unsolicited AI Microsoft is shoving in my computer without me asking for it.
I agree there are too many distros and think there should be just a few. Distrowatch is CRAZY long.
I'm a debian sid user...I use debian for the cutting edge. I specifically do this for apt and other debianisms that don't translate to arch. I tried arch, I'm too familiar with the debianisms to move and it just isn't worth it to me.
I'm starting to learn linux myself. My 70 year old mother has an old mac that is over 15 years old. It's slow and the hardware is too old to update now. She isn't intellectually invested in it, but it's what she's familiar with. I have a small intel NUC that I have tested a number of distros on and landed on mint. My biggest needs were mac look and feel for familiarity and the ability to run Ledger Live. I could not, for the life of me, get Ledger to install on debian 12. I'm sure it can be done, but I gave up and moved on.
Great video Chris... So true !! I've distro-hopped so many times in the past until as late as 2020 and have settled with Fedora as my main workstation. I still have a fondness and miss Solaris which was my first jump into the realms of non-windows systems. My backup pc runs Ghost-bsd of which I only use maybe 3 - 4 times a year and haven't updated it for almost 5 years.... If it ain't broke, don't fix it !!!
How much different is BSD from a typical Linux?
I love my linuxes but the only exposure I've ever had of BSD has been with a Mac which is not really a BSD.
I was interested in giving it a shot but stepped back cause I heard it has not so great support for laptop drivers especially Intel WiFi cards.
Any reason why you don't run a Solaris based system ?
@@autohmae no more support for Solaris. The kernel is quite old and wouldn’t support some of the new hardware now.
@@MadmusicalHulk I guess only illumos OpenIndiana still remains ? Everything else pretty much geared towards a server function ?
Someone told the truth. Linux became complicated to the average Win user because this gigantic amonut of forks.
I know, I know, frorks the same of liberty to create something but it came to be a problem for an average user.
Debian, Arch, OpenSUSE and Fedora are the real players.
I use OpenSuse, 2 things I really like about it are zypper and especially yast.
Can't wait to NEED only ONE and finally switch forever;
100% agree but some forks are good. For example MX. It just has really nice tools and for some reason runs better than pure Debian on absolute potato machines. Even a 2 thread toaster feels like it rips on MX.
Im using Venom Linux as my main system, stable, solid ,simple, usable and powerful af... (Inspired by LFS/BLFS/CRUX)
OpenSUSE fan base really not having good times hearing Titus words this time.
Yeah, because he's dead wrong on that take. But it's fine we can't be right all the time.
🧑🏽💻I'm finally doing my Indiana Jones step of faith in my learning thus far by building from the base up using tinycore as my host..1week in I have accomplished writing & debugging some scripts to automate grabbing basic packages & partition format & make basic directories....😂😂😂so much fun especially when doing all this from a 27year old gateway solo 5350....yes call me extreme 😂😂😂😂I needed a real challenge & oh Boi I got 1 too😅😅...Thankyou chris for all the knowledge you share🏆...at some point I'll be able to teach what I've learned....linux is really fun & also pretty efficient definitely better than Microsofts commercial bullying...🙌🏽💗
Experience taught me that Arch eventually breaks after updates. Much like Windows. I always use LMDE, pure Debian, or MX Linux KDE.
Mint and MX Linux are 2 of my favorites
I mostly agree with video, however would add Nix, Guix and Gentoo to the list, so more like 6 of them.
nix is trash
I knew what my requirements were, researched, then chose a distribution. I is happy.
Gentoo user here. I totally agree with most take of this. Gaming I use Pop!OS and couldn't be happier
I use Mint.
But since my box has removable SATA bays and I put my system and my HOME folder on separate HDDs, I'm gonna create a Debian system disk and alternate between Mint and Debian each day and see which one I like better over the long term.
What is the difference?
I remember when you could buy OpenSuSE in a box from Fry's electronics.
Debian or Devuan (OpenRC version), Arch or Artix (OpenRC version), Alpine Linux. The three distro anyone needs.
Im thinking Linux Mint, Vanilla Os, Arch, and Fedora would literally cover 95 percent of all Linux necessities
Actually any distro that's is correctly maintained and isn't for a specific use will cover all the needs for Linux, it's a matter of convenience if you want either a rolling release or a more stable distro, but in the end all of them are pure Linux
No. Non of them is source-based distro.
@@mwont what are you even talking about?
the handy thing about pop os (sometimes) is they sell hardware, so they can package the nvidia drivers with the OS
i used all three and settled on arch