As someone who builds a computer, installs whatever seems like the most stable LTS distro at the time with the longest support period, and only switches to a new one when the current LTS expires, I’d like to thank all of you for being my beta testers. Your support means the world.
you’re welcome mr debian user
This guy runs debian (btw)
We’ve got to come up with a different acronym. What says old and stable?
“I use Debian, lol (lots of love)”Why the face?
I was born with it
I once heard someone say that Debian is like the sound Dads make when getting off the couch. I’ve never felt so seen.
(I absolutely run Debian, lol)
I use Arch BTW full-time for work and personal for about 3 years now and haven’t had any issues at all.
been using Artix and Arch for two years, for work and play, no issues
I think bleeding edge linux is probably more stable than windows
Around 10 years here. Some issues, but much less time wasted in total than if I had done “dist-upgrade”s the whole time.
One huge advantage of a rolling distro is that generally only one thing can break at a time :)
whats dist-upgrade? this is the first time ive heard of it
It’s what Debian and similar distributions use to switch from one stable release to the next. This happens every half year for Ubuntu and every blue moon for Debian, which makes it a significantly more error-prone process than updating Arch every week in my experience.
The LTS released every other year) is supported 5 years.
Oof, that’s probably almost a full reinstall when you upgrade, depending on how stable your stack is. A lot of services will will have breaking config changes in that time frame.
The only issue I ever had was Arch ARM changing the naming convention for network devices and making me have to plug the first Raspberry Pi that I upgraded into a monitor to debug what was going on.
This was annoying for sure, but less annoying than using a 6 year old Python version like the Red Hat Enterprise Linux at work…
I see your 6 year old python version and raise you RHEL5 running python 2.5 in 2022.
That thing didn’t even have a base Exception class.
Yeah, people like to think that bleeding edge means “untested”. As if your OS was directly receiving the dev’s
git push…
I like Fedora for my desktop. Close enough to upstream to get the latest features, but not so bleeding edge that it’s unstable.
And it’s Linus’s distro of choice.
Yeah, but he has stated that he really doesn’t have an opinion. He just happened to install Fedora on the family PC a long time ago and now he neither wants to deal with two separate distros, nor switch the whole household over.
I mean that and being open enough of a distro he can change the kernel out decently often, but not so open things like throwing a new kernel in arch leads to poking at other things.
Yeah same. Its a little annoying having to wait for certain updates, like when a new application can be built from source on arch, but i’d have to rebuild a core dependency from a scratch to get it working on fedora.
But ive been using it for years, and even if i broke the system, ive always got it working again, which is saying something.
I’m wondering where people like you and me, using non-LTS but not rolling distros, go in the OP pic.
fence and then grass and then dirt and rocks
I’m on Nobara, and if the installation ever dies, i will probably install pure fedora. My previous experiences were all with debian, which drove me crazy as a gamer because when playing current games you want your system to be a lot closer to the bleeding edge of the knife - debian is more like a chain glove for holding it.
It’s balanced as all things should be.
I’ve really started to enjoy Kinonite. Fedora’s atomic version of KDE Plasma.
I’m kinda coming around to using Fedora. I use Arch, btw, but Fedora is pretty close to how I configure my Arch system anyway. Plus, Fedora has a little extra polish with the splash screens that I don’t bother with in my Arch setup.
Maaaaybe…
I use Debian testing for… 20 years? I had serious problems with it. Twice. Nothing unrepairable, but still I needed another machine with internet to fix the problem. I suppose that is ok stability-wise for 20 years.
Sounds like the exact reason that official debian backports came into existence.
Obligatory reference to NixOS.
This but new Linux users. They get attracted to the worse newbies distros every time
Step 1: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.
Step 2: but then again maybe I should try out this little extra thing I just found online that might not work…
It turns out you love installing and configuring software, not actually using it.
Step 1: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.
Step 2: but then again maybe I should try out this little extra thing I just found online that might not work…Step 2: Why is x broken after an update!?
…
Step 99: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.
Is it just me? I’ve had more issues with Linux updates than Windows updates at this point. Don’t get me started with major distro updates.
To me it kinda depends on what hardware/distro.
Currently running MX on multiple systems for more than a year now and it’s been pretty smooth sailing.
I do remember, however, using fedora and whatnot ages ago having exactly what you describe.
If you want something more stable you might wanna look at debian, opensuse,… (I’m sure someone more knowledgeable will complete this list). They might not be as flashy but you can depend on those and get some work done.
More than a year doesn’t sound particularly long.
I’m running LTS versions of Ubuntu server (and Windows 11 on my PC). Debian would be more stable, but then it’s so far behind that it’s a pain to use at times, especially for running any kind of game server. Ubuntu has been pretty good so far, but LTS to LTS isn’t always easy.
Either keep things minimal or keep the complex stuff isolated.
I never make it to step 1
Used to be me. I ran Debian Unstable for years. Got tired of it breaking. I installed Stable probably 7 or 8 years ago and never looked back.
If you ever feel the need, OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is shockingly stable on my old rig.
yo you can just turn a choice into a meme and the crowd will go crazy
I have this, but in Windows 11. I’m stuck.
TFW Windows drops everything you’re doing to automatically install unstable updates
Best feeling ever.
I had an update today knock out my wireless card. We’re living on the edge.
Ooh fun! I didn’t get that one!
Same here. I want to ditch Windows 11 so badly, but I tried Linux Mint and I lost half my frame rate in games. I guess if you use a Nvidia GPU on Linux then you’re shit outta luck sadly, as I heard the reason is poor driver support. If I did something wrong I’ll gladly try Linux again but I don’t have high hopes it will work now :(
Did you install the actual nvidia drivers or were you just using the default nouveau driver?
I tried both propietary drivers and the open source (x.org) drivers. All were lower FPS. Ryzen 9 3900XT + RTX 5080 for reference
nvidia drivers are good performance-wise, you should have installed the proprietary ones because mint comes with nouveau, which does not perform well at all. if you did that, let’s talk about L3 cache. ironically gaming on low end hardware is worse on linux because apparently proton needs quite a bit of that cache. my previous cpu (9600kf) had 9 MB and it was hopeless, current one has almost 100 and performance is not an issue anymore.
btw pop os comes with proprietary nvidia drivers so you don’t need to think about it all, but because they ship it with their half-done cosmic de, can’t recommend it to newcomers anymore…
100%, biggest performance upgrade I ever experienced for Linux gaming was upgrading to a X3D CPU.
My CPU (Ryzen 9 3900XT) is a 12 core CPU paired with an RTX 5080. My CPU sucks for gaming and is meant more for workstations, so you might be onto something here…
your cpu is good, seems like you were on the right tracks originally. people have been complaining about 5080 performance with dx12 games on linux. it may take them a while to get the drivers right, but i did recently see some news (techlinked probably) about nvidia adding resources to optimizing their linux drivers
Opensuse Tumbleweed is my way to go and I am pretty happy. Also do have an NVIDIA Card…
I’m just waiting for win 11 to fail catastrophically in me. That will definitely give me the time to install Linux… checks notes… Debian?
Yep that’s my plan, whenever my Win11 install becomes broken, I’ll make the switch, laggy games be damned! Maybe we can install Arch so we can fit in with the Linux crowd and finally say “I use Arch btw”
Tumbleweed and Nvidia Proprietary drivers worked really well for my games. There is Bazzite that’s ready to go for gaming too.
What games specifically? Some distros require a bit more driver installation, so maybe that was part of it (was running an rtx 2070 super on linux until a few months ago on linux, didn’t have any issues with frame rates). The poor driver support is mostly on laptops, as they sometimes have issues switching between integrated and discrete graphics.
On my system I am using kde x11 instead of wayland for the same reason. Last time I tried wayland I was getting half of the framerate compared to x11.
At some point I want to switch to a gaming-oriented distros and see if it’s magically better there.
Pop/cosmic let’s go!
I have many other things I’d rather do on my computer, than mess around with the OS. I just want one that works and stays out of my way. Oh, and doesn’t spy on me.
Use Guix/Nix, have your cake and eat it
I’ve been very happy with Endeavour / Arch on my desktop for the past year until last week. Issues when waking up the desktop, Plasma panels disappearing, resolution forced to the minimum, etc. I rolled back the kernel to the LTS version and it fixed a few things. I can’t complain because it’s not my main computer but it’s not ideal.
Best of both worlds:
- install boring stable distro
- use Homebrew to install bleeding edge stuff, separately from the base system.
Still feels like a hat on a hat. Unless you’re on bleeding edge hardware doing something truly novel with the OS, I’m not sure why a selective opt-in log of various bolt-ons and patches improves your experience.
Computers, at their heart, are still just a place you go to manage spreadsheets, email other people those spreadsheets, and pirate entertainment. So you’re always left asking the burning question “How will this patch improve my experience with spreadsheets?” And 99.5% of the time, the answer is “It won’t”.
I think you meant to say nix lol.
Is Homebrew any good on Linux tho?
Homebrew is supported on Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora.
I use it on my recent Linux Mint install. Mint has pretty old packages or enormously bloated flatpacks, that come with limitations.
neovim only came in an ancient version, that doesn’t support lazyvim. Nicotine+ came as ancient from the Mint packages or as a 4 GB monster via flatpack.
I used Homebrew and everything installed quickly in current versions and worked like a breeze.
The great thing about Homebrew is that removing it is as easy as
rm -r /home/linuxbrewNix is great as well of course and very powerful. Can be a bit of a bitch to write all the config files though.
