They say debian is free and has its promise, but Arch has like 2-4 maintainers?
I’m honestly not sure if I’m witnessing the most autistic responses to the most obvious shitpost ever, or if the AI bots got into Lemmy already.
Why wouldn’t we? Lemmy has at least 12 real people.
I’m a real people, and I’m livid that I shouldn’t respond with a paragraph about Mint because this is obvious shitposting.
That’s right, you are a real people! You can tell you’re real because your eyes are real eyes.emoji . This was first discovered by the early 21st century philosopher — jayden smith.
So are you, Bruce. You’re also real, and don’t need to dress up in a rubber suit for attention. You’re good enough.
Plan9
try one for a week, switch to the other for a week, and if you feel like it, switch to any other whenever you want
Just get Cachyos its what I use and is super easy and based on Arch
I highly recommend Mint Cinnamon, especially if this is your first foray into Linux.
Take debian & if you are into headaches take Arch
If you know vaguely what you’re doing or are willing to learn, you can go with whatever and it’ll be fine.
Personally not a big fan of debian because they tend to be slower and more conservative on updates. Arch is a bit more technical, but very customizable.
I’m personally a big fan of Fedora. Software updated quickly enough to have all the bells and whistles, slow enough to not get cut by bleeding edge software.
Gentoo is where you learn the most about Linux and software in general.
Long time gentoo advocate(/fanboy) here, and so, it stings a little to say this, but, there are ways to use gentoo that do not have you learn as much about your system as, say, e.g. CRUX, KISS/Carbs, LFS(?), starting with just a busybox and kernel, Exherbo, or even many ways of using slackware [and several other suggestions yet, but gotta cut the list short somewhere].
Gentoo’s very conveniently wrapped up with portage. So conveniently, you can be forgiven for lingering in the convenience and not venturing deeper into what the convenience wraps around. It’s not a thick opaque plastic wrap like some distros that try hard to lower the entry bar, but it is still convenient. … Conveniently availing advanced fidelity of choice over what you’re installing, conveniently managing complexity in simplicity, but ultimately a convenience trap still none the less. … Many Gentoo users look like uneducated yokels in flying saucers, compared to those who actually do compile their software themselves (they run
make), rather than those who have emerge do it for them. [Or an even more extreme example, we’re like anyone using an LLM voice assistant.] As in: We’re not superior skilled savvy sysadmin, we just have better tools.And why do the effort of learning to become better, when the machine does it for you.
But then, with gentoo, you do still have the choice. Gentoo is all about choice.
One can try say same for any distro, and that’s true, for all being (mostly) Free Software (“Opensource”) and so can study (freedom1) it to whatever depth your curiosity takes you, but, Arch does try take some of your choice away from you, not the freedom to study it, but in that it insists it have the freedom to bite you. [ Though, there be ways to mitigate that ]. Debian (or Devuan), Gentoo, Suse, and others, let you opt-in to the fast lane. Arch seem to be screaming “COME WITH US, FAST AS WE CAN!!!” and leaving little room to hear anything about taking arch to a slow lane.
It was mostly sarcastic suggestion, but as you said, you can hit the ground running with Gentoo nowadays very quickly, and go back and revisit every part of it and play around with it, and learn about everything later.
I think it’s Ubuntu that’s slow, while Debian as its base is smaller and faster?
Your logic seems sound, yup.
Though broader than the issue you’re responding to, the bigger quality of note in Ubuntu, is not that it’s slow (nor larger), but instead, the most issue of ubuntu, is that they’re very very silly. More marketing silly than sensible development.
Better Ubuntu be slow than fast anyway. See what they do when they try go fast? Like replacing the userland with rust…
That’s beyond just “ready or not, here it comes” release model madness.
It’s silly.
No, Debian is typically quite a bit older than even the Ubuntu LTS. E.g. they currently still don’t ship a Nvidia driver that supports the 50 series GPUs.
Slower on updates, not slow to run. Slower on updates is referring to how it takes longer for new features / software to be shipped out for you to download. Debian usually prioritizes machines that chug along for a long time without anything breaking, rather than adding new stuff
You’re right that it’s not slow to run. It is small and fast
But fast on security updates when running on stable
Performance differences between distros tend to be negligible. Unless you have a specific use case and a distro specifically tuned for that, you will hardly notice any difference.
you will hardly notice any difference
until you leave linux, to assembly operating systems, like kolibrios.
Ubuntu is based off the testing version of Debian, so they have newer software versions
Debian is rock solid, there are even more user-friendly distros though. In a few edge-cases it will expect you to know your way around things, however there are a lot of guides for it. Going with this will cause the growth of a mighty white beard!
Arch Linux will make you cry. If you want to learn how to fix and configure things it’s great (and their wiki arguably is the greatest of all), but their lack of QA and expectation to do that yourself often causes issues. You’ll probably cut your fingers on its bleeding edge. If you want to learn with less bleeding I’d recommend CachyOS these days. I’m certainly not saying this because my computer didn’t boot after updates multiple times. /s
HOWEVER if you have an Nvidia GPU, first off: I’m so sorry. Secondly, you absolutely (!) should use a distro that takes care of their driver for you. Their drivers are hot steaming garbage that you do not want to meddle with (many distros try their best to do it for you, but often enough it won’t work for some people). See below, Nvidia distros marked with recycling symbol.
A few other options to consider with noticeable features:
- Bazzite (♻️): If you mainly play games. User-friendly, most compatible with handhelds next to CachyOS. Takes care of a lot of small things related to gaming.
- Fedora: If you want modern features on a very stable system. Very good ecosystem. Basically the other stable workhorse next to Debian. Will spawn a nice hat on your head, m’lady.
- OpenSuse: Also very stable, best distro for those concerned about US influence (it’s strongly EU-based). Tumbleweed arguably most stable rolling-release distro (newest system software) with a great graphical settings’ tool YaST (future unknown, unfortunately). Leap is rock-solid but slow, meant more for Office PCs and Enterprise users. After installing this you’ll suddenly start talking german.
- Linux Mint: If you want things to just work with the flattest learning curve possible for former Windows victims. Helpful tips for Ubuntu usually apply and that weird software offering you a manual download for Ubuntu will just work.
- ElementaryOS: Very good for users used to MacOS, probably flattest learning curve for them. Great accessibility! Not as feature rich as others (their whole desktop is made in-house, so it’s very cohesive but a lot of work for them), but what they have is very well tested.
- ZorinOS (Core): Also very good. Most likely the one with the biggest software selection from the start (comes with both Snap and Flatpak pre-configured). Probably the one you’d eventually find on some school computer.
And three others interesting if you might buy new hardware soon (damn, you rich):
- TuxedoOS (♻️): Default OS on devices from Tuxedo Computers (EU). Works on any machine and is a really nice distro in general.
- SlimbookOS (♻️): Default OS for Slimbook (EU) devices. Also nice.
- Pop_OS! (♻️): Default OS for System76 (US) devices. They’re currently developing a whole new desktop environment (Cosmic), so their normal release hangs a little bit behind. It’s okay though. Be aware it’s from a US company (not just maintainers, but commercial entity). Fucked up Linus Tech Tips once.
[Arch’s] wiki arguably is the greatest of all
100% agree. Even as a Fedora user, in the rare occasion I have some obscure issue the Arch wiki is a godsend. Even though I’ve never actually used Arch, I’m still extremely grateful for the work they do on documenting every little thing for desktop Linux. A lot of that info is applicable for all Linux desktop distros.
Yup. Arch’s wiki’s one of the two best things Arch has going for it.
Thankfully, don’t have to use Arch to make use of arch wiki.
This is such a fantastic answer. I wish stuff like this was the top search result for these questions.
I will note that perhaps Linux Mint should get a ♻️, since it comes with a very simple “Driver Manager” utility that detects your GPU and allows you to select the appropriate proprietary driver for it. The onboarding welcome program directs you to open it.
Edit: demo video: https://youtu.be/12FKdE0ZRc4
I only marked those who bundle the driver with the image since that way they can treat is as core system package and add the necessary deep system configurations + helper scripts straight form the start. There are in fact quite a few distros who use such a helper tool (I think Zorin has one too?), but even with their best effort the driver still causes issues so god damn often or just fails to install for weird reasons. Additionally there might be issues after updates. Distros that integrate them from the start might add a few extra scripts to mitigate update problems, perhaps ensure Secure Boot still works, make specific changes to Wayland due to Nvidia being really bad with it by default, set up everything for hybrid graphics, ecetera.
My brother just threw out an RTX 3060 because of all the issues (in that case on OpenSuse) and I had so. many. issues. In the last 10 years with all kinds of green GPUs that I can only in good conscious recommend distros with pre-installed drivers to Nvidia users, and to avoid that company like the Plague.
I will push back on this a bit because Debian is great, but point release distros like Debian that focus on stability can be incredibly behind on important updates that include features users will want. I personally recommend Fedora to start because imo it’s the best of both worlds for new penguins and greybeards alike.
I didn’t game, but use Bazzite. It has worked on every system I’ve installed it on, even an old AMD A6. I just feel safe in there, but it’s not perfect. And the distro is large.
Mint deals with nvidia just fine
I can tell you from experience that it’s not a given. Not because of Mint, but because of the driver. You’re just lucky that your hardware-driver-kernel combination happened to work flawlessly.
Fairs
Why have you forsaken God? You should be praying in TempleOS.
Isn’t it true that a server running TempleOS has the best protection against remote exploits?
Yes, the networking stack is perfectly protected for it only connects directly to the heavens via faith based prayer-wave.
Most based opinion i’ve seem here
larp larp larp sahur ✌️
If you have to ask, you definitely don’t want Arch
The fact that you’re asking this suggests you might be new to linux so go Mint but if it has to be one of those two then Debian
Linux Mint Debian Edition. Best of both worlds.
:3 I would have thought best of both worlds be more like: install Devuan, read everything on https://bedrocklinux.org/, run the script once knowing the implications of running it and are enthused for this nontrivial change of your system, and then just
brl fetch arch. Or other way around if you prefer arch’s installer. Or Debian/Devuan, Arch/Artix(/Obarun/Joborun/etc) if preferring init freedom.Edit: … cos then you can do cool things like
apt upgrade && pacman -SyuThe lack of PPA support might bite you though. For newcomers I’d strongly recommend staying with the standard Mint (Cinnamon) version, any reason not to is highly technical and more of an issue for the maintainers.
NixOS ;)
I moved to nixos, then moved my server to nixos. It was painful, but now I don’t have to remember where I put that systemd timer or where stuff is in general.
Fucking sadistic bastard…I second this.
Let me expose my lack of knowledge and experience in this.
Afaik. NixOS is completely build from configs, thus easy to VCS, and you can try stuff and then just roll back like nothing happened… what’s the difference to snapshots and why is it sadistic/masochistic but worth it?
Give me your NixOS pitch.
You can learn to fly.
Here, take off, for the first time, from the top of this cliff.
Snapshots work in filesystem level. NixOS rollbacks work in system configuration level. NixOS has steep learning curve due to the nix language and fragmented documentation but once you get grip of it, it works great. Either way, you netted the days of suffering to set everything up :)
The problem with a beginner using NixOS is that it teaches them, well, NixOS. Using just about any other distro will teach them transferrable skills; i.e. suffering , until they embrace ansible;)
Unless that other distro is Guix, in which case Stall man smiles upon you and I wish you the best with your ultra libre Pentium machine.
If you are interested in maintaining your OS as an ongoing and constant project, go with Arch. You will learn a lot about Linux, and about system administration in general. You will also have entire days where you are unable to do anything productive with your computer because the last update broke userspace again and you can either spend a lot of time troubleshooting your specific problem, or spend a lot of time reinstalling and reconfiguring your system.
If your computer is more than just a hobby platform and you need to use it regularly for any kind of productivity, go with Debian. Set it and forget it.
Either way, off-system file backups are recommended.
Unless you intentionally doing something wrong or have close to zero experience with linux there might some of the problems you’ve mentioned, also you can expect similar on debian if you are having them on arch.
Anyway, I would recommend something other to OP because both of these distributions require some non-zero experience with linux. (Also OP itself feels like trolling)
Is your hardware ten years old or more?
Do you want a system made up of software that is on average 3 years old?
Do you want absolutely ridiculous stability for the uptime memes?
Are you a fan of the idea that every design decision should be done by a committee of theoretically democratically chosen developers but is actually just whoever wants the job because there is never any real transparency or motion about when the meetings are, much less when elections are?
Does the idea of your operating system being compatible not because its good but because it’s just the largest base thanks to corporate investment make you moist?
Then pick Debian.
If you answered no to literally any of those options then go ahead and pick an Arch flavor, or Arch itself.
You mean Cachy OS? Yeah, I’ve heard of that, might choose it, I dunno yet.
Linux '26er here. I tried a few and CachyOS is now my jam. I’m way too new to offer true insight, but as a new convert, Cachy has good video/gaming support and all the core features I need to keep exploring. 100% recommend a day or two to try it out.
I run Cachyos (KDE), for 10 months now, on a 13 year old HP workstation. Daily updates. Best distro I’ve used (previously used Mint, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu), wouldn’t go back to any of the others.
But is it catchy?
I’m also fairly new, and one big benefit of CachyOS is the sensible defaults. You get to start with the modern way of doing things instead of having to discover them slowly.
microinstead ofnanofor example
I’ve never used it but recommend it to newcomers because they all seem to like it.
Debian is chosen for Satellites because it is “stable”, that is it doesn’t do major changes like changing the Kernel.
Arch isn’t for beginners, but it’s a rolling release distro that’s nice and simple but powerful.
Some have started with arch.
Not all beginners are alike.
… Some even started with LFS.
You do have the option though. I run LMDE7, and installed a 7.0-prempt kernel yesterday because I felt that I was seeing too much stuttering in 3d games. I installed it from my package manager which already had debian Backports turned on.
