I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't consider different Linux distros to be different OSes. I was expecting to read people trying out Haiku, ReactOS, Solaris, any of the *BSDs, or something I've never heard of.
If you want something obscure barely anyone heard about try eComStation. Unfortunately you'll have to pirate it, but its really easy to find.
If you're not the pirating type, you can buy a license for ArcaOS to get something still supported.
It's a bit pricey though.
Wow, I am definitely getting old if OS/2 is “obscure”
I mean even Solaris and the BSDs are just different flavors of Unix
... and Linux is not Unix. BSD and Solaris are, in my opinion, much better than any Linux. The problem is that BSD suffers from hardware incompatibility, and there are very few application programs for the current Solaris.
Good point. I should have worded my question differently.
You are not the only one. Haiku is getting close to daily driver capability.
You cannot practically use it on real hardware yet but one to watch is SaerenityOS.
It is unfinished enough to be a pipe dream but RavynOS is cool.
I am not sure there is anything outside the POSIX space that is really usable as a desktop on current hardware.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because i really like that its rolling release, new software and stable. Im using it as a main distro now. It has everything i need.
OpenSUSE is one of the distros that I have never tried. If Alpine ever fails me, I think I'll give it a try.
I distro hopped a lot and i always had a reason to switch. With OpenSUSE i still didnt find a reason.
I'm usually an Arch person (btw) but I've been playing around with NixOS in a VM and I'm tempted to try daily driving it...
I was tempted to give NixOS a try as well. It seems to be highly recommended on the fediverse.
I finally got fed up with Windows 11 when an update broke itself during an update. Apparently it was a pretty widespread issue. Defender got disabled because the update renamed several files.
I moved to PopOS and have been happy ever since. I couldn't believe that almost everything on my Lenovo Flex 5 just worked, including the touchscreen, pen, and 360 degree hinge. The only thing that doesn't work is the finger print sensor apparently due to lack of available drivers.
I really like how modern PopOS feels.
I'm in a similar boat although PopOS has been problematic for some gaming that was fine on Ubuntu (until an nVidia update broke the entire system).
opensuse kalpa - the KDE version of its immutable desktop. Pretty neat combination of rolling core and applications separated out primarily into flatpak and other containers.
I've been using Pop_OS! for most of the year, but recently switched to kUbuntu to try out the latest KDE beta with tiling managers, among other reasons.
I'm thinking of trying out Blend OS for my next hop!
I'm not particularly militant about Linux distros, but Alpine is one distro I disapprove of in particular. The reason is that it isn't GNU/Linux -- it strips out (copyleft) GNU libc and coreutils and replaces them with permissively-licensed alternatives. I think that (whether intentional or not) it caters too much to corporate interests that exploit "open source" without truly respecting the users' freedom, and therefore its popularity is potentially harmful to the Free Software movement in the long run.
PopOS. Pretty satisfied.
Linux Mint Cinnamon. It's been good, no complaints. Very helpful for easing into Linux by having a GUI, and I've been learning CLI and bash scripting.
I played with plan 9. It was pretty neat, and was able to setup a remote drawterm session.
I'm running Linux Mint Debian Edition after years of being biased against Mint for their early security missteps. I'm not in love with the cinnamon desktop but it is very definitively acceptable
I have been using Debian for the last 20 years or so. I also had a brief encounter with Gentoo which was a big help to dive into compiling, specially kernels adjusted to low performant and old hardware. I have been using Debian for my servers (web mostly) but discovered FreeBSD and jails for myself this year. It didn't take long to convet my primary webserver to FreeBSD. Until now, no complains. I have an easy way to isolate websites and services in their own jail allowing users to access theirs without conpromising host security.
Windows 11. Once you remove the ads and restore the old Taskbar/Start Menu, It's a decent modern OS. AutoHDR is so good. I never have to worry about toggling it on/off, nor calibrating it for each and every game. Just set it once and forget it.
If you care about HDR, then there's no better OS ATM.
I have hopped around using VMs in the past, however this year my HDD was dying (bad sectors after about 8-ish years of use), so got an SSD and decided to install Linux instead of cloning my Windows 10 Pro.
I tried going on Debian 11 testing, but there was some issue with the installer displaying any text (as you can imagine this makes it almost impossible to install the OS...) So I hopped to Fedora for a bit -till it broke while I was trying to figure out how to run Windows games, and then to PopOS.
I'm wondering to go to Debian 12 Testing, but need to figure out how I want to partition my SSD otherwise I am currently having to keep erasing everything which of course means I am having to copy data after each new install. This will work till such time that my HDD is alive.
Any suggestions?
Debian 12 is stable now. Testing doesn’t really have a version, it is rolling. What is currently testing will eventually become 13.
I tried PopOS finally after many glowing reviews... and it was beautiful, snappy and had lots of unique features. But while it was very friendly, I had trouble finding my way around. I think still aimed at linux users who are a little more knowledgable. (Not me.)
Ultimately I am too basic and went back to Mint.
Interesting. I haven't used Pop, but I had always been under the impression that it was meant to be as easy as Mint.
Oh I think it is! You should definitely give it a try, I think it's just me. I tend to do pretty poorly with OS that aren't extremely windows-like.
That's a very valid opinion. I started out with Kubuntu, and after a bit of distro hopping I'm on Pop!_OS now for my laptop and desktop. I love it, but I doubt I would've at the start of my journey
PostmarketOS with phosh (sxmo is good too, no native dvorak support though ;_;) on my pinephone. Found it was the most usable out of Plasma Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, and Mobian.
I installed Haiku since not having played with it in early alpha stages. I have no real use case for it, but it has really come along.
I recently installed Arch Linux on my Dell Latitude laptop from 2015, it had been running Ubuntu since 2019. I love it, and now I'm considering also installing it on my gaming desktop which has Fedora 38 on it right now. Most things can be installed with pacman or the AUR and it runs very fast on this oldish laptop. Still using i3 for my window manager, but I started using bumblebee-status for the status_command part of i3bar and customized my theme, highly recommend!
I messed around with Steam OS. Seems capable. It works for what it is. I haven't used any Linux distro other than that for the last year since last year I tried Manjaro, Fedora, OpenSuse, and Linux Mint, but all failed to pass my basic tests, because I was using KDE, Nvidia, and Wayland, most failed to even boot into the live CD. Looking at you Fedora and OpenSuse! I've been using Linux since 2007 in some form or another. Had it as my daily driver at one point and gave up on it. Been waiting for it to finally mesh with the majority of my workflow.
I started fiddling with NixOS and it quickly became my Docker host and my virtual desktop. I don't know if I'm going to put it on my physical desktop but the idea is tempting.
I don't know if NixOS is going to take off but it seems like something the enterprise IT world may adopt and I want to be on that train.
Ubuntu has been my daily driver for about ten years; but I've also had rendezvous with OpenSUSE, Linux Mint, RedHat, Arch, and Zorin. Nix has been on my mind, but I always come back to Ubuntu.
I’ve tried it before but this year I really committed to trying Mint as a daily driver. Was going well until I ran into a weird issue with wine and text to speech integrations in a game.
Could I get some recommendations? I'm building a server with spare parts from an old gaming PC and I'm trying to decide the best OS for my use case.
Currently my gaming PC is Windows and it's a bit ridiculous to have it be a VR PC and a Plex Server, but due to the WMR VR device it'll be staying on Windows. However, the server I'm leaning towards Linux due to the sheer number of services I want the server to be running, I'll be needing to set up docker and portainer to get it nicely organized. Plus it will just be easier to install each service.
Anyway, I'm asking for recs because I don't want to learn windows server, I'm slightly familiar with DietPi OS (a very minimal GUI Raspbian-lite) and minimal other Linux distros like Mint and Ubuntu, but my server will be with an NVIDIA 1660 GPU which I know have some driver issues. Will that be the case for pretty much any non-Windows OS? If I want hardware transcoding with Plex will it be more difficult than it should be?
Tomahawk B450, GTX 1660, R5 3600 leaning towards Linux Mint for Plex, radicale, a lem/kbin/libre/piped server, and then of course just regular cloud backups for my phone.
Is there any OS that I'd be better off using that's still mostly a simple regular experience?
Will that be the case for pretty much any non-Windows OS? If I want hardware transcoding with Plex will it be more difficult than it should be? Is there any OS that I'd be better off using that's still mostly a simple regular experience?
Sounds like questions for threads of their own...
Quite positive you will find something non-Windows that works smoothly.
I like Debian for a server OS and in fact use it for plex as well. The astute observer might go through my posts and notice I don't use Debian as a daily driver because of it's relatively slow release cycle, but that's part of what makes it a great server. It's stable and well vetted. As you may be aware it's what Raspbian is based off of, so you'll have some familiarity too.
I agree with the other poster that your Nvidia hardware transcoding question might be better as it's own post. But I'll say what little I know and gleaned from a low effort search just now.
If you use the proprietary drivers, you'll probably be fine? Aforementioned search tells me you need nvenc for that, which seems to be a part of their proprietary stuff. Be sure to install from the Debian repo, not the Nvidia website. Their drivers are problematic as you pointed out. I've personally had issues with them and wayland, but ymmv for your purposes.
Have EndeavourOS installed on a secondary disk and loving it so far.
EndevourOS is for people that value Arch and the AUR but also have other uses for their time. It is my primary OS on multiple machines.
Been messing around with it for the past few days. Getting some of the software that I use on Windows, it replacements for it, has been the only trouble. The rest is just fun learning. It's a bit nicer to learn with than trying to get everything it has base than normal Arch.
i normally wouldn't consider distributions to be a diffrent OS , but i think fedora silverblue has been diffrent enough to be worth a mention.
immutable distros seem like a rather drastic change, but it hasn't been as jaring as i would have expected.
my biggest takeaway sofar has been, that flatpacks aren't as bad & slow as i thought.
the only issue i encountered with them has been the terminal in vscode,
which (understandably) starts in the flatpack env.
i found a workarround that immediatly enters my toolbox, but unfortunatly, that broke just now.
im still unsure about the tradeoffs that immutable distros bring, (imo thats hard to judge)
but so far nothing has steered me away from it.
if i where to stop using immutable distros,
id surely continue to rely on tool/distro boxes and flatpacks
Tried Windows 11. Ran back to Win 10 a few days later.
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