What new OS* have you tried this year? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by bbbhltz@beehaw.org to c/operating_systems@beehaw.org

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*or distribution

Having been a (GNU-)Linux user since 2006 (desktop only), I have done what many Linux users have also done: hop around from one thing to another.

That all stopped a few years ago when I decided that I would just stick with Debian. I was happy and comfortable. It worked. I used Stable, Testing, Unstable... no issues.

That is until about 4 months ago I was cleaning and found an older laptop and decided to try something different on it: Alpine Linux.

I even wrote about it on my blog. It was such a nice installation and process that I decided to put it on my main personal laptop.

Since April I have been using Alpine and I must say I am pleased. Differences from one Linux to the next aren't much to write about. With Alpine however, I finally experienced another part of Linux that I hadn't had the opportunity to enjoy: the community.

Package requesting? Easy. Asking for help? No shame. Patience and help provided? Excellent.

None of those comments are to disparage other OS communities. It is simply that I had only ever used popular distros (Debian- and Arch-based) so I never needed to ask for help. Either way, I am still using Alpine.

So, just to repeat the titular question: what have you tried out this year? What are your impressions?

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[-] a-man-from-earth@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

It was time for me to return to Linux, which I've been using on and off for two decades. This time I wanted to give Nobara a go, with its optimizations for gaming. But alas, the LiveUSB is unusable. The default options lead to a black screen (I guess when the kernel framebuffer kicks in), and the "troubleshooting" option gives me a desktop that crashes in a few minutes, when still setting up the options in the installer. I guess Wayland is too unstable.

So I returned to Gentoo and am now in the middle of installing that (again). Its LiveUSB system is stable and giving me no problem.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I did the exact opposite, and set up a virtual machine with Windows 3.1 yesterday.

Now if only I had my old apps…

[-] TheOtherJake@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Fedora workstation. Had been on Silverblue for years, but got a machine with Nvidia and didn't want the extra headaches of SB

[-] Aio@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Here are the Linux distros i have tried this year and my opinions on them:

Arch: I liked it and im sticking with it on my laptop, it is great on such a medium power machine. But the updates suck if you do not have a reliable internet connection.

Mint: I love it and im going to stay with mint for a long time on my main PC i think.

Fedora: Nice installer but a pain to work with.

Tails: A nice idea and pretty easy to install but way too painful for daily driving.

Slax: Did not work.

[-] garam@lemmy.my.id 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

CentOS Stream for fast up and tear down on KVM with ansible. welp, I want to check if it's b2b compatible with RHEL, and it's..

Alpine in WSL2, use it daily on Windows 10 WSL, need for testing stuff when my X220 isn't around. I still need Windows to test software and do Whatsapp Video Call sadly.. No Windows client at the moment...

It's same like old centos, just for dev, I have none in production, but I think I want to try one. Let us see if it's okay like EL Clones, or licensed RHEL in general.

At least now I don't need to buy more RHEL license when needed. and I'm happy with Fedora+CentOS Streams VM on my Thinkpad X220... simple spin up using ansible playbook, viola... I have new env, that's lightweight and without installing (cloud image with cloud init)

For Desktop, after hoping, I always back to Fedora... haha... last time I try ubuntu based, xubuntu I think. Not fond of ubuntu approach for trackpoint on thinkpad, with same fedora X11 config, on Xubuntu with tweak here there, still sucks... so back to fedora xfce spin...

At least we now have distrobox, and I can keep EL env with other distro software... eg arch... in one box without dual boot or other things

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