Hello everyone, I need help to decide on a Linux Distribution to settle and finally stop distro hopping. I have quite some experience with Linux(1year Mint, a quarter year Arch, nixos, debian, manjaro, fedora, suse tumbleweed and kalpa…)I have been experimenting for now almost 3 years. Now I finally want to setlle but I just don’t know where. I like Nix’s shell but don’t like installing everything in five steps(with git because my brain can stand neither the dirty tree warning nor leaving out on the git push) and I don’t need the reproducibility. I like rolling so I don’t need to reinstall or do any major update, but even more appealing is low maintenance and stability in the sense of nothing unexpectedly breaking. I’ll use the computer as an daily driver mostly for programming & 3d design, university related work, streaming and also some gaming. Thank you for your answers. #linux #distrohopping. EDIT: I don’t want to have a company behind my distribution. And my specs: Nvidia RTX 4070, Amd Radeon 7 7840HS, 16GB of RAM
Conclusion: Thanks a lot for all of that feedback, I decided to go for Debian 13 Stable and might check out MX once.
The final conclusion :P: I will now install LMDE and either try to install KDE Plasma or just stick with Cinnamon. Its not as uncustomizable after all. And the flashbacks I got during the installation from me first stepping into Linux… …definetly the rabbit hole I should have fallen into, even though I can now never live a normal life again :/.
CachyOS, it is the way
Personnaly CachyOS has been the one to stop my distro hopping, though I must say, I 'm an arch linux fan, so Cachy did it for me. All of the Fedora based distros I’ve tried were good at the beginning but felt limited at some point, though this is specific to my use cases. But one that I really liked, and I’m not much of a debian person usually was PikaOS, so I’d recommend trying it out if not already done.
I’d definitely give PikaOS a try. I’ve been using it and honestly really like it so far. I’ve bounced around between a few different distros, but PikaOS has been one of the easiest to just install and start using.
Fedora.
I used to a Fedora guy until IBM bought them and they killed CentOS. I first used Red Hat in middle school back in the nineties, so it broke my heart to leave, but I settled on OpenSUSE. It’s non-US based, and it feels just as polished, if not more than Fedora. I use Tumbleweed, which is a rolling distro.
I go into distro-hop frenzies every 3 to 6 months. Last run Included EndeavourOS and CachyOS. I did stay in CachyOS for a couple of months, and used it to give some windows managers a chance, turns out I’m a DE kind of guy. Ended up back on Fedora, as it invariably happens, only this time I went with KDE. I’m a sucker for the GNOME workflow, but KDE is infinitely lighter on resources and way more customizable, so I now have a Plasma desktop that looks and behaves like Gnome.
In terms of cutting edge and almost never breaking, and if it does break, just reboot and choose the previous good kernel, Fedora has never let me down. They did fuck up horribly last week with kernel 7.2.5, lol.
As an average user I really love Kubuntu.
I recommend Trisquel. Unlike most GNU/Linux distros, it’s 100% free.
Ah too bad you didn’t like nix. I was just about to propose a simple home-manager repo which could at least declare your tooling across any distro.
while I don’t understand the git problem, since versioning your OS/tooling is a major feature not a headache, you seem too have found a place with debian so go ahead.
I can only tell you that I’m using CachyOS (Arch) with Wayland and the latest Noctalia, which is extremely customizable. I’m very content. My compositor is Hyprland, but Niri or Mango work, too. Noctalia even technically works with KDE, which I also used for quite some time, but I wouldn’t recommend using it on top of it. Noctalia (Hyprland) has been a standard installation option in the CachyOS .iso ever since August 2026.
And it has problems; try changing the color theme and it keeps requesting your password. Some stuff is seriously messed up in CachyOS’s Noctalia+Hyprland setup, which I tried in the past month. I’m gonna try Pop!_OS+COSMIC sometime soon; hopefully that’ll rock, or else I’ll revert to the tried-&-true Mint Cinnamon.
It doesn’t do that. My color theme changes dynamically with my background. But even manual changes don’t require that. Did you enable polkit in the control center? Are you running Noctalia 5 or newer?
Only when I want to update my greeter theme alongside everything else, I get polkit requests asking for my password. But I also got noctalia-greeter after having had installed another greeter. So maybe that messed it up. Anyway, you can disable auto theme update for the greeter. Or use a different greeter.
I’m sure there are problems still, but it only just got implemented last month (Noctalia greeter is also super new). I think we can expect fixes. Maybe your particular issue has already been fixed. For some tools I’m using I’m getting daily updates by now, so last month is like ages ago in terms of updates. Not necessarily true for Noctalia, though.
I did like Mint Cinnamon, as well. Pop!_OS I haven’t tried yet. I might hop a little on my second machine. But for now I’m happy with my heavily customized Noctalia setup on my main machine. What else did you find to be messed up?
I always vote for boredom, which means I vote for Debian. It’s a well rounded, reliable and solid OS. It can be a bit dated on some packages but it rewards with very low maintenance. It works. It does what it is supposed to do, which is allowing us to run and use our computer as we see fit.
You want something a bit more up to date? Move to Mint. If Debian still appeals to you, move to LMDE.
I’d recommend LMDE over Ubuntu Mint. There isn’t much point to ubuntu mint anymore to be honest
I disagree. As someone who is running both Debian-Testing and ubuntu-Mint, there is a difference between the two, especially in support of some hardware and some pre-configurations that come handy in some “difficult” machines. Ubuntu has special workarounds for a lot of things, you see. Debian does not. Debian doesn’t even boot on my DELL Xeon workstation, for example. Ubuntu does. And that’s my main issue with LMDE, being based on Debian. Also, LMDE doesn’t have the nvidia driver panel, to make it easier for people with nvidias. If Debian was to create these workarounds for various machines, then sure, why not. LMDE would be just fine.
I guess they’re very similar overall. The main advantage I see for Mint/Ubuntu over LMDE/Debian is hardware and driver support. On Ubuntu you get much more recent versions for the kernel, Mesa, Nvidia drivers, … from the HWE stack.
I’d say that if you’re using such up to date hardware that you need the latest kernels and drivers, you probably don’t need the handholding of mint, so you might want to prefer fedora or arch or smth, and not Mint/Ubuntu.
I don’t think people with new hardware are typically more technically competent… I think it depends more on the use case and how much money people are willing to spend. I think there are a lot of gamers that are quite new to Linux. But, e.g., right now Debian stable doesn’t support the Nvidia 50 series at all (released in January 2025).
Nvidia has a debain repository you put in your apt and get drivers from. I am using it now with a 5060.
It’s exactly like windows for the nvidia repo, you get your drivers from the hardware manufacturer.
That’s the fine details of personal situation and preference. I think we have a disagreement on perspective, and I’m glad you pointed out that specific detail, so that others reading our discussion can make a well informed decision.
I still disagree, but not because of a technical level, from my perspective, it’s still roughly the same, we just see “most recent hardware” as being applicable to different people.
And I hope you can feel that you can agree with the idea that it’s a social disagreement and not a technical one.
Really?
Bias : I use debian for my own machine.
I have two machines on Mint I am responsible for; one craptop with LMDE and one tower for my Mrs with Ubuntu Mint.
I hate fucking about with the tower more than the craptop. The laptop is just as easy to use and was just as easy to install and everything. The only thing I needed to do was to replace cinnamon with XFCE in an attempt to make it run faster since the craptop has like 2gb ram.
Doesn’t Mint just configures Cinnamon as default DE and leaves the rest alone, working from the stable branch? That’s my understanding.
I also run Debian. One desktop and three laptops. I run Mate, normally. The best compromise between useability and DE resource use. But I’ve used XFCE and LXDE.
You do you but…
god I hate Mate. The fucking config preferences never worked properly across “profiles/saves/whatever” for me.
I like LXQT most. I tried out basically every DE under the sun in a VM (and KDE and Gnome on bare metal. Gnome as part of Nyarch to rescue my wife’s old tower and to see wtf it was like. It crashed and fucked up. Not sure if it was due to Ny or arch, but obv not a good fit)
Yes, even Sugar. Please do not try Sugar.
I worked with seriously hardware constricted machines for years and users on a learning curve.
KDE did not make my fancy when I tried it, when first moving from Windows, 20 years ago. Not then, not now. I know it has evolved a great deal but I can’t justify commiting so much hardware resources for the DE alone. And the obcession with the K’s are a bit of a pet peeve. I’m aware I’m getting some packages from it now and then and I have to eventually try it again but tomorrow is not the eve of such day.
I used Gnome until Gnome ceased to be Gnome and reinvented itself under that smartphone aspect. Mate forked and maintained that simple approachable look and feel.
XFCE is good but I missed the dual panel on the file explorer and eventually moved from it. It also tended to force me to mannually configure sound settings, keyboard hotkeys and other small things that otherwise were readily available.
I spent some time with Bunsen Labs installed on a machine and I enjoyed the look and feel. Conky was the jewel for me. But I had other users on that machine that didn’t adapt.
A short stint on Enlightenment. Not my cup of tea. Deepin was a disappointment. And I couldn’t motivate myself to manually configure a tile manager. I want a computer, not another hobby.
I used LXQT for some time but I felt it lacking. Very light and very fast but… Cinnamon is a nope for me, personally, but I have set it up for others and people enjoyed it, even more when coming from Windows.
But isn’t this the beauty of Linux? There is an option for everyone. Like you very well put it: you do you.
But isn’t this the beauty of Linux? There is an option for everyone. Like you very well put it: you do you.
Yep. I fucking hate current gnome but I’m glad it exists for someone who is into it, and that they are marching to the beat of their own drum. I just don’t want to hear it. I literally made a post on this.
I am curious to find out more about Bunsen Labs.
I don’t like Cinnamon but want to use KDE, but the user friendliness of LMDE would be really nice, not that i wouldn’t like the terminal.
My understanding is that Mint focus development of LMDE around Cinnamon but the other DEs are there nonetheless, untouched, like Debian releases it.
you can have KDE on LMDE. Cinnamon’s default login manager has an icon to change the DE you’re going to log into.
It actually happens naturally, or it should at least. So don’t mind anyone. Distrohop until you find yourself settled.
You seem to know enough distros. If none of them exactly clicked with you perfectly, continue your search.
I stayed on Arch-based for more than 10 years and it was suppose to be temporary for me as I was keep saying that to myself. In reality I was settled. So, don’t mind others, find it yourself. It will happen sooner ot later.
P.S.
Void is good.
I’ve settled on CachyOS, using Bazaar for flatpaks (I avoid the AUR). I get a rolling os with frequent updates and more or less secure and verified apps. It’s been a year, no problem so far.
I was avoiding the AUR as well, and I would definetly do so again. Even though I would probably stick with a plain Arch install instead of CachyOS
It’s best to think of the AUR as an arch-specific build instruction wiki, not a package manager repo. It’s just that the build instructions are formally specified, so it’s possible for the former to be used like the latter. But that’s how you get yourself in trouble.
Fedora is a great choice.
I had a similar journey and at some point settled for Debian.
I know, everyone around here will tell you how basic that is and how much program versions lag behind sometimes, but I have come to the conclusion that this really doesn’t bother me on daily use.
The main wow moment was, when the I noticed my system was running for 5 years and nothing ever broke.
Sure, I sometimes miss the AUR or some of the bells and whistles off bleeding edge distros, but in the end I want my main daily driver as a tool to other stuff, not a project to constantly put effort in.
The beauty of Debian is, its reliable AF, everything you got working once stays working, in 99,99% of cases even with a major version change, its the best documented and tested system and it does everything I need and more.
Plus with KDE plasma and all the native programs, like kdeconnect, kdenlive, kget etc I dont miss out on convinience. (Sure I could still use them on other distros, but I like how it is integrated into a good user experience with the option to tweak everything but without the need to do so)
The main down site imho is that some advanced things which may work in a hacky and time consuming way on arch just will not work on Debian at all, but I seldom have such moments and its a small price to pay for a system that’s just won’t brake from where I stand.
everyone around here will tell you how basic that is and how much program versions lag behind sometimes
which mostly show people don’t know they one can add a repository and fix that, my Firefox is 2 days old.
And that repository is flathub. Stable base for the OS, bleeding edge rolling release for the apps
I meant literally the repository https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#From_Mozilla_APT_repository_.28recommended_by_Mozilla.29 not an alternative method. One can add the official source of built packages my Mozilla, keep their Debian distribution otherwise untouched and get the latest.
I did enjoy debian a lot when I used it, I then left it for hyprland and the rolling release though. But debian is definitely something up top of my list right now. Especially because I am now back to KDE Plasma and I’m not planning to change anything about that soon. The only picky point was that it does not support BTRFS with custom subvolumes for timeshift out of the box. But the stability would be a blessing.
debian doesn’t do that ‘out-of-the-box’, but you can do luks and btrfs at install (default partitioning even, just go back and change partition type of root before continuing with install), then ‘adjust’ things to be ‘timeshift compatible’ after install. for some inspiration: https://mutschler.dev/linux/debian-btrfs-trixie/
i’ve used this numerous times, on debian and a couple other distributions.
I have the same feeling regarding Debian and btrfs (or zfs). Would be a blast having either on Debian.
But on the other hand, I’ve been running Debian unstable for two years now (initially installed unstable for Star Citizen) and haven’t had major issues with it. But be warned, it being unstable you’re obviously only one update away from it being unstable :D
Given the specs of your system, if you want productivity and gaming, I’ll suggest Bazzite. It runs Fedora atomic under the hood so it is extremely stable. It comes with everything you need for gaming. Installing additional software is trivial with flatpaks using Bazaar. Overall it meets all your criteria. It has been my daily driver for a couple of years and I think I’ve found my distro.
