I’ve messed around with Linux before, mostly in VMs, but I’m looking to switch over from Windows permanently on my laptop because I think Linux is cool. Most people in this community talk about pros and cons of this distro or this other distro, but I’d like to hear your opinions based on entirely subjective factors.
I think Arch is neat, I think Ubuntu isn’t as neat, why? Who knows. Tell me about how you chose a specific distro because you thought the name was cool or because it ships with some completely unknown utility no one uses.

  • TurboWafflz@lemmy.world
    91·
    8 months ago

    OpenSUSE just feels all cool and enterprisey and I feel like I’m doing important things when I use my computer

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    8·
    8 months ago

    If you want to create a Hannah Montana branded version of ublue kinoite plasma 6, that would be as neat as it gets.

    Also there is Cosmic, I am just gonna say

    Rust

    • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      8 months ago

      I installed it three nights ago.

      It has a lot of neat

      It has a lot of wtf

      You start out, I want x, then you realize you want y, then you find out to get y, you need z. Then you put follow some instructions and defining unfree in one spot no longer works. Then you find out there are no safe facilities to deploy secrets and you’ll have to make that anyway.

      I don’t hate it at all, but I’m slowly realizing it’s not what I thought it was.

      Still cool though.

      • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Yeah, it’s very much one of those “steep learning curve” distros, and requires a lot of background reading and perhaps a bit of functional programming knowledge.

        For secrets storage, I’ve been using agenix, but you can probably get away with just putting the secrets as plain text files in /var/secrets or similar.

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
    5·
    8 months ago

    For me it’s just Linux itself that’s cool. I mean, I get the different distros have different opinions and things that make them neat, and that in and of itself is what’s so cool. FWIW I use Ubuntu (server) and desktop.

  • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
    5·
    8 months ago

    I think what you mean with “neat” is the desktop environment (DE), which hugely defines how a distro looks like.
    Most major distros (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, etc.) have have the most major ones.

    Here’s my post about distro choices if you’re interested, since it’s mostly more about DE choice: https://feddit.de/post/9087676

  • myogg@lemmy.world
    4·
    8 months ago

    I use Arch because it makes installing almost any software package trivially easy via the AUR and if you run into issues, the wiki is there to help.

  • intrepid@lemmy.ca
    3·
    8 months ago

    Let me start with my unbiased opinion. There’s something for everybody in the Linux land. You have to try different distros out and settle with the one you like most. I usually advocate for the path of least resistance - ie, to start with the easiest distro. Mint is a good first distro. Fedora and Debian are also reasonable choices. But I have also seen a rare few cases where people start directly with a high effort distro like Arch - so it’s not impossible.

    For a lot of people, Mint may satisfy their needs - a user friendly distro that needs no tinkering and meets all of their needs. Some people though, like to tune everything. Such people can eventually grow into something like Arch.

    I personally like Gentoo. Not because it’s compiled from source, but because it’s easy to work with its Portage package management system. Another one worth trying out is QubesOS, if you’re into security.

    • XTL@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      8 months ago

      Well, you don’t really have to try anything. You can pick a suitable one and just use it. Don’t like something? Configure. Want software? Install software. Yes, that works for desktop envs. Got problems? File reports and/or ask for help.

      If you pick one that isn’t going to die out in a while, you can probably keep using the same distro for life. Debian is highly likely to outlive us all.

  • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    8 months ago

    Okay, you asked, we deliver ;-) I tried OS/2 and BSD, but did stick with Linux (Using Debian and Arch currently).

    "No. That’s it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say “OS/2? Hah. I’ve got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.” – Linus Torvalds

    • Scio@kbin.social
      4·
      8 months ago

      Probably wouldn’t’ve thought that when it came out, but I kinda really like OS/2 as a name. Had a very Serial Experiments Lain ring to it.

      …Certainly a lot cooler than OSX.

  • NateSwift@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    8 months ago

    I installed Arch because I liked the idea of building everything from the ground up, choosing all of my utilities, and gentoo would take too long on my laptop. Still haven’t finished my DE 2 computers and 3 years later

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    8 months ago

    I used Fedora on my laptop for like 4 years. It came with gnome, and was very stable. I didn’t know a lot about Linux at the time, but it treated me well.

    Eventually, I was learning graphics and the mesa drivers in fedora’s repos were lacking specific OGL support I wanted to try out. I tried installing mesa from source, but it didn’t go very smoothly.

    This is when I learned about arch’s rolling release model. I ran antergos for a while, then manjaro, and now endeavor, and more recently I’ve heard arch has a fancy installer wizard so I might just do that next.

    I would still recommend Fedora (or Mint) as someone’s first go at Linux. I don’t think you need to try arch until you know why you’re using it.

    • Tempy@lemmy.temporus.me
      1·
      8 months ago

      If you are on endeavour, I don’t think there’s much point jumping to plain Arch if you are all setup and comfortable. I say this as a pure Arch user 😛 Not much will change for you, you’ll just be pissing away a day to setup everything you’ve already setup on endeavour again.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        8 months ago

        Yeah, it wouldn’t be for no reason, I still have a desktop on Manjaro that I’ve been meaning to swap to endeavorOS. But I pretty much just use arch flavors rather than arch because they’re quicker to install lol.

  • mac@infosec.pub
    3·
    8 months ago

    Fedora just documents itself incredibly well, plus all the pushes they’re doing with immutable distributions and somehow making it seem simple is a wonderful thing.

  • spacebanana@lemmy.world
    2·
    8 months ago

    I have a tendency to use “DIY” systems, basically systems that leave the administration up to me, and either have a minimal base or a customizable, powerful but convenient installer. Then comes the package manager’s strengths and weaknesses, and the package repository and its release cycles.

    My favorite OSes of all are:

    • NixOS
    • FreeBSD
    • Arch/Endeavour
    • Debian
    • To some extend Alpine

    I never used Gentoo so I don’t classify it, but i believe I would like it a lot if I used it.

    And yeah, I have a logo bias lmao. NixOS, FreeBSD and Debian have amazing logos. Something that is neat is when a distro has multiple kernel versions in the repository.