Two years into full-time Linux and I’m finally burning the distro-hopping cycle. I fell for the Arch/AUR trap for a while, but I got tired of spending my weekends debugging file manager crashes instead of maintaining my home lab.
Switched back to Fedora, and it’s boring in exactly the way I need it to be. It’s a stable launchpad for my projects, not the project itself.
Fedora for fun, OpenSUSE for work.
Nobara for fun, rocky for work.
I worked on United Linux, with suse. Never again.
Uh, twenty years ago? Why’s that?
Debian for server, NetBSD for tinkering
I don’t do either of those things tho
Then OpenSUSE for everything else
CachyOS anyone?
Went from OpenSUSE way back then, moved to Ubuntu for a while, then when I decided to finally switch totally to Linux, I went with Arch. Last December I migrated to CachyOS and I really like it. I remove a bunch of stuff on installation and I install no DE/WM as I prefer to bring my own config, but as a base, it’s solid and has some stuff already configured that I don’t have to do, like btrfs snapshots for example.
For gaming, oh yes. And enable snapshots so you can rollback to a working version if the latest update shits the bed.
My partner isn’t IT-literate but loves her CachyOS since it means not having to deal with Windows
Just switched my wife to EndevourOS because she wanted to ditch windows and it’s what I daily drive. Maybe should have done cachy but I didn’t think about it and didn’t want to put her on something I also don’t have direct experience with.
Don’t get comfy, I used to be fedora, then debian, then arch. Mint + Cinnamon is my final resting place.
I like cinnamon. Haven’t run desktop Linux since slackware, so it was a breath of fresh air on Nobara.
Selinux
Rootless podman networking
These things are awful on their own to comprehends for those of us without comp-sci degrees, but fedora has me boxing with them more than I expected and fuck everyone involved with that!
I fell for the Arch/AUR trap for a while, but I got tired of spending my weekends debugging file manager crashes instead of maintaining my home lab.
What sort of file manager crashes were you having?
Right mouse click, it was an intermittent issue and never did get to the bottom of it as the only forum posts I could find were from 10 years ago. Yes I know I could of used the keyboard shortcuts but my muscle memory is more mouse orientated than keyboard lol
Kinoite user here - no urge to hop. Distrobox if I need something else
I just swapped over yesterday to Fedora from Ubuntu. It’s been a good experience so far! Except for installing nvidia drivers, still working on that
Why do distros make that so difficult?
# pacman -S nvidia # systemctl rebootGood to go. 🚀
Fedora doesn’t ship proprietary NVIDIA drivers in its official repos and doesn’t include 3rd party repos with proprietary software either. This is for licensing and I guess philosophical reasons. Arch has a different approach. That’s why.
Can’t you access those with RPM Fusion or something? Whenever I’m able to switch back to Linux I’d really want to start daily driving Fedora
Yes, you can easily add 3rd party repos, they just aren’t included in the Fedora distribution. I’m sure there are instructions on the RPM Fusion website for it.
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Pacman doesn’t fetch from the AUR.
Shouldn’t be difficult. Add the rpmfusion repo and install drivers (with akmods that handles everything when the driver / kernel updates). Instructions on the rpmfusion web site. After that, setup dnf-automatic and you’re done.
Ubuntu has (imo) always been incredibly difficult dogshit for no reason. The fact it used to be the defacto Linux recommend is probably one of the reasons adoption was so slow
Fedora (Silverblue in particular) was the end of my distro hopping journey too. It’s just so pleasant to use and it’s comfortably up to date. I also like its tendency to push newer technologies.
Luckily for me, I switched from Cachy to Fedora kde right before the AUR attacks started happening. Fedora honestly feels like home to me now. I customized it to have a very Gnome like workflow, and its working flawlessly for me.
Dude, if you documented your process for this, could you share the configuration with me, please? I’ve been trying (on and off) to do precisely that because of how walled GNOME has become between GNOME 39 and now, but my results have been “less than spectacular” to say the least. I think I just need a starting point, but the videos on YouTube about that are not really practical. I’m on GNOME because I just love the whole workflow, but would rather be on Plasma with the Gnome workflow if possible. That would be great. If not, well FUCK YOU! Just kidding, lol (about the fuck you, I still would love a starting point on this 🤣)
Why not fedora gnome? 🤔
Gnome has slowly become like a DE made by Apple. Even trying to configure it to use a screen shot app other than the integrated one is a fucking chore, they want you to forcibly use theirs, which is great for basic screen shooting, but I’m more of a flames hot fan because of how seamless it is to annotate on any shot instead of taking the shot, having to use a second app to edit/annotate, and then, I don’t know when it started, but every screenshot gets saved as a picture now, no way to just use it with the clipboard and let it disappear on the next SC or copy.
Then there’s the mentality. In GNOME If a feature doesn’t fit the design language, no matter how popular, it’s rejected. Dissenting opinions on design choices are almost always met with “trust the process.”
Im actually curious…is there any other de that goes for kind of a gnome like workflow or design language but maybe a bit more customizable and open? I’ve honestly really only use Cinnamon and KDE so far (i came from windows originally) so I’m not quite accustomed to all the different de choices. Also, what do you use yourself?.
I’m in a similar situation as you. I’ve been a Gnome user since Gnome 2, but want the same as you, which is why I asked for the configuration in Plasma to have a starting point.
I just spun up a new Fedora KDE install to try again (for the 100th time) to achieve the same workflow I’m used to in GNOME (mostly it’s having an app grid instead of an app menu, dynamic workspaces and ‘dash-to-dock’ functionality). There are some things that have been incredibly hard for me in KDE in terms of ease of access, like how ‘Alt-tab’ doesn’t seem to work across workspaces, then Plasma in default is just too crowded when compared to Gnome. But I think KDE is far superior in terms of customization, and I can easily have various windows of the same app open and traverse across them with alt-tab, whereas in Gnome alt-tab will only work across apps, not separate windows of the same apps.
So, like you, I’m still trying to make my DE my own, but it is fun, and I am learning a lot doing it.
Oh oops I almost ignored that other reply by accident my bad. I pretty much just followed along with a youtube video and copied what he did…hold on lemme get the link to it, maybe it helps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wurtYbHpc7o. Sorry if it doesn’t help, I kinda just look up things as I go along or watch vids. Also not really the best at explaining things, my mind works in kind of an odd and abstract way so I suck at explaining things in a coherent way.
So, I finally (almost) did it. All I am missing now is the dynamic workspaces and to make Dolphin look/behave a bit more like Nautilus. And I know I can just go ahead and install Nautilus, however, it would install a bunch of Gnome dependencies that I don’t want.
But for now, it is working as intended. Even the Alt-tab that used to just go around the active workspace can now go across workspaces.
Again, thanks so much.
Hey, thanks so much. I’ll try this video. I really appreciate it.
Once I’m done, I’ll come back to let you (and everyone else) how it went.
For now, have an amazing week.
Isnt gnome a bit more resource intensive? also like the option of more customization if i ever wanna change the layout or aesthetic.
You can customize gnome pretty far. The code to have normal human minimize/maximize/close buttons is all still there, and the window bar is there as well. You just have to know which programs to pull from dnf that know what
registrydconf settings to adjust. I have yet to find a use case for nautilus between Dolphin (KDE) and using a terminal.Huh good to know. Will be honest I’m a pretty slow learner, but I do find it pretty fun to explore all the options I get on linux. Knowing me it will probably be years until I find a de (or maybe a tiling window manager) thats perfect for me. Been using linux for maaaaybe 1 1/2-2 years but I still feel like a beginner in a lot of ways.
Install gnome-tweaks. It’ll be under “Accessories” or you can search for it in their activities travesty. There are some gnome-shell-extension-X things to install as well before you head into the tweaks program. They all used to be part of gnome-tweaks and now they’re not. If I recall a helpful web lookup occurs when you’re messing with that stuff and tells you what package to install.
gnome can be rough until you tailor it to your usage or if you’re in an austere environment with no internet. I think all those settings can be changed via editing dconf directly, but I don’t know how, and at this point in my life I don’t really feel like trying to hack a user experience provided to me into usefulness (no root, admin doesn’t want to use linux at all so he sets up the minimal least risky thing he can and won’t change it). gnome’s interpretation of “minimal” is pretty painful.
I use LXQT when I can. I’ll get around to trying modern KDE at some point.
Back to Fedora myself.
My path so far: Manjaro -> Arch -> Mint -> Fedora -> EndeavourOS -> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -> Bazzite -> Fedora.
All distros on the list are brilliant in their own right, they just failed on my hardware in all variety of odd ways, or were simply too limited for what I want to do. Of all of them, Fedora was the least problematic in the long run, and with the snapshot experience I gained from OpenSUSE, I think I can manage it well now.
P.S. Seems like the article author also got inspiration for btrfs after using OpenSUSE, and I don’t think it’s random. Folks there made a truly perfect integration. If you want to know what btrfs can truly offer, look no further, this is the best use of this filesystem anywhere on Linux.
Speaking of Fedora, my experience of installation was nothing similar. It was rough all the way. From the installer literally not launching, to borked nvidia drivers, it all caused me some pain. But after I’ve set everything up, it was a breeze.
Debian on my severs and workstation. My laptop is also Debian, though I have a Haiku partition that has been a lot of fun to play around with. It’s way, way better than the last time I tried it.
NixOS for everything except my phones (one clean iPhone with Lockdown mode enabled and one Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS).
I’ve recently had some issues with Fedora (KDE). After I install any update it tells me to restart to finish installing. So I restart and it still tells me the same thing. Probably time I distrohop again.
With the usual restriction of “either upstream or Mint, otherwise you’re doing it wrong”. There are 6 options. Ubuntu is obviously out. Arch is not my cup of tea. Fedora is already ruled out. Debian/Mint aren’t as secure as Fedora/OpenSUSE. That leaves me with going back to OpenSUSE Leap.
But the proprietary media codecs on OpenSUSE come from the AUR … looks like I’m out of options.
This might not be your issue, but I remember for me there’s this button in the tray that appears after all updates are downloaded. You click it and there’s an option to restart and update. If you just go to the main menu to restart, it doesn’t always show this “restart and update” option, and just restarts without installing the updates. Though even if you make this mistake you shouldn’t need to re-download the updates. Just go to KDE Discover and check for updates again, and the button will appear in the tray again. I think.
Also maybe you’d like the Fedora atomic distros, like Bazzite or Aurora. Unlike installing the updates during reboot, they install them in a “disabled state” while the system is running. Then you reboot and it automatically boots to the new version, no need to wait for any installation. What’s neat is that it’s really hard to break. Even if you pull the power while it’s installing updates, it will just use the previous version and try installing again. No risk of corruption.
Why distro-hop when you could jump in on the bug tracker or forge or the matrix channels and get involved with the community to find the root cause of the issue and make the distro you’re on better?
What’s the security issue with Debian and Mint? Debian is usually my goto but I don’t want to expose myself to security issues
Linux in general is not secure for desktop users. There’s basically never sandboxing, and when there is it’s usually weak, antivirus is rarely used, and developers aren’t vetted as stringently as with paid software. Apparently Fedora and OpenSUSE take these issues more seriously, and SE Linux does somewhat restrict what malicious things a piece of software can do.
It’s a pretty widely held view that Fedora and OpenSUSE are more secure than Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch for desktop users but I’m not really an expert so I’m mostly retroactively justifying what I’ve heard second-hand.
You’re mostly right, but I disagree about the bit about paid software and vetted developers. Open source like Linux is also mostly developed by programmers hired by companies, so there’s no difference there. Proprietary software has also had problems with malicious developers and there’s less transparency there.
Desktop Linux so far was meant to be a fun general purpose computing experience for geeks. Throwing extra security layers on it evidently spoils some of that fun, you can see how Linux nerds react to things like Polkit, SELinux, Wayland or Flatpak. But PCs in general suck at security, they’re based on legacy tech from an era when cybersecurity wasn’t even a concept.
The XZ Utils thing is a prime example of the risks Linux faces.
Mobile operating systems in general are far more secure than Desktop operating systems. ChromeOS seems to be the most secure desktop option, but given the privacy implications of a Google operating system and the lock-down of Google Play I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.
There’s also https://secureblue.dev/
Tried it. Firstly it wouldn’t install. Secondly, the developer lead developer is a very private person and I don’t trust a Linux distro made by someone who is so secretive.
I got fed up with Discover’s whole reboot-to-update thing and just disabled it.
Eventually, I ended up just disabling updates through discover altogether, I’d rather just use my little bash script anyways.
With LUKS the whole “reboot to update” thing is 1000 times as inconvenient. I set it to install updates immediately, and even automatically, but the update process just isn’t going great for me in a bunch of ways.
Yeah, LUKS or multiboot make things much more complicated. I think it’s well intentioned, but I’ve never had any stability issues skipping it, so it seems unnecessary for most folks. Also, snapper-boot is just a better solution to the upgrade stability problem.
I’m on bazzite
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