Which distro do you currently use and why?
Ah, the cliche "which distro" thread. Not looking for a flame war here - just curious which distro you guys are using and why you like it. I've gone back and forth between distros over the years and I'm curious if any new features really stick out to encourage a switch. I've been running Arch Linux consistently for the longest time. I chose it because I prefer a rolling release package system and like to update applications and services as soon as the community has done the initial testing. The AUR system has been invaluable for alternative releases or packages not found in the repos. To top if off they have a fantastic wiki.
6 years ago by WhoNeedszZz
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Arch, for about three years consistently and before that I distrohopped like there was no future left for me. My favourite from those days was, by far, Fedora as I have been running that since its' beginnings. Other distro's I have tried and used for more than a few weeks: Mandriva, Ubuntu, Puppy (I was too poor at that time to buy spareparts to get the machine decent again, so minimalism was the way to go), Cent OS at a Linux course for (network-)administration and security (nothing too fancy, but the Spartan terminal only classes made me love computing in a way, because I caught myself being the most lazy bugger with the fancy graphic installers and the lot). Ah, and Damn Small Linux, mainly out of curiosity of how long I could stand a freaking fast computer without problems. Tinkering is nice, even when it is not always really needed. And so I landed with Arch, which was a steep hill for a while, but when I had it running (vanilla, about the sixth attempt) and got XFCE fit to my specs (minimalist with a touch of fancy), I knew there was no way back.
Looking at empty space for an extra partition, I am thinking about Gentoo or FreeBSD as a side-project / hobby-thing there.
In daily use I hardly run into trouble, because I use the software for ages and most problems I ever had, were due to my own wrong input at the preferences. GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus for image production, altering and so on, mostly to prepare paintwork, and for internet it's Firefox, Thunderbird, Filezilla and ToR. Yeah, regular user on the outside, poweruser in the inside. ;-)
I'm also running XFCE and fits my needs for a DE as you described.
That being said I am curious about how Wayland operates versus X11. I know XFCE hasn't switched to it, but Gnome and KDE have. Gnome and KDE have both gone a different direction than I like in their design so not really interested in installing those.
Gnome and KDE (Plasma) are both beautiful and useful in their own right. While Gnome tends to be more functional of the two, KDE is clearly more about aesthetics. From the three, XFCE showed the very least amount of bugs or annoyances here over the years, the other two always had some little thing that bugged me. I am kind of loyal to what serves me the best programme. It is kind of biased, since I use XFCE the most, I get used to it and start to see, sometimes the same, annoyances or even bugs as part of the software. Being more forgiving. And the logo is cute. :-)
But that's not a real answer, of course. Wayland is fine for me, but X11 is more pured out, better distilled. Wayland is more from and for today, with mobiles, tablets and all in mind. Or, that's how I see it, to be honoust. My first question is always: does it work for me and what makes it better than what I use now? That's what I love about Linux and the open source movement in general: choices and trustworthiness. I trust open source software from a group of good dedicated programmers and an active forum with it way better than their closed source counterparts. :-)
Wayland is definitely unpolished and too new to be mainstream. I'm just excited about something new for once in Linux land. X11 has worked for a long time, but it has gotten behind with modern configurations. Graphics drivers, for one, have been a pita on X11 the whole time.
I follow a similar thought pattern. XFCE has been the most stable for me as well. I didn't mind Gnome 2.x, but once Gnome Shell came out I lost interest. I like a traditional desktop layout. Gnome Shell seems more like a mobile layout to me. KDE is definitely geared towards aesthetics and they are good at what they do. My issue has been the odd annoyances or bugs that just won't get squashed and I will always prefer function over form (in anything).
I'm running GalliumOS on my ex-Chromebook. It's lightweight and is designed for use on Chromebooks which is nice. It's quick to install which is handy because I sometimes just do a fresh install if an issue comes up. It runs things like VS Code, Kodi and the basics without any problems.
I gave POP_OS a quick look at the weekend but didn't give it long enough to get any kind of a feel for it.
New to Linux, as the result of taking some IT classes. Just starting to feel my way around Fedora, running in a VM.
Welcome to Linux. While running in a VM is a good way to check a distro out for the first time, I really encourage installing it to a drive. You really can't get a good feel of the performance in a VM as it is constrained.
Thanks. I had to set up a VM and load an OS of choice as part of an OS class. I fully intend to dual boot when I have some spare time to play with various distros in the VM. I do have to keep a windows partition on at least one box for games though.
For my daily driver, I am running Ubuntu. On my servers, I run Debian. But I like to play around with many distros.
And why did you choose them?