Hey fellow Linux enthusiasts! I’m curious to know if any of you use a less popular, obscure or exotic Linux distribution. What motivated you to choose that distribution over the more mainstream ones? I’d love to hear about your experiences and any unique features or benefits that drew you to your chosen distribution.
Fedora Silverblue
I use Fedora Silverblue, I don’t know if that (still) counts as “underground”-distro.
Reason I switched: I’ve been distrohopping/ desktophopping for the whole time I used Linux (~2-3 years) and always came back to Fedora. I really like it’s sane (for me) defaults.
Problem: I broke pretty much any system I installed after a few weeks.
Knowing enough to change everything, but doing exactly that without knowing exactly what I do and how to fix stuff is really bad.
Instead of fixing a problem, I just reinstalled. That took me just an hour everytime, but still is a bad practice, even when it’s quicker.
Also, everytime I was happy with Gnome, KDE got a shiny new feature I just wanted to have, and I switched the Fedora spin, since switching DE on a used system feels really dirty and buggy.
The last time I broke my (Tumbleweed) install without actually doing anything I just said “Fuck it, even if I loose some freedom, I will now only use immutable systems from now on!”.
I decided for Fedora, and oh boy…
Actually, I didn’t loose much freedom or functionality at all!
(Only exception: no VPN app, I have to use the menu from Gnome; and somehow, Boxes doesn’t work atm, maybe that’s just a bug).
I’m now using it for 2 months and couldn’t be happier!!! Why?
I’m really in love with Silverblue, everybody should check it out!
Is it still necessary to reboot if you install/update/remove some system package?
Yes and no.
As the other commenter said, you can apply live if it has to be (but you absolutely shouldn’t).
But, I never have to reboot anyway. When I install apps, I do that in containers (Toolbox, Distrobox, Flatpak) and they give me all functionality I need.
You basically only install drivers and absolutely essential stuff per OSTree and you only do that once.
Updates get applied and installed in the background for me. There’s no prompt to reboot, they only get staged.
I shut down my PC every few days anyway, and when I boot, I boot into the new image.
I don’t see that as a problem. Rebooting is only a matter of seconds on a NVME
I haven’t really used Tool/Distrobox so correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t they basically contain a sort of a lightweight copy of the OS (minus the kernel/and some core stuff? ), so wouldn’t you have to keep all your containers up-to-date as well, in addition to your host OS? I’m just wondering how much of a double-up/space waste there is going on with such a setup.
I’m no expert, so I can’t help you much.
The container downloaded in less than a minute in my case, and I have really really bad internet.
The containers are really minimalist (basically only a set of dependencies) and shouldn’t take much disk space.
Heck, and even if they do, space is really cheap anyway.
They function sort of like how Flatpaks do. With Flatpaks, you also don’t download a whole OS, only dependencies.
Maintainence wise, you’re right.
Normally, you would have to type the “distrobox-upgrade” command to update all containers.
In my case, since I use uBlue, this gets done automatically afaik.
Not strictly, no - there is an apply-live option now. Restarting is still a good idea though as with any distro.
I don’t know if I’d count it because I’d consider it part of Fedora, but +1 for Silverblue. I’ve been playing with it for 3 years and daily driving it for the past year - it’s been great seeing it improve during that time and feels like the future.
I use NixOS for very similar reasons. And also, because I like my full configuration in one place.
Yeah, I fully get why people like Nix.
I fully respect it when people want a “next-gen-Arch” with the DIY-aspect of building their own OS. At least, that’s my impression on it.
For me personally, it sounds like too much work. I’m not advanced enough and want something hassle free that “just works”.
But especially for professional developers (reproducibility) and Linux enthusiasts, it sounds like a dream!
As a fellow Silverblue user, I really wanted to like NixOS. I was surprised to discover it did not support declarative management of flatpak workflows, which pretty much eliminated it as an option for me. That, combined with its highly unconventional filesystem hierarchy, and its cumbersome configuration and project documentation was enough to send me back to Silverblue.
Don’t get me wrong, NixOS is very powerful and an excellent solution for some use cases; it just wasn’t right for mine.
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I can’t speak for the OP, but I routinely copy/paste from my post history in order to save time.
I used to have Silverblue for my work laptop OS, I broke it quite fast, multiple times, got annoyed, switched to NixOS like on my home setup. I am the person that tinkers with everything, and NixOS just wont die. I need to install it only once per computer’s drive lifetime.