Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)H

HayadSont

@ HayadSont @discuss.online

Posts
16
Comments
190
Joined
11 mo. ago

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?

    Jump

  • Apologies for the 'spam', but I was afraid editing my previous message would be in vain. If you desire/crave for decent documentation, then Bazzite deserves another endorsement. While its documentation isn't as expansive as the excellent ArchWiki, it should be more than able to answer your questions.

    Secondly, if you happen to come across an issue that has been painstakingly difficult to resolve, then please consider consulting its many community channels for support. There's a Discourse, a Discord and an AnswerOverflow. So pick your poison 😉. FWIW, I've always had great experiences on their Discord.

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?

    Jump

  • Excellent choice fam! However, as much as I adore Fedora Kinoite, it might not provide the best onboarding 😅. If you're fine with that, then please feel free to go ahead and embark on your journey. However, I would suggest you to at least look into uBlue's offerings:

    • All operate within the paradigm of providing a so-called "batteries-included" product. So, going through the whole mumbo jumbo of RPM Fusion's Howtos to see what's relevant for you to apply and painstakingly waiting for them to be applied can be skipped.
    • Furthermore, based on your precise needs, you can choose to adopt more opinionated variants:
      • Aurora is their general use KDE variant
      • Bazzite, on the other hand, is their game ready variant that defaults to KDE
    • Or, if you prefer a minimal installation, you can choose to install their base images instead. These basically offer Fedora's images (including Kinoite) with the absolute minimal of hardware enablement and other essential uBlue goodies.
    • If you are a system crafter at heart, then perhaps you're more attracted towards creating your own bootc image. This can be achieved by uBlue's own image-template OR through the community-effort in BlueBuild.

    Regardless, fam, enjoy! And please consider to report back on your findings 😉! I would love to read your adventures of venturing the exotic waters of Fedora Atomic 😊!

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?

    Jump

  • Sure fam. This is actually a situation that might come up a lot. Basically any instance of dependency hell caused by conflicting dependencies would be resolved if two different versions of the same software could coexist.

    • Peeps that are maintaining packages probably have to deal with this every once in a while as well. Especially if the packaged software relies on some very niche (and possibly questionable) dependencies*. To point towards one of the most openly discussed cases of this, consider watching this video by Brodie in which the takedown of the unofficial packages of Bottles is being discussed.
    • E.g. whenever one tries to compile software themselves OR install/use them as/from binaries/tarballs.
    • E.g. installing packages as PPAs or other third party repositories (like e.g. the AUR) can also come with dependency hell and are often the reason why breakage occurs.

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?

    Jump

  • Q: Would a normal system (read: I'm not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?

    A: No. This is literally unsupported.

    Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?

  • Deleted Locked

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • I will agree with you that Desktop Linux leaves a lot to be desired from a security perspective. But, I'm not sure if these are its biggest problems.

    Not all distros ship SELinux and the ones that do, don’t actually configure it securely.

    Is SELinux employed on Desktop Linux the very same way we find on Android? Unfortunately, no. So, there's definitely a ton of mileage to be had here. But, there's literally nothing that stops you from making a fortress out of it. So, the ones that are intimately familiar with SELinux will leverage it to perfectly suit their needs. Which, is the only truly sensible way one should use SELinux to lock their system. Being dictated by the defaults set by the distro is only a counterproductive exercise of comparing/contrasting threat models.

    New users are expected to keep copying and pasting commands from their browsers to their terminal which compromises some Linux security defenses.

    They're absolutely not expected to do so. What makes you even think that's the case?

    KDE, GNOME and Sway are the only functional Desktop Environments/Window Managers that support Wayland all, while the Other DEs are not even close to shipping with Wayland.

    This is your best point. I agree that other DEs should haste in supporting Wayland. Though, at least I find solace in GNOME and KDE Plasma being the most used DEs/WMs to begin with. Hence, even if only those two would support Wayland, we would still have allowed over half of Linux' users to choose Wayland.

    Most if not all of the Linux Distros in 2025 ship with Grub bootloader, which suffers from a lot of problems, instead of using the bootloaders that does not support BIOS and will improve the reliability of booting and provide a more stable experience.

    Sorry, I'm not familiar with this problem/issue. Would you please be so kind to explain why I (or anyone else, for that matter) should worry about this? Like, what "problems" are we talking about? How is (allegedly) GRUB not reliable or stable compared to the others?

    Btw, just curious, what are your thoughts on secureblue?

  • Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite.... wait actually CachyOS and Solus

    Jump

  • First of all, thank you for that response!

    Do you think I am using this thread and this thread alone as my only source of information on these distros?

    No, I don't think that. I'd even challenge that notion as your query didn't start with a simple "What's best?" but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you. Please feel free to enlighten me on what made you even consider the premise of your above question. Though, as this is not that important to begin with, it's also perfectly fine to ignore that 👍.

    I feel as though this thread has delved into the essence of the matter perfectly well. That matter being, of course, people’s opinions on the three distros I laid out.

    If you lay it out like that, then; yeah, surely. However, it seems we fundamentally differ on what the essence of the matter is. And, perhaps I'm at fault for thinking this is a beneficial exercise to begin with. Regardless, I feel I at least owe you an explanation that goes over where I'm coming from:

    Fundamentally, literally none of your original three distros serve you well for the purposes of "I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize". Each one is pretty opinionated (by default^[Garuda is exempted from this through its KDE Lite offering.]) and -heck- both Bazzite and Nobara come with (highly) specialized tools required for system maintenance. This is because they've identified that there's a very serious disconnect between the freedom they'd like to allow their users and the (otherwise almost insurmountable) complexity this adds to how upgrades are managed. Bazzite trusts Fedora Atomic's tooling for this, while Nobara has created their own.

    Being (highly) opinionated isn't necessarily bad. But it's undeniably easier to tweak/tinker/configure a more minimal system. Hence, you're better served by a lean install (with sane defaults). Thankfully, community members either recognized this and tried to sway you towards other options. With success*. Or, you were able to discern distros that better serve you from the communities' input. However it may be, both CachyOS and Solus are definitely better in that regard. Though, crucially, if the community strictly kept to discussing the original three distros and didn't go out of their way to venture into unexplored waters, then you wouldn't have arrived where you are right now.

    Anyhow, all of the above could as well be disregarded the very moment you (hypothetically) state that your idea of customization is limited to the avenues KDE Plasma offers. Because, the original three are perfectly suited for that. So, your ideas on what tweaking/tinkering/customization entails is fundamentally linked to the distro that's most fit for the job.

    And thus, I would distill the essence of the matter to be a clear idea on what kind of balance between "stability" and "customization" is envisioned as desirable by you. And, while at it, proper delineations of what is and isn't understood as stability and customization. Is the requirement of stability only satisfied if you can easily rollback to a proper working state? Or, is borking on a random update simply unforgivable? On the other hand, do you really want to compile your own kernel and install it? Or were you merely interested in KDE's knobs? Etc. etc.

    and start an in-depth discussion

    Not necessarily, answering "Or…, like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place?" would probably have been sufficient.

    something I can crack open and break while tweaking - for the learning experience

    There's so much we could go over in the paragraph the above text is found, but I'll instead limit myself to just the above text. I find myself in a conundrum when you present that the above was implied and that (somehow) you came to consider Bazzite. While Bazzite is a lot more customizable than people give it credit for, I would not describe any part of the experience as "cracking it open". So, when met with an oxymoron as such, I literally have to ask for a clarification.

    Fedora has lost my favor due to being a fixed release distro.

    You've stated somewhere that you "Love the idea of rolling releases". So, if Solus passes as a rolling release distro [To be clear, technically, it absolutely does.], but [has less uptodate packages than Fedora's previous release](https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/pnewest)[So I'm not even comparing it to Fedora 42 or Fedora Rawhide (i.e. its rolling release branch).]. Then, what is it intrinsically that makes it favorable as a rolling release? And I haven't even delved into why Fedora's release cadence is referred to as semi-rolling or how the latest updates to packages like GNOME arrive earlier in Fedora compared to even Arch. Btw, this is not meant as one big advertisement for Fedora. Instead, I want to point out the many many nuances that exist within the Linux landscape.

    After CachyOS was brought to my attention, and I researched it a little bit, it seemed to fit my desires pretty well. It’s optimized for speed, which is perfect for games, and it’s rolling release so I still get to feel like an uber haxx0r.

    But, I think I’ll stick with CachyOS for now, I’m excited to use Arch btw.

    I agree that CachyOS is one of the better fits. And if you're not interested to check out Arch, EndeavourOS or openSUSE Tumbleweed(/Slowroll), then I can't even think of another rolling release worth considering for you.

    I love that it’s a small team.

    I don't know why this would be preferred over a big team 🤔. Mind helping me understand this?

    Btw, to be clear, Solus, as a project, is currently not very healthy. While it could compete with Fedora and openSUSE in the past, the last couple of years haven't been very kind to it. I'd propose the idea that the departure of its founder (i.e. Ikey Doherty) from the project has left it (relatively) visionless. And the turbulent times that followed made nurturing its community a great challenge. One, I'd argue, they weren't able to handle gracefully. Regardless, it's undoubtedly a shell of its former glory. This is also reflected by how relatively bare-bones its repository is. Or how absent it is within the discourse. Hopefully it will be able to bounce back after goodies from Doherty's latest project (i.e. AerynOS) trinkle down to benefit Solus. But, until then, it would be very irresponsible of me if I didn't discourage you from daily-driving it...

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?

    Jump

  • the performance will take a hit

    This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.

  • Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite.... wait actually CachyOS and Solus

    Jump

  • I suppose that's fine, and please feel free to act however way you wish.

    The fact remains, however, that no one actually delved into the essence of the matter.

    Furthermore, I find it rather troublesome that you deflected the question rather than answering it head-on. Perhaps you didn't think it through yet, and are just waiting to be swayed by whoever advertises best.

    To illustrate my point, would you (at least) be so kind to explain me where/why Fedora has lost your favor? While, on the other hand, what Solus provides (in contrast) to justify your interest in it?

  • Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite.... wait actually CachyOS and Solus

    Jump

  • But, now that I’m familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.

    Don’t get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.

    Fam, did I understand you correctly that you want to tinker/tweak/customize the system to your heart's content? Yet, you also wish that the system "just works". At least, mostly. Is that right? Or..., like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you'd like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place? Please, if possible, be explicit.

    After I got a better idea on what it actually is that you seek, I'll try to answer your other(/remaining) questions.

  • Which Distros Are Doing Best Currently?

    Jump

  • I’ve heard it has poor long term stability.

    Relatively speaking, sure. But I'd argue this is by design. Basically, every 'modern' distro is trying to solve the problem that come with updates on an 'open'/'free' operating system. The solution they come up with essentially dictates a huge part of the identity of the distro. As I've noted elsewhere, these include the following:

    • Some choose to outright freeze packages and only come with security updates
    • Others have (almost) excessive testing to prevent breakage
    • Yet others employ rollbacks to ensure that the (eventual/inevitable) breakage can easily be deflected
    • Finally, there are distros that fall on a spectrum in regards to their more radical state management in hopes of minimizing breakage
    • (Though, I'm sure I've forgotten some other methods...)
    • And, of course, we find combinations of the above employed on the very same distro/system

    And, of course, we shouldn't forget to mention Arch's approach; lay the responsibility on the user 😅. So, Arch 'breaking'/'borking' after an update is a user error. Which other distro can tout such an impressive entry in their documentation for system maintenance?

    To be fair, this makes total sense. The user can basically build their system from scratch. So..., why wouldn't they be capable to come up with their solution to the above problem? Besides, the ArchWiki continues to be a guiding light whatever solution they'd like to adopt: be it 'freezing' the kernel, or using better tested software, perhaps setting up Snapper for rollbacks etc...

    Is there a distro that’s like Arch for installation but more stable?

    Gentoo

  • looking to migrate off gmail finally

    Jump

  • Bad issues with system load on Mint Desktop

    Jump

  • Upgrading between major versions is not a trivial task. Did you adhere to the instructions/tutorials found on this page?

  • In search of a non-electron text editor that can fold | Are emacs and (neo)vim my only options?

    Jump

  • Thanks fam for the wonderful conversation! Wish ya the best!

    I feel this, but never had any pains related to it, it's just more comfortable.

    FWIW, my biggest pains had been related to that. Though, more recently this has been rivaling it.

  • Reminder: Proton Mail addresses have vendor lock-in

    Jump

  • What have you switched to?

  • In search of a non-electron text editor that can fold | Are emacs and (neo)vim my only options?

    Jump

  • Again, I want to establish that I've learned a ton and really appreciate your writings. Thank you!

    That looks interesting, although I would be weary of learning a layout that only works on specific keyboards, it will make it hard for you to use a laptop on the go, work in an office with a normal keyboard or any other similar situation.

    Thanks for the reminder! While I can't completely ignore the main takeaway, I do find myself only rarely (read: less than 5%) engage with normal keyboards. And, AFAIU, by only adopting the exotic layout for splitting keyboards, I can keep the muscle memory for QWERTY on regular keyboards. Though, please feel free to correct me if I say something that goes against your own experiences.

    which btw I strongly recommend you check out wrist and finger stretching exercises as they help a lot

    Would you be so kind to share what has worked for your wrist? While there's no reason to assume that your exercises work out for me, I can at least discuss them with the physiotherapist. BTW, to be clear, I've already visited the physiotherapist a number of times and we've discussed exercises that I've eventually incorporated in my daily routine.

    Lots of the changes I made (e.g. split ortholinear keyboard) were probably not needed

    Question: If we focus on the split ortholinear keyboard, is only the ortholinear aspect (possibly) redundant? Or..., the split itself?

  • Fedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages - potentially bad news for Steam gamers

    Jump

  • Well articulated reply. Thank you!

  • Fedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages - potentially bad news for Steam gamers

    Jump

  • Isn’t Bazzite built on Fedora Silverblue

    Kinda.

    installs the Steam Flatpak?

    Actually no. Bazzite installs Steam from the RPM Fusion repo.

    As for an attempt to shed light on why Fedora is absent from Steam's numbers, see this comment. Finally, perhaps this is worth looking into to see how big Fedora's gaming community is compared to the rest of its users.

  • Deleted

    I maked a maymay. I mint fan.

    Jump

  • Bazzite is a lot less user friendly than mint in major ways.

    Would you be so kind to substantiate the above claim beyond what's found below?

    KDE is too deep unnecessarily so.

  • Questions about Distros and Using Linux Before I Switch

    Jump

  • Unfortunately, based on what I saw on the Proton website, if I want to use it on linux it looks like the only way is to get it on Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora using the console.

    For official support, yes. Thankfully, ProtonVPN is also available as a flatpak. As such, any distro that allows installing (unverified) flatpaks through its GUI software store suffices. Though, not all distros are created equally in this respect. Focusing on Kubuntu and Linux Mint specifically: