If you have been using Linux for +10 years, what are you using now?
Been using Linux for over a decade, and last few years Ubuntu (on desktops/laptops), plus Debian on servers, but been looking to switch to something less “Canonical”-y for a long time (since the Amazon search fiasco, pretty much).
Appreciate recommendations or just an interesting discussion about people’s experiences, there are no wrong answers.
Edit: Thanks for the lots of interesting answers and discussions. I will try a few of the suggestions in a VM.
On my new laptop, I wanted to try something less “Cannonical”-y too, after many years of using Ubuntu. I already used Manjaro KDE on my desktop and I kinda liked it. So that, I decided to install Arch and maybe copy some configs from Manjaro, if needed. Well, at first glance, it was awesome. Fast, fully configurable system, that is fully mine. Alas, that euphoria didn’t last long: very soon some fundamental problems occured. Here I should specify that I’m using my laptop for live musical performance. And I focus on some specific things that other users might not need to.
- Wine - couldn’t make it work with 32bit apps and VST plugins. That’s really important to me, because some of those don’t have any native replacements. Whatever I tried, Wine just refused to create a 32bit prefix.
- At some point, several (lots of) important LV2 plugins stopped showing their GUIs. They kept working in “generic GUI” mode, but for things like equalizers having a good visualization is crucial.
- KDE+pipewire+wayland is the worst setup for live performance ever. When you move your mouse around taskbar, it creates video-streams (to draw thumbnails) that make audio graph massively crackle.
- Really bad performance with several soundcards. SOme cards just refused to work together in one graph, turning the sound into the ocean of xruns. And that possibility of several soundcards was the reason why wanted to switch from JACK to pipewire in the first place.
- No possibility to have pipewire-jack and pipewire-jack-client packages installed simultaneously.
- LADISH and Claudia - they’re quite tricky obsolete pieces of software that I use. These are really handy for making large complicated audio systems. Alternatively I tried raysession, but it didn’t work well too (didn’t restore connections).
This list could have been longer, but I will probably stop here. After a month of struggling I switched back to Ubuntu Mate 24.04. And what can I say… It works fine. It’s a bit tougher than Arch, but not much; and at the end - not a single issue of listed above. And Ubuntu has custom lowlatency kernel that helps with realtime audio applications. And it’s still Linux after all - I can easily do whatever I want - like, uninstall Snap. Some packages are too old - that’s acceptable for an LTS release; if I need something up-to-date, I can just build it from source. Also I notice the same issues on my Manjaro desktop, but it’s not so crucial there, as I primarily use desktop for gaming and video montage. But still, considering to return to Ubuntu on it too.
What I want to say is that maybe Ubuntu is not so bad, really. Cutting off some unneeded things can turn it into a good OS.
My custom Kinoite-based system using ublue-builder. Gets me updates with 0 interference with my daily use, secure boot, tpm based FDE, and I can still install packages during the CI step (although distrobox is the main way to do that).
I’ve been on Linux since my childhood (found it in a tech magazine in 2008), hopped through Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, and Manjaro until like 2022 when I settled on Fedora KDE, then shifted to their immutable stuff 1-2 years later.
Arch and KDE Neon currently. Started with Slackware 1.0, Yggdrasil, did the old RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, PCLinuxOS, RHEL, CentOS, and several more. Started back with Slackware and kernel 0.99pl13, I believe.
NixOS. Started with Yellow Dog Linux in 1998.
I don’t do everything through nix’s derivation system.
Many of my configs are just an outOfStoreSymlink to my configs in the same dotfiles repos. I don’t need every change wrapped in a derivation. Neovim is probably the largest. A few node projects for automations I’m fine using pnpm to manage. Nix still places everything but I can tweek those configs and commit in the same repo without a full blown activation.
Been using Linux for about 8 years now. My DE of choice has pretty much always been XFCE. Here’s an overview of the distros I’ve daily driven.
Linux Mint -> Debian -> Arch -> NixOS -> Arch
I tried NixOS for about a year before switching back to Arch recently. There were just too many problems I couldn’t find a solution to, and I realized that the advantages of an immutable OS just aren’t that important to me.
Arch really is a dream to use, and the setup is pretty easy if you use the archinstall script. And most importantly, their wiki is amazing.
Oh hey, my anniversary is coming up.
For base daily driver on desk and lap, just a stable standard beginner friendly distro. I’ve customized it a lot, added custom hotkey scripts here and there, but it’s so close to base that a stranger could use it. VMs for anything specialist, a couple of portable USB distros for presentation/demo/one-purpose OS environments, but for the most part I’ve just kept it simple and clean.
Ubuntu for many years, then back to Windows, then Arch for a year and now NixOS for about 1.5 years
Approaching 20 years full time., basically Ubuntu or Debian with xfce desktop for desktops. I know it’s not what all the cool kids are using or doing but it works. Going back nearly 30 years I was messing around and failing with all sorts of distros
RIP Mandrake my first ever Linux experience that actually worked
Using Arch for almost a decade now. Started with Ubuntu, fedora, mint but finally landed on arch. But am thinking about switching to gentoo; arch has gone too mainstream that im afraid it might be plagued with “age verification” virus
I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years. My first distro was Mandrake. I’ve always cime back to that line od distros.
I’m currently using Mageia on my laptop and gaming PC. I can’t think of anything I haven’t been able to run. My daughter uses the gaming PC to game and do school work. It’s a great distro with little headache.
I also Ubuntu Studio for recording music, playing electric drums, music productuon, and also gaming. I also have some hime automation set up on it.
I just found out that https://www.mandrakelinux.org/ is still a thing
Arch since 2018, mint for a few years before that, Ubuntu from 2008-2014
Debian. I like my computer to work.
On my server I run Ubuntu and on my desktop I’m running Linux mint because it just fucking works and I don’t got to mess with shit.
i used to use debian heavily in the past, but switched to ubuntu because of kkkernel liveeeeeee patching.
now that i have to switch back because of age verification; i find myself wishing that debian has live patching so i can go back to it.
I’ve been using Linux for more than 20+
First distro: Slackware, then Debian for many years, finally Fedora, since 2014, very happy user.
What I like in Fedora: the 6 months release provides bleeding edge experience without compromising stability.
Switched from Windows in 2002, did FreeBSD -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Arch. Finally switched to NixOS in 2012 and never looked back.
The builtin isolation meant I never actually got properly acquainted with Docker until I switched jobs and had to use it.
