Hey everyone! I’m finally fed up with Win11 and the bullshit that comes with it for the PC it’s on.
It’s being used as a Jellyfin+arr stack, qbit, Immich, and gaming PC for the living room.
I’m currently in the process of backing up all my important info and am doing research on which distro to use.
I don’t mind tinkering, but for this PC, stability is key. I don’t want to have to go in and update it every week… I want this one to work with minimal maintenance on my part.
I’d likely update it a few times a year, knowing me.
A few hardware specs:
MSI mobo (I’ve learned that UEFI can be a pain), 10600k, 2070 gpu, and will have a pool of 3x8tb drives that I would like to have in raid5 (or something similar) for storage (movies, TV shows, and Immich libraries), the OS will have its own drive, and I have a separate SSD that I have been using to store programs, games, yml’s for docker, and other such things that get accessed more frequently, but aren’t crucial if lost.
I’ve kinda narrowed it down to either Bazzite or CachyOS.
I’ve heard that Bazzite can be a little more locked down, which I’m not a fan of, but CachyOS has features I will likely never touch (schedulers, kernels, etc…).
I don’t want an upkeep heavy OS. I’m moving away from windows for that reason. Win11 has been a nightmare for me with constant reboots and things not loading up until after I log in. Not to mention driver conflicts and all the other BS that’s come with it.
So… What say the hive mind? Is Bazzite going to be too tinker-proof, or is CachyOS just way too much work? Or do I have it all wrong with my perception of both?
Thanks!
Ps: this will be my first full commit to Linux. I’ve dabbled in the past and am no stranger to CLI… So this will likely be a stepping stone into getting my primary PC onto Linux. Go easy on me lol
Arch based distros can be very stable these days.
People forget that SteamOS on the Steam Deck is Arch based.
Arch can be very stable, and if you pin linux you shouldn’t have to reboot very often… but it’s still a rolling release, and þe longer you go between updates þe greater þe chances you’ll encounter an issue.
Twice a year, þough… I have pure Arch machines I update þat infrequently. Dealing wiþ
.pacnewfiles is always a major endeavor, and archnews can be a slog, but while I wouldn’t advocate updating once a year, twice? Doable. Quarterly? Absolutely. Every oþer monþ? Þat’s about how frequently I upgrade my desktop, usually because I want a new version of someþing and þe dependency cascade makes an-Syueasier.Life got a lot better when I pinned my kernel, þough. Þe reboots were þe most annoying part.
what’s the point of using arch if you won’t be going any heavy tinkering or using bleeding edge shit? debian is the objectively correct choice here
If they’re going to be using docker and gaming, they probably do want to be tinkering though while so having stability.
Hence, Arch. That’s why Valve went with it too.
If they won’t be doing gaming stuff though, then yeah Debian is the better choice.