What Distros do you want to shoutout and why you think they are doing well/are the best at what they do?

I am curious what is out there and have only had some experience with Linux Mint, SteamOS, and Pop!_OS

  • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I don’t know about the best but Debian has been going strong for 32 years and the backbone of many distros. Its MVP in my book.

    • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Whats the purpose of gentoo over arch and when do you draw the line of diminishing returns? It sounds like gentoo is a lot harder for not much more reward.

  • iopq@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    NixOS by far has the most momentum right now.

    Just check the non-unique package counts:

    https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/nonunique

    More than 80K packages that exist in other distros, more than all of packages in AUR combined with 90%+ being the newest version in unstable

    And you can run unstable without an issue since you can downgrade individual packages whenever

    • Tenderizer78@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Popular equals more money and more interest. In other words popularity and quality feed into each-other (not 1:1, but more than 1:0).

  • Peasley@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    Fedora has gotten much more stable and reliable in the past decade. 15+ years ago it was generally regarded as nice but unstable. I’d say nowadays for a moderately technical user it offers a better experience overall than Ubuntu or Mint. There are still unfortunately some pitfalls for new users (media codecs come to mind). In fact, the only issues i’ve had in most of those 10 years have been related to GNOME plugins or the Plasma 6 transition, problems that also occured on Ubuntu.

    I have 2 computers: one running Ubuntu, one Fedora. This has been my setup for over a decade. I have lately been finding Ubuntu more and more cumbersome to use, with less of the “just works” experience i remember having in the past. Perhaps the focus on cloud computing has caused the desktop to languish a bit.

    I would like to try Pop!_OS, but i haven’t had a free evening for a while to do a backup and reinstall on one of my computers. It’s also been a while since i used Mint, so my impression could be out of date.

    The nice thing about Linux overall (compared to macOS and Windows) is that each update generally improves on the experience. On commercial platforms the experience gets worse as often as it gets better, usually both at the same time. GNOME and Plasma are both overall much better than they were a decade ago (despite a few regressions) while macOS and Windows are both worse in general.

    • CairhienBookworm@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then switched to Linux Mint for a while and dabbled with Manjaro for a hot minute, and ultimately found my home on Fedora Workstation for the past several years. Once set up with rpmfusion and 3rd party codecs it’s a very solid and reliable distribution. The new atomic projects (and derivatives) look very interesting too.

  • Sem@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 months ago

    Fedora Silverblue – a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.

  • Loucypher@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 months ago

    If you leave alone the haters, Ubuntu is doing great. Mint LDME also fantastic if you wish to have a rock solid base.

  • commander@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    The whole of Fedora atomic distros are interesting in an exercise in getting good with layering and distrobox. Pop_os 24.04 just to see if a third pillar of Linux frontends with GTK and Qt is viable. People are always pissy about Manjaro but they seem to have an interesting present being pre installed on the Orange Pi Neo handheld

  • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 months ago

    EndeavourOS, it’s Arch with a familiar installer, several useful helper scripts, and a friendly community.

  • bonegakrejg@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’m currently using Pop!_OS, which is a great desktop distro.

    I was using MX Linux a lot which is amazing for both times when you need a portable distro with lots of features and when you need something that will still run well on older machines.

  • Tenderizer78@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’m not an expert but …

    • I think Fedora and OpenSUSE are the best (with Fedora leading). Well-funded and they take security seriously.
    • Arch and Bazzite are filling specific niches.
    • ReactOS and NixOS I think are in beta, but I’m not paying much attention to either.
    • In terms of desktop environments I think KDE Plasma leads the pack. MATE is strong on accessibility though.
  • mrcleanup@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    Garuda absolutely nails it with their helper app that sets you up with a choice of popular software, handles updates, and gives you easy access to common settings.

    It makes it very approachable for people new to Linux.

  • jfx@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    3 months ago

    Tried Manjaro and Opensuse for a presentation machine lately: issues over issues, that just shouldn’t exist on new installation (problems with USB disks, input). Came back to Debian asap because Debian, weirdly, "just works ™ now.