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.
Idk if this counts but I found my home in a less popular distro, kind of.
I’d tried a few back in the early '00s. While my friends were experimenting with drugs and shit, I was experimenting with Linux distros and virtual machines lmao.
I started with Suse. I’m not too sure what made me switch or where I heard about this one from, but I eventually moved on to Mepis. It was originally rooted in Debian, then moved to Ubuntu before being discontinued.
My good friend at the time was big into Debian. I felt like pure Debian was too much for me to take on as a noob, but I wanted to be able to reach out to him for help now and again when I needed it. Switching to Mepis was pretty much a no-brainer. It was easy enough to get accustomed with. I was still mostly a Windows user, so the transition to KDE was simple. I’m old enough to remember the days of DOS so bumping around a CLI was also not that big of a deal.
The hardest parts were understanding how to install software (the concept of the repository was new to me), and the basic terminal commands. From there I was mostly good.
I remember when Mepis moved to Ubuntu, there were a lot of groans - myself included. But ironically, I’ve been a pretty much dedicated to Ubuntu for my linux stuff for ages. These days I’m running it with i3wm and I have no major complaints.
To be completely honest, though, I still don’t really fully understand the standard file layout… I get it conceptually, but then stuff gets so fragmented - binary files in usr instead of bin, how to track where installed stuff ends up, etc.
I’ll figure it out one day, when I really need to… But that time hasn’t come yet. A quick find in the terminal always gets me what I need.
OpenMandriva. It is the official successor from Mandrake/Mandriva and has a rolling release edition called ROME which has brand new software. It is independent too and does not belong to a corporation.
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Why are people still using anything other than Debian and Redhat tho?
Arch and its derivatives (and once, NixOS) are the only distros that provide me with the range of software I need. But guess what? NixOS has some issues if you don’t want to go deep into it, and for me they mostly stemmed from the immutability of it. And Arch and derivatives are all rolling release, when I don’t want a rolling release. I want a machine I can keep running for 10-15 days or more and not have to bother with the idea of updates.
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?
- Atomic updates + super quick and easy rollback support (already saved my butt) by rebooting and selecting another image.
- Clear separation between “my” stuff and the OS, which is really intuitive.
- Feels clean.
- I can rebase anytime I want (switch to KDE, a WM, and so on) with one command and no residual data or bugs.
- Self maintaining with automatic updates in the background.
- Unlimited software: not an advantage of SB, but you have to use distrobox sometimes, and I would never discovered that tool without!
- AND, a project called uBlue . You can create or download custom images, like a SteamOS/ Nobara-clone, Vanilla with QOL-changes, almost all DEs (e.g. XFCE, which is unsupported by default), and so on.
I’m really in love with Silverblue, everybody should check it out!
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!
Garuda Linux, if that counts. It’s the best and most beginner friendly arch based distro imho. I need wine-staging and it comes packaged for arch which is very nice since I keep having troubles with it on non arch based disteos. On debian for instance it broke with every update, damn winehq install.
