this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
58 points (95.3% liked)

Linux

55025 readers
880 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Just curious to know if anyone has been using the same distro for multiple years/decades and what or if you have it takes for you to want to switch to a different distro?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Defectus@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (2 children)

"We now added AI to the kernel"

[–] crumbguzzler5000@feddit.org 3 points 5 days ago

This would be 100% valid

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

Weird Al: Kernel Drivers

A parody kernel of Linux USB Support

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Well one day I heard about NixOS... And that's all it took

[–] dingleberrylover@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Sell it to me, please

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

Something going catastrophically wrong with my current installation in a way that I can't fix.

[–] LaterRedditor@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Saturday for some

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

I've been settling on Linux Mint more and more as my generic workhorse distro. I have the least amount of issues with it out of the box compared to any other desktop distro.

It's clean, relatively low bloat, includes codecs and drivers for basically everything I've ever needed to use/do, and Cinnamon's only crime as a DE is looking kind of boring. But it's easy to select a new theme, so not really a huge issue either.

I use a bunch of different distros for different purposes, but if you held a gun to my head and made me pick a distro I had to use exclusively for the rest of my life, it would be Mint with Cinnamon.

If something was to replace it, it would have to be even cleaner, simpler to setup, and have even better general stability and compatibility.

[–] JoeTheSane@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

A whim, usually.

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I used ubuntu for 10+ yr and switched because of firefox snap. To fedora. Wow it is so much better here

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I am

  1. Glad you had the courage to try something new
  2. Impressed you had your limit and stuck to it
  3. Relieved as a former security person that you're improving package validation and will reap the rewards even if you don't notice
  4. Disappointed it wasn't before some seriously sketchy shit has gone down with RH and trickled down to fedora.

Finally

  1. Overjoyed as fuck if it seemed like an easy switch, but please correct me there.
[–] ghost_towels@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Could you elaborate on the sketchy shit? I am literally about to switch from openSUSE to Fedora, is there anything I should be aware of? Thanks for your time.

[–] TerHu@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

id like to know too

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Eh, probably if Guix becomes significantly better I'll switch to it (from NixOS). I really like how seriously they take user freedom, bootstrapping (only 357 bytes of binary to bootstrap everything else from source!) and consistent user interfaces (scheme everywhere). But unfortunately the package repo is just not big and mature enough yet, and declarative configuration options are not as good as they are with NixOS. My job is also Nix-related, and that's another major reason I'm staying for now.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] SpicyToaster420@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 days ago

I’ve been in Pop!_OS for a lot of years now; and Ubuntu/Mint before that. The lack of updates in Pop!_OS (not Cosmic!) is starting to wear me thin; the U22.04 basis is starting to get a bit threadbare and their App Store has always been broken— but now it seems even more brokener.

The Cosmic Alphas don’t work well on my machine, Wayland is still pretty unstable and some of the apps I have to use just don’t work with it at all. I’ve got way too much to do to go and try to debug it or hack it or even give up and go try another distro. When they take Cosmic out of beta, if it doesn’t work for me I’m just going to drop and go back to hopping. Or worse, I may just go back to MacOS 100% except for when I’m working on some server-side shit.

[–] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Not sure... I really like Arch, except for one thing that is also a problem on most other distros : packages creating files everywhere and leaving a mess behind when uninstalled. I'd rather have them isolated like NixOS does, and being able to switch easily between several versions of the same package is neat. Declarative configs are also very cool... but I really don't want to use a weird language for making packages, I'm just stating to learn how that work and I like that Arch packages are very straightforward and easy to understand.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I half the point of package managers was so you could easily uninstall them. Do package managers usually not fully uninstall?

load more comments (1 replies)

Nix becomes extremely easy once you get the hang of the language. Much more straightforward then some cryptic bash

[–] Heavybell@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

If gentoo stopped being maintained, I guess I'd find something else.

[–] JGrffn@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

I'm on Bazzite, so I may be tempted to switch to SteamOS on at least one of my devices, but Bazzite covers pretty much all my bases currently, both for gaming and work. I have a laptop with EndeavourOS and I love it, been using it for about 2-3 years there, but I'm switching laptops soon to a framework so I'll also go with Bazzite there for consistency and due to the official support it has with framework laptops.

Honestly the experience I've had with these distros so far leaves me wishing for nothing more, and now with immutability and distro box I kinda don't see the point in changing to anything else unless Bazzite development dies out or they make a painfully stupid decision, which doesn't seem to be the case so far!

[–] sunshine@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

I usually try out a couple of new distros whenever I am either setting up a new computer, or something happens with my current machine that requires a fresh OS anyway.

I've been married to Pop!_OS for a couple of years now. however, for the past couple of months I've been booting exclusively into KDE Plasma on my desktop computer; almost everything works really well for me in that environment, except the built-in Pop!_OS stuff itself, such as the pop shop, does not work very well. so I might end up switching to a distribution that's built around KDE, such as KDE Neon.

I'm also pretty curious about the Nix package manager and the concept of immutable desktop systems, so I guess I might try NixOS at some point? I don't know much about it yet.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

Probably nothing. I'm currently in the process of starting to distrohop a lot. I want to try out lots of distros, for fun and in order to recommend distros to other people. I will probably eventually settle on arch or nixos though, the customization seams really awesome.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Nothing could get me to switch off gentoo at this point. It's so flexible that you can use package managers from other distros (if you're crazy and like to create problems for yourself). Creating your own packages is very easy with their ebuild system. In terms of the packages they offer the USE flags are an absolute killer feature that let you install only the parts of the program you want. They even have binary versions of larger programs like firefox or rust that you can install if you don't want to compile them.

[–] Cornelius@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Well technically with compilers like Rust, you need a Rust compiler to actually compile Rust for you. That's likely why they give binaries for such a thing.

Firefox though is a nice convenience.

[–] JTskulk@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Snap getting installed, ads when starting a shell. Basically the reasons I ditched Kubuntu.

[–] meekah@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] crumbguzzler5000@feddit.org 1 points 5 days ago

I feel this so much, if you want that experience you may as well be using Windows! What did you switch to?

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 3 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I used Fedora KDE from 2012 to 2023, then I moved to Fedora Kinoite because I like the idea of atomic distros. Don't know if that counts though since its mostly the same software, just delivered slightly differently (however you could argue that is the case for all distros)

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Modern desktop enviroment design, and seamless updates like in macOS

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Was a Ubuntu user from 9.10 until 20.04; snap shittyness caused me to hop around for a while. Settled on Mint a few years ago.

It's stable, gets out of my way and lets me get my work done.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 2 points 5 days ago

It has been a really long time (20? years) since I've been on nix. Kind of torn by Mint and Deb. I want the ease ootb but the flexibility of Deb.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago

I use Fedora Asahi Remix currently, and I want to switch to NixOS but am uncertain about the MacBook support, and even if it was good switching would take longer than it's worth unless my current installation stops working for whatever reason

[–] M137@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Shadow updating their Linux app to support anything other than Ubuntu 20.04...
It's the only reason I use it, and it's weird and bad that they only support that distro and version (which has reached EOL). I've talked to them about it and all they say is "We see the need from users for support of newer Ubuntu versions and other distros" which is such a nothingburger of an answer. I spent three days with several other distros and Ubuntu versions trying to figure out a fix but sadly never found one. I just wanna use Linux Mint or anything other than Ubuntu, especially a 5 year old version.

[–] Drito@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

I'm attracted by Alpine Linux, but it lacks an official way to use glibc for the programs that unfortunately use some glibc extension...

load more comments
view more: next ›