Linux is distinct in the sense that there are tons of distributions each with their own set of features. I'd like to hear what made you choose your specific distro.
Ubuntu, because I'm a scrub and I want things to just work for the most part
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Arch based distros or some Ubuntu based ones like POP!_OS. In the case of Arch I just like pacman and the Archwiki. Right now I'm actually using Manjaro though as it strikes (for me) a happy medium between freedom and convenience.
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I'm a Debian user, and I love the arch wiki. It elevated Linux documentation to an art form.
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Manjaro i3 CE was pretty slick until an update borked my kernel. Sticking to Ubuntu for a while.
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Arch and Debian
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Qubes, within that, flipping between Debian and Fedora
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Ubuntu because it has the most development on it. Red hat enterprise Linux comes close second due to the companies that offer support for it and its hard focus on security first.
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I would actually like to add android specifically the graphene OS for its focus on security, the companies that provide support for it, and for being maybe the linux distro with THE most development. Still hard 3rd place though for not having a command line.
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Shoutout to GrapheneOS!
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While not technically a "linux distro", I like Qubes. I heard about it by following Edward Snowden and Peter Todd.
Qubes has an interesting approach to security -- it uses the Xen hypervisor and some clever abstraction to help you sequestor different security levels of activity into different virtual machines.
So, for example, your password manager or secure documents archive would be hosted on a virtual machine that has no network access whatsoever.
Perhaps your activity requires a virtual machine which moves all internet traffic through tor that wipes all trace of activity after shut down -- theres a disposable anonymous browsing virtual machine for that.
In fact there are layers of vm's for networking -- the sys-net VM provides network and internet to a whonix (tor) VM or maybe a VM you configured to go through your VPN provider. Maybe you just want to raw dog the internet directly through your ISP for fast, non-critical traffic. Your client virtual machines can each be configured to use one of your many network vm's.
Inter-vm clipboard or file operations employ utilities that securely communicate between the virtual machines. Sussy PDF's, images, and whatnot can be safely transferred to an offline disposable virtual machine for safe viewing.
USB devices are accessible via a sys-usb virtual machine that you explicity manage device-by-device VM access to. Are you concerned about USB-port-HID-delivered attacks on your laptop? You can lock down keyboard and mouse usage to just your laptop keyboard and trackpad.
There's a lot more to qubes that I encourage people to look into, but I will caveat my enthusiasm for it briefly with these points:
  • be ready to read documentation or browse the Qubes community forums (which are very well-administrated and minimize much of the paranoia or social engineering that tends to plague other discussion platforms, like Matrix chat)
  • it's best that you are familiar with at least a moderate level of Linux administration, scripting, and troubleshooting
  • qubes is VERY finnicky with hardware: you will need an Intel core (or AMD equivalent) processor that supports specific virtualization functionality. It's best to check the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) before starting the install process
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This!
Though re: hardware, I haven't personally run into any issues with unsupported hardware in the past few years. The virtualization functionality that Qubes needs is widely available in modern desktops and laptops. Maybe if you had a really cheap one you'd run into issues.
The main annoyance re: hardware is that Qubes does want a lot of RAM due to the fact it's running multiple different OS's in parallel. The 8GB laptops many vendors want to sell you aren't really enough. 16GB is a good start; my laptop has 32GB and my desktop 64GB.
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Thanks, @petertodd!
I agree that 16GB is the floor.
I should have pointed out that Qubes virtualizing all the things wont be squeezing every ounce of performance out of the machine, but even mid-range laptops are serviceable. Recently installed on a Thinkpad with 6th gen Core i5 and 16GB of RAM, and it's running relatively well. Cold starting a disposable browsing session takes about 20 seconds (R4.1.1).
Re:Re: hardware, cheap laptops are my jam lol. Seriously, tho, of the handful of laptops I own, every one of them had some sort of Qubes suspend/wake or wifi issue that required troubleshooting. Referring to the HCL and the forums, prior to install, has been my most prudent predictor of success.
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Thanks!
I have not used Qubes but I have used xcp-ng (newest xen) in a production environment. I do know that the nsa has recommended for gov agencies to not use vms for the most secure systems as the vm guests can potentially attack each other's memory. I'll look into Qubes to see how it protects the guests from each other.
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I believe the argument goes that Xen hypervisor bare-betal virtualization is a much smaller attack surface than a hypervisor hosted by an operating system reliant upon constant administrative patching and hardening.
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Yep, I'm using 32 GB here, and have had to increase the memory allotment for my main qubes under settings->advanced many times. What's your biggest qube set to?
My main aggravation with it (being a noob) is local network. I have a NAS and a couple of RasPis that I use a lot, as well as other SATA drives on the same PC that all have to be found and mounted in different ways. Do you know of a quick way to do those or some kind of guide for interaction with them? Cheers.
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Straight up Debian
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I used Debian for 23 years, until it decided to try to robe me of my freedom to chose the init system, so I upgraded from Debian ascii to Devuan ascii and never looked back.
Alas the worse fork got to keep the original name, but the Devuan name grew on my, and I think it's cooler, haha.
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I didn't get caught up in the init wars. I learned systemd, and even though I still think its clunky, I can live with it.
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same, although i dont particularly like it, i see the idea behind it, and it's not bad, its just not fully mature, in some ways. oh well. :) is what it is, for now.
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Pop-os, because I am so used to Ubuntu and it was pre-installed on my system76 laptop and I stuck with it because of it's clean UI/UX.
My experimental setups are using NixOS, because despite its steep learning curve compared to a standard Linux distro, I love the declarative way of configuring a machine, that can "easily" be ported over to others with the assurance of running the same runtime environment...
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I love NixOS. I'm going to start running all my machines as NixOS. I was running a mix of Arch Linux and Ubuntu. The declarative configuration along with the great package availability is fantastic! I also really appreciate the documentation which is scattered but often very good. Documentation such as the OpenZFS install documentation is great for getting a mirrored setup running to protect a server from a disk going bad. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/NixOS/index.html#root-on-zfs
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Qubes (http://www.qubes-os.org) is simply the best for security & there is no argument about that. But it's hard to call it a 'distro' since what it really is, is a launch platform to use many distros side by side in virtual machines. Get a virus? Just close the window and re-open it, new machine. (!)
I wouldn't want to game on it though. And there is certainly a learning curve to using it. (I'm not totally thru that yet after 3 months!)
I've recently run across the full-featured ubuntu flavor "Pop! OS," (http://pop.system76.com) which is actually pretty awesome for creative folks, the scientific community, and other general normies. Better than Mint, which I've used for years now. My new favorite, in fact. I'm phasing Mint out of my other PCs but keeping Qubes on my work PC for security.
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There is also QubesOS and OpenBSD worth looking at
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Devuan, of course, because it's one of the very few which gives me the freedom to choose the init system (not tied to the invasive systemd mega-virus) as well as to chose whether I want to use any non-free packages or to have a 100% opensource OS.
I'd rather use only BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD and Haiku), of course, but I like btrfs too much to stop using Linux totally. I wish btrfs was ported to BSD and Haiku, and I'd say ta-ta to Linux in a heart beat.
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Made a mistake! Haiku isn't a BSD system, but a BeOS open source replacement, although I believe it is POSIX at least to a certain degree. Sorry about that!
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Have you considered FreeBSD with ZFS?
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Sure, I do use ZFS in FreeBSD and TrueNAS (and FreeNAS before, and NAS4Free), and I even tried it in Linux, but I don't like it as much as I like btrfs, so most of my servers, workstations, and laptops run Linux, and only a few run Open/Nez/FreeBSD or Haiku.
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I’ve used btrfs many times and always had hiccups. The latest experiment has been using it on Fedora as /home, which has been good, but I’m essentially using it as ext4 2.0 - not exactly a stress test.
I’ve used ZFS extensively and while it can be less flexible IMO it’s a direct consequence of its superior design.
I’m sympathetic to Jim Salters article [0] on the topic even though I’m still rooting for a modern GPL filesystem. Maybe bcachefs [1] will end up taking the crown…
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Debian. Things are a bit old, but generally "just work". I use it mostly due to familiarity, I started using Linux with Ubuntu at version 5.10. Switched to Debian after working at an tiny wireless ISP that used Debian everywhere. After that no going back, I'd learned too much.
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Fedora because I got brain washed years ago by redhat.
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Fedora. It works, is reliable, great experience ootb.
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Have used both Pop!_OS and Ubuntu. Pop!_OS is my daily driver now and I'm really enjoying it. The extra features and UX improvements make it feel like a polished easy to use OS.
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I'm gonna be the first one to say openSUSE TumbleWeed of course. simple, easy, rolling release, RPM, YaSt, an alternative to Fedora and Arch so to speak
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Anyone try NixOS?
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Yes! I love NixOS. Nix-Bitcoin is also available and great for running Bitcoin servers.
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Cool, interested to learn more. Seems such a clean approach compared to other distros. Attempting to get the NixOS stable boot image working on USB today.
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Did you get the USB working? I'm setting up a new node on Nuc with two m.2 harddisks using ZFS. OpenZFS has good documentation on how to do this.
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Yup, still configuring things, haven't tried ZFS yet.
X11/Wayland performance seems worse than most other distros. Any tips on that?
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I work at Red Hat so I for desktop I use Fedora. Why? It was a pretty easy switch. If I were to try another distro it would be Arch for the philosophy of building from the ground up.
For servers I almost always go with Debian or Ubuntu.
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I use trisquel, specifically the kde version triskel, because it's free as in freedom™, and relatively easy to use, even for a dumbass like me.
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Depends on the use case. For example:
  • Debian stable for servers
  • A rolling distro for Desktop (such as OpenSuse Tumbleweed or something Arch based)
But if I had to only pick one, Debian.
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Manjaro is an easy to use Arch Linux distro, you can benefit from a large collection of free and non-free (be careful..) community built packages with the AUR package manager.
Linux Mint is a downstream distro from Ubuntu, with some useful add-ons, it has a less corporate feel and more community based. You can download the most lightweight desktop environment with it XFCE. It also doesn't use the snap package manager by default that is considered less safe.
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Ubuntu LTS are my standard go-to. I've had experience with RH/Fedora based distros as well as Archlinux (I enjoy messing around with ricing an old laptop) but even when I'm not using a window manager, I often go back to Ubuntu, it's like an old pair of jeans.
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LFS (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org)! If that counts as a "distro". I've never had a system so stable than one that I built myself. Arch has been the closest to something I like that is an actual distribution. For a long time I struggled with the package managers on the popular distributions dictating how bleeding edge I could be. I want to build the latest and greatest versions of some projects before the package maintainers get around to it. BUT when I do that, the package system in whatever distro I'm on loses track of whatever I just built and doesn't count it as a dependency met for something else later. I get why this can't work.. I just don't like it. So I did LFS for over a decade.. but building every little thing from scratch and then keeping it up to date with every dependency along the way takes way more time from your life than you like when you have a job and family! So now I (reluctantly) live the distro lifestyle. If I'm looking to run a server, then I like the Red Hat based distros. If I just want to mess around, I like Arch.
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May I just say wow hot damn this community has a lot of linux folks!
I guess it's hard to be security-minded enough to protect your coins and at the same time keep drinking the windows/mac kool-aid.
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I used SuSE exclusively in the early 2000's now, Ubuntu.
I have no preference, I just need it to work... Happy to experiment with new Linux flavours
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Gentoo. Customizability.
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I have in the past choose Arch Linux and Ubuntu for a variety of workstations and servers. Going forward I'm going to be picking all NixOS. I was skeptical of NixOS in the past but after trying Nix-Bitcoin I can see the appeal of using a declarative configuration for maintaining systems.
NixOS is does have a steep learning curve but for me it is worth it. I still have much I can learn but I know enough to safely maintain my systems which is what is important to me.
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debian. it always works, and always has, and i've been using it since version 3.0.
I've tried a bunch of other things, but they never stack up the same way, and usually drive me up the wall.. even running debian testing is better than the typical ubuntu experience.
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Only ever used Ubuntu through VMWare on a Mac.
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Debian. Switched to some of its derivatives for short periods (ubuntu,kali) but always returned back to the roots of free software
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ubuntu. Been using it for 10 years plus and never felt the need to switch
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EndeavourOS, principalmente por su gestor de paquetes Pacman, su wiki y gestor de AUR. Me gusta también su personalización y su version de GNOME que es muy limpia. Es básicamente un Arch personalizado que me gusta mucho.
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FreeBSD. Because: 03:20:40 up 1042 days, 19:12, 1 user, load average: 4.16, 4.09, 4.23
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Fedora, because I want to LARP as a nerd even though I'm not even a dev, lol.
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Gentoo is no more classy? :(
Arch/Pop_OS here, little time to compile lately.
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PopOS, because I’ve found it to be more stable than plain ubuntu
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PopOS Ubuntu. Getting off windows is hard!
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Fedora because I used to participate into the project...
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I like the adaptability and stability of mint.
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Ubuntu, most friendly
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Elementary OS. I like the default UX :)
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I use Arch btw
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I end up using debian based distros the most, but my favorite will always be slackware.
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Haiku os. But no crypto wallet support.
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One problem with Linux is the library compatibility problems. There's certain programs that require running an old distro because the program only supports libc5 (Linux mint comes to mind).
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Ubuntu Server
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I like to use MS DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11
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(slow clap)
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