For me it’s PeppermintOS.

I started my Linux adventure a few years ago, and haven’t owned a Windows PC since.

I currently use Arch on my main rig, and I wanted to install Linux on two old laptops that I found laying around in my house

I then remembered the first distro I ever used, which is PeppermintOS, and I was amazed at the latest updates they released.

They even have a mini ISO now to do a net-install with no bloat, with a Debian or Devuan base.

Sadly, I believe the founder passed away a few years ago, which is why I was really happy to see the continuation of this amazing project.

  • aramus@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    Whenever somebody recommends NixOS, I just want to spam the comments with Guix. I prefer configs I can understand, and I think lisp makes that easier. Other than syntax, the only thing I see is people complaining about the free-oftware-only. But the recently hyped distrobox solves that (together with the nonguix repo). Yet nobody recommends guix in all these “immutable” distro threads.

    In my opinion Guix is the best mix of:

    • Arch (rolling release),

    • NixOS (“immutable”, atomic updates , rollback, reproducible, declarative configs)

    • Gentoo (source code based, write your own package definitions for any source code you find),

    with some lispy syntax.

    • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.today
      1·
      1 year ago

      NixOS, and hopefully soon SnowflakeOS which makes it more approachable for more casual users.

      https://snowflakeos.org/

      Another user mentioned Guix, which I’d like to try soon to compare to NixOS.

      It’s hard to compete with how much there is in nixpkgs though… as much as I… a professional Haskell programmer… hate to acknowledge the realities of network effects.

      • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
        0·
        1 year ago

        So, I have only ever known Windows, but am becoming more and more Linux curious. I see all these different distros you guys talk about and I have to ask, do all the distros run any of the available software or would I have to try to try to find one that will run what I’m interested in running? If so which distro will run the available music production software? I’m sick of microshaft. Help a brother out?

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 year ago

          Welcome to the Linux community!

          There’s a certain set of us Linux users who cling to the adage “for beginners, distro doesn’t matter much.” A lot of the differences between distros are things under the hood that you won’t notice or care about. The main two things that will change your experience are the DE and the package manager.

          DE = Desktop Environment. The GUI, what it looks and feels like. This is a matter of personal taste, you can find DEs that look and work more like Windows, more like MacOS, or neither. Try out a few, pick which one you want. I like Cinnamon because they tend to put things where someone who’s used to Windows, but doesn’t really like Windows, would look for things. Again your choice of DE is personal taste.

          Package manager = app store. Think about smart phones, a major deciding factor is which app store(s) it has access to. My Samsung Galaxy has both the Google Play and Samsung Galaxy stores. If you buy a Pixel, you don’t get the Samsung store. If you buy an iPhone, you’re stuck with Apple’s App Store. Go back to what? 2014 or so and buy a Fire Phone, you’re stuck with Amazon’s app store. Same thing with Linux distros.

          In practice, most mainstream distros will support practically all Linux software in some way. I run Linux Mint, Mint comes with APT and Flatpak, and between the two I can find all the software I want. (Asterisk: video games, for which I have Steam). Other distros will have technically different but functionally similar package managers; on Arch you’d use Pacman, on Fedora you’d use RPM. The Steam Deck uses only Flatpak for user apps.

          So go with a fairly mainstream distro that has Flatpak support either out of the box or easily installed and you’ll be okay.

  • rodbiren@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Mint is surprisingly loved and disliked from what I have seen. Having used it since 2007 I am in the category that likes it for what it is. But I am somewhat surprised by the open hostility it gets for simply existing. Main arguments being that it is a dinosaur, uses X11, should not exist because anything not KDE or GNOME is just diluting desktop Linux and is part of the problem. It has no fancy corporate sponsor, it has a small team, and it for sure has warts, but you can claw Linux Mint from my cold dead hard drive because I have distro hopped like an addict and it just checks the boxes for me. It shows up and works, even on newer hardware with a little tweaking here and there, but I can use Nvidia, find network printers without effort, scan, install and update flatpak, backup the system, game, and get actual work done that is not fiddle farting around with esoteric configs all the time. I can post on actual forums with actual users on it and not some discord where someone will just post memes over my questions. I have a strong feeling it will exist for a long while given it’s history. And it is mind numbingly borning as an OS. I just sit down and compute, what a concept.

    • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
      0·
      1 year ago

      I tried it once, and it was hella impressive, but I didn’t stick with it, I don’t know why. It just seems a little too much for me.

      • Alex@feddit.ro
        0·
        1 year ago

        It kinda fucks up your FS (not in a data-loss way, but it gets really messy): it was showing 3.2TB… on a 509gb partition of a 1tb ssd. Heck, I only have 3TB in my whole PC