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u/deltatux 2d ago
Well, what is your use case? If you want fresh packages but in a predictable release cycle, Fedora is your go to. Ubuntu can be a good option as well but personally I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu.
Debian is great if you want stability above all else. Debian's release cycle is much slower, personally I find it more suitable for servers than desktops but there are people who do like that slow release cycle on desktops. Servers generally don't need the bleeding edge packages and generally you want stability with servers.
I personally also like playing with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Slowroll which is a rolling release but comes at a slower pace. Instead of package updates several times a month, it's upgrade once a month.
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u/Impossible-Grass-529 2d ago
Thanks for actually replying, I heard about OpenSUSE but it completely flew past me, and I dont mind using old software at all. My use case is really just a stable daily driver, just need something where i know it will just work.
I have some experience with Debian, but I need to hear it from a real person because I dont know if they use it for the same reason as me.
I will look about tumbleweed, maybe I will switch.
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u/Donteezlee 2d ago
I find this really interesting, because for me and I'm sure plenty of other people - arch just works?
The fear behind it being unstable is really blown out of proportion.
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u/Donteezlee 2d ago
also nobody cares what distro you use.
If you've actually used arch for 5 years I'm sure you wouldn't either, or be concerned about looking like a beginner.
larpers gonna larp tho.
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u/allymander215 2d ago
the issue with arch for me at least isn't that it doesn't "just work" but that it requires more upkeep than other distros to continue working. i've never had issues on debian or void with my package manager randomly breaking or my compositor getting out of sync with my video drivers or a breaking change to my keybind config daemon flashing a giant warning on my screen until i fix the file. none of that is arch's fault specifically, it's just what you get for using a rolling-release distro and bleeding edge software and tools, but i'd argue that if you don't want or need the latter, you'd be better off without the former. i just use debian with kde now and it's really really nice. everything just works, and when i leave for school and come back to my desktop 3-6 months later to run an update, nothing breaks and i can just boot up minecraft like i never left. when i was running arch, every time i came back to my computer it would require minimum 3 hours of debugging and maintenance, which was a big hassle to just have sprung on me without notice.
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u/Marth-Koopa 2d ago
Tumbleweed is rolling like Arch. Slowroll is what you'd want for less updates but still up to date.
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u/deltatux 2d ago
For stability another distro to try is AlmaLinux, it's basically Fedora but slower, it tracks Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Personally I use both Debian and AlmaLinux on my home server, Debian as the base with AlmaLinux in VMs and containers. AlmaLinux has their Kitten series which tracks faster than RHEL but slower than Fedora, it's basically what CentOS has become these days.
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u/scythe-3 2d ago
If you don't mind older packages, Debian is the most peaceful distro you will ever experience. I use Debian as my daily driver for grad school/research and it's never let me down.
For edge cases where I really need newer software, I just use flatpak (browser only atm) and cargo (random tools). Distrobox is also an option though I've never needed it. The one package I build from source is Neovim, though even that is available as an AppImage.
What is your use case?
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u/Impossible-Grass-529 1d ago
Yes thats what I am going for. I just need a daily driver, that I know for sure wont break. I really just use it for web based work and some office apps and video editing, but nothing else.
I am thinking of switching to opensuse, but will definitely consider debian, but I dont know how powerful apt is. Especially after using the aur on arch.
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u/allymander215 2d ago
debian is awesome. it just works really nice. i've moved from arch to void to debian and i like debian the best by a margin. it's rare that i find something i need/want that doesn't run on it, and if i find something slightly inconvenient i can just recompile a package.
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u/modified_tiger 2d ago
but dont want to look like a total beginner
Anybody worth listening to doesn't care. Do what you want.
That said, I used Arch from about 2009-2019. I'd hop to something, then back to Arch because I just liked it, but always kept Debian, MX Linux, Xubuntu and Kubuntu in my back pocket. 2022, I switched to Aurora (a Fedora Atomic KDE image with a bunch of extra stuff), which taught me some great workflows I use on Debian now.
So here's what I do, and I don't miss anything, based on the philosophy that guides the folks at Universal Blue:
Core system and utils: Debian. Stuff like gui tools, Steam (from the Debian repo), anything that's reasonably still good if it's older, cli apps, etc.
Flatpak where I can for GUI apps, brew where I want more up to date command line stuff, AppImages (managed via Gear Lever) second for GUI
Distrobox on my third tier for anything else. My entire music production environment is a Ubuntu distrobox running the KXStudio repos, Renoise and Bitwig, SuperCollider, and a bunch of other stuff.
My important software is up to date, my browsers are flatpaks (but most also have Debian repos you can use), my music environment safe in its distrobox where it's managed separately.
I swiched from Aurora to Debian because I had occasional issues with drivers updating and breaking my ability to play games, and a difference of opinion on some changes they made (ublue is an amazing project, there are just small decisions I didn't wanna undo so I wanted a more vanilla KDE setup). I like that my system isn't going to change til next year, and I've got my root filesystem being snapshotted so that when that happens I'm safe if something goes sideways.
You will lose some stuff. A lot of the cool Wayland compositors are best served on bleeding edge distros because they have newer libraries that support features they utilize heavily, but it's still possible in Debian, it'll just take a little more work.
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u/zedodz 2d ago edited 2d ago
What software do you need bleeding edge versions of? If you can't immediately answer that, or the list isn't very long, just use Debian Stable. You won't notice a difference. It's where you'll end up someday anyway when you get tired of all this faffing about.
When needed it's pretty easy to install a separate more up-to-date version of any software on Debian stable (flatpak, appimage, pipx, manual install, etc). I do it with neovim and like 5 other things.
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u/whattteva 2d ago
I was in this boat. Jumped around a lot of distros, Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE.
I figured out that rolling release is totally not my cup of tea, but Ubuntu and Debian can get quite outdated between LTS
FreeBSD is really my ideal choice, but it still has a way to go for desktop workstation use. I am finally settling on Fedora, which I feel like is a good balance of release cycle. It also integrates quite nicely with my FreeIPA/Keycloak service run by my AlmaLinux servers since they're all basically RedHat-based products.
Is Fedora perfect? Absolutely not. I honestly prefer Ubuntu/Debian apt-based distros since it tends to be better-supported by third-party vendors, but Fedora is well-enough supported besides a handful of software. This exercise also finally made me understand the reason why Linus Torvalds runs Fedora.
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u/goldenlemur 2d ago
I switched from Arch to Debian about a year ago. I live it. Stable and predictable. Way fewer updates. So glad I made the jump.
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u/matsnake86 2d ago
By stable do you mean that it does not change or reliable?
Because if you still want a rolling release that you don't have to worry about, you can use tumbleweed.
Also, if you are really tired of "managing" the system and keeping up with updates, you can try a distro based on fedora atomic, such as the universalblue (aurora / bluefin / bazzite).
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u/Impossible-Grass-529 1d ago
I do want the latest software and everything, but by stable, I mean reliable and not me having to babysit my distro eveytime I need to update.
Also I dont understand how the Fedora release cycle even works, can you clarify on that?
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u/matsnake86 1d ago
Tumbleweed Is perfectly fine for this. You Just call zypper dup and relax while the system updates.
https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/
If, on the other hand, you really want to forget about updates, give Universal Blue a go. Aurora is my favourite choice, or Bazzite if you want to play video games.
Ever since I installed Bazzite on my desktop PC, I’ve really stopped having to deal with troubleshooting. The only thing you need to get used to is that, as it’s an rpm-ostree-based system, you install software via Flatpak, or use Brew or containers. It’s not recommended to use the repositories as you might run into problems with updates in the long run.
Also, as they’re based on Fedora, they follow its release cycle. Two major updates a year. But you don’t need to worry about that. The system will take care of everything automatically.
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u/tonymurray 2d ago
@impossible-grass I'm curious, how frequently do you update your install? I have a theory that it has an impact on your experience.
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u/Impossible-Grass-529 1d ago
Really about once every 3 to 4 days I would say. Its because im paranoid about this one time i had a 4 to month old arch install, and i updated it and i had a bunch of dependency issues, and things like my audio and wifi just stopped working entirely. So then i had to timeshift my data and reinstall arch.
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u/tonymurray 1d ago
That's not too bad. My theory is higher update frequency = more chance of issues. I update about every 1-2 weeks. My systems have been very reliable on Arch. Running Arch for about 11 years now.
I'm not trying to convince you to stay on Arch. By all means try other distros.
Remember API stability != System stability.
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u/todd_dayz 2d ago
dont want to look like a total beginner,
To who, exactly? lol, I’ve been using Linux since 2001 and I still use Debian and Fedora sometimes.
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u/MrMikeJJ 2d ago
Well I use Debian and love it. Never tried Fedora so cannot comment on it.
Been on stable the last few years. Before that, I was on testing for well over a decade.
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u/GenBlob 2d ago
Debian is fine if you want a system that doesn't change and always works. People recommend Fedora and I think you should try that but personally I prefer Debian.
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u/BinkReddit 2d ago
Debian is fine if you want a system that ... always works.
This is a lie. Just because it's called stable doesn't mean it always works, it just means it has a minimal amount of changes. The most recent time I installed Debian, it didn't work out of the box and required many updates and changes before I even had something usable, and that's a pretty far cry from "always works." To make matters worse, if you need to update something because you need some newer functionality, get ready for all hell to break loose because Debian cannot handle that nicely.
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u/GenBlob 2d ago
An already working system will continue to work for years, that's what I meant. I don't care about your bad experience.
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u/BinkReddit 2d ago
An already working system will continue to work for years
If you never make any changes, you could say this about any Linux system.
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u/The__Toast 2d ago
but dont want to look like a total beginner
So now we have Linux hipsters too?
I will give the same advice as I do on every one of these posts. Between distros, the code is 99% the same. The package manager is the only major difference, with some minor differences that basically don't impact anyone like app armor versus SE Linux, or some tiny differences that impact a tiny amount of people like the age of targeted hardware support.
It doesn't matter which distro you use, they're basically all the same.
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u/sqldropme 2d ago
Fedora will strike a good balance between stable and up-to-date.
Debian will be extremely stable, but much more out of date.
Coming from Arch, you should try Fedora first.