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I could never decide, even after 20 years. I started in 1998 with Mandrake and KDE 1.0. I can't remember what I moved to after that but somewhere in there, early on I tried Slackware (on floppy) if I remember correctly. I spent the next 20 years bouncing around and could never settle.
I stopped using Linux as a desktop but still use it every day in VMs, both at work and at home. Interestingly enough, I am using Slackware as my home Linux of choice. I set it up as my "hack box" because I am a pen tester by trade and use my home lab to practice and do research. I only use a few specialized tools and they are all available as SlackBuilds so it was easy.
Slackware doesn't have systemd and is very simple for me: cli only and it's fast and easy to maintain because it's very static. I am not to opposed to systemd, but I wanted to keep things simple.
My favorite distros for a desktop have been Arch and probably OpenSuse, with a mention for Void as well. Arch because it is so flexible and the package manager is a Swiss army knife. OpenSuse Leap for me was the best KDE implementation I have seen and worked very well for the most part. Void is very much like Slackware in that is is dead simple, rocket fast and easy to maintain.
You mentioned your second favorite was Arch. Any big reasons for that? I find myself at their wiki quite often.
I like the "get out of my way and just let me work" of Arch. I like that it doesn't automatically enable every service that it installs. I like that it doesn't have a bunch of gui helpers for everything. I like that it doesn't try to force you to use gui tools for stuff. It just goes about running and letting you manage it however you want, without getting in your way. Given I use Debian a lot and how old everything tends to be on that, I do appreciate the fact that Arch is kept nice and up to date. Yes, there's pretty much always broken packages due to the nature of the OS, but they're usually fixed quite quickly since it's usually an upstream issue, not a Arch-specific issue.
Selfishness and just works on my oldy gear. Plus. The developer adopted me online.
Cuz when it get's down to it.
It is all about me.
Good thing I got a conscience and continue to pay it forward. Cuz if the developer did not teach me. Drool would probably crust up on the side of my mouth looking at this screen.
That wouldn't help anyone.
Edit: I also will say that through the years. This distro I run has developed ludicrous speed with the usb changes and other custom scripts in /usr/local/bin.
Lat Christmas my 15-year-old hard drive finally died and I bought a new computer — the old 32-bit AMD only supported one web browser. CentOS 8 still hadn't managed to get an Xfce version finished, so I decided to look for something different after 20 years of Red-Hattery. I didn't want anything Debian based, SUSE is almost as tied to KCE as Red Hat is to Gnome, and I certainly didn't want a "tinkerer's distro" like Arch or Slackware, so I chanced using PCLinuxOS — and I'm happy. For a rolling-release, it has very few problems. Once a new version of python-pillow upset Pysol, but that was sorted in 24 hours. Currently some people are having trouble with the Nvidia driver, but I'm inclined to think that any Linux user who gets Nvidia is asking for trouble!
The next question will be what to do about my 32-bit non-PAE laptop now Xubuntu is obsolescent. Grit my teeth and use Debian, or treat myself to a new(ish) computer? — it must have a track-point, not a touch-pad.
Last edited by DavidMcCann; 07-31-2020 at 09:53 AM.
Distribution: KDE Neon, Mageia, Kubuntu, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Mint KDE, Slackware, Arch, Sabayon, Debian, Devuan
Posts: 41
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by KGIII
That's a lot of distros. I'd get confused with that many. Why KDE?
Well, sometimes I got confused when I dualbooted just 2 Linux distros, then I got fine with this and began to dualboot 4 distros, and then more, and more. ─ Anything you start step by step, you get used to. ─ I have labeled my partitions as Linux1, Linux2... Linux12, also Home1, Home2... Home12, and I keep them visible at Conky (see Attachment).
It was the way I have found to gradually try Kubuntu, while keep working with Windows, ─ and after Windows, to try other distros, while keep working with Kubuntu as my "main" distro. No hurry. I had to reorganize my workflow and adapt it to Kubuntu, as far as my workflow had been organized and adapted to Windows, before (I have done this also from 8bit Apple II+ to CP/M, then to MS-DOS 16bit "PC-IBM", before. I was not born within Windows).
Back in 2016 I finally got my workflow completely adapted to Kubuntu and removed Windows. What to do with this empty space? Added KDE Neon to my dualboot.
Back in 2017 I finally got KDE Neon and Mint KDE so useful to me as Kubuntu, and there was 2 real disasters ─ for the first and last time, until now. ─ I have lost Mint and KDE Neon installations. No problem! I just kept working with Kubuntu, until I had a time to reinstall Mint KDE and KDE Neon.
For this time, I was just beginning to try non-debian distros (Manjaro, openSUSE, Mageia), but I still couldn't do all my work in none of them.
Why not VM? First, I hadn't enough RAM + CPU. In addition, I felt not secure to put all the eggs in one basket. By having a fully operational 2nd Linux, I could keep working even if I got some disaster with my "main" Kubuntu. Well, indeed I finally had 2 disasters, only, not with Kubuntu.
Why KDE? Well, I have started with KDE on Kurumin Linux, and when it was discontinued, it was natural to use Kubuntu, with a minimal adaptation. Then I have tried Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE, Xfce, ─ always for a long time, thanks to dualboot, ─ and found no reason to leave KDE.
Quote:
You mentioned your second favorite was Arch. Any big reasons for that? I find myself at their wiki quite often.
Yes, most of us frequently find ourselves learning something at Arch Wiki. It is very fine, and it was a reason to try Arch.
I have installed Arch Linux back in 2017, using a very easy "Revenge Installer" (now called "Zen Installer"), and that Arch installation presented zero problem to me, until January 2020 (curiously, I had had a few problems with Manjaro, before replace it with Arch). Dualbooting other distros, I had all the time to learn and feel comfortable with Arch. This year, with a new PC desktop, I finally installed Arch the "arch way".
openSUSE Leap worked fine for 3 years, through 3 upgrades, and I finally upgraded it to Tumbleweed. There were 2 or 3 problems, but it was very easy to restore previous snapshots and get it working again. This year, in the new hardware, I have installed Tumbleweed. But back in 2017, it took a long time before I feel comfortable with it.
I have tried Fedora 2 times, before to get it fully useful to me last year. Also, I tried Mageia for 2 years, before to get it 100% useful to me, last year.
Void has been a grateful surprise. It seemed hard, so it was the last distro I have tried, last year, and worked fine since the first moment. I could easily say that Void quickly became my 2nd best distro... if I could decide what could be the first ;-)
Last edited by Flavio R. Cavalcanti; 07-31-2020 at 12:17 PM.
I like that it doesn't automatically enable every service that it installs. I like that it doesn't have a bunch of gui helpers for everything. I like that it doesn't try to force you to use gui tools for stuff. It just goes about running and letting you manage it however you want, without getting in your way. Given I use Debian a lot and how old everything tends to be on that, I do appreciate the fact that Arch is kept nice and up to date...
...and rolling! In a way it's way more comfortable than a release distro.
I could sign everything you wrote there. Signature material.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timothy Miller
Yes, there's pretty much always broken packages due to the nature of the OS, but they're usually fixed quite quickly since it's usually an upstream issue, not a Arch-specific issue.
This is not my experience, and keep wondering why people say that so often.
I suspect it's the 3 large DE's that tend to break sometimes.
I use a simple openbox setup.
...and rolling! In a way it's way more comfortable than a release distro.
I could sign everything you wrote there. Signature material.
This is not my experience, and keep wondering why people say that so often.
I suspect it's the 3 large DE's that tend to break sometimes.
I use a simple openbox setup.
I don't know that I've EVER not had at least 1 broken package in Arch. Usually not KDE packages, although it has been a few times this year. But also quite a few other packages. Last year firmware was a major issue, with the firmware for ath10k getting broken 4 or 5 times.
It (Slackware) was good to me in a time of great need and turmoil (due to myself being dumb and not keeping a strict enough backupping regiment), and I don't forget kindness like that.
The way it was utterly obedient, logical and, most of all, worked perfectly caused me to be unable to switch to anything else afterwards.
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