Hello everyone,

After I researched a lot I thought I might ask here for opinions.

After using Zorin OS for more than a year I wanted something more up to date.
And because many people praise Fedora and call it one of the best, I installed it.
I was disapointed to say the least. So many troubles after a clean install with erros coming up every boot and no easy way to switch between integrated and dedicated GPU.
A battery time of 1h 50min without doing anything while on Zorin I got around 4 to 6 hours watching Youtube/livestreams.

That's the Story so far. NOW

- I want a Distro with good efficiency (low average Load)
- tools to manage GPUs.
- The latest VANILLA GNOME (within a month of a new Gnome release)
- No bloat (a minimal ISO is an option)
- Not Arch (I was thinking about Manjaro but I heard they mess with things).
- Not declarative (if possible)
- A Distro that has stable Development/finances behind it (Just want to be sure it will get the new Gnome every 6 months and other important updates reliably quick)

These are my thoughts..

openSUSE Tumbelweed
CentOS
Solus Gnome
OpenMandriva EDIT: Has no Gnome (Mandriva Linux did)

Clear Linux would be a real first Place contender but it seems the Desktop is not the priority anymore so I am not sure about that.

If Ubuntu had a Vanilla Gnome version
If Gnome had its own Distro (I know you can install GNome OS Nightly now on Hardware but it still is not a real Distro)

Any other suggestions and experiences with the Distros I mentioned?

Appreciate all the Input

Gentoo of course. You build it exactly how you like it, Gentoo is nothing but a set of tools to build your own Linux.

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Isn't Genotoo something for experienced Linux users? I am not new to Linux but I am just a little above the average Computer user. But thanks for the Idea I will look into it

What does "Not declarative" mean in this context?

"A Distro that has stable Development/finances behind it" rules out CentOS - there is no development, and v7 has under 2 years of maintenance left. (v8 was EOLed last year.)

Solus seems to be a team of four volunteers with a blog post on funding/finances that may either reassure or worry you.

OpenMandriva doesn't appear to offer a Gnome edition.

That brings your shortlist down to one; what's stopping you just using Tumbleweed?

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Gentoo is generally put in the same group as Arch and Slackware - in the words of Distrowatch: "On the other end of the spectrum, Arch Linux, Gentoo, and Slackware Linux are more advanced distributions that require plenty of learning before they can be used effectively."

Your reasons for not wanting Arch may apply equally to Gentoo.

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I was speaking a little tongue-in-cheek indeed, but newbie-friendliness wasn't in requirements. Gentoo certainly is the most user-friendly distro I have ever seen.

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For desktop use? Or for server? Or embedded? Or something else?

Sorry, that was to clear to me so I forgot that it is not obvious to everyone else. I mentioned watching Youtube and talking about Battery performance.

So yes, Desktop

Nothing Like NixOS for example.

I thought about CentOS Stream and if I understood it correctly it is like a "test" version of RHEL. So Red Hat is behind it...?

I read about that so it is a little worrying

Now that you mention it. Because Mandriva Linux had a Gnome Edition and many more I asumed OpenMandriva has one too.

Nothing really except the Bloat. And I think not even with their netinstall it is possible to actually have a bare bone Gnome

True. I guess normal-user-friendliness would be good (that's why I said "not arch"). I like to and can do things with guids. But usually just for trying things and not for something I want to use every day without learning to much. Not sure how often you have to "fix" things in Gentoo after updates.

How about Debian Unstable? And why not Ubuntu? I can't speak from experience, as I haven't used Gnome since the demise of version 2!

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I was thinking about Debian unstable but my short experience with Deb stable a few years ago weren't that great.

Ubuntu modifies Gnome. I like it but I prefere Vanilla Gnome

EDIT:

Do you know how recent Debian unstable is? They don't offer an unstable iso so I could test it without installing it

I have 6 computers running Gentoo testing branch. I started with stable in 2004, converted to testing a few days after my first install and never looked back. These 6 computers together consume less than 10 minutes per week of my time to keep them up to date. This is a real life example from a real user.

You are not obliged to go ricing! Although undocumented omg-optimization in GCC may sound tempting ...

Edit: More undocumented optimizations for GCC

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Ok, but CentOS Stream is not CentOS - using the name was a marketing trick to get people to be beta-testers for RHEL.

RHEL is server focused so not ideal for desktop use, and whilst it should be more stable than Fedora there's no guarantee it'll solve your desktop/graphics related issues, because those are less likely to be a concern for its target users.


There appears to be a vanilla-gnome-desktop package - maybe you can uninstall Ubuntu's Gnome and install that instead?
(I've no idea if uninstalling is necessary, but I'm assuming without doing so there would be conflicts; in which case I guess you might need to purge configs also.)


Probably more recent than Ubuntu, but it's a rolling distro for testers, not general purpose.

Read these:
https://www.debian.org/releases/sid/
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable

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debian unstable is a rolling development version and not an official release. With respect to Gnome, distrowatch lists it at version 42.5 where the latest is 43. I have no idea as to how or when the developers decide to upgrade or if unstable keeps it "vanilla" or not. Typically testing or unstable versions, short development distributions like Fedora or rolling releases will have a more recent version.

debian has a package tracker https://tracker.debian.org/ and distrowatch can be used to track versions but I do not know how often they update their website.

I have no idea but IMO the only way to get the latest and greatest within a month of release would be to install from their website.

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