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Ask HN: How to choose a certain GNU/Linux distro?
I have been using different flavors of Linux since the past 5 or 6 years.
I tried switching between Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Arch, Manjaro, etc.. while keeping the same Desktop Environment for familiarity reasons.
I have yet to find a reason to get attached to one flavor over the others.
As a laptop user how do you choose which distribution to use (beside out-of-the-box hardware compatibility) ?
- irixusr 11y agoPick one that works for you* and plays nice with your hardware. Make sure it has a very good package manager. I like Debian with mate myself (never tried arch, but i use their tutorials a lot). Apt-get works, has almost everything I need and there is a large user base. Ubuntu peevs me off trying to be so flashy. But I tap into the know how of their user base often. * works for you means that you don't spend your days trying to figure stupid things out, or you battle buggy GUIs. Whatever it is you do on a computer the district/environment is a tool, not the end goal.
- Raed667 11y ago> the district/environment is a tool, not the end goal I went off Arch/Manjaro due to this. Keeping the system working smoothly after every single change was too much work. I guess I'll be sticking to Mint with Mate after all.
- viraptor 11y agoSome factors for choice: - security policy: how are notifications handled and what's the normal timeframe for published update (RH and Ubuntu have upper hand here because they will often get embargoed early notifications) - rolling update / stable snapshots: do you prefer to deal with a big upgrade breakage ~once a year, or small ones potentially at any point? - source or binary packages? - what security options are integrated? (RH-based: selinux, ubuntu-based: apparmor, gentoo: grsec/selinux) - a year ago I'd say systemd/sanity, but Arch adopted systemd and there are no big linux distributions without it anymore - team behind the project - is it only a handful of people dealing with issues when they have time, or are they paid enough to work on the weekend if something terrible happens? - kernel - are you getting extra patches for critical issues, or completely new versions in updates? - foss - do you care about splitting software into free/non-free repositories (debian does it) The rest is gravy. There's not much real difference between systems after that. My choice: Arch for home (CVEs monitored, rolling update, binary packages, tomoyo lsm, big team, new kernels, don't care about foss split), Ubuntu for work (security team with quick respose, stable snapshots, apparmor lsm, big team, kernel patches, kind-of-foss-split).
- Raed667 11y agoI went with Arch for over a year, and 'pacman -Syu' was one of my biggest fears, as when rebooting I didn't know what package was going to get messed up. How did you work around that ?
- viraptor 11y agoWatch out for notices during the upgrade. Check the forums if anything warns/fails. So far I only ran into one issue over 2 years, so it's not bad. But otherwise, all the data I have is backed up, so I don't mind restoring the system from scratch if everything fails. Or to put it more bluntly: if you're afraid of upgrades, that's a good sign you should fix your backup strategy.