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I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

petre 5y ago
openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.
josephg 5y ago
I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.
y4mi 5y ago
Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux
- zamalek 5y ago
  Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.
- shams93 5y ago
  Yeah I switched to Fedora recently, with pipewire setup by default its really easy to get great audio performance out of the box, I used to have to build custom kernels for jackd.
zarkov99 5y ago
PopOS. Ubuntu with better power management and a tilling WM.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I like Fedora.
dudus 5y ago
Manjaro seems pretty popular now. It's based in Arch with rolling releases and everything but gives a good experience out of the box while Arch is a full time job to maintain
- e-v 5y ago
  > Arch is a full time job to maintain I've never understood that sentiment. Are there things I don't know about I should be doing? I installed Arch probably four years ago on my laptop, and have never had to do anything but install updates and read the announcements on archlinux.org since. I do understand the appeal of Manjaro - I did use it briefly when it first came out - but I don't see how maintaining Arch Linux would appear as being particularly complicated. I literally don't do anything with it I wouldn't do with any other OS.
  - feydaykyn 5y ago
    The fact that any update may break your system if you're not careful is quite stressful when you're working. It's only a few hours from time to time, but when work is pilling up "just for an update" it feels like days. Also, it seems to me that ArchLinux had less very impactfull changes in the past years because it has matured quite a lot. It's only an impression though!
tclst 5y ago
If you like (or are okay with) GNOME, I'd recommend giving Fedora a try. Been using for a few years now and it has been the closest thing to "set up and forget" to me (I needed to install some codecs to play H.264/HEVC video). Painless upgrades, decent software catalog... It has been extremely reliable. Highly recommend it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  My home server uses Fedora. I've upgraded it on every release, from Fedora 29 all the way to 34 today. I've been dailying the 35 beta on my desktop and it's been great so far as well.
int_19h 5y ago
Mint is arguably better at being what Ubuntu was originally intended to be. And is still based on Ubuntu, so all your mad apt-get skills still apply, the packages are readily available etc.
- kd913 5y ago
  Ubuntu is a commercial distro. They have their own infra, they have their own security team, they have large amounts of reliable funding and contracts. Mint is worked by a few people, had several large security flaws including not distributing security updates timely. They had issues in the past with their ISO being hacked. I can empathize with the whole mint, small time dev-base stuff. It just doesn't make sense to me compared with just going straight ubuntu + cinnamon.
skinkestek 5y ago
KDE Neon. Based on Ubuntu but with a UI built by and for actual users, not a UI built by experts for grandmothers.
n8cpdx 5y ago
If you want to use a multitouch trackpad fluently, Elementary is is the only game in town. It has macOS-level support which is pretty cool.
- djbusby 5y ago
  How do they get it? Can't those tools also work in Debian or Gentoo? What's the magic sauce? Kernel patches?
- marcodiego 5y ago
  https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45 https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45
  - n8cpdx 5y ago
    Can't edit my comment but thanks for pointing this out. For anyone not wanting to watch the video, apparently this release includes trackpad multitouch support comparable to elementary. It looks like Ubuntu is now comparable to Elementary. I'm going to be trying this out ASAP. Ubuntu with Wayland does a much better job with high and mixed DPI display setups. Maybe now I won't have to choose between running my 4k display at full resolution and using my trackpad.

openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.

josephg 5y ago

I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.

y4mi 5y ago

Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux

zamalek 5y ago
Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.
shams93 5y ago
Yeah I switched to Fedora recently, with pipewire setup by default its really easy to get great audio performance out of the box, I used to have to build custom kernels for jackd.

zarkov99 5y ago

PopOS. Ubuntu with better power management and a tilling WM.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

I like Fedora.

dudus 5y ago

Manjaro seems pretty popular now. It's based in Arch with rolling releases and everything but gives a good experience out of the box while Arch is a full time job to maintain

e-v 5y ago
> Arch is a full time job to maintain I've never understood that sentiment. Are there things I don't know about I should be doing? I installed Arch probably four years ago on my laptop, and have never had to do anything but install updates and read the announcements on archlinux.org since. I do understand the appeal of Manjaro - I did use it briefly when it first came out - but I don't see how maintaining Arch Linux would appear as being particularly complicated. I literally don't do anything with it I wouldn't do with any other OS.
- feydaykyn 5y ago
  The fact that any update may break your system if you're not careful is quite stressful when you're working. It's only a few hours from time to time, but when work is pilling up "just for an update" it feels like days. Also, it seems to me that ArchLinux had less very impactfull changes in the past years because it has matured quite a lot. It's only an impression though!

tclst 5y ago

If you like (or are okay with) GNOME, I'd recommend giving Fedora a try. Been using for a few years now and it has been the closest thing to "set up and forget" to me (I needed to install some codecs to play H.264/HEVC video). Painless upgrades, decent software catalog... It has been extremely reliable. Highly recommend it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
My home server uses Fedora. I've upgraded it on every release, from Fedora 29 all the way to 34 today. I've been dailying the 35 beta on my desktop and it's been great so far as well.

int_19h 5y ago

Mint is arguably better at being what Ubuntu was originally intended to be. And is still based on Ubuntu, so all your mad apt-get skills still apply, the packages are readily available etc.

kd913 5y ago
Ubuntu is a commercial distro. They have their own infra, they have their own security team, they have large amounts of reliable funding and contracts. Mint is worked by a few people, had several large security flaws including not distributing security updates timely. They had issues in the past with their ISO being hacked. I can empathize with the whole mint, small time dev-base stuff. It just doesn't make sense to me compared with just going straight ubuntu + cinnamon.

skinkestek 5y ago

KDE Neon. Based on Ubuntu but with a UI built by and for actual users, not a UI built by experts for grandmothers.

n8cpdx 5y ago

If you want to use a multitouch trackpad fluently, Elementary is is the only game in town. It has macOS-level support which is pretty cool.

djbusby 5y ago
How do they get it? Can't those tools also work in Debian or Gentoo? What's the magic sauce? Kernel patches?
marcodiego 5y ago
https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45 https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Can't edit my comment but thanks for pointing this out. For anyone not wanting to watch the video, apparently this release includes trackpad multitouch support comparable to elementary. It looks like Ubuntu is now comparable to Elementary. I'm going to be trying this out ASAP. Ubuntu with Wayland does a much better job with high and mixed DPI display setups. Maybe now I won't have to choose between running my 4k display at full resolution and using my trackpad.