4 ms·

For distros the best one is the most thoroughly tested and debugged. That definitely used to be Ubuntu back in its glory days. I'm not sure who it is any more -

by pydry 3y ago

For distros the best one is the most thoroughly tested and debugged. That definitely used to be Ubuntu back in its glory days. I'm not sure who it is any more - perhaps fedora.

wallon_brux 3y ago
Agreed, I was using Arch until I got tired of fixing broken stuff. I then thought I'd rather have a distro where things weren't broken in the first place, Ubuntu worked well for me in that regard
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I use Manjaro for years with zero issues, though for context I have to say that I make it a goal to always update it at least once a week because rolling release distros can be fickle if you upgrade them rarely. And never once had a problem.
ensignavenger 3y ago
I switched from Ubuntu to straight Debian... but I have been testing Opensuse and had good experiences with it so far. I am super excited for theor upcoming Slowroll edition.
bityard 3y ago
I would guess it depends on the environment you operate in, but it feels to me (emphasis on feels) that the top two are RHEL and Debian. Both are very stable, tested, and have tons of community support. 1. RHEL: Despite recent business/licensing shenanigans they still sponsor an enormous amount of work that benefits the whole open source community. Very big in enterprises, web hosting, and most cloud providers. Has multiple "cousin" distros like Fedora, CentOS Stream, Rocky, and Alma if you have no need or want to be a direct Red Hat customer. 2. Debian: Has a pretty old-school development process, which results in a very stable general purpose Linux-based OS with a (somewhat) predictable release cycle and very few frills or non-essential baggage. More popular among those who shy away from distros with commercial attachment because the Debian community leans toward Free Software (in the GNU sense). Quite popular in embedded and small systems (e.g. Raspberry Pi), cloud images, and containers. The upstream for a number of other quite popular distros.
ranger207 3y ago
IME it's Fedora because it's still RHEL's upstream so they dedicate engineering time to actually fix stuff
lmm 3y ago
Not sure. Often I'd rather have a distro that breaks a little more often, but is easier to understand and fix when it breaks, than one that's a little more tested but changes more often and is less well documented. If I wanted a polished product, and didn't care about fixing it myself, I wouldn't be using Linux in the first place.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  > If I wanted a polished product, and didn't care about fixing it myself, I wouldn't be using Linux in the first place. Then what would you be using? Windows certainly isn't a "polished product", and from all the problems I've read with people using Macs, MacOS doesn't seem to be either.
zilti 3y ago
It has been a lot of distributions for a long time - e.g. openSUSE.
pdimitar 3y ago
I am not an Linux expert by any stretch but I also used quite a few distributions (though very few in anger i.e. actively for long periods of time). To me Arch and its derivatives (e.g. Manjaro and EndeavourOS) and Void Linux are the best nowadays.

by pydry 3y ago

For distros the best one is the most thoroughly tested and debugged. That definitely used to be Ubuntu back in its glory days. I'm not sure who it is any more - perhaps fedora.

wallon_brux 3y ago

Agreed, I was using Arch until I got tired of fixing broken stuff. I then thought I'd rather have a distro where things weren't broken in the first place, Ubuntu worked well for me in that regard

pdimitar 3y ago
I use Manjaro for years with zero issues, though for context I have to say that I make it a goal to always update it at least once a week because rolling release distros can be fickle if you upgrade them rarely. And never once had a problem.

ensignavenger 3y ago

I switched from Ubuntu to straight Debian... but I have been testing Opensuse and had good experiences with it so far. I am super excited for theor upcoming Slowroll edition.

bityard 3y ago

I would guess it depends on the environment you operate in, but it feels to me (emphasis on feels) that the top two are RHEL and Debian. Both are very stable, tested, and have tons of community support. 1. RHEL: Despite recent business/licensing shenanigans they still sponsor an enormous amount of work that benefits the whole open source community. Very big in enterprises, web hosting, and most cloud providers. Has multiple "cousin" distros like Fedora, CentOS Stream, Rocky, and Alma if you have no need or want to be a direct Red Hat customer. 2. Debian: Has a pretty old-school development process, which results in a very stable general purpose Linux-based OS with a (somewhat) predictable release cycle and very few frills or non-essential baggage. More popular among those who shy away from distros with commercial attachment because the Debian community leans toward Free Software (in the GNU sense). Quite popular in embedded and small systems (e.g. Raspberry Pi), cloud images, and containers. The upstream for a number of other quite popular distros.

ranger207 3y ago

IME it's Fedora because it's still RHEL's upstream so they dedicate engineering time to actually fix stuff

lmm 3y ago

Not sure. Often I'd rather have a distro that breaks a little more often, but is easier to understand and fix when it breaks, than one that's a little more tested but changes more often and is less well documented. If I wanted a polished product, and didn't care about fixing it myself, I wouldn't be using Linux in the first place.

shiroiuma 3y ago
> If I wanted a polished product, and didn't care about fixing it myself, I wouldn't be using Linux in the first place. Then what would you be using? Windows certainly isn't a "polished product", and from all the problems I've read with people using Macs, MacOS doesn't seem to be either.

zilti 3y ago

It has been a lot of distributions for a long time - e.g. openSUSE.

pdimitar 3y ago

I am not an Linux expert by any stretch but I also used quite a few distributions (though very few in anger i.e. actively for long periods of time). To me Arch and its derivatives (e.g. Manjaro and EndeavourOS) and Void Linux are the best nowadays.