3 ms·

I keep thinking this and maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love to be able to opt for something in this direction, some old school constraints, I feel like w

by Folcon 1mo ago

I keep thinking this and maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love to be able to opt for something in this direction, some old school constraints, I feel like we should be able to do something pretty magical these days For example, is there a version of linux that I'm missing? I've not run a desktop linux box in over a decade, any suggestions would be great, or is everyone happily running ubuntu / fedora?

Gabrys1 1mo ago
Use Debian. It's matured perfectly as a graphical distro IMO
- kopirgan 1mo ago
  Yeah mine is Debian + xfce although my laptop is fairly powerful 32Gb gen 12 Intel. It's fast, light and pleasure to use. Apt any day over all those fancy flat pack etc
gyomu 1mo ago
Just run debian + xfce, that’ll feel super snappy on 4GB of RAM, maybe even 2 (but then of course you’re bound by whatever other apps you use)
screamingninja 1mo ago
Atomic OS images. I moved away from individual package management once I discovered the alternates. Currently on Bluefin (Fedora-based) - not affiliated with the project but just a happy user. https://projectbluefin.io/ https://projectbluefin.io/
d3Xt3r 1mo ago
No one uses Ubuntu any more (besides corporations), it's possibly the worst distro of the whole lot due to several bad decisions from Canonical (snap etc). Fedora is a decent alternative, but if you're really after performance, CachyOS is the way to go as they provide highly optimised (PGO/LTC etc) and CPU-family specific kernel, custom scheduler (BORE) and optimised binary packages (catering to x86-64-v3, x86-64-v4 and znver4+ architectures). PorteuX is also an interesting performance-optimised distro that takes a different approach - which is that of extreme minimalism (aggressive binary stripping, minimal packages) and its "Copy to RAM" feature (basically the OS runs 100% from RAM, so storage I/O bottlenecks are completely eliminated). I've tested both on a 128GB Strix Halo laptop and haven't found much of a difference in terms of snappiness, but if you have older, more humble machine, I reckon PorteuX would definitely feel more snappy. Finally in terms of snappiness, the DE you use also makes a huge difference. The PorteuX guys have just put together an interesting benchmark comparing various DEs and Wayland to X11 which is worth checking out: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-X11-Performance-PorteuX https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-X11-Performance-Porteu...
- flohofwoe 1mo ago
  Tbh, Ubuntu/Kubuntu is fine if you're not a Linux die hard and just need a balanced OS that either feels more like macOS (in that case go for vanilla Ubuntu) or like Windows (in that case go for Kubuntu).
  - d3Xt3r 1mo ago
    Ubuntu is even more problematic for non-Linux die hards because they won't know (or want to) deal with all the issues with snap (like slow app startups and other compatibility issues), or the inevitable package conflicts or other issues when it's time to do a dist-upgrade. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949222 My mum was on an Ubuntu base as well (Mint first, later Xubuntu) but after both eventually experienced failed dist-upgrades (no GUI after reboot), I switched her to an immutable distro (Aurora) and it's been rock solid so far. And in the event something does break, rollback is as simple as selecting the previous image from the boot menu. So for normies who want a macOS like experience, I'd recommend Bluefin, and for Windows-like, I'd recommend Aurora. And Bazzite for gamers. All of these are Fedora-based immutable distros and have none of the stability issues that Ubuntu-based distros have, plus the generally newer kernel+mesa stack compared to Ubuntu means you'll also have better compatibility with newer hardware.
eru 1mo ago
Distro choice mostly determines package manager and how configuration works and what you get by default. Any distribution can approximately run any program and that includes window managers. I'm using ArchLinux with XMonad as my window manager. That's neat, though it doesn't make Firefox or VSCode any faster (nor slower).
esseph 1mo ago
Fedora is very good these days.
flohofwoe 1mo ago
Plain Kubuntu on an Asus Zenbook OLED 14 laptop looks and feels pretty great compared to both Win11 on the same machine (ok that's not really surprising) or current macOS on an M1 Pro MBP (hardware is pretty old by now ofc). Once you start CPU intensive tasks the ASUS gets pretty hot though, while the Mac at most gets a bit warm.
ryukoposting 1mo ago
No distro is going to be perceptibly faster than another. It's all about user experience - what tools ship with it, package manager, etc. I'd pump the brakes on Ubuntu, which nowadays is a perceptibly worse user experience than other mainstream distros. Snap is a disaster, and flatpak rocketed past it years ago thanks to Valve bucks.

by Folcon 1mo ago

Gabrys1 1mo ago

Use Debian. It's matured perfectly as a graphical distro IMO

kopirgan 1mo ago
Yeah mine is Debian + xfce although my laptop is fairly powerful 32Gb gen 12 Intel. It's fast, light and pleasure to use. Apt any day over all those fancy flat pack etc

gyomu 1mo ago

Just run debian + xfce, that’ll feel super snappy on 4GB of RAM, maybe even 2 (but then of course you’re bound by whatever other apps you use)

screamingninja 1mo ago

Atomic OS images. I moved away from individual package management once I discovered the alternates. Currently on Bluefin (Fedora-based) - not affiliated with the project but just a happy user. https://projectbluefin.io/ https://projectbluefin.io/

d3Xt3r 1mo ago

No one uses Ubuntu any more (besides corporations), it's possibly the worst distro of the whole lot due to several bad decisions from Canonical (snap etc). Fedora is a decent alternative, but if you're really after performance, CachyOS is the way to go as they provide highly optimised (PGO/LTC etc) and CPU-family specific kernel, custom scheduler (BORE) and optimised binary packages (catering to x86-64-v3, x86-64-v4 and znver4+ architectures). PorteuX is also an interesting performance-optimised distro that takes a different approach - which is that of extreme minimalism (aggressive binary stripping, minimal packages) and its "Copy to RAM" feature (basically the OS runs 100% from RAM, so storage I/O bottlenecks are completely eliminated). I've tested both on a 128GB Strix Halo laptop and haven't found much of a difference in terms of snappiness, but if you have older, more humble machine, I reckon PorteuX would definitely feel more snappy. Finally in terms of snappiness, the DE you use also makes a huge difference. The PorteuX guys have just put together an interesting benchmark comparing various DEs and Wayland to X11 which is worth checking out: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-X11-Performance-PorteuX https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-X11-Performance-Porteu...

flohofwoe 1mo ago
Tbh, Ubuntu/Kubuntu is fine if you're not a Linux die hard and just need a balanced OS that either feels more like macOS (in that case go for vanilla Ubuntu) or like Windows (in that case go for Kubuntu).
- d3Xt3r 1mo ago
  Ubuntu is even more problematic for non-Linux die hards because they won't know (or want to) deal with all the issues with snap (like slow app startups and other compatibility issues), or the inevitable package conflicts or other issues when it's time to do a dist-upgrade. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949222 My mum was on an Ubuntu base as well (Mint first, later Xubuntu) but after both eventually experienced failed dist-upgrades (no GUI after reboot), I switched her to an immutable distro (Aurora) and it's been rock solid so far. And in the event something does break, rollback is as simple as selecting the previous image from the boot menu. So for normies who want a macOS like experience, I'd recommend Bluefin, and for Windows-like, I'd recommend Aurora. And Bazzite for gamers. All of these are Fedora-based immutable distros and have none of the stability issues that Ubuntu-based distros have, plus the generally newer kernel+mesa stack compared to Ubuntu means you'll also have better compatibility with newer hardware.

eru 1mo ago

Distro choice mostly determines package manager and how configuration works and what you get by default. Any distribution can approximately run any program and that includes window managers. I'm using ArchLinux with XMonad as my window manager. That's neat, though it doesn't make Firefox or VSCode any faster (nor slower).

esseph 1mo ago

Fedora is very good these days.

flohofwoe 1mo ago

Plain Kubuntu on an Asus Zenbook OLED 14 laptop looks and feels pretty great compared to both Win11 on the same machine (ok that's not really surprising) or current macOS on an M1 Pro MBP (hardware is pretty old by now ofc). Once you start CPU intensive tasks the ASUS gets pretty hot though, while the Mac at most gets a bit warm.

ryukoposting 1mo ago

No distro is going to be perceptibly faster than another. It's all about user experience - what tools ship with it, package manager, etc. I'd pump the brakes on Ubuntu, which nowadays is a perceptibly worse user experience than other mainstream distros. Snap is a disaster, and flatpak rocketed past it years ago thanks to Valve bucks.