Hello everyone, I need help to decide on a Linux Distribution to settle and finally stop distro hopping. I have quite some experience with Linux(1year Mint, a quarter year Arch, nixos, debian, manjaro, fedora, suse tumbleweed and kalpa...)I have been experimenting for now almost 3 years. Now I finally want to setlle but I just don't know where. I like Nix's shell but don't like installing everything in five steps(with git because my brain can stand neither the dirty tree warning nor leaving out on the git push) and I don't need the reproducibility. I like rolling so I don't need to reinstall or do any major update, but even more appealing is low maintenance and stability in the sense of nothing unexpectedly breaking. I'll use the computer as an daily driver mostly for programming & 3d design, university related work, streaming and also some gaming. Thank you for your answers. #linux #distrohopping. EDIT: I don't want to have a company behind my distribution. And my specs: Nvidia RTX 4070, Amd Radeon 7 7840HS, 16GB of RAM
Conclusion: Thanks a lot for all of that feedback, I decided to go for Debian 13 Stable and might check out MX once.
The final conclusion :P: I will now install LMDE and either try to install KDE Plasma or just stick with Cinnamon. Its not as uncustomizable after all. And the flashbacks I got during the installation from me first stepping into Linux... ...definetly the rabbit hole I should have fallen into, even though I can now never live a normal life again :/.
I had a similar journey and at some point settled for Debian.
I know, everyone around here will tell you how basic that is and how much program versions lag behind sometimes, but I have come to the conclusion that this really doesn't bother me on daily use.
The main wow moment was, when the I noticed my system was running for 5 years and nothing ever broke.
Sure, I sometimes miss the AUR or some of the bells and whistles off bleeding edge distros, but in the end I want my main daily driver as a tool to other stuff, not a project to constantly put effort in.
The beauty of Debian is, its reliable AF, everything you got working once stays working, in 99,99% of cases even with a major version change, its the best documented and tested system and it does everything I need and more.
Plus with KDE plasma and all the native programs, like kdeconnect, kdenlive, kget etc I dont miss out on convinience. (Sure I could still use them on other distros, but I like how it is integrated into a good user experience with the option to tweak everything but without the need to do so)
The main down site imho is that some advanced things which may work in a hacky and time consuming way on arch just will not work on Debian at all, but I seldom have such moments and its a small price to pay for a system that's just won't brake from where I stand.
which mostly show people don't know they one can add a repository and fix that, my Firefox is 2 days old.
And that repository is flathub. Stable base for the OS, bleeding edge rolling release for the apps
I meant literally the repository https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#From_Mozilla_APT_repository_.28recommended_by_Mozilla.29 not an alternative method. One can add the official source of built packages my Mozilla, keep their Debian distribution otherwise untouched and get the latest.
I did enjoy debian a lot when I used it, I then left it for hyprland and the rolling release though. But debian is definitely something up top of my list right now. Especially because I am now back to KDE Plasma and I'm not planning to change anything about that soon. The only picky point was that it does not support BTRFS with custom subvolumes for timeshift out of the box. But the stability would be a blessing.
debian doesn't do that 'out-of-the-box', but you can do luks and btrfs at install (default partitioning even, just go back and change partition type of root before continuing with install), then 'adjust' things to be 'timeshift compatible' after install. for some inspiration: https://mutschler.dev/linux/debian-btrfs-trixie/
i've used this numerous times, on debian and a couple other distributions.
I have the same feeling regarding Debian and btrfs (or zfs). Would be a blast having either on Debian.
But on the other hand, I've been running Debian unstable for two years now (initially installed unstable for Star Citizen) and haven't had major issues with it. But be warned, it being unstable you're obviously only one update away from it being unstable :D