For me it’s PeppermintOS.
I started my Linux adventure a few years ago, and haven’t owned a Windows PC since.
I currently use Arch on my main rig, and I wanted to install Linux on two old laptops that I found laying around in my house
I then remembered the first distro I ever used, which is PeppermintOS, and I was amazed at the latest updates they released.
They even have a mini ISO now to do a net-install with no bloat, with a Debian or Devuan base.
Sadly, I believe the founder passed away a few years ago, which is why I was really happy to see the continuation of this amazing project.
I’m the boring old type that think the best distros are generally the most promoted ones.
Except Ubuntu. They have a special place in my heart. I had to fight their Snap system exactly like I had to fight the telemetry in Windows7, and eventually I got worn out and moved on.
The WebApp system that PeppermintOS uses is fantastic though and deserves more both recognition and use!
I generally don’t understand why people go for the smaller ones at all. I guess it’s good that someone does to prevent the whole scene being dominated by a single distro, but with some exceptions (e.g. you hate systemd for some reason and really want systemd-less arch, or you have a super niche preferences). For 99% of distros it makes very little difference which one you use, except that you’ll have fewer resources at your disposal (fewer packages, fewer stack overflow threads, fewer everything).
ubuntu pushing snap is what pushed me away. i had used it since warty and was a regular contributor in the official forums. i went back to pure debian, and have since added mint and manjaro (yes i know about its history) desktops, and a few dietpi on x64 (no sbc here), two of which run my piholes.
I don’t know about it’s history, can you enlighten me?
main source is ManjarNo
Doing changes right is a bit hard. With immutable Distros, some changes are easier like adding or removing packages, bur core OS adaptions are harder.
But for example how would you convert regular Ubuntu to
This all gets messy, so people choose small distros
I’m on arch, which I consider one of the larger distros, where most such configuration is very simple. Not sure what rolling mesa is. I probably wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu to anyone who is against using Snap, but there are many distros to choose from if you want KDE as well? It’s more a question of why people would go for Hannah Montana Linux (figuratively speaking, some very niche distro).
But to respond to your core point, sure. If you do have a lot of customization needs for whatever reason, then by all means. (I still don’t get it)
I meant that its not easy to customize deep system changes and keep them working well, on your own.
There are Forks of Ubuntu like TuxedoOS, PopOS (?) and more that do rather big changes that could break things. So its best to have a community support them.
But I agree on your point. Currently I am on Fedora Kinoite but still dont switch to ublue, as I can do the changes on my own, on the official base.
If I had an NVIDIA card though, I think ublue is the only Distro thats reliable enough (if an update would break, you simply dont get it)
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I like to be able to browse docs and forum posts when I run into issues. Ubuntu sucks but is great at this, Mint is great but they suck at this.
The nature of FOSS suggests (make that extra italic) that the most popular distros should be those that actually work the best. Totally agree that Ubuntu is an outlier, and even that is because of choices Canonical made – and corporate decisions really aren’t typically a part of FOSS.
That said, I truly enjoy smaller distros for hobbyism. I don’t necessarily see a use case where they should be chosen over a larger one, except for the really annoying fact that distros with corporate backing will always also tend to get quicker adoption.