Hey fellow Linux enthusiasts! I’m curious to know if any of you use a less popular, obscure or exotic Linux distribution. What motivated you to choose that distribution over the more mainstream ones? I’d love to hear about your experiences and any unique features or benefits that drew you to your chosen distribution.
Idk if this counts but I found my home in a less popular distro, kind of.
I’d tried a few back in the early '00s. While my friends were experimenting with drugs and shit, I was experimenting with Linux distros and virtual machines lmao.
I started with Suse. I’m not too sure what made me switch or where I heard about this one from, but I eventually moved on to Mepis. It was originally rooted in Debian, then moved to Ubuntu before being discontinued.
My good friend at the time was big into Debian. I felt like pure Debian was too much for me to take on as a noob, but I wanted to be able to reach out to him for help now and again when I needed it. Switching to Mepis was pretty much a no-brainer. It was easy enough to get accustomed with. I was still mostly a Windows user, so the transition to KDE was simple. I’m old enough to remember the days of DOS so bumping around a CLI was also not that big of a deal.
The hardest parts were understanding how to install software (the concept of the repository was new to me), and the basic terminal commands. From there I was mostly good.
I remember when Mepis moved to Ubuntu, there were a lot of groans - myself included. But ironically, I’ve been a pretty much dedicated to Ubuntu for my linux stuff for ages. These days I’m running it with i3wm and I have no major complaints.
To be completely honest, though, I still don’t really fully understand the standard file layout… I get it conceptually, but then stuff gets so fragmented - binary files in usr instead of bin, how to track where installed stuff ends up, etc.
I’ll figure it out one day, when I really need to… But that time hasn’t come yet. A quick
findin the terminal always gets me what I need.Alpine Linux. I started using it to dogfood my packages I was maintaining for postmarketOS but I’ve come to really like it. It does help that I can just fix packaging problems (or just missing packages entirely) myself.
Previously I used Gentoo which I still have a place in my heart for. If I’d ever move to anything else it would probably be Gentoo again.
I’ve been using Source Mage for about a year now! It’s a source-based distro like Gentoo. It’s magic themed, so instead of repositories we have grimoires, and instead of packages we have spells :) my main reason for using it is because I tried it out a few years ago and the magic themed intrigued me. Eventually I decided to write some of my own spells (some important programs were missing that I wanted) I found them a lot easier to parse than gentoos ebuilds personally. But after I’d been sending PRs for a few months, I got added to the team as an official maintainer!
it’s a really fun distro to use, if not a bit hard to get up-and-running (only tarball-based install, we used to have ISOs but they’re out of date for now) I’ve put a lot of work into getting it how i like it, i enjoy the tinkering aspect of it :) its fun
I use Ubuntu, which is apparently the least popular distro around.
I use Manjaro and based on the downvotes I received when mentioning it around here, I can assure that you are excused and you can give me this crown.
I use Ubuntu, it’s the default for ROS. I tried debian but the instructions didn’t work instantly so I just as quickly gave up and went back to Ubuntu since I was busy. Lol.
why not use rhino linux instead? ubuntu but rolling release
Not OP, but as someone using Ubuntu LTS releases on several systems, I can answer my reason: Having the latest & greatest release of all software available is neat, but sometimes the stability of knowing “nothing on my system changes in any significant way until I ask it to upgrade to the next LTS” is just more valuable.
My primary example is my work laptop: I use a fairly fixed set of tools and for the few places where I need up-to-date ones I can install them manually (they are often proprietary and/or not-quite established tools that aren’t available in most distros anyway).
A similar situation exists on my primary homelab server: it’s running Debian because all the “services” are running in docker containers anyway, so the primary job of the OS is to do its job and stay out of my way. Upgrading various system components at essentially random times runs counter to that goal.
My fav obscure distros are: 1. Sparky Linux, Debian based simple stable system. It has many flavours with a lot of desktops to choose from. Also has stable and semi-roling iso. Now I never installed Debian itself, so can’t compare sparky with Debian. But it is very much better than any other distro I used. I don’t know why it is not popular. 2. Reborn OS. I used to love it when running. Arch based lovely project. This is the very much successor of Antergos.
I switched to NixOS almost two years ago, and it’s really nice being able to define my whole system in a single set of config files. If my hard drive dies or I switch computers, I can just reinstall NixOS using my config files and everything will be set up the exact same way. It’s extremely solid and I don’t need to baby my system because if it breaks I can just reinstall everything back to normal.
And I can share parts of the config between devices, so when I change my Neovim or VSCodium configs using Home-Manager it gets synced to my other devices, as well as being saved as part of my NixOS config files.
I’ve been a crux user for over 10 years now. I switched to it from Archlinux because it uses a port tree system for packages (think of it as the AUR but for everything) and because the package “recipes” are very simple and easy to write.
At the time I was packaging a lot of stuff on Arch and the PKGBUILD format felt too bulky, complex and constraining for my needs. I switch to crux and found one of the simplest distro out there, and sticked to it. It’s also the Linux distro that feels the most like OpenBSD, which is neat as well.
Also the mascot.
That’s an interesting distro. Can you provide a bit more info as to how it differs from a source-first distribution like Gentoo?
Crux is also “source first”, as you must compile every package from source. However, Gentoo focuses on “use flags” to build the packages, which let’s you fine tune every single feature. Crux ports don’t have that, so you technically end up with the same software for everyone, except that they’re optimized for your architecture.
Its main advantage is the simplicity of the system as a whole, as well as the build system, which leads to Pkgfile that are very straightforward to write.
Thanks. That’s very interesting.
Fedora Silverblue
I use Fedora Silverblue, I don’t know if that (still) counts as “underground”-distro.
Reason I switched: I’ve been distrohopping/ desktophopping for the whole time I used Linux (~2-3 years) and always came back to Fedora. I really like it’s sane (for me) defaults.
Problem: I broke pretty much any system I installed after a few weeks.
Knowing enough to change everything, but doing exactly that without knowing exactly what I do and how to fix stuff is really bad.
Instead of fixing a problem, I just reinstalled. That took me just an hour everytime, but still is a bad practice, even when it’s quicker.Also, everytime I was happy with Gnome, KDE got a shiny new feature I just wanted to have, and I switched the Fedora spin, since switching DE on a used system feels really dirty and buggy.
The last time I broke my (Tumbleweed) install without actually doing anything I just said “Fuck it, even if I loose some freedom, I will now only use immutable systems from now on!”.
I decided for Fedora, and oh boy…
Actually, I didn’t loose much freedom or functionality at all!
(Only exception: no VPN app, I have to use the menu from Gnome; and somehow, Boxes doesn’t work atm, maybe that’s just a bug).
I’m now using it for 2 months and couldn’t be happier!!! Why?
- Atomic updates + super quick and easy rollback support (already saved my butt) by rebooting and selecting another image.
- Clear separation between “my” stuff and the OS, which is really intuitive.
- Feels clean.
- I can rebase anytime I want (switch to KDE, a WM, and so on) with one command and no residual data or bugs.
- Self maintaining with automatic updates in the background.
- Unlimited software: not an advantage of SB, but you have to use distrobox sometimes, and I would never discovered that tool without!
- AND, a project called uBlue . You can create or download custom images, like a SteamOS/ Nobara-clone, Vanilla with QOL-changes, almost all DEs (e.g. XFCE, which is unsupported by default), and so on.
I’m really in love with Silverblue, everybody should check it out!
I use NixOS for very similar reasons. And also, because I like my full configuration in one place.
Yeah, I fully get why people like Nix.
I fully respect it when people want a “next-gen-Arch” with the DIY-aspect of building their own OS. At least, that’s my impression on it.
For me personally, it sounds like too much work. I’m not advanced enough and want something hassle free that “just works”.
But especially for professional developers (reproducibility) and Linux enthusiasts, it sounds like a dream!
voidlinux on my laptop (from Fedora) - why? I wanted to see what a systemd-less distro was like nowadays. I have used Linux since 1992 and Unix since 1984 so I’m used to SysVinit. What I find with voidlinux is a system I can understand easily - not that I struggle with systemd, but I felt there was just so much happening under the hood, just too clever by half. If I wanted MacOS, I’d have bought an Apple.
The packaging system on voidlinux is sooooo much faster than fedora. The really weird thing is that my battery life almost doubled. I can’t explain it except to say that the laptop is much calmer than under fedora, which seems to run the fan constantly. Same workload, CPU governers, powertop tweaks etc etc - but battery life almost doubled.
The one downside is a smaller array of packages in the repositories. But since I’m happy installing from source for those few corner cases, it’s no biggie.
I’ve left fedora on my media/file server for now as I still do some fedora packaging (mainly for sway related packages).
I consider it too from Artix. I heard it has lots of (often broken) AUR packages in the repo?
Why are people still using anything other than Debian and Redhat tho?
Arch and its derivatives (and once, NixOS) are the only distros that provide me with the range of software I need. But guess what? NixOS has some issues if you don’t want to go deep into it, and for me they mostly stemmed from the immutability of it. And Arch and derivatives are all rolling release, when I don’t want a rolling release. I want a machine I can keep running for 10-15 days or more and not have to bother with the idea of updates.
NixOS
I’m on Garuda, primarily becausei built a new machine with a (then) bleeding edge GPU, so I needed something rolling release that could make use of it. I tried a few others, including Endeavour and Nobara, but Garuda got me farthest along on its own.
