Having a Linux choice quandary

[mikeymikec]

My Win10 SSD's capacity has been an issue lately so I bought a Samsung 980 PRO 1TB. I suspected that I'd be in for some bother by trying to rejig the GRUB bootloader into accepting a cloned install onto the NVMe drive, so I decided to start over. It did not go well.

Win10 installed fine onto the NVMe drive, then my first few attempts to install KDE Neon ended up on a blank screen almost immediately. I found that was because I hadn't set the BIOS to UEFI only, then Neon and Debian both complained about grub failing to install, then I fixed that by disabling fast boot in the BIOS, then Debian decided that starting sddm automatically by default was far too much bother, followed by what seemed to be Debian apparently not bothering to fire up the amdgpu graphics driver (640x480 only).

As I was researching various issues, I discovered that the Kubuntu 22 LTS devs have decided that snaps for everything would be a great idea. Considering my experience with the Chromium snap on Kubuntu 20 (ie. it was faster to start Chromium through a Debian VM being hosted on a 5400rpm HDD than through kubuntu natively on SSD) resulted in me removing snap completely, I don't have a lot of faith in Firefox's performance as a snap. Which kinda blows future versions of Kubuntu out of the water and KDE Neon.

Something I haven't completely ruled out yet is installing Linux Mint and then installing KDE on top, but normally I'd play around with these ideas in a VM first before steamrollering my system's OS configuration. Apparently the Mint guys have no love for snap. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind thinking snap is a good idea in terms of everyday usability. Updates are nice, sure, but not at the expense of every day performance.

I could go back to Kubuntu 20 but that seems like a short-term solution, and the way that MTP functionality inexplicably died on my old install didn't fill me with confidence. Going to Windows (10) exclusively involves some faffing around, getting my Thunderbird profile migrated etc, I think I'll lose the XnViewMP database metadata in the process which isn't a showstopper but it's irritating. It's still kind of a short-term option (three years to go), but I guess it's better than Kubuntu 20 on that front. A bit of full-time experience with Windows 10 might not be a bad idea with regard to my ability to support customers.

Thoughts?

 

[crashtech]

I just put the OSes on separate drives and use the UEFI boot menu to switch between OSes. The way Windows handles major updates tends to bork the bootloader. But that's not really what you're asking about. I think Mint with your desktop environment of choice would be a fairly seamless transition. I haven't tried it, since I'm happy enough with Cinnamon, but on headless machines that I only remote into I have been switching little by little to Mint Xfce, it seems to reduce lag quite a bit while using Anydesk.

 

[Fallen Kell]

You didnt really go into your use cases so it is hard to say what you should try. Personally given all your issues, I would stick with a distro that is rock solid and not experimental. That being said, without your use case, I dont even know what to recommend. Normally I would say something like Rocky Linux (the new CentOS now that CentOS is an experimental stream), or openSUSE (the non-stream based version, i.e. not tumbleweed).

 

[mxnerd]

I tested Linux distros occasionally and Linux Mint (Cinnamon or Debian (LMDE5)) is the only one I liked. Never bothered trying out Snap though.

Also did not any performance issues with Mint. Ubuntu is big & slow and KDE Neon has many bugs.

Don't get it why you want to install KDE on top of Mint.

 

[mikeymikec]

KDE: Out of the DEs I tried, it seemed to provide the most comprehensive service.

I've gone with Cinnamon Mint for now and just doing minor UI changes to suit my preferences. I was strongly considering going for Windows on its own but I figured that if I am going to make that kind of change, I'm going to plan it out properly to minimise the chaos.

 

[manly]

Canonical is all-in with snaps, so you probably should take Fallen Kell's advice and look for a non-Ubuntu based distro. I guess Mint Linux is okay because they disable snaps by default?

 

[igor_kavinski]

The thoughtful, capable, and ethical replacement for Windows and macOS ⋅ elementary OS

Pop!_OS by System76

Try these out in VMs.

 

[DasFox]

Personally given all your issues, I would stick with a distro that is rock solid and not experimental.

The unfortunate reality today, is that Rock Solid in Linux can still be an issue, depending on what you do in the OS.

As someone that has used all the major distros and plenty more, the only serious Rock Solid distro is Slackware, nothing even comes close.

With all the BS I put up with so many distros, it’s why I gravitated to Slack, and I’ve never looked back.

Fact! What one distro can do, they all can do!

 

[igor_kavinski]

As someone that has used all the major distros and plenty more, the only serious Rock Solid distro is Slackware, nothing even comes close.

More details about what issues you faced with which distros exactly?

 

[mikeymikec]

The unfortunate reality today, is that Rock Solid in Linux can still be an issue, depending on what you do in the OS.

As someone that has used all the major distros and plenty more, the only serious Rock Solid distro is Slackware, nothing even comes close.

With all the BS I put up with so many distros, it’s why I gravitated to Slack, and I’ve never looked back.

Fact! What one distro can do, they all can do!

Slackware is not on the Linux beard scale. Any idea where it lies?

 

[lxskllr]

Just a little shorter than gentoo.

 

[mxnerd]

Slackware is not on the Linux beard scale. Any idea where it lies?

Very, very early.

Linux distro is like virus now. 😂

==

2020 full timeline

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

 

[DasFox]

More details about what issues you faced with which distros exactly?

Spend a few years and distro hop, and play a lot in various distros, doing various things is the best way to know for yourself, all the problems you will face.

Why, because software isn’t perfect, and the reasons why Slack does it better, is because Pat and the team, mess as little as possible with the software and source that is packaged into Slack, and Slack is also a very simple hands on distro, with no bloated automated overhead, leading to less problems.

Basically Slackware is the simplest of all distros, with very little intertwined into it, making for greater performance, stability and security.

 

[you2]

Way late to this thread; but I use ubuntu WITH xfce4 interface. There are pros and cons. I'm a huge believer in ZFS and ubuntu makes it easy to use zfs (don't have to build my own kernel which i did before ubuntu integrated it); HOWEVER i'm pissed off at snap esp with chromium. I understand the security angle and while it is important the other head-ache created by snap drives me up a wall. so there is that to consider.

I've tried a few other distributions and i find they all have pro/con (well the ones i've tried); btw XFCE4 is 10000 times better than gnome3 and unity.

 

[mikeymikec]

I had assumed the beard scale referred to competence required to achieve said feat?

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm on Linux Mint, I find its mostly plug and play, it just works. When it comes to a desktop I don't really want to mess with the system I just want it to work, so I tend to stay on the short side of the beard scale.

For servers I was using CentOS but I've been switching to Devuan over time as I upgrade, which is Debian without SystemD. I sometimes toy with making my own server distro, it would basically just be based off an existing distro but introduce some config and installed custom apps out of the box to make server management easier. I was looking into how to modify the Debian installer a while back but got side tracked. The goal would be to create a distro that has a web interface to manage every aspect of a server like firewall rules, mailboxes, apache virtual hosts etc... and lot of the misc config would be done for you out of the box. Kind of like cpanel I guess, but without the price tag.

 

[igor_kavinski]

MX Linux – Midweight Simple Stable Desktop OS

mxlinux.org

Available in XFCE and Fluxbox flavors. Being actively maintained.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The goal would be to create a distro that has a web interface to manage every aspect of a server like firewall rules, mailboxes, apache virtual hosts etc... and lot of the misc config would be done for you out of the box.

Cockpit Project

Cockpit makes it easy to administer your Linux servers via a web browser.

cockpit-project.org

That could help you AFTER installation.

 

[hrsetrdr]

This about distro hopping? Check out one of the nice Arch-Linux derivatives- Garuda, Endeavouros or Manjaro. They are rolling releases like Arch, smooth as warm butter!