Why I Hate MOST Linux Distributions

[@jayefe17]

One thing you did for me Chris is that you made me more comfortable in the terminal and saved me from entering the vortex of distro-hopping. Thank you

[@Soraviel]

Same here, I'm not afraid of the terminal anymore either (I love it a lot)

[@mikeboatright5349]

@@Soraviel I started in the MS-DOS days so the command line isn't a big deal. The command line works really well once you get over it. I know some newer coders just out of college think it's going to be really hard to figure out but once they use it it's great for them.

[@ahuman4386]

@@mikeboatright5349 Yep. Same here with started in MS-DOS 5.01 here. Went from DOS to Win 98 (skipped the 95 and 3.11 years but did some use on them, just not as mine.) After XP and 7 and now 10, I did get lazy and like the desktop too much and was "scared" of the CLI in Linux. But after using it more and more over the past year or 2, I do my updates and installs with CLI more and more and love it. Just something warm and fuzzy with seeing words and numbers and symbols fly on the screen as it is working that makes it so cool again. Like getting back to basics.

[@orkhepaj]

so where did u hop last time?

[@LeonisYT]

5:40 . I agree. I want System 76 to be there as well. I'm personally glad they didn't release pop os 22.10 in favor of finishing their own DE , and can't wait to try it they're finished.

[@LuisCaneSec]

I'm excited about it and I really want them to take their time to polish it. I'd rather wait for a quality product than get frustrated with an unfinished promise.

[@vaisakh_km]

Yes really excited, if it is snapier,fast and have tiling.. i stop using twm :) hopfully they do that

[@gwgux]

Agreed, I have PopOS on my laptop and I'm eagerly waiting for it to come out when it's done. Depending on how good it is, I may switch the rest of my computers back to PopOS.

[@skillzset1066]

I run PopOS as my daily driver also. I was distro-hopping before that. I'm also really excited about the new COSMIC desktop. But I reckon, initially after it's released, you would essentially be stuck with the default experience that COSMIC provides, right? Because currently, I think Pop has the best implementation of GNOME, however, I still changed the theme, the icons, the cursor and much more. And since COSMIC will be a totally new DE written in RUST, I assume you won't have themes, etc. in the beginning until other devs begin designing COSMIC-specific themes, as they do with GNOME, right?

[@mikkolukas]

PopOS! is unstable. I have had it dump me with a malfunctional boot after doing a standard update the UI advised me to do. *That* is unacceptable behavior of a serious distro.

[@davidholt7906]

Another way to say what you seem to be saying about Arch is “if the right distro for you is Arch-based, you don’t need a recommendation from a video” 😊

[@soulstenance]

Very true. I just switched to Arch as a sort of 30 day challenge but I absolutely love it. You learn so much, because you have to. Mint is amazing but I felt like I was stagnating - not learning anything new.

[@hellomiakoda3782]

LoL! My linux journey started on Ubuntu. I learned there. Tried Fedora, hated it. Used Fedora at my precious job, still hate. (I'd take Fedora over mac or windows tho!) Tried Mint, but I was too far in my journey for it when I tried it. Used Pop for a good while. It's basically Ubuntu with easier nVidia drivers. And now, my main PC, and my secondary, run Manjaro. I have a little netbook thing that couldnt run Manjaro in any useful way, so its got Linux Lite. But Manjaro is as close as Id like to get to running Arch. I'm just not interested in all the crap I have to do.

[@soulstenance]

@@hellomiakoda3782 Sounds like quite an adventure! I've heard some dubious things about Manjaro that make me hesitant to try it, like expired certificates and held back packages breaking the AUR.

[@williamhansen9456]

@@soulstenance When I was done with ubuntu I chose Pop over Manjaro for this reason! Appearently it has been a thing for quiet a long time with no fix. I hated the popshop app manager though and ended up with MX and it's a keeper!

[@soulstenance]

@@williamhansen9456 Pop looks pretty sweet, though I haven't ever installed it. My only issue with the Pop Shop was the lack of version numbers on apps prior to installing them. On Mint this was invaluable as it helped me decide if I wanted the flatpak or repo version of a particular app. The Ubuntu/Mint/Debian repos often have egregiously outdated apps.

[@prgnify]

Honestly, on 'the year of corpo linux': I got to say OpenSUSE has been absolutely amazing, and every distro from them has a reason to exist and lots of unique things, instead of just packaging a bundle of things on top of something else. All of them have YaST (for us GUI inclined people), snapshots with snapper and btrfd, the OBS and their brilliant security features to name a few: Tumbleweed is rolling stable, you get fresh stuff and awesome performance; Leap is stable and goes by point release MicroOS in its current form is awesome for docker podman kubernetes etc., and a very capable release for people who want a "immutable" OS - which some people seem to think is the future of the linux desktop. They absolutely do not have the mindshare of other higher level distros (like debian-buntu-min, fedora, arch) but have the same if not higher quality - not to mention you can trust SUSE to be around for a long time, same as Canonical and Valve and RedHat and Google, they may be smaller, but they DO have contracts to extend support for some of their enterprise releases for like, the next decade - and as they are listed on the german stock exhange we KNOW they have the capital and manpower, as their financials are regularly released - they employ around 2k people and in terms of revenue are groing like, 25% yoy

[@larsradtke4097]

I use OpenSUSE for 15 years now. Before always leap versions, because I was afraid of tumbleweed. But since I got a new notebook in 2020, I found that the new drivers and the support for both graphics were only available with tumbleweed, I am staying with tumbleweed. Absolutely positive surprised how good it works. Only the amount of updates can be a lot of course.

[@brolinofvandar]

Originally, it was SuSE, German company, and it's actually one of the oldest commercial linux distributions, predating any of the ubuntu based systems. First SuSE release was in 94. I've been using it since around 99 or so. Opensuse came about after SuSE was purchased, and was its community release (like Fedora to Red Hat). It was owned by Novell at one point, so it's no surprise that the distribution has some solid networking support, including nice graphical Yast tools to configure just about any of it. I look at other distributions every few years, but I always end up staying with Opensuse. I can see no improvement over it from any other distro I've seen. I use it on everything, including my home server.

[@ADeeSHUPA]

​@@brolinofvandar SUSe or Slackware

[@TheSilverFX]

@@larsradtke4097 I unfortunately had problems trying to make my docking station work with Tumbleweed... Never found what was the culprit in all this. I reinstalled the system twice, but none of the install were providing me with the dual monitor setup working as intented... Other than that, it's a fantastic distro

[@mikeboatright5349]

I've settled on Fedora KDE after distro hoping a lot. I use Mint for about 10 years at home but my job is using RedHat with KDE so Fedora works better for me with tools and the command line. Also, Fedora is pretty stable and has newer tools for software development. My company is now starting to move to AWS so we will see if we keep RHEL or go with something different. I also use to use Ubuntu Server and then just installed a GUI so I had all the server related tools which is nice. Love the channel! Lot of good info.

[@aneemesh7524]

iirc Amazon Linux uses yum so you may be at home there, or at least a predecessor of home

[@tuckersguitarfiasco]

Chris, you are spot on with this. I consider myself an intermediate with Linux, and I have Ubuntu installed on my other PC, and I use it when I need it (which silly enough it is for creating ISO USB sticks). I have straight Debian on my Main Computer in a VM for browsing. I use Debian-based distros because I feel like I am not pressured to update my system everyday. There is a lot of us Linux users that just wants something that just works and not feeling like we got to do so many chores with our distros. Overall, It is basically the same. only difference is how it looks and what programs and branch of Linux it is from.

[@heron619]

For a long time I used to distro hop like crazy, from Manjaro to Fedora to PopOS back to Ubuntu and then I stumbled upon Chris's videos. I took his advice and switched to Mint, really learned to use Linux. And recently I have switched to Kubuntu and it felt really reassuring hearing him also recommending it in this video, and so far so good. I think i found my sweet spot with a Debian based stable system with the customizability of Kde Desktop!

[@plutorocks1]

I've used bunch of distributions lke Manjaro, Kubuntu, Fedora, Arco and others but I'm glad for finally making my initial choice to stick with openSUSE Tumbleweed after long haul distro hopping. Much of the packages I find here are almost new, great stability, well tested before pushed to users and breaks less than a typical Arch and other bleeding edge distribution do. Prolly this would be plateau of sustainability, at least for my case unless there's massive jaw dropping distribution in next linings, I would settle with openSUSE. Kudos to their team for incredible workings, their engineering matches to the same standard as German automobiles like Porsche and Audis.

[@abruenin236]

@Ryan Simmons Yepp, OpenSUSE is not the distro you use, if you want to look cool. But it is an excellent work horse, I use it every day.

[@sourabhuwusingh]

I would add to the list of good distributions, Opensuse. They do a phenomenal work with YaSt and you get both flexibility of either going with a rolling or a stable release distribution. I have found that fedora has not so good experience on KDE whereas I never had any problems with Opensuse and KDE.

[@shanewallace2460]

Opensuse is said to have the best implementation of KDE. As u mentioned, Opensuse is also a solid distro from Germany.

[@sourabhuwusingh]

@@shanewallace2460 They also have corporate backing so it should be there on the list.

[@gogudelagaze1585]

Yup, it's definitely one of the better distros out there imo.

[@themedleb]

KDE? Go OpenSUSE Gnome? Go Fedora

[@basilcat3111]

@@themedleb openSUSE devs are paid by SUSE to maintain gnome and gnome is the default in SLE.

[@roku-casualenjoyer555]

I very like the theme of challenging your thoughts and exploring the flip side of the coin, i hope you will always stay strong!

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

00:13 that's GNOME in nutshell. "We decided that wasting the top bar by centering the clock is what you want. Also the system will not boot to the desktop anymore as it's more logical the first thing you'll want to do is to launch a program."😂

[@DannyDaDane]

Totally agree with everything you said in this video. However, in my EARLY learning days, I found it very informative to practice installing different distros and checking them out and learn to distinguish the crap from the gold and see the commonalities between them and eventually learn to see and work on the underlying core OS and be better able to filter out all the noise and fanfare. Thank you for the video.

[@sadtechgeek]

@@JeffWF73 Even with that, it was an interesting comment, unlike your snarky reply. In the time it took you to come up with that attempt at humour, you could have posted an experience or comment that was helpful.

[@scrunt62]

I'm really appreciative of your channel, it's like a gateway drug haha. I think what I appreciate most is that you provide content that is non-patronizing, and that actively maintains accessibility or relevancy with people who aren't already tech-whizzes. Offering education for how people can get into these things if they so choose to is great. You also seem to have a high degree of understanding on whether extrapolation is helpful or not--meanwhile, a lot of other people aren't interested in being relevant to people still in the process of learning certain things, ooor they kind of seem to want to show off despite advertising their content for beginners, which probably puts them at risk of losing some of that viewer base. I think right now you seem to be the biggest net being cast; you're gathering people who don't know so much about coding or linux and are basically providing accessible, non-patronizing ways of getting started, but your content also seems to be relevant to people who already are familiar with these systems, too. It's so helpful. Thanks for everything you do!

[@burgerchild]

ive used linux mint and it's the distro that has caused me the least issues on my desktop system. I don't see myself switching ever, the software compatibility is very solid, the stability is excellent, and the development team is admirable. If i want to test distros from now on, I'm just gonna do it on my extra 120gb SSD in my laptop.

[@ahuman4386]

Same here! I may venture on other distros just to try but always come home to Mint as my daily. Love both Cin and XFCE DE's and how clean they are. Though I am doing more in CLI and I love to make that look cool. lol

[@Evgen13Great]

I use LMDE now with Windows 11 dualboot, nice distro)

[@m4kulatura]

oh hi didn't expect you here

[@burgerchild]

@@m4kulatura yuhh

[@jonathandawson3091]

Chris Titus is the reason why I use Arch today and haven't logged into Windows for almost a year now, and am very happy. You're truly making a difference. Love your work man.

[@pincus321]

Andy’s Ham Radio is this a great way to do an easy introduce to simple users to tools for beginner amateurs

[@gravelrhoads]

Thank you! I love that you play around with all sorts of hardware and software. Even when you know it's going to be a subpar experience, because you learn something in the journey. Seriously though, Linux has a perception problem. The masses (the ones that even know what GNU/Linux is) think you have to be a programmer to use it and that's always going to be a problem unless, sadly, a large company does their own unified version that gives you just a little bit of personalization features. Because at the end of the day, people really only want to change some of the colors and maybe have a dark mode.

[@deultima]

And I thank you for that. i think that's why I was attracted to your channel. I was just a year deep into my switching to Linux journey and you challenged me to build my own gaming centric OS based on Manjaro. You challenged me to keep my Windows skills sharp even though I hated it but, I still need to support it as it is a functional and popular OS. You then challenged me switch to Fedora and Nobara for my gaming needs. And now that I need to rebuild my laptop desktop as an Arch Update broke it last night, LOL . I'm accepting your challenge to give base Debian a try. You make all this learning fun.

[@B5152g]

What I hate is when asking for help on fixing or configuring things, you will get sent to articles or long forums where you have to read pages and pages of things before you find what you want, instead of that person telling you how to do something in a few sentences.. Want to request a feature or have an idea on how to make things work better, or how things should? Well too bad you will get attacked..

[@erics7004]

I'm using Opensuse Tumbleweed, if it wasn't for the lack of software and the NVIDIA drivers issue, it would be the perfect distro for everyone. The updates don't break like Arch.

[@ItsCryptic]

Personally I’m Fedora - that’s not because I’m “new” to Linux. In fact I’ve used it on servers for years and only switched because my hardware couldn’t support windows 11. I’m a developer & a casual gamer with most of my games being playable, and most apps I use being open source or are web apps.

[@yvrelna]

I think you're underestimating the amount of work needed to "cobbling together everyone else's work". Most Linux distros are based on either Debian's or Red Hat's work. That's why the derivative distributions can just focus on creating user interfaces, rather than having to do all the boring "cobbling together everyone else's work" that's absolutely necessary building blocks to make other usable distro. Nothing that Debian does is particularly eye-catching. In fact, they're mostly quite boring and mundane, package management, maintaining build servers, mirrors, QA, etc, things that "nobody" cared about. But without these essential work being done by Debian, your derivatives Mint Desktop are worthless. People often seems to be taking these fundamental work for granted, and not really appreciate their importance. It's also not really a good thing if distros actually have what's effectively unique/proprietary components that aren't upstreamed to the root distributions. That derivative distros can steal ideas and work from each other is a sign of a healthy ecosystem that's fostered by the hard work done by the contributors of these root distros. Even if most of these derivative distros are uncreative and unoriginal, that's just a natural consequence of the open nature of Linux.

[@JohnFlower-NZ]

I think of derivative distros as testbeds for upstream. They can do crazy stuff and upstream can implement their best ideas wthou the pain of breaking stuff.

[@512Bytes]

I definitely agree with this! Re-branding has to stop in GNU/Linux 😡

[@NoNameAtAll2]

yeah, like adding "gnu" to already established name "linux"

[@512Bytes]

@@NoNameAtAll2 If it uses the GNU tools is a GNU/Linux distribution, that's why Android and ChromeOS are not Linux distributions although they use the Linux kernel. Linux is just the Kernel, not the whole thing.

[@slavyori]

@@512Bytes So Alpine Linux is not distro?

[@ChrisTitusTech]

When I'm around elitist I like to call them out for using GNU/Linux and correct them with... SystemD/GNU/Xorg/Linux

[@tanseby]

Saying making a fork of another distro is the wrong appropriate I think

[@DenzilFerreira]

Fedora user here, since 27, same install upgraded to 36. No issues, good workflow. At the end of the day, use what doesn't mess with your work. Press on switch, and off we go to build.

[@MichaelJHathaway]

I make my own distro with Debian. Mint is awesome for new and advanced users.

[@msinfo32]

Debian is great! Especially for compatibility too. Running under testing branch here myself and it's absolutely great.

[@shanewallace2460]

Very true...Debian is rock stable and Linux Mint Debian Edition is noob friendly stability...

[@tonigon5767]

I have trialed every single Distro i could get my hands on, and that would load (I have a list of ones that would stop partway into the install) . I have had Mint on the same machine since version 14. I have discarded everything except for Mint, Kubuntu, Fedora and POP OS. I like Manjaro (when it works) If the OS works reliably, then it is up to the user to make it work for them .

[@themedleb]

(when it works) lol

[@killertruth186]

Not only most of the copycat distributions is the issue, the lack of the most basic standardization as well. And yes, it is possible to have standardization and free to change at the same time.

[@linuxstreamer8910]

i love endeavouros because it is mostly arch linux but with a proper installer where you get to choose what parts you want for me it is gonna be kde & after the install i add pamac & discover to it

[@marnixds]

it is not easy, especially when installing via yay (many unknown options) but I like it as well.

[@brookedoesstuff]

same, it also has some extra installed components that allow for more compatibility without needing to download and install them manually, which is nice for laptops

[@Petrisha]

Godspeed Chris, and thank you for questioning and challenging my status quo with every video! I sincerely believe I've had the most concentrated learning experience in a long time over these last six months thanks to you.

[@asdf51501]

Linux nooby guy here, though I’ve dabbled in it since the 90s and currently have a Mint Cinnamon install running on my 5950x box. I appreciate this channel a lot for several reasons: You do a great job of “humanizing” the experience, you’re entertaining and easy to listen to, you know what you’re talking about, and so on, so it makes learning the subject matter a breeze and a good experience.

[@Sherlock385]

On point. So many distributions, so little innovations and real customisations. After some distro hopping I find it the best to take the most basic thing (clean Debian, Arch, whatever) and customize it by my preferences. And it's the true beauty of it. BTW, great job dismantling the basic postulate of consumerism ;-) (8:30)

[@runninginthe90s75]

Same here, i really hate Linux distros, they all the same shit but different skin. Not to mention the awful toxic Linux community who are bunch of toxic arrogant elitist talking crap about distros you use. Linux easily the worst OS to use, it was pure shit.

[@Sherlock385]

@@runninginthe90s75 I don't hate them, there are some that are nicely balanced, like Zorin or Mint, even Manjaro, but I still find it the best to start vanilla and add what I prefer. And yes, the "community" can be toxic, but it' like everything else in life. I must say that I wouldn't go very far if there weren't good people that helped me along with their knowledge and advices.

[@richardsinclair7661]

@@runninginthe90s75 Sounds like you either had a bad experience (or a few bad experiences), or your expectations for what using Linux would be like were misguided. I'm predominantly a Windows user because it's what I know best, but I've been dabbling in Linux for about a year now and it's been really fun. It is a bit of a pain sometimes, but that's Linux in general. If you don't like solving problems, or aren't at least indifferent to them, Linux isn't for you. Also, the community can be toxic, but it depends on the places you frequent. Most Linux users I've come across have been super nice. Especially on KZbin.

[@stevedixon921]

I use Windows and am I'm okay with that (years of training and experience with it). I tinker with Linux on the side and find use cases for it, but I still have very little experience with it and still dislike using the cli. I have absolutely no plans to switch to Linux for my daily driver as Windows does what I need it to do. I find this channel refreshing as it has a different take on using linux to solve your objectives and I learn stuff in the process. I tried a number of distros but eventually landed on Debian as my preferred out of box desktop distro (it can be just a server with a desktop if you want it to be), though Mint was my launching point. One observation is that I find it very 'distracting' (in all OS's) when all the bits and pieces in the gui space do not look or work consistently depending on your desktop window manager, etc (example: managing wifi connection profiles in a kde app running on a gnome window manager). Shame I see so much effort going into creating 'the next best distro' rather than making the bits and pieces better at the source (which I consider Debian to be, given how many other distros are forked off of it). I like the concept of atomic distros in particular when combined with self repairing COW file systems ("oops, it broke" == "roll it back, carry on").

[@raderator]

Tried a bunch of distros including Mint, Pop, Ubuntu and Fedora. Never been tempted to switch from Zorin Core. It's so slick and modern. It's what made me switch from Windows after 30 years. Protip: Stick with Chrome, if you are using it. Makes the transition easy. Just install the Linux Scroll Speed Fix extension.

[@arnonart]

i started with mint in jan 2019. the reason i moved to manjaro on my daily driver is because i'm more into photography and i couldn't wait for the updates to be available after half a year. however, i installed mint to many friends and they all love it. even some elderly people that never before used a computer. i have one mint running on a mini pc connected to my tv set. it's awesome.

[@JoseRobertoS93]

Like Linus said on the Linux challenge videos, "most of the users wants a simple one way to do things and simply play the games", that's the reason most of distros are aiming to replicate the windows experience, but failing in the process when the desktop experience has it's flaws. I agree with the idea that developers must focus into create a cohesive and polish experience instead of building more distros and trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm glad that I found your channel and learning a lot of stuff that can be done into IT management and tricks that already solved some issues. Maybe isn't for everyone that wants to take a deep dive into terminal commands or taking the system that they're using to a next level. Still a red or blue pill decision.

[@gogudelagaze1585]

The problem with this is that most projects seem to have people in charge that have egos the size of small planetoids. Certain Gnome devs come to mind, as well as Canonical regarding any tech they didn't write. And if you REALLY want to get people pissed off, perform a deep dive and analysis of the available UI frameworks or packaging systems from an application developer's point of view. hint: You'll end up saying Electron/Tauri/Flutter are far better than any native alternative. Then try to explain your findings to the userbase that keeps complaining about people using said frameworks and get based by 70-80% of people. The only people that will agree with you are other application developers (and Linus Torvalds himself, lol) IDK why, but the community itself has a very self-defeating mentality.

[@Sumire973]

@@gogudelagaze1585 And then we have other non-Linux operating systems, like FreeBSD, that use the same UI frameworks, desktop environments, and display servers, the FreeBSD team is aiming to remove any GPL components from their base system, and if they start to focus on the desktop, they will have to reinvent the wheel since both QT and GTK are GPL toolkits..Because those operating systems share many of the same technologies and things like freedesktop specs, it will end up with the result that they will always influence each other and it will be impossible for the community to stick with one choice anyway. When PC-BSD/TrueOS died, Lumina Desktop was ported to Linux and the remains of TrueOS were moved to Project Triden, a Void Linux based distro, It did happen with Lumina, it can happen again, and not only with DEs, but also with toolkits and many other system components, you simply just can't fight the innate modularity of UNIX design And this goes way beyond a matter of ego, you can't ask Linux, *BSDs, Illumos and others to merge together to form the one and best FLOSS OS in the same way that you can't ask MIcrosoft, Apple, Commodore and others to merging to form the only and best proprietary OS (apart from the fact that the latter would constitute a full-fledged trust monopoly case) those alternative operating systems still have every right to exist no matter how much their mere existence causes issues.

[@gogudelagaze1585]

@@Sumire973 I'm not very familiar with the BSD family, I must admit. I should probably give it a go at some time. Are IUP or Tk options they're considering? I ended up using IUP for one of my projects, and it was MIT/fairly nice to use. But what you're saying sounds like portability to BSD is going to be quite the nightmare going forward.. Still, that's an impressive undertaking. I'm not saying that all projects should pick one thing and use that, but I quite got the feeling there's quite a bit of "not invented here" syndrome, but I guess that could be just my impression as I'm not all that deeply involved with many projects. Still, this fragmentation will lead to developers packing in more and more dependencies, breaking the developer-maintainer-user chain. I've already seen some package maintainers complain about how this is impacting them. Thanks for your insight!

[@MisterSiga]

thing keeping me away from linux is how much effort it takes to do things that windows /mac users take for granted . just want to get home from work, get on my pc and do my thing be it gaming , movies or my own dev projects. I dont want to have to wrestle my OS , dont care about the elitist crap "oh real men with huge penises use linux" or "sigma alpha ultra chads do". life is too short

[@TheGhostOfRandy1-2-3]

Went straight from Mint (still have it as my work distro) to Garuda for my personal distro. And as always - I have win10 as the ultimate fall back OS. Manjaro on my laptop, I'd recommend Zorin above mint as a starter. Or Manjaro depending on the person. Ilove them all, and glad there are people working on this for fun in the background.

[@Tzalim]

I love Garuda, Garuda Lite is my fav.

[@neptronix]

I agree with the comment about Linux Mint. It's very refined and for the most part 'just works'. We love it at our company.

[@talkysassis]

My big problem with every distro scept NixOS is simple: Why can't I have program v1.0 AND v2.5 at the same time?

[@solasoul33]

Well you have a point and thank you because we are all here to learn. At the end of the day your system really determines what distribution you use really some will be great until the next update, some may not even boot up at all. What I would love is for developers to be more open with what is actually installed on the system and give users a choice.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

If it is in the repository, you can install it. There is a fine balance between just enough software and too much redundant software (bloat). Some distros do give you a lot of choice during install. However, some find this too confusing while others love it. In other words, no matter what the developers do, they won't please everyone. Linux users tend to be even more picky than Windows and Mac users IMO.

[@poseidon3032]

I would like more distros to be tailored to the specs of the system. Not just minimal requirements, but usable kind. If it has to be a basic window manager to run effectively, then so be it.

[@tomonabudget]

I've been hopping onto Linux and off for over 20 years now. I so wish the community would spend the time to resolve many long standing issues, rather than spinning out a yet another: - Desktop environment - Package Manager - Linux Distro I tried so many times and just can't make the switch full time because it always lacked certain things that I use in windows. I always hit always a heckin road block or some setting or update nukes my installation. I like Mint and I adored Suse Linux in the early day. But support for non Debian distros has always been challenging. Overall the Linux Desktop works wonderfully if you mainly code. Things that always gave me issues: - scanners - adobe Lightroom to edit photos - Microsoft Office (Libre Office is stuck in the year 2000) - Photoshop (Gimp is just weird) - 4k screens as screen scaling is broken - NTFS support for external hard drives is still am issue - native Network sharing is just a nightmare - a central store or repo for software with up to date software since most repos are hopelessly outdated - no breakages with updates - NVIDIA graphics function - easy ability to have different mouse speed on my touch pad vs my mouse - larger mouse pointer and pointer highlight - linux remembering my screen positions - simple battery/ power management And the list goes on.

[@ΧρήστοςΤουμπάρης]

OpenSUSE is also pretty unique distro, it is stable and it has it's own unique packages and his own package manager. I used it around a year and I loved it. The only disadvantage that i found it's that it has a small community. I would REALLY appreciate, if you give a second chance. EDIT: I don't want you to review it, I just want you to try it for yourself

[@kuhluhOG]

I prefer (and run) openSUSE Tumbleweed too. That's mostly because of their release method (aka, the one thing which you can't customize on a distro). It's a rolling release which tries to be as speedy as Arch when releasing packages while at the same time reducing the instability which comes form it through automatic testing (including automatic GUI testing) and have a fail-safe (thanks to snapper) in case it doesn't work.

[@jyothishkumar3098]

This video reminded me of how I first loved Linux because I installed Ubuntu and Kubuntu (in 2010~) and was impressed by their wierd differences when compared to Windows. Nowadays, all of 'em converging to a single predictable style so distros don't even seem different from each other. I'll make sure to pick out the distros that have some good thought gone into it from now on 🙂

[@nonyabusiness-f9e]

if big papa Gaben is the corporate overlord im stuck with im am 100% okay with that.

[@Ramg77]

Two weeks ago I watched a couple of videos about your experience using ChromeOS and you even said that you would never use it. Well that encouraged me to try it and 5 days later I completely changed Windows 11 Pro from my new laptop to ChromeOS, I don't think you'll like that but the point is that it was you who aroused in me that curiosity to try something new. I have been a Windows and Linux user since the beginning, but I had lost that curiosity, that spark to discover new things, to try new things, until I saw your videos. I bought this computer to use it in the degree in data sciences that I am studying and ChromeOS perfectly covers all my needs in that regard. The truth is that there is still a world to discover and these days I felt it again like when I watched Computer Chronicles as a child. Greetings from Argentina.

[@GixoXYZ]

I agree with what you're saying to some point and I enjoyed and learned from most of the content you've made but I think there is a beauty in having so many distros and that's the freedom of doing what ever you want to do with your software. Also distros such Debian started like any other distro and who knows we might see a great new distro in your list in the future.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

I don't know how long you've followed this channel but Christ use to be a huge Arch fanboy. His stance tends to change over time as he changes and grows. 😉

[@GixoXYZ]

I think it's been 3 years. Someone who doesn't change is a dead person. I used to be more excited and a Arch/ Gentoo fanboy as well but now I think having a reliable and less time consuming system is more important. It's not to say that I don't love Arch anymore but it doesn't fit my lifestyle anymore and that's the beauty of Linux to have options tailored for your needs.

[@juliewalker9509]

You are the person, who got me to try linux and stick with it . i use Pop-0s with kde , and also linux mint cin

[@RanaHussain-mp4pv]

I love your explanation. Why you never talk about openSuse distribution. I think it is most under rated Linux distribution, but my personal experience it is the most reliable Linux system. What is your thoughts on OpenSuse Tumbleweed or OpenSuse Leap. Keep up the great work.

[@AmjadKhateeb]

I really like your channel, and I'm very impressed about your videos. There is many unique characteristics in your videos that makes me impressed and keep watching. You always go direct to the main point. I don't like videos that reveals the (secret) at the end of the video. Give me the point, don't waste my time. You always encourage to be on my own way, which fits me, and the way that works and suitable for me. Not to be forced by other opinions. I have watched most of your video in the last 3 years. Maybe I didn't apply more than 10% of what you have showed in all the videos. But I think that's the point. I want to be myself, not others.

[@cmh-yen]

I won't lie, I just installed debian yesterday on a vm to try out linux for the first time, because you said it was what you used, and it has been a very enlightening experience. I think it is so much nicer to just not have to make so many decisions trying to get into it, just picking one that they say is good and then rolling with the punches for a while. It really seems like there is so much you can do if you just learn how Linux actually works at it's core instead of just chasing shiny objects and new distros.

[@glenlinux9924]

I have spent last year and this year distro hopping, went back to Linux Mint and will be staying with it for the long run. Great vid as always Chris, thank you.

[@miket.220]

Longtime Windows and Mac user here. I toyed with Linux here and there over the years, but never could stay for a number of reasons. I recently took the plunge and installed Linux Mint 21. Wow, what a difference from past distros. You are 100% right about it - Mint is a beautifully cohesive experience for a Linux distro. I'd say it is every bit as polished an experience as Windows. I installed it on a 2012 Mac Mini and everything worked right out of the box. The only hitch was the wifi card wasn't recognized initially. But a quick plug onto ethernet, fired up their driver manager, and within 5 min my wifi connection was up and running. Linux is, of course, a bit of a learning curve from Mac and Windows. But Mint has made it a lot easier to deal with and hasn't discouraged me like past distros.

[@XeroLinux]

Amen brother.. Amen ... Although I maintain one of those Distros, I totally understand where you coming from. I never recommend my distro for the n00bs simply because it's based off of Arch one of the most unstable bases out there. I could have based it on Mint or Debian, at the end of the day I used what gave me the most freedom at a huge cost of stability.. We all are different coats of paint on top of something that already existed. The worst thing to say is that our creation is good for everyone. We created it for ourselves in the end, we share in hopes to increase the amount Linux users. But it's perfectly fine if they decide to stick with Windows if it's what works for them. Stop hating on Windows users.. We use what works and that's the end of it. Sorry for lengthy comment but you hit me where it hurts the most buddy... LoL ;)

[@youdontknowme2508]

Yeah exactly. This is just another Linux user's rant tbh. I usually see this stuff people arguing about distro choices on reddit forums lol. And this video is no different from that. It's okay to recommend something I would say but straight up saying something is bad is no different from the ones I've mentioned above. Let the people choose whatever they want to. And btw continue the nice work you're doing. There are people who love you and your work.

[@XeroLinux]

@@youdontknowme2508 Yessir, let the users use what they want.. Our job is to set the right expectations. Once that's done, let them roam free, use whatever works best for them. In Linux there will be a lot of experimentation before finding right "Distro". Choices are basically few main ones with countless iterations of them.

[@Nonas_a_Blerd]

I periodically distro hop, but always come back to Sparky Linux. It isn't pretty, but it's based on Debian Testing, and has great tools that make it easy to customize how you want. Thanks for all your videos.

[@twinshock175]

Love your work Chris, only stumbled onto the Win10 debloate recently, then checked out you channels other videos etc you have done. Me now, have been on and upgraded with Linux Mint for about 4 years due to Win 10 anniversary updates messing with drivers and hardware not working. Mint just works, very little fuss, minimal issues. My spare laptop is Win10, still need it for certain apps and programs. I run Ventoy on a USB stick, I tryed out some different distros here and there, havent really felt the urge to jump to any particular distro just yet except to load a light weight alternate RPi project based like machine. I am learning more now as I go, even had a hand-me-down Mac for a while during covid to play with. Linux is where I am happiest.

[@karsh001]

When I worked as a dev, I used Gentoo as my daily driver. I loved it, but its very time consuming to work with. Now I mainly use Mint and Windows.

[@notuxnobux]

Less common but arch is the most popular option for professional use when it comes to graphics card use or when you want the latest drivers. Nvidia for example uses arch for their arm+nvidia development. Dxvk is primarly developed on arch too and thats why steamos is arch based. Greg hartman who is the maintainer of the linux stable branch (basically linus right hand man) also uses arch for testing software as he needs the latest systemd version.

[@umop3plsdn]

also the point that no one ever brings up when saying Arch rolling bad is that NO ONE is forcing you to do updates. Even if you wanted a stable environment using Arch is definitely an option not to mention access to the AUR. I'm not saying that's me because I update every day when I turn my machine on it's like friggin christmas

[@TheEricDangerous]

For me, the support for older versions of GTK is the most important problem. MacOS or Windows users have no choice but to use a recent version. Mr. Torvalds probably has something to do in this area. Because the fragmentation created by the endless support of old environments is to the detriment of the users, nobody wants to have the Win3.11 desktop running on the latest NT kernel, under Linux unfortunately yes. Those who never found themselves in a hotel room with a moldy network and a ton of reports to send to work (and 2Giga of updates for Arch to do), will never understand why Debian is by far the best distribution.

[@Sumire973]

Considering that *BSDs and Solaris/Illumos use and can use GTK/QT as well, definitely Torvalds can't do anything about this, especially considering the Linux port of Lumina Desktop after the death of PC-BSD/TrueOS, as many of these operating systems share the same technologies even if you managed to fix that problem on Linux you would have to deal with the siege that comes from other open source operating systems, for example FreeBSD is actively seeking to get rid of the GPL code from its base systems, and GTK /QT are GPL toolkits, they will want to create their own solutions sooner or later if they see it feasible. And then there are the linuxisms, as much as those OSes are even much less used than Linux on the desktop, they should not be underestimated either, since if the right circumstances are given, all Linux users could be forced to migrate to those operating systems, Linuxisms cause problems for non-Linux systems precisely by using Linux-centric features that are not present in those operating systems for obvious reasons, like systemd for example.

[@ricardosobral986]

Two years ago I switched to Linux because I "wanted something different", and to me your channel was what made me challenge my self into learning what I could do with it, every day has been a learning experience, something new, something different, a new challenge for me to overcome and I can say for certain that your channel was one of the many things that helped me to just that. As someone said here on the comment section, your channel actually saved me from distro-hopping haha

[@phrtao]

All distros are really just starting points. They always talk about attracting new users because for anyone who is more knowledgeable it does not really matter which distro you are on or which Desktop environment or window manager you use either. I also find that Linux does not 'break' under normal usage. I have enough experience to know that you don't experiment on your main system (I use a VM for that or an old laptop). All distros use the same packages with very little deviation. Some have newer versions some keep older ones. It is mainly the default settings and hardware detection that give a good or bad experiences on first install but once you learn what you are doing pretty much any distro can be made to work for you.

[@Peter-yd2ok]

I used to to do distro hopping every week and I've finally settled on WSL2 with ubuntu

[@kewejuankenobie]

I moved my laptop to Pop_OS! because I am excited for the full release of Cosmic next year, and the awesome power settings on it. My battery life went from 2 hours on Windows, to 6 hours on Pop_OS!

[@Liperium]

Wow is it that good from the get go? My laptop has like a 3h battery tops on Fedora. Hmm, might try it out!

[@kewejuankenobie]

@@Liperium Part of it is because on the go, I switch to the I-gpu via the battery profiles and when on power, I switch to Hybrid or Dedicated

[@Liperium]

@@kewejuankenobie that's something missing on Fedora, but I forgot it existed on pop os. I tried it once, but a lot of stuff wasn't working for me ( screen dimming, etc ) And I bricked it at one point, so I tried Fedora. I still get better power efficiency on there, but I haven't looked if the gpu or igpu get's properly switched (probably not) But I think I could do that with nvidia optimus?

[@bertblankenstein3738]

I know you like to customize your Linux. I'm just on the basics, Mint, and that works pretty good for me. I've got some other stuff running on pis, and I'm also in to the microcontrollers. I make it work without to much trouble. I still like these videos, because I should get out there and try to customize the environment much more, and these videos do show how to do that.

[@fredashay]

I use Mint, but when I had to upgrade from 19 to 20, I couldn't simply upgrade. I had to install a brand new install and then reinstall all my apps and reset all my preferences. It was a huge pain in the @$$! If Mint does that again from 20 to 21, I'm switching to Debian.

[@EonNShadow]

Anyone gonna mention Changed at 5:15? Just me? Ok.

[@surv5k]

i was gonna comment the same thing lmao

[@nathanmiddleton1478]

I was one of those Arch users screaming at you in my head but refrained from commenting until the end. Ironically the only truly breaking update I ever experienced on a system was a dist upgrade on Debian. It was in the early 2000's so I'm sure the software has come a long way. My two favorite distributions definitely are Debian and ArchLinux. If you never, ever, ever need anything outside of an offician repo Debian is definitely the way to go though, which for an up-to-date desktop system where you expect things to be a little hinky sometimes, is not Debian. On the otherhand; ArchLinux is really quite stable depending on how you approach your use of it, but the average user isn't going to understand this. And, if you're jumping on whole-system updates everytime there are new packages you will run into issues. With that said, the reason I stick with Arch is because of the accessibility of the package format. Debian's package format has everything spread out and chopped up; Why? Give me a list of files, track those files, enough is done. Give me some metadata about those files and some tools to manage them. That simplicity has made my filesystem, distribution, and overall Linux experience much less of a black box.

[@heinrichagrippa5681]

In my experience, very frequent full system updates has actually be the _best_ way of reliably using Arch long term. That way, you're only ever upgrading a couple or at most a few packages at a time - kind of a ship of Theseus type deal - and if something breaks or requires some manual intervention, it's much easier to pinpoint what went wrong. It's when you finally get around to updating after putting it off for a few months, and now pacman wants to basically replace your entire system, that things get hairy. That's where you end up with multiple package conflicts, multiple dependencies that have been replaced/renamed, circular dependency issues, and finally getting the update to actually go through only to find your system is now broken in several different ways and you have no idea which out of the 800 new packages caused this.

[@nathanmiddleton1478]

@@heinrichagrippa5681 That can be true, it can also be you're the one that discovers your sound system just broke. :) I didn't mean to imply waiting "months" because Arch is still a rolling release, that'd be horrible thinking. The idea is to wait and not be OCD about it, or have it scripted to jump on it immediately. That's a lesson I've learned from Arch itself. I used to have it auto-update every night after a certain period of desktop inactivity via systemd/cron. After a handful of incidents where something would stop working and I'd find in the blog an explanation that a package went through with some discovered issues. I stopped doing that. My personal practice now, and one I'd recommend to everyone, is to just give some things a week at a time. Check the home page/blog for anything big, then manually update. Know what you're getting into first, because like this video says things *do* break on Arch because of it being a rolling-release distro. Just using your head though can resolve a lot of that. It's not something a new user, or someone with little experience wants to deal with though.

[@JamesColeman]

I mostly agree with you, however my stance on distributions for beginners have changed significantly with newer releases of Fedora. They have made it much harder for an individual to make a mistake and they also have the installation process similar to Windows and MacOS where you install the OS then do a first time setup at first boot. This means you can install on a system and sell it without setting up a user account for the new computer owner to just setup an account and use the computer.

[@MrFreeGman]

I first installed Mint in 2012 as my first distro. I still use it today. I've tried out dozens of other distros, but at the end of the day, Mint gives me the best user experience and the least headaches (for my use case, which is as a developer whose time is valuable).

[@computer_freedom]

I couldn't agree with you more. For the reasons you mention, I keep coming back to Mint. At the end of the day an OS should be a means to an end, and not something I have to fight with.

[@Acilius.]

Between yours and the French Linux Experiment channel - I really get my dosage of all things Linux :-D Thanks so much for continuing to take the time to publish this content and staying true to principles and ideals. I very much enjoy your take on most of the issues you take on. Cheers

[@andrewnorris5415]

As a pro coder working on a startup I am learning lots of things. New languages, frameworks, APIs, low level C, high level AI/Python. I do not have so much time (or extra hassle?) to try out distros. I have settled on Ubuntu - happy with it for now. Prefer Linux to Windows on that basis. Still have to make versions of my Desktop coding tool app for Windows though. I'm using WxWidgets. Spend most time in Linux developing it.

[@theannoyingcitrus]

What you said about challenging people’s beliefs is something the Linux community really needs to learn.

[@phoenixrising4995]

I think recommending immutable distros to newbies is the way to go. If they want to get their hands dirty give them a distrobox.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

That depends on your perspective. Offer any belief or position and it will get challenged at some point by someone. It is the willingness to consider the other side of the argument that is the issue IMO. Most are too intent on defending their position to sit back and look at the other perspective. I've found that the other side has some valid points even if I don't agree with it as a whole.

[@lorduggae]

I started on Mint then went to Pop! and have finally settled on Manjaro. It has the perfect amount of freedom, tools and hand holding that I want. Mint is a great distro, I've switched my mom over to Mint and she likes it.

[@pedrohqb]

I am actually an EndeavourOS user. It simply works for me, as it acts as a non-hassle Arch installer. I stopped distro-hopping after I saw Arch was by far the easiest for me to manage. Started using arch repos + flatpaks for most of the stuff, and AUR for the rest. To rollback I have installed snapper + btrfs-assistant, and it works just fine. You must be confortable and know how to troubleshoot. That's it

[@phoenixrising4995]

I think immutable distros will solve these issues. Imagine a flatpak only distro with more consistent packing of runtimes and apps. If you don't care about complete sandboxing you could use distrobox to run a whole distro as an app or run apps within the container. The only fruit left hanging is driver support at that point. Plus, most quality apps are now flatpaks so you're not missing much. I think GnomeOS or Silverblue will be the future.

[@gogudelagaze1585]

Problem with immutable distros is that they still require security updates, and in my experience, non-rolling release distros tend to break often when you do updates. I do agree with you that that's how it should be, though. I've been using NixOS in the last year or so precisely because of this, and it is freaking bulletproof once you know how to use it.

[@phoenixrising4995]

@@gogudelagaze1585 I wonder how a more stable independent GNOME OS would be. Rolling base image and flatpaks ontop. If you need more advance stuff just use distrobox.

[@Sumire973]

@@gogudelagaze1585 >that they still require security updates Which is true for literally any OS, since it's impossible to write bug-free software, If DOS and other old operating systems didn't have security updates, it is because they were made before the Internet era, this doesn't mean that they did not have vulnerabilities though.

[@eructationlyrique]

I realized at some point the reason I would distrohop was because I didn't like the choices the distributor would make for me. Once I understood that, I switched to Gentoo and never looked back

[@fragdq]

I use Linux since 20+ years. Currently using Fedora Silverblue as my Desktop, and its a really fresh thing and feels kinda good, has its own issues, but nothing is perfect though. I would suggest everybody to try it out. I used Arch Linux for years and in retrospect I feel like I wasted too much time with it, it is good, when it runs without issues, but I feel like I wasted so much time fixing stuff, tinkering all the time etc. - I don't want that stuff on my Desktop anymore.+ Arch Linux system rot is reall when you use it over years. For my servers I only use Debian, nothing else. Never had issues with it on my Servers of all those years.

[@phoenixrising4995]

Yup immutable distros are the future. I would like to see a distro that uses only flatpaks and the desktop is LFS or completely independent. That would be a clean experience and if you need more there is distrobox, which you don't need root to run.

[@KnutBluetooth]

Nope it's not real. You're just not that skilled.

[@fragdq]

@@KnutBluetooth ye talk shit dude, get lost. u don't even know me and you wanna make a profile out of me. you are the EPITOME of those Arch elitist losers that get butthurt when somebody says something bad about their loved OS, even if its a true statement. jesus christ, you people are the worst. Imagine thinking that Arch or any other distro needs some sort of special skill to use it... seriously. This is so dumb.

[@vincentvandenBergh1986]

Why not recommend openSUSE LEAP. It has its own identity, unique features and has a fabulous integration and a clear philosophy.

[@LasseNumminen]

4:30 I do agree with you here but just to note that as an individual arch experience both my desktop (intel nvidia) and laptop (newer intel, nvidia) have been running flawlessly for years now. Only hiccup was to set up the laptop's discrete GPU to display image through the intel GPU. In fact this has been the best experience for me running nvidia cards on linux. I still keep expecting something to break every time I run updates and keep getting positively surprised that nothing of the sorts happened. Even after years of doing this without issues.

[@WolvericCatkin]

Yeah, that's what switching to Mint felt like to me... _"Falling in love with computing..."_ like I did so many years ago, when I was first introduced to computers with Windows 7... just a computer, no nagging walls in the way when I want to do something...

[@folksurvival]

>first introduced to computers with Windows 7

[@nado911]

Kudos to you Chris, this really echoed to me because yes I think the essence of using Linux as a driver or some sort is really the knowledge and "the bed" you make from it. It just reinforces the pusedo-cheeky response that the best distro is the one you use really holds up. If you're productive and it lights the fire of I want make cool shit for my self and potentially other users, the distro ultimately doesn't matter. Edit: Corrected typo

[@TheCgOrion]

I have eventually settled on Mandrake, and I haven't had any problems with it. I 100% agree with you that Mint is a great starting point for new users. I'm primarily a gamer though, so it's Windows, and Linux is a hobby.

[@MagikBoubou666]

I totally agree with you Chris ! Your videos are really good to build up our mind about various subjects that are really difficult to understand completely. I also distro hopped for quite some time and I came back to my initial vanilla Debian, which is one of the two Linux types that deserves attention with RHEL stuffs (and maybe what Nix OS tries to provide) in my opinion. On the other side, I think you should make a video about *BSD OSes to completely tackle this (these ?) point(s). I personally tried FreeBSD, which looked fine despite some little hardware compatibily issues. My point is mainly about the "true" UNIX inheritance thing, its different philosophy about the kernel tightly coupled with its userland, licensing conflicts with Linux GPL... I was really surprised of how rock solid and well documented the whole thing could be and it might have some of the keys to solve the "too many distro" problem (which is a real cancer for the whole UNIX-like world that is really counter productive). I have no idea how you will be able to summarize this but it's a video I'd really like to see in order to continue my reflection about all this. They also have a nice community with some guys I'm sure you might like with their simpicity 😁. I also really like how you are able not to be tied to only one system with Windows and Mac OS content, which is why I think you might be that one guy that will be able to link BSD with the rest of your (good) work. Keep it up man ! Your content is really refreshing in our always more manichean and binary world 🙂

[@soooslaaal8204]

>Started on Gentoo You've gotta tell me more, were you a Unix power user beforehand?

[@MagikBoubou666]

​@@soooslaaal8204 I can't tell if I'm a "UNIX power user" but I like to know what my system is doing and how to maintain it in the long run. I also like to use everything I want when I need it. I use my computer to develop things, play video games, watch movies, emulate stuffs... so if using a versatile system makes me a power user so be it my friend ! I finally moved back to my plain old Arch Linux because it's what works best for me in the end. How is life on planet Gentoo ?

[@tomiokadev]

With a few exceptions (Gentoo, Alpine, AWS and Azure) I 100% agree with you. Some distros like gentoo, Alpine, AWS and Azure have a clear direction to what they expect from the user and what the user should expect from the distro. Coincidentally (or not) 2 of them are corporate distros.

[@viarnay]

My distrohopping voyage stopped in the shores of Kubuntu LTS along time ago . Gnu-linux is slowly being more and more popular. There are a lot of channels and info about it, there are a ton of distributions, icons sets, applications, tools. It is a computing school in your room.

[@henryvaneyk3769]

Another issue is the big pain in the behind to build a proper Linux native desktop application. One of the reasons Windows thrived was the fact that they created excellent development environments. It is so much more easier to start up Visual Studio and build a native Windows application. Try the same with Linux. After one week of trying to build a simple desktop app I just gave up. There are just too many different ways to build a Linux desktop app that it is no wonder that it is very difficult for distro makers to provide a cohesive desktop experience. I mean, so many Linux gurus still fight about which is best, Gnome or KDE. FFS, pick one and build on it.

[@FlameSoulis]

Honestly, this is how I felt when I was dealing with Endeavour. It supports everything, but because of that, it supports all of them terribly. I had the worst experience with it, and while it nearly destroyed my viewpoint of ever trying Arch again, I did give Manjaro a try, who has a smaller desktop selection and more attention are given to those supported choices. This is also why I have also just generally preferred Mint: I operate so many servers, that by the end of the day, waiting for more things to compile (AUR) or dealing with more tinkering is just a painful experience when I just want to relax. While you do eventually hit the point where you need to tinker no more, there are also things that as a power user who just wants to chill, if the system throws on a good package manager with a GUI so I'm not having to memorize funky naming conventions or needing to do the apt/pacman shuffle all the time, then I'm usually fine. The less the OS gets in my way of things, the better, because the next day, that's the exact thing I'll be dealing with anyway.

[@pooourya]

The best distros are simply arch and debian. If you are new to the linux world, use mint, kubuntu or fedora. when you began to feel comfortable with one of them, I recommend going for debian or arch. You can stick with the distro you were using too. The thing with linux is that you have a lot of distros to choose from, but in the end, using a base distro and building on top of it is the most fun experience.

[@tekdragon]

When I first started watching your vids, I sometimes found your directness to be a little off-putting. Then I recognized it for what it really was: AUTHENTIC. You unapologetically take us on whatever tech adventure you believe in, whether it's about linux, windows or macOS and I really really appreciate that. I've learned alot from your channel in just the short time i've been subscribed. Thank you!

[@magnusm4]

That part of the horrific beauty of Linux. When one does work on Linux, it's open to the public. So if you like a package manager, a code shell or desktop environment from another distro then download and use it.

[@Bens963]

Great video, I typically only go for distributions with something unique to offer. Started on Gentoo in 2009 which I ran daily for about 10 years before switching over to Debian for my daily desktop which I love. I agree that most really are just distros with slight differences. I wanted to like Fedora but dnf and networking is oddly slow for me. I typically recommend Mint/Ubuntu for most folk who want to start out. Arch I never got on with because I felt Gentoo did it better. NixOS is a great outlier with a surprisingly vibrant userbase

[@Vospi]

This shouldn't piss anybody off in my opinion. Hate is maybe a strong word, but the argument is there.

[@ozzieggg]

I appreciate the developer effort to make insane modularity of normal distros and value it more over providing an extremely smooth experience for people coming in to use very specialized distros. Linux is a community project. I'd wager it is much harder for people starting on very specialized distros to get to the point that they can begin to understand and possibly even contribute to the massive collection of open source software that makes up a regular distro.

[@cosmiccuttlefish5765]

This channel was the one that really helped me recontextualize my understanding of desktop Linux. I love my Linux update news and whatnot but your often unique (and frequently contradictory) perspectives are some of the most thought provoking I have seen. Keep making us all think.

[@plasmatech576]

I would recommend Fedora because it is fairly vanilla, up-to-date, and appears to have the best hardware driver support as far as I know. For example, compared to other distros (like Manjaro, Pop, Zorin, Elementary, Endeavour) Fedora is the only distro that works fully out-of-the-box on the Framework laptop (it works for things such as fingerprint sensor, trackpad, graphics/scaling, wifi, etc). My assumption is that hardware support is generally better, and the experience may be smoother on more hardware.

[@marko19914]

1:44 - "They [Linux Mint] did their own update stuff" - Technically it is all Ubuntu/Debian. Well, they created the front end app. 2:04 - "Vanilla Debian is not for noobs" - It is not for the absolute noobs but quite fine after a year of casual daily driving linux experience.

[@paultrainer4560]

Mr Chris, regardless of how you think you are positive or negative, AWESOME is definitely the flavour in all your vids. Please keep up the challenges and goals you have set. Super inspiring 😊

[@vitalwonhyo]

Good Point !! here im 15 year user for Work im use fedora centos debian and alpine linux (docker or container) we need stability

[@Gem-In_Eye]

I started with Linux Mint when I had my break-up with Windows 10 Now I love it to death, I made it look like Windows 7 which I loved And if anyone asks me what would I want I would say Linux Mint blindly It has really been a journey and I loved this

[@stevenmishos]

My observation is Linux (distros, installers, desktops, packages, etc) need to focus more on user experience. The core engineering is there, but the quirks need to be addressed because it's the usability quirks that send people back to Windows and Mac. My sense is these quirks come from the preferences of the engineers/developers, and they're not a good representation of a general user (i.e. there a significant curse of knowledge cognitive bias). Ironically, I also think the FOSS dogma is holding Linux back when the default response (if an app isn't available for Linux) is to say, "use a FOSS alternative". As such, there needs to be more effort getting mainstream applications available natively on Linux.