Hello, i am currently looking for a Linux distribution with these criteria:

-it should be more or less stable, comparable to Ubuntu with or without LTS // -it should not be related to IBM to any way (so no fedora/redhat) // -it should not feature snaps (no Ubuntu or KDE neon) // -KDE plasma should be installable manually (best case even installed by default) // -no DIY Distros //

I’ve been thinking about using an immutable distro, but if anyone can recommend something to me, I’d be very grateful //

Edit: I’m sorry for the bad formatting, for some reason it doesn’t register spaces

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    55·
    9 months ago

    Can you please like write the points in a list and not with these weird // in between? Lemmy uses markdown

    - this (that space between line and text is important)
- is 
- a list

* this
* too
* forwhateverreason

    ``` before and after something : codeblock

    *italic*

    **bold**

    ***both***

  • Para_lyzed@lemmy.world
    411·
    9 months ago

    Just to clarity the relationship between Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora, Fedora is only sponsored by Red Hat. They make all their own decisions, and while they receive financial support from Red Hat and Red Hat owns the Fedora trademark, their decisions and development are independent of Red Hat (and by extension IBM), with the single exception that they cannot risk violating the law (i.e. copyright infringement), else it risks Red Hat legal trouble (and Fedora would risk losing their sponsorship as a result). Red Hat benefits from Fedora’s development by the community, given that Fedora is RHEL’s upstream, hence why it continues to sponsor Fedora. But it isn’t Red Hat that is in charge of Fedora’s development, it’s FESCo, which is entirely community elected, and does not stand for the interests of Red Hat, but rather for the interests of the community.

    Eliminating Fedora from contention in that regard is essentially like eliminating Debian because you don’t like Canonical, who makes Ubuntu, a downstream of Debian.

    Add on top of that the fact that IBM and Red Hat are major contributors to the Linux kernel, and you absolutely cannot avoid connections to them while using Linux. I mean, that’s quite frankly a ridiculous exclusion criteria in the context of Linux. If you’re looking to avoid an operating system OWNED by Red Hat or IBM, then Fedora should not be included in that list. Neither of them have any say or pull in the development of Fedora, which is a completely community-driven project (no, owning the trademark doesn’t change that fact; if Red Hat tried to take over, the Fedora community would simply fork the project, rebrand, and continue on their own). Besides, Red Hat has no interest in controlling Fedora, because it doesn’t benefit them. Their only interest is in enterprise applications, which is not a good use case for Fedora. The only operating systems Red Hat actually has any control over are RHEL, CentOS, and any derivatives of those operating systems like Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, and such (though Red Hat’s control over derivatives was only the result of those projects being downstream, not actual ownership).

    So with that in mind, I’d recommend the Fedora KDE spin if you want a normal, stable, snap-free, no DIY required distro with KDE, or if you want the immutable version, Fedora Kinoite is what you’d be looking for. And Fedora has the major advantage over Debian-based distros of actually receiving package and kernel updates regularly, so you can stay up to date and enjoy new features, all while maintaining stability.

    Fedora Kinoite is absolutely the best immutable distro fitting your criteria. Anything else will have a much smaller community and less support as a result. rpm-ostree has great documentation, and all of the Fedora Atomic Spins have a huge userbase available in case you ever have questions.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      15·
      9 months ago

      Second that.

      No matter if atomic or regular, Fedora has a good automatically preset rollback mechanism for when an update breaks something.

      They also have good Wayland support, awesome new packages, BTRFS and more.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
      13·
      9 months ago

      This is a great comment because I didn’t know this distinction. You’ve OKed Fedora for me when I thought I needed to boycott them because of RHEL’s shenanigans.

    • spaghetti_carbanana@krabb.org
      10·
      9 months ago

      Jumping on the OpenSUSE bandwagon. I use it daily, have been running the same install of Tumbleweed for years without issue. I’m using KDE Plasma which it let’s you choose as part of the installation which fulfils that requirement for you as well.

      If you’re familiar with Redhat you’ll feel at home on it. Zypper is the package manager instead of yum/dnf and works really well (particularly when coping with dependency issues.

      I’ve worked with heaps of distros over the years (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, RHEL, old school Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky, Oracle, even a bit of Alpine and some BSD variants) and OpenSUSE is definitely my favourite for a workstation.

    • Veidenbaums@lemmy.ml
      6·
      9 months ago

      I second opensuse, there is also a non-rolling release option, i think.

      My tumbleweed has been exceptionally stable, updates without problem.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      4·
      9 months ago

      Getting the arch experience in software support (has a “community repo” as well) but in a stable way and there is never the need to use the terminal, if you don’t want)

      Love it, recommend it.

      For more stableness check out the slow rolling version or the immutable versions (both in “beta” state)

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      31·
      9 months ago

      Slowroll. You change to it from Tumbleweed and its not completely finished but should already just work.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          1·
          9 months ago

          Is is as testing as Fedora Rawhide? I just cant imagine it can be that stable, because Rawhide is a mess. But maybe they do way better testing.

          • Dehydrated@lemmy.world
            3·
            9 months ago

            I don’t really know how stable Fedora Rawhide is, because I only used it once. But OpenSuse does a whole lot of testing before shipping any update. From their website:

            Why should you consider openSUSE Tumbleweed over other distributions? The answer lies in its rigorous testing and stability emphasis. OpenSUSE is the base for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, meaning it’s secure, stable, and provides most of the software and tools you may need. While some rolling release distributions may offer the latest software packages, openSUSE Tumbleweed couples this with a strong emphasis on ensuring these updates won’t destabilize your system. Every Tumbleweed snapshot undergoes rigorous automated testing via openQA, openSUSE’s comprehensive testing tool, before its release. This process prevents critical bugs from reaching your system, providing an unexpected level of stability for a rolling release.

            • Pantherina@feddit.de
              1·
              9 months ago

              Hm, this should be the case for rawhide too. But tbh rawhide has other problems like rpmfusion not being updated so there is no openh264 and stuff like that.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
    281·
    9 months ago

    I’ve been running Linux Mint Cinnamon for years. It’s the stablest, most dependable distro I’ve ever run. I’ve installed it, updated it and major-version-upgraded it many times on many machines and it never broke.

    It’s basically Ubuntu with the features that make Ubuntu shite removed (basically Unity and snaps) and a no-nonsense, GTK-based Win95-like desktop environment tacked on.

    • clif@lemmy.world
      52·
      9 months ago

      I’ve been on mint for ages but when I updated my RAID this year it originally wouldn’t recognize it. I eventually got it recognized but it capped the 16TB drives at 999GB for some reason. For fun, I went up the chain to Ubuntu… Same thing

      In frustration I went to Grandma’s house with Debian and it worked perfect out of the box. I’d spent hours researching it but the best I found was a potential RAID related bug (lvm, specifically, I think) introduced in Ubuntu that, of course, filtered into Mint. Even fdisk reported the physical drives as 999GB in Mint/Ubuntu.

      I still don’t know the exact cause but I got it up and running so I’m a Debian guy now, I guess.

      Granted, my use case isn’t super normal since I’m using a BIOS RAID1 (and we all know how fun BIOS RAID can be) with full disk encryption.

      Worked out in the end but it made me sad to ditch Mint

        • clif@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 months ago

          Yep, that’s why I made sure to include that “we all know how fun BIOS RAID is” bit.

          It was fine with the previous 2TB RAID1, but that doesn’t mean anything.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      1·
      9 months ago

      Mint with KDE? this makes no sense. This would be Ubuntu, maybe with Kubuntu Backports. You should be able to remove ubuntu-specific stuff like snaps easily.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
    25·
    9 months ago

    -it should be more or less stable, comparable to Ubuntu with or without LTS

    Ubuntu was based on Debian, which touts its stability

    -it should not be related to IBM to any way (so no fedora/redhat)

    Debian has no afiliation to IBM, they’re not even loosely part of each others’ “partners” programs

    -it should not feature snaps (no Ubuntu or KDE neon)

    Debian doesn’t use snaps (welcome to the greener side of the fence btw, fuck snaps)

    -KDE plasma should be installable manually (best case even installed by default)

    Debian uses KDE as one of it’s default install options when installing the OS, and it can be installed later with tasksel (or by just getting all the packages if you want to do it the hard way)

    -no DIY Distros

    Debian has a barebones headless option, but the installer defaults (which come with the whole DE and oyher convenienve packages) are pretty user-friendly

    In summary, I have no fucking clue what OS you should use.

    P.S. newlines on lemmy are either done by using two spaces at the end of a line
    and then pressing enter
    (make sure your phone doesn’t autocorrect/one of the spaces away like mine does) or by pressing

    Enter twice (without the double spaces), so there’s a

    blank line in between

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    18·
    9 months ago

    Definitely Debian. Or Mint if you also like the cinnamon desktop (which is similar to KDE’s in terms of default look).

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      11·
      9 months ago

      Cinnamon has no real Wayland support, along with all the fancy stuff like perfect fractional scaling, multi refresh rates, HDR support, and whatnot. At least Wayland support is important

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        1·
        9 months ago

        They didn’t specify that requirement. For instance, I have zero need for any of that and therefore can keep on trucking on Xorg until Wayland reaches my DE of choice in a stable form.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          11·
          9 months ago

          I imagine installing KDE on Mint is not a good experience. You would need to remove the entire desktop, all the iconsets etc. and then install KDE.

          Lets see which X.org desktop wins the race for 3rd place with real Wayland support! I sure hope for the best.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
            2·
            9 months ago

            I have yet to find an actual description of said difficulties. I’ve used Debian based distros for over 20 years, with a recent hiatus of some 3 years recently when I simply stopped using PCs at home. A different DE was always just an apt-get away, then select which of the N installed DEs you wanted to try at the login screen.

            • Pantherina@feddit.de
              11·
              9 months ago
              • setup autoupdates
              • setup virt-manager
              • install flatpak apps

              This is for sure different on GNOME than on KDE, my reference is GNOME and its horrible packagenames make debloating a pain.

  • StrangeAstronomer@lemmy.ml
    16·
    9 months ago

    You can’t avoid IBM/RedHat - they contribute to the kernel and many, many other parts of Linux eg systemd. I have no idea what you mean by DIY distros, what a peculiar adjective in this context. Linux itself is DIY. Life is DIY.

    That said, voidlinux is an independent distro without systemd or snaps based on runit for init and xbps for package management. It’s also a STABLE rolling release.

    • pixelscript@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      I have no idea what you mean by DIY distros, what a peculiar adjective in this context. Linux itself is DIY. Life is DIY.

      Pretty sure what they meant is no distros where you have to manually curate and possibly even build every sodding package, like Linux From Scratch, Gentoo, and maybe to an extent Arch. I presume they want a disto that flashes to a live USB, walks through a wizard, and boots up out of the box fully functional in minutes, no fuss required.

    • yianiris@kafeneio.social
      53·
      9 months ago

      > You can’t avoid IBM/RedHat

      Let’s just leave it at that, we can’t avoid code published by them, it is everywhere. Both of those are subject and clear collaborators with agencies of the state that protects their existence.

      It is 100s of times better than MS, ok, yes, it is. Still, “we” have a long way to go, away from “them”.

      @StrangeAstronomer @Luffy879

  • HumanPerson@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    16·
    9 months ago

    Opensuse. It comes in different flavors including tumbleweed (rolling but tested), slowroll (slower rolling), leap (stable), and micro / leap micro (immutable). It is not owned or funded by redhat although it does use rpm. Its installer is the best I have ever seen for managing software before installation and will let you select KDE.

  • Johanno@feddit.de
    161·
    9 months ago

    Of course debian.

    However pure debian needs some love before you can use it.

    If you want to use steam. Enable 32 bit arch.

    If you want to use flatpak. You need to install it and add the default repo.

    To install kde plasma you need only a single apt command.

    I personally run debian-testing/Trixie.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      3·
      9 months ago

      I dont get Debian. It is so manual, everything needs to be done manually. They default to ext4 which is old as balls, their updates are not automatic (and apt-automatic is painfully complicated to configure) even though on a stable distro you can easily differentiate between security and feature updates.

      Everything that might be nicely preconfigured on Opensuse or Fedora is manual on Debian.

      And… you get years old packages, without any of the fixes the developers added in the past.

      As a semi-rolling Distro Opensuse Slowroll sounds nice. I think it already works, you change repos in Tumbleweed and thats it.

      • Johanno@feddit.de
        4·
        9 months ago

        The testing branch is at most 3 weeks old. I get new software, not the newest. Kde plasma has a auto update function that works on bootup. (though I usually go into sleep mode and therefore update often by hand.)

        Yes debian is pretty plain and empty but once configured it works. Sure I would recommend Mint to people who don’t like to configure. However the Mint(debian) version is lacking a lot and there is no testing branch you can safely run of.

            • Shareni@programming.dev
              2·
              9 months ago

              MX is preconfigured Debian with extra tools to help manage the system.

              We’re living in the age of flatpak and nix. There are plenty of options to install fresh and bleeding edge packages, while still having your system boot every time.

              • Pantherina@feddit.de
                1·
                9 months ago

                I loved LSD conky lol.

                Never could get that to work and now on Wayland the whole concept would need to be rewritten to be a part of the desktop containmenr.

                • Shareni@programming.dev
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  I’m guessing you replied to the wrong person.

                  Can’t you make the same thing in eww and have it work on Wayland?

  • sibachian@lemmy.mlEnglish
    141·
    9 months ago

    Linux Mint is hands down the most stable linux distro out there and has been for years. zero tinkering needed. everything just runs no questions asked.

    My only grief with Mint is the most recent update where they changed the software centee and now it’s slowed to a crawl. Why they would do this is anyones guess.

    I’m recommending MX until such time that Mint sort their crap out - unfortunately I doubt they will, seeing as this change of software center was to resolve some other issues they (but not is end users) though they had.

    MX is basically debian but with a lot of improvements. Sure it might have a bit of a learning curve for those primarily used to Ubuntu based systems, but it beats running any of the other Ubuntu distros by miles since they all struggle with the crap Ubuntu puts on top of Debian.

    Manjaro is another great option if you don’t want to deal with debian based stuff, and KDE is the default DE with most stuff under reasonable control. You can also use all the Arch resources if you ever run into trouble so it’s a lot less of a headache than what I’ve experienced running OpenSUSE (i want to love OpenSUSE but I just can’t).

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      2·
      9 months ago

      Linux mint is just Ubuntu with opinionated Ubuntu crap removed. Is there Linux Mint with KDE?

      • sibachian@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        not at all. mint offers a bunch of features ‘exclusive’ to mint as an integration with their system. of course it’s all open source and you could install it on any other system. but the key important factor with mint is that everything ‘just works’ with a fresh install, no customization necessary - which is something that can’t be said about any other distro, including Ubuntu. it is the only distro i recommend for non-pc users as there is no chance they will brick it.

        regardless, KDE is just a DE. you won’t get the same mint experience of course, since it isn’t officially supported (and indeed, only cinnamon offers the complete mint experience), but installing KDE on mint is easy enough if you insist on using it.