One of the few things that differentiates the major distros is the package manager. I’ve been running void on my laptop for the last 3 years and love it. XBPS is super fast and easy to use. It has never left me with a broken system either. That said, I’ve got the itch to switch.
I am looking at rolling / up to date distros. I’m inclined to use CLI when available.
I’ve been considering Opensuse, but last time I used zypper it was painfully slow. Has it gotten any better?
I was thinking of trying Alpine, how is APK?
Not interested in *butu, but apt seemed okay.
What’s your favorite and how does it behave?
Stick to Void. Everything else will look slow. Haven’t moved since I started using it.
Void was a great experience last time I used it. A minimal set of tools/software were installed(for some reason, I dislike ISOs/distros that fill everything from Libre Office to an FTP client in it; I will just download them if I want it), the package manager seemed pacy enough and system was fast. It is definitely one of the better distros I have tried.
After I got over the beginner phase, yeah, I started liking minimalistic distros as well (basic set of tools, everything else is on repo or you can compile it through templates).
It’s definitely hard to beat: )
I run Void a netbook from 2012, I am always blown away when it resumes from sleep faster than I can open the lid. For the first day I thought maybe it wasn’t suspending and sleep was broken.
It’s soo good. It’s taught me most of what I know about Linux. And, without getting into a battle over inits, I just love the simplicity of runit.
Yep, runit is great, have to hand it to the guy, simple and elegant 👍.
If you don’t want Ubuntu, you can still have Debian. All the apt goodness without the Canonical drama.
Ever consider Gentoo?
I haven’t honestly. Isn’t that one that takes forever to install because it builds the packages as you install the system?
Forever, no! Sure, compiling Firefox with some flags on my slow system can take ahem, time but I can install Gentoo in couple of days.
Though, in all seriousness, Gentoo takes a notch higher than Arch and unlike Arch, which has many entry level distros based on it, Gentoo has comparatively lesser. It’s fully usable but takes some initial time configuring and setting up the system exactly to the user’s requirements. The package manager is portage, I think.
I read somewhere that chromeos is based on gentoo.
That said, Gentoo isn’t what I would recommend to someone hooked on Xbps.
Yes. Chrome OS is heavily modified(and locked down) version of Gentoo but I doubt any end users of Chrome OS want to experience vanilla Gentoo :p.
Folks who use Gentoo do out of their own choosing, not because someone recommended it. It is quite technical a distro and takes some time picking up. Void, is comparatively way easier to come to grips with than Gentoo.
If you’re on Celeron, then yes it should take forever.
Throw a decent quad core and you’ll be done with a fully functional desktop in a day!
APK is really fast
You’re going to be impressed with NixOS. You might still hate it because of the learning curve, but it offers you the ability to have both stable and nightly packages in one system.
If you mess something up, you can just boot into the previous configuration.
I know, so cool. I am open to learning, but I am not sure I am in for that depth of education :)
Really nixos just needs a better wiki 😹
NixOS’ issue isn’t mainly the wiki, but rather general documentation.
Still love it though but I always go through nixpkgs to look up stuff.
Not a global opinion here as many hardcore linux users will stand by Arch or Mint, but I always have preferred Debian. It’s what Ubuntu is based on, so it uses apt(itude), yet it’s not prebloated Ubuntu and much more true to adaptation and unedited software than Ubuntu has become… But in the end it’s more personal choice and taste, so usually requires a bunch of failed attempts to get one that fits, as every linux can basically do the same things, yet on some or other slightly different way… 😜
I just want to add that for Debian with a rolling, up-to-date experience, Siduction does that nicely.
Forgot to mention that, but indeed, Sid works pretty well…
Thanks, Sid hasn’t been on my radar. Ill go have a look. I happen to have a ZFS box up in rsync.net running Debian, and it’d be nice to learn more about CLI in the deb world.
Just clarifying in case there’s a mix-up: Siduction is a desktop distro based on Debian Sid, not exactly the same distro. It’s my favorite take on Debian so far but honestly I always have something to grumble about in apt-world.
I did kinda assume you meant Debian’s Sid, tbh. Hadn’t heard of Siduction as a Distro. Siduction being the actual long name of Debian Sid sounded very plausible. 😅
Gotcha. I looked at Seduction the bistro and I’m inclined to give it a trial alongside a few others.
Apt and aptitude are both front-ends for apt-get (and related tools)
Debian is to the Rolling Stones as Arch is to the Backstreet Boys and Mint is to NSync.
If OP wants choice of a minimal init system, try Devuan
No. Debian package update status is annoying. And I am on testing…on top of that, apt is decent but I don’t see anything special about it.
I would recommend playing around with containers instead of doing a reinstall. Containers give a similar experience without so much work
LXC is killer. You can spin up containers that ‘feel’ exactly like a VM but with way less overhead.
Or you could just use distrobox and podman. It is way simpler and has even less overhead. There also is the benefit of having way more images as you have docker hub and fedora toolbox
Not sure if it would be optimal without systemd, tho. CMIIW
Great suggestion. A few of the distro suggestions here are in the deep end of the Linux pool, so it’s probably best to build them virtually to see how I want things setup.
APK/Alpine is great! And the Edge repos are well stocked.
Chimera Linux seems to be using even newer apktools than Alpine, not sure what the deal with that is. But that distro is still in early stages with limited repos for now.
Pacman/makepkg/Arch is great too, and an obvious consideration for your usage, curiously omitted from your post.
Ah Chimera. I’ve been looking at that the last two days. I am really tempted to give it a shot. My laptop is mostly for playing around these days. Are you running it?
I forgot about Arch. I ran Manjaro for a year and didn’t have the best experience. 'Course I was pretty green on Linux then.
EndeavourOS is a better Arch experience. If you were to look back into it I would recommend it over Manjaro.
No unfortunately I haven’t tried Chimera yet, but its design is close to my ideal distro. I’d especially love to see its package repos fill up, but the selection is tight as it stands.
apk isn’t any more or less than using dpkg by itself, or opkg. As for what I use, I use Arch at home and Ubuntu on my virtual machines (because they’re officially supported by my hosting provider). They work for me. I like them.
If you plan on trying Alpine, be aware that it’s based on musl and busybox, rather than glibc and systemd, or whichever replacement you would usually go for. It’s great for reproducible containers, but not so much for a desktop system
Thanks for the heads up. That is something I’ve taken into consideration. I am curious how long I’d last on musl.
on the flip side, Drew DeVault is perfectly happy with Alpine on both desktop and server
Hearing how you’ve been using Void before makes me think you may have experience with it already, given which stage1 bundle you were using
I never took a swing at musl, though I did kick it around a few times. I used my laptop for work for years and couldn’t afford to lose options for some apps. The gloves are off now :)
Its frustrating because Alpine gave me the fastest desktop. I dropped Alpine because some apps requires Glibc extensions !
It always comes down to what you do with your computer
I’ve been considering Opensuse, but last time I used zypper it was painfully slow. Has it gotten any better?
No, I am using TW for years and despise its package manager slowness. Apart from that though, TW is great. Have void on my laptop as well, sadly rarely use it currently.
Went with Arch and Fedora simply for the parallel downloading. I tried xbps , the only turn off for me was the fact that feature was missing otherwise void is best to stick with.
You know pacman has parallel download support right? I’m pretty sure it’s at 3 by default.
Interesting fact! If you’ve had an arch machine for a while, it’s possible you didn’t know that parallel download support is available, because it’s a config option hidden in
pacman conf.pacnew(I know I didn’t realize it until months after, lol).https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/pacman#Enabling_parallel_downloads
I said for xbps does not have parallel download support.
OH wait I misread as to Fedora
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Alpine is great! Apk is super fast. The package selection isn’t then best, but it’s on-par with dnf and apt. My one gripe is musl/openrc issues, but you’re already used to that if you use Void
