Servers are all Debian. Family member's laptops are all Debian. I used Debian on my laptops for 20 years, but when Steam Deck switched to Arch, I switched my laptop to Arch to force me to learn it. I have a file with notes of differences between Debian and Arch. Next time I buy a new laptop, I will probably go back to Debian.
Yep. Debian. I like apt, and I like shit that just....works. I'm very much a form after function kind of person. Plus, Debian was the first Linux distro I became most familiar with at a young age. So what if a bunch of packages are on "old" versions. They work. The kernel works. KDE Plasma works. I can do everything I want to do without having to constantly be on the bleeding edge. If you prefer newer things, that's great. I prefer older, more proven things. That's also why I drive Toyota cars and old Honda motorcycles.
My Proxmox cluster runs...uh...Proxmox, which is based on Debian. NAS runs OMV which also runs on top of Debian. Laptops all run Linux Mint Debian Edition 7, and my 5800X3D/7900XTX gaming PC runs LMDE6 (will be upgrading to 7 soon). The only non-Debian machines in my house are my wife's iMac and Macbook Pro, and the Home Assistant mini PC.
That’s the same philosophy I’ve applied for a long time. Recently, I found out that gaming is an exception to the rule, though. While older versions are just fine for the most part, there are edge cases where that no longer applies. I also found out that I care about one of them. Until you hit that brick wall, there’s no reason to switch. Just keep on using Debian for everything.
Took me a while to realise that I was spending way too much time figuring out workarounds instead of actually gaming. I ended up using Bazzite in my gaming rig because it works so well for that purpose.
Yes. Everything is NixOS. Because it's perfect for everything.
What is the learning/on-boarding curve for this?
I ask because my home folder has a giant just file I use to script everything. I feel like I’m 80% there to just migrating.
It's a very steep curve to start, with some additional minor steep parts along the way, but it's not a long curve. Once you got the core concepts and the basic language constructs, you've learned most of what you'll ever need.
Two nice resources: search.nixos.org is super handy, and you can search GitHub with language:nix and a search term to get tons of examples from other people.
Oh, and nix and just is actually a pretty common combo!
And it's very handy for this, I have the same config for all my devices (desktop, laptop and server). Enabling and disabling different modules depending on the host it's deployed to.
Yep, exactly.
To be fair, if you use Debian, Arch, Fedora,... long enough, you also know how to tweak your machine for every purpose. In Nix, it's just somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you have to know how to tweak your system to achieve.... anything, and then it's the same tweaking mechanics for every other purpose as well.
I love how this post doesn't even pretend that anyone may use anything but Linux. Classic Lemmy.
Whoa, that’s completely untrue buddy.
Some people here use BSD-based systems.
I don't see anyone here saying "actually I use BSD" so it seems to have been a safe assumption
Self-hosting on Windows Server is a pain I don't need in my life.
i do use freebsd :) and occasionally win7/10..
usage goes like freebsd >>> linux > m$win
I've converted everything to NixOS (Desktop, laptop, nas and 3d printer, rpi with home assistant) only my router is still pfSense (and thus BSD). It just makes configuration and updating so much easier from one central configuration. And I don't have to remember what and how I installed something. It's just there in my flake.
The machines I use regularly are all some form of ArchLinux (currently mostly CachyOS). Machines I use rarely I stick to LTS distros with few updates. Machines I don't maintain myself I try to stick to immutable distros that just update themselves every once in a while (less chance of breakage).
Arch on user PCs and Debian on anything else. This is with the exception that our big server is on Proxmox and the NAS (as well as off-site backup) are on unRaid.
Tbh I still consider Proxmox as Debian, so you're pretty much there ;).
Fedora KDE for anything I need a GUI for, Debian for anything headless.
I've used damn near everything else in 30 years of Linux, but I'm pretty sure my tombstone will run Debian.
I do, but it's more out of laziness than anything else. I hate having to remember sixteen different ways of doing things, so I tend to configure all my stuff as identical as reasonably possible. Is this the best way of doing things? Probably not. But it keeps my blood pressure down.
I use arch btw (on everything).
So yes ... my laptop, my home server and even my wife's laptop.
yes. Everything is Fedora Silverblue, except servers they are ubuntu on proxmox.
My hobby is gaming, linux is just a means to do that hobby, not a hobby itself.
Yes, Debian. It's called the universal operating system for a reason.
Same, literaly only have bazzite and android on one device each with everything else being Debian.
Although I have been thinking about switching to Nix for a more robust backup/restore setup.
Oooh, look at mr. Rich guy here with multiple devices.
/s.... (not really, cries in only computer being a dying laptop from 2011 with no way to get even just another dying 2011 laptop when this one dies.)
Debian on server, arch of some kind for personal use
Debian on my servers. No drama, it just works.
Fedora on my laptop and desktop. Still solid, but quicker updates.
Server: debian
Desktop: mint
Laptop: pop-os
Nanopi for travel Jellyfin: Debian.
arch on my two laptops, and desktop. proxmox on my server as the hypervisor, and debian on the vm/lxc. my routers are running openwrt.
one of my laptops i use for testing, and i do switch distro's.. i've tried alpine, gentoo and i'd like to try openbsd. but arch is comfy
I used to use a variety. I’d use Arch on my desktop/gaming machine, Fedora on my laptop, and Debian on my server. But I got the NixOS bug a few years back and now I use that everywhere. It’s great to have every change and configuration documented and available for easy review or modification, and built in generation rollbacks are a lifesaver.
Thinking of building an HTPC from some spare parts, and I think that’ll be the machine to buck the trend. Bazzite will be everything I need out of the box for that purpose without any effort for maintenance. It’s not getting customized or doing anything but games and media
Laptop arch
Web servers Debian or fedora.
Looking into slackware for self hosting
NixOS home server, gaming PC will soon move to Bazzite from Windows 10 (whenever I'm done working on my home server). I'm trying Bazzite for that machine because I use it more like a game console hooked up to the TV and don't need the same level of tweaking and customization.
No, and that's the beauty of Linux.
Desktop gaming PC: Fedora KDE (might try Bazzite if I stop dual booting Windows, but I already got Nvidia set up and that's the hard part)
Old laptop: Zorin OS
Old as dirt laptop: antiX
Wife's Surface: Pop!_OS 22.04. Maybe change it eventually to something lighter.
I will likely go with Ubuntu Server or Debian when I set up my home server. Ubuntu seems like it has better Docker support.
ZorinOS for the desktop and PopOS on the laptop which also serves as a Plex server.
Welcome to Lemmy 🫶
Proxmox with plethora of distros (preferably Debian), openwrt, opnsense (freeBSD), the pies as well somewhere ... but my desktop & laptop are both Tumbleweed.
(But I should try Bazzite myself at some point to understand if it's really a distro to recommend to Windows refugees looking for gaming & not learning anything or not that much "Linux related" immediately. It wouldn't be my guess, but the experiences I read here stayed with me for some reason.)
I mix, my server and laptop are nixos but I use an arch variant on my desktop. Mostly I do this because of various pain points with nixos and gaming.
I use NixOS on everything ! This way, I can re-use parts of my configuration as a base, and customise only the few things that need to change from one machine to the other.
The only exception is my Steam Deck. I trust Valve on that one, and my usage of it is so different from other computers as to make 95% of my config entirely irrelevant anyway.
Jup, Debian stable on my three servers an on my laptop. I think its just way easier to run the same system everywhere. Also, Debian is a great distribution.
yes, it's Arch all the way for me. it's flexible in the way that I can configure it for any system I need, and I usually know what I want from it.
my installations on my desktop and laptop look fairly similar, but my server and test computers can look different depending on the hardware specifications they have.
plus, with BTRFS snapshots, if anything breaks I can simply roll back to a previous version of the system.
Debian always. Stablility is good, good is stability. But i am open to trying fedora in the near future
My main desktop is Mint - I feel like most of the random pieces of software I find myself wanting to run are built for Ubuntu or at the very least a lfh distro.
My server and random devices run NixOS, and I'm acrually considering combining all the config into a monorepo...
My Raspberry PI I think runs Raspbian though. I should see if I can nixify it.
For me, I am running EndeavourOS on my laptop (for its rolling release updates and its customisability) and Debian on my homeserver (for its stability). I have also set up a secondary laptop with Linux Mint that is now being used by somebody else for its ease of use :)
I use Arch (btw) on my desktops and laptops.
On my servers I'm halfway through replacing Debian with openSUSE.
My desktop and servers have different use cases and I interact with them in different ways, so there's little confusion for me.
Yes. Mint. Way enough, and I haven't figured out why I should like disto hop yet.
Arch for Gaming/Desktop, Debian for Server/Proxmox/VPS.
I run unraid for my main servers (mostly out of convenience/ease), and pop-os for everything else. I treat my laptop as my beta tester for my desktop which is stable, but both use the same underlying os. Who has the time to troubleshoot more than one?
No. Debian on the server. CachyOS on the laptop OPNsense / FreeBSD on the router-firewall appliance.
I don't really feel like I need a single OS across everything. The lack of that has never been an issue.
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