Been using popos for a while now. I'm at the point of Linux between wanting more ui customization options and not wanting to have to mess wit reinstalling a new distro. If I do reinstall at some point, I'll probably switch to fedora or something
libre
Welcome to libre
A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.
The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.
Resources
- Free Software, Free Society provides an excellent primer in the origins and theory around free software and the GNU Project, the pioneers of the Free Software Movement.
- Switch to GNU/Linux! If you're still using Windows in
$CURRENT_YEAR
, flock to Linux Mint!; Apple Silicon users will want to check out Asahi Linux.
Rules
- Be on topic: Posts should be about free software and other hacktivst struggles. Topics about general tech news should be in the technology comm or programming comm. That doesn't mean all posts have to be serious though, memes are welcome!
- Avoid using misleading terms/speading misinformation: Here's a great article about what those words are. In short, try to avoid parroting common Techbro lingo and topics.
- Avoid being confrontational: People are in different stages of liberating their computing, focus on informing rather than accusing. Debatebro nonsense is not tolerated.
- All site-wide rules still apply
Artwork
- Xenia was meant to be an alternative to Tux and was created (licensed under CC0) by Alan Mackey in 1996.
- Comm icon (of Xenia the Linux mascot) was originally created by @ioletsgo
- Comm banner is a close up of "Dorlotons Degooglisons" by David Revoy (CC-BY 4.0) for Framasoft
Haven't used it on the desktop since forever. On servers I use a mix of AlmaLinux and Ubuntu.
Fedora on my laptop, I switched because I wanted to use the Plasma cube but I think I ended up getting GNOME, which works well enough so I don't mind.
I put Mint on an old laptop for my kids. The laptop is so old windows stopped supporting WiFi drivers for it, but it could connect to the internet with Mint out of the box.
And I've got an old Dell off a guy I put Debian on. I went with xfce so it uses less than a gig ram at idle and I plan to use it as a server once I can figure out docker
Fedora KDE for half a year now
Debian with fluxbox, cause I am tired and want things to just work and not change.
Ubuntu
Opensuse tumbleweed Plasma 6
Alpine. It’s pretty lovely, but usually when I’m setting something up for someone else it’s either Debian or Fedora.
Linux Mint Debian Edition.
Zorin, because it's very slim for my shit ass laptop. To be honest, it gives me grief sometimes, and I thought about switching until the other day when I needed to turn my laptop into a router, and it only took me about 2 clicks, because it was built into the network manager.
Fedora server on my server, custom blue build image on my laptop based on Gnome secureblue
Fedora Asahi Remix with Guix Home which I moved a lot of my configurations and software to for my laptop. Proxmox + Debian + Docker for my server, I have a few things on a Guix System VM but haven't had time to move anything else nor have I started it up in a while.
I think I went Ubuntu > Xubuntu > Mint > Lubuntu > Kubuntu > Arch (LXQt) > Arch (DWM)
Mint was great as a relatively new linux user. LXQt is fantastic on old hardware. After KDE I really wanted to try a tiling window manager, really enjoying it so far.
KDE Neon but I might move to fedora or ~~KDE Neon~~ Tuxedo OS eventually
Arch btw
CachyOS btw.
Ubuntu LTS on server
Void Linux
I use Fedora with the KDE desktop. I like Fedora because it gets updates pretty quickly, and you get flatpak applications by default, which are more secure and work well. I like KDE because all its built in applications, like the file manager, have the right amount of buttons in them and aren't overly simplified.
I think most people's second favourite choice is Mint. Mint is an extremely solid choice. It doesn't top many lists because it doesn't really stand out, which makes it great.
My only gripe with Mint is that I wish they didn't remove KDE as one of their flavors. When I started using Linux like a decade ago, I first tried Fedora but struggled to install it. Not sure if it has improved for beginners since then.
I run Arch on my desktop and media server. The media server mostly just runs docker images though. I set up Fedora Kinoite on my wife's laptop recently though and think that's good for every day non gaming use. If I had more time I'd look into NixOS.
Just slap proxmox on it and use them all
Bazzite on desktop because it actually just works and headless Debian on my server because stuff like CoreOS is such a pain in the ass with SELinux.
Oh fucc how did I miss this in my own comm lmao.
I use NixOS with flakes on all my machines. Having your operating system as code is actually far easier to wrap my mind than other distros and it helps with learning how each of the individual components of a GNU system fit together and with Nix I always know roughly how point A -> point B.
Second would always go to Fedora Atomic Desktop since like NixOS your operating system is basically just a schema to write out before hand and then deploy. The commonality being that the Linux joke of "sudo apt install into broken system" is entirely vanquished in favor of user simplicity and I would recommend something like Universal Blue's Bazzite to people wanting to see peak GNU/Linux capabilities.
Debian on my workshop computer
Debian on my Minecraft/plex server
Debian on my NAS
EndeavourOS on my old laptop that I fuck around with
Arch until I get my desktop setup to install Gentoo again. I miss portage so much. I'm going to see if I can make a minimal FreeBSD host install to serve as a hypervisor, and then virtualize various Linux, BSD, and other operating systems, with a Gentoo VM as my main OS. Why FreeBSD? Well...
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Russian-Linux-Maintainers-Drop
I would do OpenBSD, but it looks like FreeBSD is much farther ahead on developing AMD IOMMU support, which is what I need.
https://freebsdfoundation.org/project/amd-iommu/
And if that fails, I may just make a very locked down Gentoo hypervisor, and then I will just practice with a BSD VM until it is ready.
I would like to play with Guix, NixOS, and T2 SDE, and also try LFS.
I use OpenWRT on my routers.
Arch, but I don't really use desktop linux very much. On servers I usually run debian
Arch (btw) on my personal computer and Pop_OS! on a shared computer with my family.
i dual boot windows and solus linux. it was a good distro when i got it but the lack of support has made me just use the windows side for a while now
Arch on my laptop, Debian on my servers. But for new users I'd reccomend Fedora KDE.
i usually just use debian but im lazy lately so i started using mx (debian with some convenience tools), no complaints
I have two devices, one runs Arch and the other runs Gentoo. Arch because I got used to it a while ago and really like the flexibility, and Gentoo because I took it as a challenge and ended up liking it.