this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Hi all, Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives.

Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues.

It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me.

I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system.

I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back — and it's probably silly to some of you— is the AUR. I love it.

It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there.

So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR.

I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games).

So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it.

I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in.

I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.

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[–] mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world 1 points 31 minutes ago

I have Fedora on my work laptop and vanilla Arch on my tinkering laptop.

I think instead of thinking about "set it and forget it", you might want to think about "if shit happens, how fast can I fix it?". That is because stuff break or there are bugs . If you use a very old and LTS distro, you might be comfortable but there might be bugs that do not get fixed until much later. Eg: Debian's kernel used to be able to suspend-then-hibernate, then they jump to one that cannot. So if you want that feature back, you need to wait.... until Debian catches up with mainline's fixes.

So if you only use your computer for web, email, movie. Then any distro will work.

Now, imo there are 2 types of problems in Linux:

  1. Boot/GRUB/partition problems: this can happen if you're dual boot, or a config goes wrong. To fix, usually you need to boot a live cd.

Pop OS would be #1 choice just because it has a "Recovery Partition" with live environment. You can reinstall the entire OS while you're on the plane, without wifi or any USB.

Arch would be #2 here, just because the arch iso is so good. It is minimal and has all the tools you need to fix stuff: partitions, wifi..etc. Plus, it boots in tty so it is faster for fixing.

  1. Problems with library mismatch: for this you want one with good snapshots built in. So OpenSUSE or if you know how to configure btrfs, maybe Fedora. I would still go Pop OS here, so you can configure btrfs AND get the recovery from point 1) above. Linux Mint would be #2 choice because they have timeshift built in.

So the TLDR for you is: pick Pop OS for the recovery partition. Also, use btrfs. Lastly, configure your disk nicely, i.e. dont do any crazy LVM encryption, just use standard layout so when comes the time to fix, it is easier.

[–] crowbar@lemm.ee 2 points 4 hours ago

Solus OS is pretty stable

[–] bund@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

tldr; look into fedora silverblue maybe ?

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I did try an immutable one and ngl, I was a little stressed out using it. I wanted to create a package with the make command and for that I had to go through some hoops I didn't fully understand, and still couldn't get it to build.

[–] bund@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

hmm i’ll look into that also i read everything, and you should go with bazzite i think

[–] Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I came here just for advertising Linux Mint once again. 👍

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's now a very strong candidate. I'm just testing cschy os for now, but I'm still leaving heavily towards mint. Do you use it?

[–] Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I have used it many years now. Couldn’t be happier. I still have Windows lying on somewhere in the hard drive, but I haven’t booted it for a year or so.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Awesome. Thank you. I'm getting the run around between distros now to see which one works the best. So far Cachy os isn't as game ready as they claim. I had to install so much shit. Couldn't even boot into any of the Garuda ISOs that I've burned on the flash drive. Was very confused with immutable distros. Tried mint, and it was cool, but didn't try it for gaming. Man, this is a pain.

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

One of ublue's offerings are probably best. Immutability is great for resiliency and updates are easily rolled back if something were to go wrong. Bazzite is great for gaming, otherwise checkout Aurora and Bluefin.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I installed aurora and distrobox got me a bit confused, so it is now on the back burner until I read more about it.

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 minutes ago

You probably won't need distrobox much unless you're a dev. Most packages will be available as a flatpak or in homebrew. You could also consider using Nix, which will most likely have every package you'd want.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Been using Linux almost 30 years, went from Redhat to everything else, and now I'm back on Redhat to stay. Fedora KDE for a nice, boring, up to date, and bulletproof OS.

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You want bazzite, for this usecase, disregard anyone who suggests something that isn't immutable, all of the immutable suggestions are valid, but if it's not immutable, it is huge downgrade for this usecase.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I'm leaning towards an immutable, but to be fully honest, they're a very, very new thing to me and understand nothing about them. Like when you give an idiot a grenade. That's me with an immutable distros. Lol
I need to learn more about them and how things work, because they do sound like what I'm looking for.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 12 points 20 hours ago

Another Debian suggestion here, including for gaming and even VR. It basically just works.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Debian stable. It's been here for 30 years, it's the largest community OS, it'll likely be here in 30 years (or until we destroy ourselves). Any derivative is subject to higher probability of additional issues, stoppage of development in the long run, etc.

If you're extra lazy, Ubuntu LTS with Ubuntu Pro (free) enabled. You could use that for 10 years (or until Canonical cancels it) before you need to upgrade. Ubuntu is the least risky alternative for boring operation since it's used in the enterprise and Canonical is profitable. The risk there is Canonical doing an IPO and Ubuntu going the way of tightening access like Red Hat did.

[–] signofzeta@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 12 hours ago

I’ll second Debian. I run it on backports and it’s reasonably stable, but if you want it rock-solid, don’t do that.

You might want to keep your browser more up to date than the rest of your OS. That’s up to you as the user. Mozilla has a deb you can add to Apt manually, should you choose.

[–] stefenauris@pawb.social 7 points 1 day ago

I'm in complete agreement with this post. Debian is pretty meticulous with their releases and Ubuntu LTS has a predictable release cadence if that's more important than "when it's ready"

[–] AugustWest@lemm.ee 3 points 23 hours ago (6 children)

Ubuntu? Never. I have had longer less problem free with Arch than Ubuntu. Last time I tried it for a project it was broken on install.

I am all for Debian, love it. But Ubuntu has been crappy since day one.

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[–] richardisaguy@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Use distrobox brother, it is really underrated, I use it on my fedora PC so I can have access to the AUR all the time, you could even use Debian with it and have access the the AUR on a 2 year out of date install, seriously, it is really worth the effort of checking out, changed my Linux experience forever.

[–] crowbar@lemm.ee 1 points 4 hours ago

I use distrobox on my steam deck and i use it for work 😂

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

I tried it and I was very confused. I was trying to build an app from source and it was complete cluster fuck. I gave up

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago

A few paragraphs would do wonders for the legibility of your post.

[–] j4yt33@feddit.org 2 points 18 hours ago

You could try CachyOS, arch based and you can run it with KDE. I use Pop!OS and have been super happy with it

[–] mko@lemm.ee 5 points 22 hours ago

I would say fedora silverblue. Have been using it for a while. All updates, app and os, are distributed via app center so reasonably foolproof.

And a benefit is that it has podman out of the box so you can run docker images without fiddling with the terminal.

[–] AugustWest@lemm.ee 5 points 22 hours ago

I put Fedora on a laptop as a whim almost 2 years ago.

My main computers are arch, but. I had an iso handy and hadn't used anything from based in years.

I am surprised at how quickly it gets updates. Gimp was at 3 before arch stable.

Anyways, I just keep updating the laptop and it just keeps working. I have yet to actually do anything for maintenance on it.

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 40 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Debian. I've had installations which went trough several major version upgrades, I've worked with 'set and forget' setups where someone originally installed Debian and I get my hands on it 3-5 years later to upgrade it and it just works. Sure, it might not be as fancy as some alternatives and some things may need manual tweaking here and there, but the thing just works and even on rare occasion something breaks you'll still have options to fix it assuming you're comfortable with plain old terminal.

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[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

NIXOS, set and forget. It will not change unless you ask it to. Occasionally things might get renamed, but they set up warnings and don’t deprecate old naming for a long time

[–] ominous_mist@lemmy.ml 3 points 20 hours ago

NIXOS has been really great so far for me. very stable and mostly easy to figure out. my only problem has been getting SSBM netplay working.

[–] idealpink@feddit.nu 1 points 18 hours ago

This is the way

[–] silentjohn@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Basically every distro is based on either arch or debian (some exceptions). I've been perfectly happy with debian, even as a gamer.

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[–] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 18 hours ago

If you can wait a bit for the Rocky 10 release, you'd get a decade of boring rock-solid secure computing.

[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ive been a long term windows user. Almost 80% of my life. Tried macos and linux but always went to windows. Last year, i decided to move away from big tech in general. Ive moved away from most of it except windows, which is windows 10 LTSC. I tried ubuntu, kubuntu, fedora gnome, fedora kde, kde neon, arch (failed hard), arctix, endeavour and lastly i settled with linux mint cinnamon. A couple of tweak and a few hours. It feels like home. Goodbye windows, you will not be missed. I do dualboot windows 10 whenever i need to use program that only support windows.

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[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Pls format your posts it's so much easier to read

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 10 points 21 hours ago

Says the comment without punctuation ;-)

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I've been wanting to try out NixOS for this very reason lately (although I don't break my system often). If everything works for me there, I'll switch to it.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've thought about nix, but it looks like it has a somewhat steep learning curve, and I honestly don't even have the time for that :/

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