Here’s the thing. When I talk to friends interested in Linux, it’s always Debian or Fedora that I suggest. I think they draw a good line for what the average user wants and needs and they’re stable. In fact, I used Fedora for a long time, and all my homelab stuff runs Debian. It wasn’t until computers themselves became a hobby that I switched to Arch. And I think that’s likely the cutoff. If you’re a computer user, stable distros are great. If you’re more a hobbiest… Well, the Arch wiki can own your free time.
Everything is declared exactly how I want it. If something would break, it just bails on the update. If I want to set up a new machine, I just clone my config and build it.
I’m not sure what could be more “just works” than that.
I don’t even notice Debian, which is exactly how an operating system should work.
And yet…
I love this
Here’s the thing. When I talk to friends interested in Linux, it’s always Debian or Fedora that I suggest. I think they draw a good line for what the average user wants and needs and they’re stable. In fact, I used Fedora for a long time, and all my homelab stuff runs Debian. It wasn’t until computers themselves became a hobby that I switched to Arch. And I think that’s likely the cutoff. If you’re a computer user, stable distros are great. If you’re more a hobbiest… Well, the Arch wiki can own your free time.
“Man I wish I could do more with my new computer” – Fedora
“Yeah I just want to breathe some new life into this old laptop and have it last me until the end of time” – Debian
NixOS has entered the chat
Normal distro -> arch -> gentoo -> nixOS -> QubesOS -> Debian pipeline.
The only problem with Debian is that I want packages from this century.
Thats what you think you want but by the time you’re at the end of the pipeline you just want a computer that works.
So far, that’s exactly why I’ve stopped at Nix.
Everything is declared exactly how I want it. If something would break, it just bails on the update. If I want to set up a new machine, I just clone my config and build it.
I’m not sure what could be more “just works” than that.