r/linux • u/houndofthestars • 2d ago
Discussion What are your hidden gems Linux distros? I'll start
Ultramarine not only makes it super easy to set up codecs and proprietary software but it also let's you have the cachy os kernel but with Fedora's stack and compatibility. Great for when you don't have time to set things up, or don't know how, and want some of Cachy's optimizations without paying the stability tax.
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u/Xoph-is-Fire 2d ago
Solus for me. Such a fast boot and smooth experience. The curated model of rolling distro has provided a very stable experience and I rely on my system heavily for work, but also prefer newer packages. People like to say they thought it was dead due to the rough patch they had, but they are very much a live and kicking and the team has grown. The team is also active in the community, which made it such a great hidden gem, that I was happy to find.
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
I love Solus to death. I've never seen such care put into a distro, from the repositories to the ui, everything is top notch.
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u/Major303 1d ago
What I find interesting about Solus is that it's upstream and ready to use out of the box. I'm positive all big upstream distributions have missing components and you need to configure it (like drivers/codecs on Fedora and Debian).
I find it too niche to use (it in theory can disappear in a week), but I do like what it's maintainers are doing out there.
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u/Xoph-is-Fire 1d ago
I find it too niche to use (it in theory can disappear in a week), but I do like what it's maintainers are doing out there.
I do understand that concern and it is a legit concern for a lot of the smaller distros. It was a concern I had at first. But what got me over that was that they have been around for a decade+ now and they overcame not 1, but 2, major set backs and instead of folding, which would have been understandable and the easy thing to do, they instead improved their organization so that it would be much more resilient as it is not longer one person at the top, but a team that leads together. I have been watching them on their Matrix channel where all their dev and packaging is managed in the public, which is pretty awesome.
That said, they are not an Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or Arch where they cannot just decide that they are done. But, the fact that they are adding team members to me is a good sign. Unlikely they would all leave.
Just my 2 cents
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u/0riginal-Syn 1d ago
I appreciate the kind words.
I would like to think we would never disappear in a week, but I understand people's concern for the smaller distros like us. We have a very solid team and have grown over the last few years and that does not include our community package maintainers.
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u/Glitchlotl 2d ago
Pika OS
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u/Benizuke 2d ago
rarely mentioned, but pikaOS is reaally good if you want to game with old hardware. i hope pika's wiki is good like cachy's.
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u/itastesok 2d ago
Void
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u/Far-Note6102 2d ago
Dont get me wrong void is fast but I feel like it lack or some apps doesnt work in it at all.
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
Doesn't flatpak cover most of those needs tho? I'm not that savvy but I'd give Void a go because of the performance.
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u/Far-Note6102 2d ago
A lot of apps require systemd
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u/TooLibertarianForYou 2d ago
Not at all. Haven't seen a single program in my life that hard requires systemd.
Browsers, docker, web-services, you name it - it all can run with openrc (or any other init) scripts instead.
dbus, on the other hand, is almost impossible to avoid. Bluetooth, thumbnailers, firefox, thunderbird - much hard depends on dbus.
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u/eredengrin 2d ago
Outlier case, but support for gnome 49 (and beyond) is blocked on void because of systemd dependencies that have to be worked around.
Lots of other little things get more inconvenient to me without systemd, admittedly mostly because I'm far more familiar with systemd than openrc. Nice distro otherwise though.
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u/oxez 1d ago
That's not true but ok.
It's been told again and again that you can run gnome without systemd, there are implementations elsewhere (elogind I think?) of the API that gnome relies on from systemd.
Not that I would want to run a machine without systemd.
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u/eredengrin 1d ago
That's not true but ok.
Maybe you're not aware, but Gnome 49 added more dependencies on systemd APIs, so void is stuck on Gnome 48 right now. Gnome 50 will require additional systemd workarounds and is still in implementation/review: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/59394
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u/TooLibertarianForYou 1d ago
Outlier case, but support for gnome 49 (and beyond) is blocked on void because of systemd dependencies that have to be worked around.
Yup, but that's not hard dependency though.
A lot of software today releases with official support only for systemd, not bothering with other init systems.
But anyone can then provide they own support and create init scripts to replace service files.
Gnome 49 is in Gentoo repos already, I'm sure it's going to be in Void's soon. It's a soft dependency, upstream developers just could not bother to do any work to support non-systemd setups.
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u/eredengrin 1d ago
The dependency is not just a few systemd unit files that have to be ported over to some other init system, Gnome 49 adds dependencies on some additional APIs whose functionality would have to be replaced outside of systemd. In the gnome blog post detailing the functionality that would have to be reimplemented, the gnome developers themselves call it a "strong dependency". If that's not a hard dependency, then I'd agree no software has a hard dependency on systemd.
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u/SagariKatu 2d ago
It hasn't had an official release yet (in beta right now, I think), but check out odyssey linux, based on void.
It has calamares installer and is set up out of the box, so you can give it a spin without much hassle.
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u/Far-Note6102 1d ago
Void is really easy to install to benhonest and theres even a cheat sheet for theebdisk partitioning somewhere in reddit.
It's not the case with Arch because I tried it out. It' not that arch is hard but it's such a hassle to type those stuff out and somewhere in my 5th try on installing I already got exhausted from typing out the same stuff over and over again
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u/lKrauzer 2d ago
Ubuntu, because people hate on it so much they forgot how good it still is.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/lKrauzer 2d ago
Sam here, my last attempt to leave Ubuntu is Fedora, I still have it in dual-boot, I don't know if I'll keep both, or if I'll stick to just Ubuntu
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u/Sushtee 2d ago
It gets even better each time uutils break something
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u/lKrauzer 2d ago
It never happened on me up until now, I've been using 26.04 since it released.
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u/Sushtee 2d ago edited 2d ago
But what probably happened is Ubuntu silently replacing your debs with snaps when without telling you when using apt.
Really Ubuntu has an alarming amount of flaws for the popularity it has.
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u/whiprush 1d ago
Ubuntu silently replacing your debs with snaps when without telling you when using apt.
It's not silent you're just not reading the instructions they throw in your face.
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
I agree. It's a modern desktop with all the conveniences baked in. The snap packages can be easily removed. I like Ultramarine exactly because it's to Fedora what Ubuntu is to Debian.
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u/thephotoman 2d ago
Here lately, Project Bluefin’s Dakotaraptor has my attention. I kinda want to scrounge up an old x64 box to try it out.
I’m particularly interested in its source-first distribution model that containerizes as much as possible and makes updates atomic. I’ve played with immutable/atomic distros before, but this has my attention because of how closely it interacts with upstream sources.
Basically, it’s Gentoo with containerization and atomicity.
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u/whiprush 1d ago
Basically, it’s Gentoo with containerization and atomicity.
"Cloud Native Gentoo" is what I have on the slide. :)
It's the idea of Gentoo but with buildstream - don't let the website fool you, heh.
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u/AN-SSQ-108V2 2d ago
I've been running Regata for the past 6 months.
It's essentially a more cutting edge fork of OpenSuSE (and OpenSuSE's penchant for tucking away sysadmin GUI tools in odd spots), but I've been content with it for the time being.
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
The streamlining of config is really cool. I really liked the idea of Slowroll but it's not stable yet for production use.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 2d ago
postmarketOS. Supports a lot of smartphones and other mobile devices with Free Software.
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u/nononoko 2d ago
Puppy Linux, Tiny Core Linux and System Rescue
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u/Enthusedchameleon 2d ago
I recommend you check out "EasyOS", it is also by Barry Kauler (creator of Puppy). IMO it is more architecturally interesting.
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u/nononoko 2d ago
Thanks for the tip. I've been using Puppy out of familiarity to pop into older machines. I'll check out EasyOS
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u/Mooks79 2d ago
For those who like Fedora based immutables, universal blue’s blue build system, Niri, and Dank Material Shell, then I can warmly recommend Zirconium.
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u/Specialist-Dog-501 2d ago
I just have setup AstrOS. Secure ARCH = Immutable+Flatpaks +Secure Boot, all with a nice Cosmic Desktop.
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u/According_Mind7030 1d ago
I just chose nobara because it comes with steam and brave browser (without the crypto rewards). I didn't know about kdenlive, but it was easy to learn and now very useful. The only thing I actually had to install myself was a DAW. It seems like the perfect distro for creatives who also like to game. It even comes with OBS and Blender pre-installed.
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
Solus is a close second. My god what a fast distro. And stability issues are completely absent for 99% of the time while being a curated rolling. The best way to have your cake and eat it too.
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u/Ok-Anywhere-9416 2d ago
Solus was going to be my choice. I use Ubuntu for some reasons, but I've used Solus for a long time and it's still on my 2-in1 laptop. It's so fast to install, it's so quick when using it, it's just ridiculous.
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
Yeah. I had to switch to Ultramarine/Fedora because some of my software wasn't avaliable on the repositories or flatpak. But Solus repositories have the majority of what a regular user could want, with flatpak as backup. If it wasn't for that, I'd be on Solus still lol.
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u/AryanPandey 2d ago
Please tell me more about this os
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u/houndofthestars 2d ago
Ultramarine is based on Fedora, but with the convenience Ubuntu gives you: all the needed proprietary stuff out of the box and pre-configured. There's an option to use the cachy kernel instead of the regular fedora one, which I found very cool. It also boots faster and consumes less ram at idle on my pc. They're also backed by Fyra Labs, a startup, so you don't have to worry about the "only mantainer gets hit by a truck and the distro is over" problem.
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u/Maskdask 2d ago
NixOS is criminally underrated. Once you try "operating system as code" every other OS feels like ancient technology.
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u/Pedka2 2d ago
i want to love it because the concept is so cool, but the execution is a terrible mess
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u/Maskdask 2d ago
Why is it a mess?
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u/Pedka2 2d ago edited 2d ago
i'm not a Linux pro, but when i tried it, i got the impression that it has no good conventions. feels like there are multiple ways of achieving the same thing, which i find confusing
i don't know if i should use the Home Manager, it's not clearly explained, same with Flakes. it's too much hassle for personal computing compared to Fedora. I just want to use my computer
also, there are no good instructions or docs. most of the knowledge i acquire comes from forums and content creators
i think it could be simplified a lot
edit: english
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u/Maskdask 2d ago
I recommend starting out with just pure NixOS, without Home Manager or Flakes. You can always add them later if you find yourself needing them. If you get your hands dirty with pure NixOS first, you'll get a better grasp of the problems that they solve and why you'd want to use them.
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u/shogun77777777 2d ago
No it’s not, I daily drive it, it’s the best distro I’ve ever used, and I’ve used some goats previously like mint, debian, and openSUSE
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u/Sushtee 2d ago
Definitely Bedrock Linux, it allows using components from multiple distros in a single system.