If you had to pick one distro to use for the next five years, what would it be? Bleeding edge / stable? Rolling / periodic?
What would you prioritise and why?
NixOS. I came a long way and it combines the best of modular, customizable and immutable.
I asked myself this exact question back in 2020 and chose Arch. At the time I had been using Fedora since 2017. What I ultimately wanted was a system I could install once and continually evolve rather than replace. Several years on, I’m still running that same installation and it has never given me a reason to reconsider…
I’ve been daily driving Debian Stable for the past 5 years and I am more than happy to continue for the next five. It’s also on nearly all of my machines and the majority of my VMs.
I’m honestly not very keen on the latest features or hardware, but I am very keen on my software being predictable and consistent, so the Debian release cycle is perfect for me.
Debian is a strong contender but the past six months I’ve been using nixos as my daily driver and loving it.
Last year I would have said Arch. I have been running it for over 15 years with some small breaks to try stuff, or with some machines that have company issued OS. But I have been toying with NixOS, and honestly I’m loving it. If I had to choose only one and couldn’t change it it would have to be Arch, I know I can get 5 years with it easily, but if I was setting a new system today it would almost assuredly be NixOS, I might regret that 3 years down the line when there’s something I can’t get to work, but the more I play around, the less likely I think that would be, and the more comfortable I feel that I will eventually migrate to NixOS fulltime
Depends on what I’m doing.
Workstation or server will be Debian. Personal devices are either Debian or Arch.
I’d prioritize Debian if I could only pick one for all options.
Don’t forget debian on phones (mobian), debian on embedded devices (armbian or even pure debian), debian on gaming machines and debian on vms running on debian hosts
MxLinux
Depends from wish of tinkering otherwise nixos very stable and not breaking between upgrades at all
If I had to limit myself to one distro for all tasks, can’t go wrong with Debian.
For my desktop: openSUSE Tumbleweed/Slowroll. I like to keep my desktop as up-to-date as possible, and openSUSE is pretty good. Sure, there’s the occasional udev update that breaks inputs in the desktop environment, but that’s the other side of the coin.
For my laptop and other uses: Debian. The old reliable doesn’t mind if I don’t update as often, and unlike rolling releases, updates aren’t wont to break anything. In a pinch I could use it on the desktop too.
For a headless server: Ubuntu. Solid, reliable and stable for many years.
For gaming: Pop OS looks promising now that cosmic has been released, however I’d probably stick with Fedora as it’s leading edge and has served me well so far.
debian is better for a headless server in my experience, it has less issues than ubuntu server on bare metal
I would go with (semi)rolling, either openSUSE Tumbleweed/Slowroll or Fedora. I prioritize fast updating distros because they are better for security (many vulnerabilities go unnoticed because the full scope isnt understood and they are deemed normal bugs), and (unlike Windows) updates on Linux are a good thing, bring new features, crash/bug fixes, and optimizations.
Fedora is very popular, has wide software support, and is very stable. openSUSE is also still pretty popular, (even its rolling edition) is quite stable as well, has good software support, and YaST allows you to do graphical administration on your system. Both take security seriously and use SELinux for security policies.
If you care about security, use Brace for automatic system hardening. It has been developed for years by the former DivestOS dev Tavi, supporting many distros.
Well, I’ve been using Ubuntu for the last 20 years (god, it hurts to say that) and only started playing with NixOS, 3 years ago.
Between the two I like NixOS better, but if I had to choose only one it would probably be Ubuntu. When things break, I know how to fix it. Usually without having to spend 2 hours of reading and trying to understand the documentation.
I used Manjaro for the last 5 years, and it still works as it did on the first day, so I’d chose it for the 5 coming years. I know the cool kids hate it, but in my case it’s the right spot.
I am using Fedora Server edition on my home server and EndeavourOS on my main. I see no reason to change that.
If I had to choose only one I would go with stable first.
