I want to start feeling out future distros for me once the age attestation makes its way into systemd. I am currently using Fedora on two computers, one I use for gaming (all AMD) and one I use for getting work done (thinkpad x13). I am pretty bummed about this because I feel quite settled in with Fedora, but with all the talk of age attestation happening I will be withdrawing my consent from using distros that intend to comply with these laws.

I have targeted three distros, Artix, Void Linux, and endeavorOS. The first two do not use systemd at all and the third has stated they will not implement age attestation methods.

I am thinking endeavorOS might be a good move, I appreciate an out of the box solution. I can and have installed Arch manually several times, but I prefer to spend my time using my computer, not necessarily going into the “rice” rabbit hole. I will probably use a desktop environment like KDE, GNOME, or XFCE.

I guess the point of this post is: anyone who has experience with systemd-free distros like Void or Artix, what are your thoughts using as a general purpose operating system? how is the learning curve coming from systemd? Can someone who is technologically competent but not particularly interested in deep customization (I am a sysadmin, but I just like my shit to work) thrive in this type of environment? I use Fedora because it’s a good mix of being generally unassuming but having sensible defaults and being extraordinarily well supported.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated. Feel free to give me any thoughts you may have on the subject of age attestation or even suggest distros I might not be aware of.

  • ChrisG@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    27 minutes ago

    I’ve recently spent a lot of time doing bare metal installs of a large number of non-systemd operating systems.

    GhostBSD - Its BSD, so its stable and avoids the problems of Linux but supports less hardware especially 3D GPU’s.

    FreeBSD - as above but more effort to install & configure initially because its server oriented but makes a fine workstation nevertheless.

    Alpine - Highly performant Linux oriented to container hosting but can be made into a workstation with effort. Forget using nvidia except in nouveau driver.

    Void - highly performant. more packages than Alpine. can be made into a workstation with effort. Forget using anything but newest nvidia GPU’s and even then strange unsolvable glitches.

    Artix - look this is Arch with a non-systemd init (your choice of 3). Being Arch it inherits the repo’s of bleeding edge packages but also inherits the heavy maintenance burden of Arch (if you know, you know). I’m just too bloody busy to baby sit an Arch install with all its nonsense.

    Endeavour et al - wait for other OS’s to implement work arounds to systemd’s cancerous kowtowing to corporate America imposed surveillance laws.

    Devuan - a drop in replacement for Debian. Inherits Debian’s stability and ease of maintenance but with proven mature implementation of OpenRC init system.

    The is the one I use for a calm happy life. To save time you can get a distro called ‘Vendefoul Wolf Linux’ which is Spanish in origin. Its a spin of Devuan but with a choice of GUI desktops and a GUI Calamares installer (the Devuan text mode TUI installer is fine, but whatever).

    My daily driver is Vendefoul Wolf (Spanish for ‘vengenance’) LxQT desktop. Light, fast simple, stable. tip: download the ‘weekly’ iso’s not the old 2025 ones.

  • fozid@feddit.uk
    11·
    3 hours ago

    I’ve been using Linux 20+ years as my main os. Most of that time I’ve been an arch user. I moved to void Linux 2 weeks ago. I’m very much a start from scratch and build to my liking sort of person, so I just extracted the rootfs base system to a fresh partition, configured everything through a chroot, and booted the new system. Took me 2 days to get to a point I was happy with. I really like void Linux. It boots faster, the init system is much simpler and I feel I understand it better than systemd already. The package manager is really good, and easy to use. I have no complaints.

    For yourself, void Linux offers an xfce ready made live version, so everything is already configured and you can test it out in a live setup first with no permanent install. I didn’t test the installer as did a manual install, however it is not a gui installer.

  • Dingaling@lemmy.mlEnglish
    243·
    16 hours ago

    I think it’s too early to be making decisions based on this alone.

    • sicktriple@lemmy.mlOP
      18·
      16 hours ago

      Fair point, but I think at this point it’s extremely likely Fedora will comply, and my issue with this is ideological, not practical. I will not use a distribution that complies with this law because I believe it is morally compromised.

    • micvil@beehaw.org
      3·
      13 hours ago

      I agree.

      As far as I know, most distros are waiting. I heard debian is doing that (people say their org structure makes them unable to satisfy it), lead dev of pclinuxos said it might be a “nothingburger”, the distros who said “no plans” are doing that, etc.

      We might get the “stack” in place before distros do anything. Only a few distros refused outright so far, even less are trying to comply.

      I think we might linger in this limbo for a long-long time, and the distros might only decide when websites start requiring and API (or when they get taken down by authorities).

  • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    11 hours ago

    and the third has stated they will not implement age attestation methods.

    Do you have a source l, I went looking earlier and couldn’t find anything

    • sicktriple@lemmy.mlOP
      51·
      10 hours ago

      https://github.com/BryanLunduke/DoesItAgeVerify

      endeavorOS is listed among those who have “decided not to age verify” but I will say the author of this page is a certifiable moron so take that with a grain of salt. Of all the distros listed and not implementing age verification, endeavorOS’s seem the least explicit.

      • Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        I’m really glad to hear that from Endeavour! I was on vanilla Arch for 10 years and been with CachyOS for the past year. But we have EndeavourOS on our kids computer and a laptop. I’ve been wary of Cachy now since how the mods have reacted to discussion about age verification And I would prefer to stick to something I know (although I’ll be keeping Artix in my back pocket just in case).

  • EastofEdson@lemmy.caEnglish
    31·
    10 hours ago

    I’m tempering the systemd thing as I do feel it is somewhat getting blown out of proportion. Though I did try some non systemd distros in a VM over the last week.

    A bigger issue for me is this push to embrace AI. It seems all the American tech companies are jumping on board and Red Hat is no exception.

    I want to love Fedora but this is the last straw for me.

    https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/31/red_hat_ai_dev/

    Essentially any distro with funding primarily from US tech companies is going to go to shit. It’s only a matter of time.

    I do run EndeavourOS on my main PC and it’s pretty great. I have not seen any statement regarding their position on the age attestation crap. I’ll jump ship if they come out in favour of it. I just hope they do not.

    • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.zip
      3·
      4 hours ago

      A bigger issue for me is this push to embrace AI. It seems all the American tech companies are jumping on board and Red Hat is no exception

      Wouldn’t the same logic apply to systemd that’s controlled by RedHat?

      They merged the PR regardless of many contributors being against it, silenced discussions about it and immediately closed another PR submitted for reverting the change.

      That’s corporate behavior, not community.

      That’s the main reason that made me distrust them and jump ship, way more than the field itself.

    • sicktriple@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      10 hours ago

      I’m less twitchy on the AI thing. CEO’s gonna CEO, and I think this whole AI thing is going to quietly die down. It’s just… not as useful as the people pushing it says it is. You can’t just mass-delusion people into thinking something does what it doesn’t do. It writes bad code. It is insecure. It makes people insane. These are facts. The tech is not improving.

      Not to mention, I find the Register quite often to be a bit too-cute-by-half in its “reporting”. We’ll see.

  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    12 hours ago

    We’re a long way from January and we still don’t really know what’s going to happen outside of a few corporate distros.

  • juipeltje@lemmy.world
    5·
    16 hours ago

    I think both Artix and Void have also said that they do not plan to implement age attestation. I haven’t used Artix all that much aside from playing around with it in a vm, but i have daily driven Void for about 2 years total probably. Artix is probably the easiest to install if you choose the gui installer. Void has a guided ncurses installer and it isn’t super difficult, but it does help if you have some experience with manually installing arch. In particular they’ll ask you to format your drive using a cli tool. Void does offer an xfce image though, so once you get it installed you’ve got a gui ready to go. Runit is pretty simple to use. It uses shell scripts so that’s something to keep in mind if you want to create a custom service, but other than that you basically just use ln -s commands to enable services, sv down to stop, and sv up to start a service.

      • juipeltje@lemmy.world
        3·
        12 hours ago

        Well they have xbps-src, which is often compared to the aur but it’s not really the same thing. It doesn’t provide any extra packages on top of the default repos, but it’s their package build system that you can use to create package templates (so like pkgbuild files in arch) and build your own packages with them. If you look hard enough you can probably find other peoples templates out there though if they’ve put them on github or something.