So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:
- Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
- Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.
For example:
- Distro (first-level comment)
- Reason (one answer)
- Other reason (a different answer)
Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.
Gentoo
Control
Out-of-box security configurations supported by the organization (SELinux, hardening)
Excellent package and dependency management with a wide variety of up-to-date software
There are dozens of us! And you can join us at !gentoo@lemm.ee if you haven’t yet!
I love it because it’s super configurable, lets you choose compiler optimizations (and through USE flags, features that you need in your packages - you don’t have to include everything).
My Linux knowledge has skyrocketed compared to before I used Gentoo. Which of course means it’s NOT the distro for people who want something that just works, but honestly, now that it’s working properly, I feel it’s actually pretty hard to break, and when it does break, I know how to fix it! Versus with Linux Mint a decade ago, if I broke it, I had no idea where to get started and just reinstalled it.
Of course, about half a year ago I decided to move from x11 and OpenRC to Wayland and systemd. And I use KDE. And have Nvidia graphics. Soooo it was a fun ride both relearning how my init system works, and also running into problems with Steam, etc.
I also try to keep my kernel in single digit megabytes, but occasionally I find something missing and have to recompile with more “bloat”. So right now I believe it’s around 11 MB, but I’ll see about improving it over my next vacation. Not that 11 MB takes long to load off a gen4 NVMe drive, but the ePeen needs to be stroked! Also no initial ramdisk, to save even more boot time.
I just reinstalled Gentoo and switched to a Systemd setup as well. I held off for as long as I could but it’s just so nice!
I’m using the binary kernel for now, but I’ll compile my own when I find the time. 11MB is nuts!
Great to hear! Though I will admit that it took me HOURS of reading the kernel config options I was disabling. But it was also very informative so it didn’t feel like a waste of time at all.
I usually run some commands while running the binary kernel that will disable every module not currently running in the config file, and then build the kernel from that.
I’m guessing you prefer building everything as a module if your kernel is that small?
Encourages hardware-based optimization and kernel specialization
Yep, these are all true. Throw in overlays and the package availability is unbeatable.
Absolutely! I haven’t had any problems setting up dependencies for various projects and have only needed overlays a few times. Sometimes USE flags can be tricky but most things are pretty well documented