I need to just pick a distro, install it on all my laptops, and become an expert on that one. Forget the rest!

I’ve got Void on my T420 (for writing), Mint on another T420 (hosting my music files) and an x380 yoga (with ubuntu studio controls for music production), NixOS on a T440p and a T430, and EndeavourOS on my T16. Previously I ran Arch and Debian on a couple machines, too.

Arch is really fun. I probably just enjoy giving in to my OCD tendancies, so that gets satisfied with my EndeavourOS install. That SHOULD be my final distro, the one that I use forever, eschewing all others.

But there are two problems:

  1. Too many updates. I fear leaving a laptop in the drawer for a few months and then it crashes when I update it.
  2. I’m getting nixpilled

Nix is obviously awesome. I love having that master config file. But the nix repos aren’t as robust, and there’s a learning curve to getting everything to work. So now I’m telling myself, “become an expert at nix and then you’ll finally find your home!”

But meanwhile Debian beckons. It’s so tempting to just go back to the safest, stablest distro with all the packages and all the documentation.

I know this is silly but it actually bugs me. Why can’t I just pick a distro?

Has anybody gone through this and then actually made the decisive move to stick to a distro? What compelled you to finally pick one?

  • throwawayishEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Get your priorities straight. Picking a distro to stick with becomes a lot easier that way.

    To give an example of how I dealt with this myself in the past.

    Number 1 priority for me was and still is security. I’m willing to give up performance and convenience for the sake of security. A shortlist of distros that in some capacity suffice: Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, Arch(/Artix), Alpine, Void, Spectrum OS, Qubes OS, Kicksecure, Whonix, Tails.

    However…:

    • Whonix and Tails fall off for not being a daily driver.
    • My laptop can’t handle Qubes OS.
    • Spectrum OS is still WIP.
    • Gentoo, Void and Arch(/Artix) require the user to set it all up themselves, but as a newbie I needed a distro that would do the heavy-lifting for me.
    • Alpine seemed cool, but I wasn’t able to deal with issues related to musl.

    So Fedora, Kicksecure and openSUSE remain. While Kicksecure (arguably) has superior defaults (when it comes to security), it is still a relatively small project compared to juggernauts like Fedora and openSUSE, so I was inclined to dismiss it unless Fedora and openSUSE weren’t able to keep up. Then I learned about how both Fedora and openSUSE had so-called immutable variants, so I got interested in those and what they had to offer. And even though they were still a bit crude, unpolished and kinda finicky to work with; the promise and potential was clearly there. I was especially amused by how Fedora’s rpm-ostree enabled one to forego unknown states, bitrot, configuration drift etc and was a very serious step-up compared to all the other options. Soon after I realized that I had found the distro and the rest is history… Since, I’ve obviously found other distros that had some interesting things going on, however none of them (besides the promise of Vanilla OS’ 2.0) has been able to deliver in terms of security and reproducibility. So for me it’s still rather clear cut.

    In your case, to me at least, it seems you’re inherently attracted towards stable distros (like Debian) but lust after rolling release due to the newer packages they offer. So in your case I’d actually recommend the following:

    • Main system: Debian(/Devuan)
    • Install Nix and access Nix packages through there.
    • Finally, install packages you still need but can’t find elsewhere through the AUR but within a container. I would recommend Distrobox as it makes this go rather easy and painless.