What Distros do you want to shoutout and why you think they are doing well/are the best at what they do?

I am curious what is out there and have only had some experience with Linux Mint, SteamOS, and Pop!_OS

  • Sem
    12•13 days ago

    Fedora Silverblue – a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.

      • @[email protected]English
        13•12 days ago

        I use immutable distros for the stability, and the nixOS approach isn’t for me.

        You can install whatever you like using a tool called distrobox, which allows you to run containers easily.

        I have an arch Linux container, and I have access to the entire AUR if I so please. I use that container to run Steam, and performance was the same as on Bazzite using the natively installed Steam.

        • SarahEnglish
          3•12 days ago

          I do this too, being able to use Arch’s packages while having Kinoite’s stability is a really, really nice combo.

        • @[email protected]
          1•12 days ago

          But because the apps are running in containers, the performance will take a hit. And also the customization.

          • @[email protected]
            5•12 days ago

            the performance will take a hit

            This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.

              • @[email protected]
                1•12 days ago

                Q: Would a normal system (read: I’m not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?

                A: No. This is literally unsupported.

                Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?

                  • @[email protected]
                    1•12 days ago

                    Sure fam. This is actually a situation that might come up a lot. Basically any instance of dependency hell caused by conflicting dependencies would be resolved if two different versions of the same software could coexist.

                    • Peeps that are maintaining packages probably have to deal with this every once in a while as well. Especially if the packaged software relies on some very niche (and possibly questionable) dependencies*. To point towards one of the most openly discussed cases of this, consider watching this video by Brodie in which the takedown of the unofficial packages of Bottles is being discussed.
                    • E.g. whenever one tries to compile software themselves OR install/use them as/from binaries/tarballs.
                    • E.g. installing packages as PPAs or other third party repositories (like e.g. the AUR) can also come with dependency hell and are often the reason why breakage occurs.