Windows 10 and 11, with WSL 2 I get all the benefits of Linux with little drawbacks. I used to use various flavours of Linux for quite some time but I got really tired of maintaining that system so I went back to Windows. Unfortunately Windows “just works” while with Linux every update felt like rolling some dice to see if my system still boots with a GUI the next day. Currently I work 100% remotely, I can not afford to have my PC to just stop working for a day or more. For servers I keep using Linux and it has been rock solid for that. Maybe I will make an another attempt in the future, I have a notebook that I use to try some distros. So far nothing impressed me enough to try to make the switch again.
We’re an all-linux household.
- Endeavoros on my gaming desktop
- Garuda on my Framework laptop
- Kubuntu on my partner’s Framework laptop
- Endeavoros on my server. Plus a handful of Pis and appliances.
- EndeavorOS on the gaming desktop
- Fedora on my framework laptop
- 2x Fedora Server version.
- Media
- Several pods
Pi Desktop
Simple and fast
Do you use a raspberry as a general purpose pc? I’ve never heard of this, how is the experience?
I have both and ancient Notebook and a Pi2 running Raspberry Pi Desktop
The emphasis in on general purpose. They are not blindingly fast, but for everyday office and browsing stuff they are really nice
Fedora. Why? Because its the best!
Fedora Kinoite from ublue.
Windows is a pain to use. Its uncustomizable, lacks pretty much all its features after making it semi-private. Apps look horrible, theming is nonexistent for the apps I use. All the apps I use in exchange of the Windows shit are also available on Linux.
So I distrohopped, stayed with KDE all the time. Everything broke but I also didnt want “stable” outdated software, until Wayland, fractional scaling and more are fixed.
Fedora Kinoite is very up-to-date, and its OSTree model is similar to git. You have an immutable system image that you can change by layering or removing RPM software, but you should do that as little as possible.
The ublue team takes care of adding Codecs and NVIDIA drivers, so client-side layering can stay minimal. This means reproducible bugs, always. You can reset the system, you have atomic updates (either it fails or succeeds) and you can save as many versions as you want.
Updates run in the background, you get your Software through Flatpak (which is more uptodate, isolated and officially supported anyways), its pretty awesome.
Manjaro GNOME w/ Pop Shell for tiling and the launcher. I mostly use it as a sophisticated virtual amplifier (Carla & Gx/LSP plugins) and for gaming. Can’t imagine going back to Windows, which I have to use on my work notebook for the time being.
Windows 10. Why? Because 80% of my creative software doesn’t work on Linux and I dislike Apple products.
21 years on Linux, because master race
Are you aware that the term master race is borrowed from Nazi ideology?
Are you aware of r/linuxmasterrace?
Yes, and I dislike the term for the reason I mentioned
Right now use Windows 10 on my PC. Not interested in 11 at all. I’ve been thinking about buying an old chromebook and tossing Linux (probably Mint) on it. A friend made one of those and I thought it was really neat. Just gotta find the time, I suppose.
Be aware that
- The storage is insane. Chromebooks you can afford have unupgradeable 128GB max
- The processors are often pretty bad, no GPU and all
- The keyboards are horrible. There are so many missing keys, will be horrible on Linux.
- The BIOS is an intense hack. Having Tianocore on modern Hardware is for sure awesome, but if it fails there is pretty much noone to help you.
- This hardware is often bullshit. Glued together, no replacement parts, ports soldered to the mainboard. I saw a video of a repairguy ranting and sent my Acer Chromebook back.
If you get an affordable one, do it! But dont waste money on that.
I’m still using Windows 10 on my personal computer. Oh I’ll probably have to upgrade someday, some game or other program will come out with exclusivity of some kind and I’ll eventually install Windows 11. But for the most part, I don’t want to fuck with it, everything works and I really just don’t want the hassle.
Running Linux Mint on an old laptop, mostly because it’s too old to decently run Windows 10. Don’t use it for much, mostly troubleshooting things.
At work the laptops are Windows 10 and I don’t think there’s a push to update. Of course all the servers are Redhat Enterprise Linux, and that’s where the majority of my work takes place.
So actually companies using RHEL! I only know of the giants like Meta leeching on CentOS, which drives me nuts.
Fedora is the most solid thing I’ve ever used. I use the KDE version on my desktop and silverblue on my laptop. Never have any problems
Why not Kinoite?
Kinonite is nice and all but on my desktop I am downloading packages far more often and I don’t want to deal with the hassle of restarting my system every time. I know there are ways around that but eh
I’ve been experimenting with Kinoite for a while now on a VM (because my main computer has an Apple Silicon chip and running Linux on bare metal would be inconvenient), and keeping packages on a toolbox works pretty well, so no need to restart there.
If you need to layer packages with rpm-ostree and don’t want to reboot, you can try the apply-live flag.
Plus, most of what I need can be found on Flathub.
Yes, layer as little apps as possible. Binary system-installing apps are a problem, but you should avoid these anyways. Also switching to hardened kernel and malloc are, but there is a project for that now in the “awesome user images” of ublue.it (not by them)
Fedora Silverblue, immutable, secure :)
Also using silverblue now but i must say it may not be for me. Everything is a little bit different and sometimes it’s just annoying.
it takes a while to get used to but i can never go back to a traditional OS
Same here. Even using stable Debian seems so broken now.
Windows 10 bc I play lots of games and it just runs. Not upgrading to Windows 11 bc I want to reinstall my PC when I do it but I don’t want to do all that at the moment.
I’m back to Windows 10 (now 11) on my main PC since I bought an Xbox and there’s hassle-free Cloud gaming, crossplay etc.
When I exclusively played on PC and built the new Machine, I was too cheap to buy a Windows licence. I tried Pop!OS because I like their gaming-focussed apporach. All games that were relevant to me (via Steam, mostly) worked fine.
I’ve since bought a Steam Deck, so I’m running SteamOS as well.
To be fair who really buys Windows licences unless it’s a business or an org
I did… for a very discounted price. Call me lazy if you want, but I didn’t want the hassle to source another version.
Is Steam OS a full featured OS? I didn’t think you could do much outside of running Steam and its games.
I can’t really say. It has a desktop component but it’s not the main focus. I’ve seen setups of people who only use the Deck as their PC, but they mostly don’t do much aside from browsing the internet in desktop mode (Firefox is preinstalled). It’s pretty nice that you can plug it into a USB-C Dock and have it connect to screens, keyboard and mouse.
I’m no expert on customizing linux, but you probably can get some usual features to work on SteamOS.
Linux mint. I stopped doing any gaming and Windows has become an advertisement platform rather than an OS.
Also Gaming on Linux works pretty well nowadays thanks to Wine and Proton, which is why I dropped my last Windows partition about 3 years ago.
