Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in breadboard, and other hardware hacking fun.
On the OS, I’m planning to try NixOS as a baremetal hypervisor (KVM/QEMU) and run my “primary” OSes in VMs with hardware passthrough. If perf is horrible, I’ll probably switch back to baremetal after a bit. But, I’m not likely going to be gaming on it so, I’m not likely to have much issue.
Once the hypervisor is working in a manner that I like, I should have an easy time backing up, rolling back, swapping out my “desktop” OS. I’ve been using Linux as my pretty much my only OS for over a decade (I use MacOS as a glorified SSH client for work). Most of my time has been on distros in the Debian or RHEL families (*buntu, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, CentOS, etc) and I pretty much live in the terminal these days.
With all of this said, I am coming to you folks for help. I would like you folks to share distros, desktop environments, window managers that you think I should give a try, or would like to inflict on me and what makes them noteworthy.
I can’t guarantee that I’ll get through suggestions, as my ADHD has been playing up lately, but I’ll give it an attempt. Seriously. If you want me to try Hannah Montana Linux, I’ll do it and report back on the experience.
EDIT: Thank you all for your fantastic suggestions. I’m going to start compiling them into a list this weekend.
- pelotron ( @pelotron@midwest.social ) English24•10 months ago
Hyprland DE is the new hotness
- noodlejetski ( @noodlejetski@lemm.ee ) 13•10 months ago
just steer clear from the community https://drewdevault.com/2023/09/17/Hyprland-toxicity.html
…or the dev https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/111363547103465966
- const_void ( @const_void@lemmy.ml ) 4•10 months ago
Yikes. What is it about Hyperland that attracts these kinds of people?
- noodlejetski ( @noodlejetski@lemm.ee ) 6•10 months ago
from what I’ve read it’s rather the lack of moderation (due to the dev’s views) that doesn’t reject them. similar situation to the Nazi bar.
- Cwilliams ( @Cwilliams@beehaw.org ) 1•10 months ago
It’s like Arch, but x10. People think Arch > Any other distro, Wayland > Xorg, Hyprland > any other DE, Rust > C, etc
- Hawk ( @Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English3•10 months ago
Yeah, I’ve been wanting to try Hyprland but have been holding off for that exact reason.
Currently on i3, maybe I’ll give sway a go.
- kelvie ( @kelvie@lemmy.ca ) 7•10 months ago
If you’re a tinkerer it’s kind of addicting. I thought I’d give it a try just to see what it was like, and ended up staying up all night customizing it, and now about a month later I don’t really want to go back to KDE (been using KDE for almost 20 years)
- pelotron ( @pelotron@midwest.social ) English1•10 months ago
Agreed, it really makes me excited to use my PC.
That’s one that I’ve been that I’ve been meaning to give a shot.
- Fizz ( @Fizz@lemmy.nz ) 4•10 months ago
Hyprland would look so sick on a cyberdeck
- Ramin Honary ( @Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml ) English14•10 months ago
Must try distros: Fedora, Mint, Void. But seriously, if you are using Nix to begin with, why use anything else? Nix is as good as it gets. If you really want to do a combo, I would recommend Fedora or Mint using Nix as just the package manager and not the hypervisor. All distros are basically the same nowadays.
Must try desktop environments: Xfce, Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE Plasma
I’ve never really Fedora or Void. Will definitely try those.
Of your DEs, I think KDE is the only one that I’ve not used significantly. I need to fix that. I think MATE deserves a place there too.
ETA: As for why not just Nix or Nix as a package manager? I’ve become accustomed to being in VMs all of the time and really like the way that doing so impacts how I interact with a system and extra capabilities provided.
- jackpot ( @jackpot@lemmy.ml ) 14•10 months ago
TempleOS
You know what? Yeah. I’ve wanted to try that product of schizophrenic mania for a while.
- Krafty Kactus ( @tkk13909@sopuli.xyz ) English10•10 months ago
I’m really looking forward to Plasma 6 and Cinnamon just had a pretty good release do there’s a couple for you :)
- Kidplayer_666 ( @Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee ) 5•10 months ago
Hopefully by the time OP gets his laptop, the wayland session will be almost complete
They’ve got time. Shipment isn’t due until Q2.
I am so glad that Cinnamon has been going strong. It made Gnome 3 a lot less painful.
- const_void ( @const_void@lemmy.ml ) 1•10 months ago
What Plasma 6 features are you looking forward to?
- Krafty Kactus ( @tkk13909@sopuli.xyz ) English2•10 months ago
There’s not really anything specific but it’ll be the first time I experience a full plasma upgrade since I started using Linux in 2022. From what I’ve seen of it, the interface is going to be a lot cleaner though so I guess I’m looking forward to that.
- Guenther_Amanita ( @Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de ) 9•10 months ago
My #1 distro recommendation would be Fedora Atomic (immutable Fedora variants).
It’s still a bit “underground” and hasn’t reached huge popularity yet, but I see its potential that it will very soon.
I have ADHD too and Fedora Atomic is a lifesaver. Why?
- You can “distrohop” anytime you want by rebasing. With that, you basically swap out the OS with something else (examples will follow), but keep your data and some settings. If you are on Fedora Workstation (Gnome) and want to have KDE, installing and removing those packages is a huge huge mess. On the OSTree variant, it’s just one command, 5 minutes of waiting, and bam, you have a clean install. I do that all the time.
- Less bugs and better security by reproducibility. Every install is the same.
- Very quick rollbacks if something did go wrong. You can’t brick your OS, which I did a lot before.
- Huge choice. See at universal-blue.org , it provides vanilla images with some quality of life changes, as well as custom ones, including “unsupported” DEs and spins, e.g. a gaming distro. They aren’t forks per se, they are basically build scripts and maintain themselves, which is why they’re always up to date and way better than Nobara for example.
- Distrobox pre-installed: you can just create an Arch container and use the AUR from it. So you don’t need to run (and troubleshoot) Arch on bare metal, but can comfortably benefit from all great things Arch provides
- BlanK0 ( @BlanK0@lemmy.ml ) 8•10 months ago
If you are an advanced linux user then I would suggest giving a try to the following distros: arch, void, gentoo and (like you said in the post) nixOS.
The reason behind is that this distros are focused on the tinkering aspect of linux, the experience of setting up everything the way you want.
If you want to give a shot to WMs I would suggest i3, sway, dwm, dwl, river, bspwm, Qtile and hyperland (maybe focus more on the Wayland ones if you want to try the latest software).
- bbbhltz ( @bbbhltz@beehaw.org ) 7•10 months ago
Don’t know if it is a must-try, but LXQt has come a long way. The file browser is excellent. Everything is fast and snappy and very traditional (start button, system tray, etc.). Runner up I guess.
You can run Alpine as a desktop. The Edge branch. New software, got what you need, installs and updates fast.
Alpine as a desktop? Now that’s weird and I’ll have to give that a go.
- bbbhltz ( @bbbhltz@beehaw.org ) 4•10 months ago
It’s easy. After running
setup-alpine
and rebooting with a bar install there is built-in scriptsetup-desktop
that lets you install Gnome, Plasma or Xfce.You can find install scripts like Alpine Suck around the web https://git.sr.ht/~bt/alpine-suck
Or check out the wiki for other inspiration https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Category:Desktop
If you use Edge, I would recommend subscribing to the user mailing list though, just in case.
- Kangie ( @Kangie@lemmy.srcfiles.zip ) 7•10 months ago
I’m slightly biased, but if you already know a bit of Linux and desire more control / customisation, or want to understand how a system is put together, then I highly recommend Gentoo Linux. The install process is pretty simple, and with the new binary package hosts you have the option of quickly installing precompiled packages to get a system installed or up-to-date.
The
USE
flags on packages, combined with portage the package manage enable an unparalleled level of configurability, the community is welcoming and respect user choice about how they want to configure / use their system, and the documentation on the wiki is top notch - I’d say better than the arch wiki in terms of quality overall.Yeah. Gentoo has been on my list for a while. I’m pretty comfortable building things from source (don’t even bother with packages for Neovim these days - they never seem up to date for my distro). Curious to see the workflows.
- cadekat ( @cadekat@pawb.social ) 2•10 months ago
Chiming in to also recommend Gentoo. It’s a pretty stable rolling release distro, with access to pretty new packages when necessary.
- makeasnek ( @makeasnek@lemmy.ml ) 6•10 months ago
Every linux enthusiast should try Qubes at least once. The architecture is totally different, vastly more secure in many ways than most Linux distros. It’s definitely not for everybody, but if privacy and security rank high on your priority list it’s worth a look. It never ends up in Linux top ten lists for some reason, but it’s an incredible OS.
- dotslashme ( @dotslashme@infosec.pub ) English5•10 months ago
I wouldn’t recommend specific ones, but I would recomnend you try out distros with unique features. Such as an immutable one, one that is built from source, one with packages, one with snap, one with flatpack, etc.
This will help you understand and evaluate what you like.
- Bitflip ( @Bitflip@lemmy.ml ) 5•10 months ago
Forget a DE, sounds like you need a WM. Definitely check out some tiling options like i3 or sway, especially since you spend so much time in the terminal.
- noorbeast ( @noorbeast@lemmy.zip ) English4•10 months ago
What is your actual personal use case, all you mention is a terminal, which every distro will support, likely with many different choices as to terminal options?
Beyond the usual browsing I’ll mainly be doing tinkering with hardware, gateware, firmware, CAD, art, projects that I may or may not finish, and the like. It’s going to be my “everything but playing video games” machine.
- MonkderZweite ( @MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ) 4•10 months ago
LFS. At least once.
- BlanK0 ( @BlanK0@lemmy.ml ) 2•10 months ago
This is the next step after maining gentoo 😂
- kwedd ( @kwedd@feddit.nl ) 3•10 months ago
- EponymousBosh ( @EponymousBosh@beehaw.org ) 3•10 months ago
Garuda might be worth a try. I used it for a couple months and really enjoyed it, I only stopped because Nvidia drivers kept breaking.
I’m going to be on an AMD CPU and didn’t opt for the discrete GPU at this time, nor will I be purchasing an Nvidia device until they start being consistently FOSS-friendly.
- EponymousBosh ( @EponymousBosh@beehaw.org ) 3•10 months ago
Yeah, I unfortunately didn’t know about the “Nvidia hates Linux” thing when I bought this laptop. I guess I know better for next time.
Oof. Yeah. Years ago, it was the other way around.