Hello everyone, I need help to decide on a Linux Distribution to settle and finally stop distro hopping. I have quite some experience with Linux(1year Mint, a quarter year Arch, nixos, debian, manjaro, fedora, suse tumbleweed and kalpa…)I have been experimenting for now almost 3 years. Now I finally want to setlle but I just don’t know where. I like Nix’s shell but don’t like installing everything in five steps(with git because my brain can stand neither the dirty tree warning nor leaving out on the git push) and I don’t need the reproducibility. I like rolling so I don’t need to reinstall or do any major update, but even more appealing is low maintenance and stability in the sense of nothing unexpectedly breaking. I’ll use the computer as an daily driver mostly for programming & 3d design, university related work, streaming and also some gaming. Thank you for your answers. #linux #distrohopping. EDIT: I don’t want to have a company behind my distribution. And my specs: Nvidia RTX 4070, Amd Radeon 7 7840HS, 16GB of RAM

Conclusion: Thanks a lot for all of that feedback, I decided to go for Debian 13 Stable and might check out MX once.

The final conclusion :P: I will now install LMDE and either try to install KDE Plasma or just stick with Cinnamon. Its not as uncustomizable after all. And the flashbacks I got during the installation from me first stepping into Linux… …definetly the rabbit hole I should have fallen into, even though I can now never live a normal life again :/.

  • techoverload ( techoverload@lemmy.today ) 
    1·
    2 hours ago

    I’d definitely give PikaOS a try. I’ve been using it and honestly really like it so far. I’ve bounced around between a few different distros, but PikaOS has been one of the easiest to just install and start using.

  • skadi ( skadi@jlai.lu ) 
    2·
    4 hours ago

    Personnaly CachyOS has been the one to stop my distro hopping, though I must say, I 'm an arch linux fan, so Cachy did it for me. All of the Fedora based distros I’ve tried were good at the beginning but felt limited at some point, though this is specific to my use cases. But one that I really liked, and I’m not much of a debian person usually was PikaOS, so I’d recommend trying it out if not already done.

    • Eric ( Eric@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
      1·
      2 hours ago

      I used to a Fedora guy until IBM bought them and they killed CentOS. I first used Red Hat in middle school back in the nineties, so it broke my heart to leave, but I settled on OpenSUSE. It’s non-US based, and it feels just as polished, if not more than Fedora. I use Tumbleweed, which is a rolling distro.

  • youmaynotknow ( jjlinux@lemmy.zip ) 
    2·
    7 hours ago

    I go into distro-hop frenzies every 3 to 6 months. Last run Included EndeavourOS and CachyOS. I did stay in CachyOS for a couple of months, and used it to give some windows managers a chance, turns out I’m a DE kind of guy. Ended up back on Fedora, as it invariably happens, only this time I went with KDE. I’m a sucker for the GNOME workflow, but KDE is infinitely lighter on resources and way more customizable, so I now have a Plasma desktop that looks and behaves like Gnome.

    In terms of cutting edge and almost never breaking, and if it does break, just reboot and choose the previous good kernel, Fedora has never let me down. They did fuck up horribly last week with kernel 7.2.5, lol.

  • Ostfriesentee ( ennof@feddit.org ) 
    3·
    13 hours ago

    I can only tell you that I’m using CachyOS (Arch) with Wayland and the latest Noctalia, which is extremely customizable. I’m very content. My compositor is Hyprland, but Niri or Mango work, too. Noctalia even technically works with KDE, which I also used for quite some time, but I wouldn’t recommend using it on top of it. Noctalia (Hyprland) has been a standard installation option in the CachyOS .iso ever since August 2026.

    • Flagstaff ( Flagstaff@programming.dev ) English
      1·
      11 hours ago

      And it has problems; try changing the color theme and it keeps requesting your password. Some stuff is seriously messed up in CachyOS’s Noctalia+Hyprland setup, which I tried in the past month. I’m gonna try Pop!_OS+COSMIC sometime soon; hopefully that’ll rock, or else I’ll revert to the tried-&-true Mint Cinnamon.

      • Ostfriesentee ( ennof@feddit.org ) 
        1·
        9 hours ago

        It doesn’t do that. My color theme changes dynamically with my background. But even manual changes don’t require that. Did you enable polkit in the control center? Are you running Noctalia 5 or newer?

        Only when I want to update my greeter theme alongside everything else, I get polkit requests asking for my password. But I also got noctalia-greeter after having had installed another greeter. So maybe that messed it up. Anyway, you can disable auto theme update for the greeter. Or use a different greeter.

        I’m sure there are problems still, but it only just got implemented last month (Noctalia greeter is also super new). I think we can expect fixes. Maybe your particular issue has already been fixed. For some tools I’m using I’m getting daily updates by now, so last month is like ages ago in terms of updates. Not necessarily true for Noctalia, though.

        I did like Mint Cinnamon, as well. Pop!_OS I haven’t tried yet. I might hop a little on my second machine. But for now I’m happy with my heavily customized Noctalia setup on my main machine. What else did you find to be messed up?

  • thegerald ( thegerald@lemmy.zip ) 
    2·
    12 hours ago

    Ah too bad you didn’t like nix. I was just about to propose a simple home-manager repo which could at least declare your tooling across any distro.

    while I don’t understand the git problem, since versioning your OS/tooling is a major feature not a headache, you seem too have found a place with debian so go ahead.

  • qyron ( qyron@sopuli.xyz ) 
    14·
    1 day ago

    I always vote for boredom, which means I vote for Debian. It’s a well rounded, reliable and solid OS. It can be a bit dated on some packages but it rewards with very low maintenance. It works. It does what it is supposed to do, which is allowing us to run and use our computer as we see fit.

    You want something a bit more up to date? Move to Mint. If Debian still appeals to you, move to LMDE.

  • muhyb ( muhyb@programming.dev ) 
    6·
    22 hours ago

    It actually happens naturally, or it should at least. So don’t mind anyone. Distrohop until you find yourself settled.

    You seem to know enough distros. If none of them exactly clicked with you perfectly, continue your search.

    I stayed on Arch-based for more than 10 years and it was suppose to be temporary for me as I was keep saying that to myself. In reality I was settled. So, don’t mind others, find it yourself. It will happen sooner ot later.

    P.S.

    Void is good.

  • tremble5218 ( tremble5218@programming.dev ) 
    3·
    21 hours ago

    Given the specs of your system, if you want productivity and gaming, I’ll suggest Bazzite. It runs Fedora atomic under the hood so it is extremely stable. It comes with everything you need for gaming. Installing additional software is trivial with flatpaks using Bazaar. Overall it meets all your criteria. It has been my daily driver for a couple of years and I think I’ve found my distro.

  • SomeLemmyUser ( Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    11·
    1 day ago

    I had a similar journey and at some point settled for Debian.

    I know, everyone around here will tell you how basic that is and how much program versions lag behind sometimes, but I have come to the conclusion that this really doesn’t bother me on daily use.

    The main wow moment was, when the I noticed my system was running for 5 years and nothing ever broke.

    Sure, I sometimes miss the AUR or some of the bells and whistles off bleeding edge distros, but in the end I want my main daily driver as a tool to other stuff, not a project to constantly put effort in.

    The beauty of Debian is, its reliable AF, everything you got working once stays working, in 99,99% of cases even with a major version change, its the best documented and tested system and it does everything I need and more.

    Plus with KDE plasma and all the native programs, like kdeconnect, kdenlive, kget etc I dont miss out on convinience. (Sure I could still use them on other distros, but I like how it is integrated into a good user experience with the option to tweak everything but without the need to do so)

    The main down site imho is that some advanced things which may work in a hacky and time consuming way on arch just will not work on Debian at all, but I seldom have such moments and its a small price to pay for a system that’s just won’t brake from where I stand.

  • BaraCoded ( BaraCoded@literature.cafe ) 
    9·
    1 day ago

    I’ve settled on CachyOS, using Bazaar for flatpaks (I avoid the AUR). I get a rolling os with frequent updates and more or less secure and verified apps. It’s been a year, no problem so far.

      • teawrecks ( teawrecks@sopuli.xyz ) 
        1·
        17 hours ago

        It’s best to think of the AUR as an arch-specific build instruction wiki, not a package manager repo. It’s just that the build instructions are formally specified, so it’s possible for the former to be used like the latter. But that’s how you get yourself in trouble.