For years, I’ve gotten by with a desktop at home running Arch and a work laptop running Kubuntu. Now I want a laptop that’s not owned by my job, so that I can use a computer outside the house and not have my workplace own the IP rights of whatever I do on it. My workload is basically just going to be emacs and web browsing, so basically any distro can do it.
I’ve already got the laptop (HP Elitebook 840 G5, secondhand), but now it’s time for the distro. I don’t plan to use this laptop often, since it’ll mostly be when I travel a few times a year. I don’t want Arch, because I don’t want to install 6 months of software updates the night before a vacation and then hope that everything works.
Thus, I’m looking at Fedora Silverblue, since that can apply updates atomically on the system, and I can always roll back. I’m wondering if anyone else has good recommendations for a distro to serve my needs.
- banazir ( @banazir@lemmy.ml ) English21•1 year ago
I mean, base Debian should work out fine.
- Mx Phibb ( @MrPhibb@reddthat.com ) English12•1 year ago
I’m fond of Linux Mint: Debian Edition for most of my computers, but run Solus on my travel laptop (recent change), though both of those might be problematic for your needs. Perhaps regular Linux Mint?
- Miku Luna \ she/it ( @backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English12•1 year ago
Not enough people here saying Debian. /j
- outbound ( @outbound@lemmy.ca ) English8•1 year ago
You’re right! We need more
cowbellDebian. I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is Debian!
- hexagonwin ( @hexagonwin@lemmy.ml ) English11•1 year ago
Devuan or Debian is great.
- sebamann ( @sebamann@discuss.tchncs.de ) English11•1 year ago
Another vote for Debian.
- dontblink ( @dontblink@feddit.it ) English11•1 year ago
Debian with some low spec DE like xfce or Debian basic DE
- MangoKangaroo ( @MangoKangaroo@beehaw.org ) English9•1 year ago
Since you’re experienced, I think Debian is appropriate. Rock-solid, well-supported, and comes with a decent variety of DE options. I personally rock GNOME and have Timeshift set up for rollbacks if necessary.
- Klara ( @boo_@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English9•1 year ago
Debian is rock-solid! A very low maintenance and comfy system in my opinion
- Nuuskis9 ( @Nuuskis9@feddit.nl ) English8•1 year ago
Debian base with Sway.
- Shikadi ( @Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org ) English2•1 year ago
What do you do for a volume icon/volume control?
- Nuuskis9 ( @Nuuskis9@feddit.nl ) English2•1 year ago
For volume control, I use Wireplumber:
- To raise the volume bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec wpctl set-volume @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 1%+
- To lower the volume bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec wpctl set-volume @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 1%-
- To mute/unmute the volume bindsym XF86AudioMute exec wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ toggle
- To mute/unmute the microphone bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SOURCE@ toggle
For icon I have configured the swaybar. I don’t use notifications, thus they’re simple to set for bindsym (above) if needed.
- Shikadi ( @Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org ) English1•1 year ago
Thanks! By configure the sway bar, do you mean that it has a way to display the volume? I couldn’t find that last time I tried to get things configured and ended up just going back to i3
- Nuuskis9 ( @Nuuskis9@feddit.nl ) English2•1 year ago
I have 4 icons displaying the current amount of volume with white background and for mute I use red background. It was super easy to set in the config file even I don’t speak C++.
- MyNameIsRichard ( @MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml ) English6•1 year ago
- buwho ( @buwho@lemmy.ml ) English4•1 year ago
Pop OS works well for me.
- HousePanther ( @housepanther@lemmy.goblackcat.com ) English2•1 year ago
Xubuntu would be a nice easy one to install. Look into Arch as well. I actually run Arch just about everywhere and really like it.
- garam ( @garam@lemmy.my.id ) English2•1 year ago
Got with Fedora, Fedora Kionite, Silverblue, anything. rpm ostree, and if you need other things, go with distrobox. RPM OS Tree will be standard near future, I think.
But I will stick with XFCE Spin tho
- I_EAT_CHALK ( @I_EAT_CHALK@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
Silverblue is cool if you want to explore an immutable base and install most apps with flatpak or in a container. If you want to install packages in a “normal” way you “overlay” them, it’s the only major difference
- Shikadi ( @Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org ) English2•1 year ago
I haven’t had an arch update go bad since 2016, other than a few things that had instant fixes on the home page/mailing list, whereas with Ubuntu I have trouble with every distro upgrade.
I like Fedora’s dnf package manager though, it’s similar to Pacman. It’s been a while but last time I used Fedora I got annoyed by packages being out of date and went back to Arch
- makingStuffForFun ( @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml ) English2•1 year ago
I say… Debian
- Shikadi ( @Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org ) English1•1 year ago
I’m probably the only one here who doesn’t like Debian for desktop lol, stable doesn’t have to mean out of date
- garam ( @garam@lemmy.my.id ) English2•1 year ago
Fedora
I like fedora, and I don’t like how apt handle rollback in debian, so I’m same on desktop, I would rather use Fedora, and on Critical Production Server, I use RHEL/Fedora/RHEL Clones (Alma).
- nani8ot ( @nani8ot@lemmy.ml ) English2•1 year ago
Arch updates going bad is much more likely to happen if the system goes without updates for a long time. So I’d really not recommend it for a seldomly used laptop.
But regularly updated Arch is fine. Even if something breaks it’s usually easy to deal with.
- Shikadi ( @Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org ) English1•1 year ago
I should have added that I update one of my arch computers like once or twice a year, and the other maybe 4 times a year. The reputation for having update issues is just as out dated as Ubuntu’s reputation for not having update issues