I tried Void (musl, xfce), and audio did not work, touchpad scrolling was inverted, and most apps did not react to setting.
Steam OS does not fit to 8 GB flash drive.
Bazzite did have issues already during install, that it did not want to create partitions in the installer, and after install it failed to boot.
I want something lite, that is not too bloated.
I want steam, VM to run app that are not wine compatible.
I do not really need desktop icons at all, just simple way to launch apps.
Since you say you want a lightweight (no bloat) distro, and you don’t want a full desktop. Arch is a natural answer. If you don’t know which window manager(WM) you want, maybe try Archcraft (archcraft has a ton of preconfigured WMs) in a VM so you can install lot’s of different WM, tiling or otherwise. After you find out which WM you want and learn that one then you can do a fresh install of arch with only that WM. (sorry for not wathcing the YT video but it’s 1 hour long).
Other than that I subscribe to the idea that linuix distro doesn’t matter that much. A linux distro isn’t “bloated“ just becouse a few more packages sitting in the SSD. Try Fedora, try Opensuse, try nixos. With Arch there has been compromised poackages in the Arch user repo (AUR), so be sure packages are safe if you use AUR. Have fun
i’m not sure with your comfortability with Linux but if you are comfortable, I would say go cashyos it will let you install DE or WM just from the base installer and then after you figure out what exactly your preferences in terms of that stuff you can just re-image or delete all the ones you don’t want and would recommend doing limine as the bootloader for cachyos cause it takes a snapshot of your system every single time you update or packages are changed.
I literally finished that Chris Titus video yesterday if you’re leaning towards Fedora because of the same reason he is, I would say go with fedora and they have multiple spins so if I’m not mistaken, they also have one for some window managers. Can’t tell you which ones are good cause I am not that comfortable with them nor are they very useful for a kind of stuff I do on my day to day.
the video was only a recent reference, of youtuber installing distro that looked clean and minimal out of the box. Not something you should watch.
I very much disagree with “distro doesn’t matter“, but if you meant “distro is just set of defaults…”, then sure, but that is exactly what I am looking for. A set of defaults, that work together, and not contain 100s apps, from which I will not use 98%.
Arch seems like a bad choice, with minimal to no good defaults chosen. Based on the Void experience I do not want to try audio, and then figure out why it does not work…
I tried that fedora server, but I screwed up and not selected gui during installation, so I had to add it from console using only phone to figure out how…. and I picked cosmic. (we will see, if it was stupid idea, or not…)
Other than that almost everything seems to work. Steam works, gamepad works, which was again not the case in Void. (Not blaming them, probably my bad decision to pick too void distro, which I would expect from Arch as well.)
I am quite comfortable opening docs for a command before pasting it to a terminal.
Last time I tried CachyOS (for my father with NVidia GPU) it did not boot after install. (About a year ago.)
Limine sound interesting, if Fedora will not work out, I will give it a try. Thanks for the recommendation.
A distro is just an opinionated version of Linux. And unless you built yourself, there will be features missing, or “bloat”. One man’s feature is another man’s bloat.
For example, I like KDE partition manager being part of a distro. But a CLI user may consider it bloat.
My personal best distro would be one that includes all GUI system tools, and all possible drivers, but zero to none applications pre-installed. For example, i have Libre Office pre-installed. First, this isn’t a great app and I want to make my own choice (ie. OnlyOffice, or Google). Second, the version that comes with a distro is severely outdated. If I would use LibreOffice, I’d install the flatpak anyway. IME, Aurora strikes a good balance: they include most system tools and drivers, but very few productivity software. Of course, this is just my personal opinion and someone else may complain about having an Office software being included.
Pick a distro that comes clsoe to your ideal, and adjsut it.
And the real difference is the release model (stable to rolling) since you cant change that. Everything else can be added or removed to or from any distro.
I was watching it before you made your post cause I was interested on how he would set up his system now since all of his scripts on his github designed for arch and I want some background noise while I was installing the new Wi-Fi card I got for my laptop and troubleshooting any issues afterwards
Look like we have quite similar opinion about definition of bloat.
From my previous experience many distros come with 5 or more text editors preinstalled, and I mean the more basic text editors with single font not office style apps.
I am quite fine with Fedora Server right now. 2 system updates was quite simple “yes update all”…”restart later”… and nothing broke.
I even run a windows only debugger “as a game in steam” using proton, and it worked, almost perfectly. (Way better that I could imagine.) The only issue is keyboard focus. I could not get keyboard input most of the time, but I hope I will find a source of this issue and there will me some flag to fix it.
I use and have used openSUSE Tumbleweed for years now, it is a rolling release so I am always on very recent software and kernels, and the install gives you far more control over all aspects, from security, boot loaders, software packages and GUI choices. Not saying it is the better choice for anyone, I just know that for me it has been a phenomenal choice and I love it.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fedora server installer, how minimal, but complete it was, and even though I screwed up the install (by not choosing UI), it was surprisingly easy to add it later from console by looking up relevant commands on phone.
I really like it so far, even though there are few differences to Windows that are annoying, I even managed to get used to a slightly different keyboard layout.
But I will probably need to look at source code of one of the apps for clipboard history, and write another version that will work for me (on cosmic).
You’re probably looking for Fedora Workstation, which has GUI. Fedora Server is meant to be a CLI-only distribution, although you can add a desktop through the command line.
That beta-DE likely is the source of your issues. I wouldn’t use Cosmic before 2.0 or 3.0.
I also think Fedora developers focus on the modern and mature DE like Gnome and KDE. The other spins likely get less attention and rely on more volunteers. Plus most people use Gnome / KDE. So bugs will be discovered and fixed sooner.
That is a function of how the distro implemented it. When I first used KDE(Fedora), I initially thought kwallet is some crypto scam And on Fedora, you just blindly click yes and are done. Same on Suse.
But on Aurora (KDE and based on Fedora) they either don’t use the stupid kwallet, or found a way way to automate whatever kwallet does. There the password only is needed when using some system tool or CLI. Never for normal use. I’m no expert, but that makes me think it isn’t a KDE issue and depends on proper distro setup by the maintainers.
OpenSuse for example, always brought an error when I opened Discover. That error didn’t seem to mean anything. Happened on Tumbleweed and Slow roll. No other KDE ever had that issue. So this isn’t a KDE issue, just a shitty distro that happens to use KDE.
I don’t recall all details, but after testing 30 distros ( and most of them with varying versions of KDE), I saw a lot of odd things, but only on specific distros. Aurora is the only one I tried that doesn’t require me to fix a fresh install. I blame distro maintainers. On Debian and MX Linux you get errors on login screen on a virgin KDE installation and you have to fix some config file to fix it. Why don’t the maintainers fix it? My guess is many graybeards still use XFCE and don’t care about KDE.
It also is used on Arch and Fedora distros. The DE itself isn’t LTS
And LTS means long-term-support. Nothing in LTS makes it inherently better quality or stable and in not crashing. “ stable” in software means, no or very few changes. Unfortunately that also means often no bug fixes.
I haven’t used Cosmic, but read a lot about the issues all the way to the LTT Linux challenge. No one stops anyone from using it, and someone needs to do the testing. But if you expect few problems and maturity, a new DE isn’t the best choice. Everything is about managing expectations.
I’m no expert, just a user who wants to use the apps. Most distros are DIY projects for people who are willing and able to tinker. that is why Linux is at 3%. Most people (like myself) want a PC to work like a phone or Mac, turn it on and go into the app and use the app, not fix the OS.
Same here. Started a few years ago with Mint, since everyone tells you it is best for beginners. Anything a bit more than just browsing was CLI (while it was GUI on windows). And the performance wasn’t better than W11 (was a 4th gen i3 with 8 or 16GB). What a bad distro. Then last year i tried again with almost every imaginable distro (inc. both Mint again). ALL of them are tinkerer projects and have some fixes needed. None of them are ready to be deployed to a noob.
I’m sorry to say that, but the vast majority of distros are the reason Linux isn’t widely used on the desktop. They all assume a user WANTS to edit the core OS and fix stuff all the time and call it freedom. To most people, that constant CLI is a prison, not freedom. Your kwallet example is a good one. A new user who somehow escaped MS, now installs Fedora and has to agree or allow some kwallet s$$t. There is no explanation what it is for, if you are signing away any access or rights? Kwallet looks like s$$t Microsoft puts in W11 and tries to trick the user to give away data or subscribe to something.
I almost gave up on Linux, until someone here pointed me to Aurora. I assume their cousins Bluefin (Gnome) and Bazzite are similar. Aurora just works out of the box and an expert and a total noob can use it without needing help all the time. I now use it on 3 PCs. If it wasn’t for that, I’d use W11. One could say Aurora is like a iphone or Chromebook, just with more software options. And that is the great thing. Because, have you ever seen someone needing to fix a phone or chromebook OS? And people that say Atomic OS are not flexible enough just don’t know about containers and homebrew.
the video was only a recent reference, of youtuber installing distro that looked clean and minimal out of the box. Not something you should watch.
After reading: