(Also extends to people who refuse to use Linux too!)
Every unique Linux Desktop setup tells a story, about the user’s journey and their trials. I feel like every decision, ranging from theming to functional choices, is a direct reflection of who we are on the inside.
An open-ended question for the Linux users here: Why do you use what you do? What are the choices you’ve had to make when planning it out?
I’ll go first: I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with the Niri Scrolling Compositor(Rofi, Alacritty and Waybar), recently switched from CosmicDE
I run this setup because I keep coming back to use shiny new-ish software on a daily basis.
I prefer this over arch(which I used for 2 years in the covid arc), because it’s quite a bit more stable despite being a rolling release distro.
I chose niri because I miss having a dual monitor on the go, and tiling windows isn’t good enough for me. Scrolling feels smooth, fancy and just right. The overview menu is very addicting, and I may not be able to go back to Windows after this!
This was my first standalone WM/Compositor setup, so there were many little pains, but no regrets.
Would love to hear more thoughts, perspectives and experiences!
You’re being very melodramatic about the whole thing…
It’s a computer. We want to use it under our terms. End of story.
Wheres the melodrama in this post ? I’m detecting enthusiasm maybe, but not melodrama. They’re looking for peoples thoughts and experience, i.e what your own terms are for making these choices. Seems reasonable. Sharing that is optional of course and I also choose not to, end of story.
I would agree with this. I don’t see it as melodramatic.
Enthusiastic, yeah. And nothing wrong with someone interested in tech to also take the more poetic route of expression.
Many of the tech enthusiast types are more akin to mindless 1s and 0s. And not everyone is.
So like you did, rather lack thereof, the response of your own story is optional. I chose to share, because it’s fun to discuss. This isn’t a changelog, or patch notes. This is part or being human and sharing something other than binary data.
I agree! Tbf that’s why we’re all here in the first place
That’s what I thought. OP made it poetic. I just want to use my PC without distractions and being watched all the time, that’s all.
Me with every new Linux installation:
My network looks like George Foreman’s kids names.
Anyway I use Ubuntu to make other Linux users mad. Stay mad, nerds.
Actually, Ubuntu is pretty good if not for the snap issue
I would unironically use it on a system that can run it fine without the loss in performance being noticeable
Ubuntu with snaps disabled is my daily driver…
Honestly, I haven messed with any of this. I just installed Mint, made sure everything works and haven’t messed with it since. It’s a tool and nothing more. It is also the reason why I left Windows. They were trying to force too many features and ads on something that I didn’t want to be more than an operating system
The main customization has been that i added app snap store for the software that I couldn’t find in the default software store
Debian with xfce. Because I’m old. I don’t want to change, damnit!
i’m not that old but i gotta recognize a solid no-bullshit choice when i see it.
The only bad OS is one that won’t do what you want when you want to do it.
I run a mixed environment at home, Windows machine for work, personal Windows machine for interoperability, Linux on the Steam Deck since that what it comes with, external Windows SSD for the Steam Deck since some games absolutely require Windows, Linux NAS for media, Linux Raspberry Pis for some fun side projects, my wife runs MacOS because she’s an Apple Fangirl, Android phone and tablet, iOS work phone for testing. Xbox, Playstation, Switch consoles for gaming.
I also use openSUSE Tumbleweed for the same reasons as you. In my case I also like the security configuration that openSUSE has (SELinux+Firewalld) and its snapshot restore tool in case of failure (snapper). I think openSUSE is one of the distributions that enforces security the most as soon as you install the system and to maintain that security I try to install only the software I need and I try not to add external repositories. I would like to try Aeon because I think it is a more security-focused distro but I still need to dual-boot with Windows to connect to my work and Aeon doesn’t allow this. In short, I use Tumbleweed as it comes out of the box and just add the packman repository. Many people think that Linux is free of malware and viruses and install many programs from aur, obs, external repositories,… without thinking that they are giving root access to code of dubious origin.
I started with Puppy Linux because I wanted to try Linux, and my 350MHz Celeron with 160MB of RAM and 4GB of disk space (of which I had around 1GB free) wasn’t enough to run neither any flavor of the major distros, nor any remotely recent version of Windows that wasn’t XP stripped down to the bare minimum, and even that ran like shit. This was around 2008.
After being able to afford a more recent machine (3GHz Intel something Dual Core, with 4GB of RAM and 500GB HDD), I switched to vanilla Ubuntu, with its Unity DE, then Xfce4.
I’ve been using the LUbuntu flavor (LXDE) since it is more lightweight than the alternatives. Don’t really care about bells and whistles now, just a functional and fast desktop.
My most recent laptop is dead now, tho, and I don’t see myself getting anything soon :(
I got tired of windows feeling like my only option. I knew there were alternatives out there so I went searching.
Mint and Kubuntu are both super easy to install and use and I’m glad to help my friends with installing a new OS whenever they ask.
I use Fedora because I barely have to do any customization to get it how I like. An almost vanilla version of Gnome? Check. Flatpak? Check. Nothing to uninstall (I’m looking at you, snapd)? Check. Steam with just a few clicks? Check.
It’s almost perfect, and making it perfect is trivial. That used to be what I said about Ubuntu.
I haven’t used Windows much since Windows Vista, so I don’t really have any way to compare with Win10/Win11.
this is what i say about ubuntu. it has gnome with a nice dock built in, indicators, desktop icons. all it really needs atm is scrapping snapd and the snap store in favor of gnome software with flatpak.
fedora has more attention to detail put into it though, its very much better overall if you install a couple of extensions. feels faster too, dunno if that’s just me.
My current main machine uses Fedora KDE because at the time I built the machine and installed the OS, Mint Cinnamon did not have particularly good Wayland support, and I needed Wayland to access certain features of my GPU and monitor combo.
I used Mint Cinnamon for ten solid years on my older machines, Cinnamon is still my favorite distro, I tried a couple early on, Cinnamon just felt like home and I stayed there for a decade. But it was kind of jank on my new machine so I went with KDE.
I use NixOS to document all of the choices I make. I can transfer my whole setup between computers and it just works. I don’t have random modifications anywhere
Do you run it impermenant? Or traditional Nix style? I been thinking about running NIX with impermenance and then persisting all the important files so I can hardware swap, or just keep a lean, clean, more secure, self maintained system over time.
Just traditional, since wine prefixes are basically a bunch of state and games are huge
I use Kubuntu on my Surface Go because it got way too warm under Windows. It’d work fine most of the time but I just got unhealthily warm to the point it’d get too hot to touch under very minor workload. My SO’s father, who’s been a huge proponent of Linux for decades now, suggested I give it a try and it’s been great. Some minor functionality restrictions but nothing I can’t work around. The touchscreen and the stylus work - that’s all I need for school
I use whatever the latest Ubuntu LTS is on my desktops and usually laptops (besides my Macbook) at the time, and whatever the latest stable Debian release is at the time on my home lab servers.
I am very much a utilitarian and function over form kind of person so I choose what I do because it is the best fit for the problem I was trying to solve, usually with little thought to looks or UI design. I find I don’t really care so much how something is done on a given platform, just that there is a way. As a result stuff like theme options, dynamic wallpapers, etc are not something I really care about. I have been using the same black image as my wallpaper on every computer I have used for at least a decade now for example. I arrange the UI in whatever way I feel is the most functional for me within the constraints of what the platform supports out of the box. Meaning I couldn’t care less for stuff like the old school Window blinds program and what not.
Ubuntu over Windows because I wanted to get away from the ever increasing ads and general slop that Microsoft was putting into Windows while still retaining some support for gaming(thanks to Valve and Proton) and building my own systems.
Debian on servers over Ubuntu or something RPM based because Debian stable is rock solid and will run whatever you put on it without issue in my experience.
I run Garuda because it’s a more convenient Arch with most relevant things preinstalled. I wanted a rolling release distro because in my experience traditional distros are stable until you have to do a version upgrade, at which point everything breaks and you’re better off just nuking the root partition and reinstalling from scratch. Rolling release distros have minor breakage all the time but don’t have those situations where you have to fix everything at the same time with a barely working emergency shell.
The AUR is kinda nice as well. It certainly beats having to manually configure/make obscure software myself.
For the desktop I use KDE. I like the traditional desktop approach and I like being able to customize my environment. Also, I disagree with just about every decision the Gnome team has made since GTK3 so sticking to Qt programs where possible suits me fine. I prefer Wayland over X11; it works perfectly fine for me and has shiny new features X11 will never have.
I also have to admit I’m happy with systemd as an init system. I do have hangups over the massive scope creep of the project but the init component is pleasant to work with.
Given that after a long spell of using almost exclusively Windows I came back to desktop Linux only after windows 11 was announced, I’m quite happy with how well everything works. Sure, it’s not without issues but neither is Windows (or macOS for that matter).
I also have Linux running on my home server but that’s just a fire-and-forget CoreNAS installation that I tell to self-update every couple months. It does what it has to with no hassle.
I use Arch with hyprland, waybar, walker, pcman-qt, Kitty.
Reason is I hate mouse or touchpads I try to use them less. Hyprland is a tiling wm but I am not a fan of tiling at all. Most of the time I switch through workspaces with command+tab and only one window on each workspace.
