So, what's everyone's favorite desktop/workstation Linux distro as of 2021?
Edit: Anyone tried using NixOS as a desktop OS? I like the idea of scripting my setup.
Edit: Anyone tried using NixOS as a desktop OS? I like the idea of scripting my setup.
It's a major distro with excellent security support, it's completely non-commercial, and KDE has a traditional GUI layout with all the optional trimmings (snap to window edges, thumbnail previews in taskbar etc)
Fedora may be the best options for new linux users who do not want to customize everything, but just wants a clean, fast and polished "works-out-of-the-box" experience.
I'll keep my higly cusomized arch (sway) install for my programming needs for now, but will probably choose Fedora for my "personal" laptop where I do some light video and photo editing.
Yes! Works great actually.
Even running Windows-based games on Steam with Proton. All my hardware worked out of the box(including my Wifi6 module) - only tweaking I had to do was for Vulkan with my GPU. Even then, not that difficult and instructions are in their wiki.
I have little reason to run Windows now. Only software I really miss is Fusion 360.
Edit - now 9 replies, all different. Great to see so much choice!
Best "works out of the box" desktop Linux experience I've had; which made me stick with it. I recommend the Budgie edition for a clean desktop environment that stays out of your way and doesn't confuse you with a billion configuration options. The packaging process is also quite easy in my opinion. In case you want to add some software that isn't yet available in the repository; either for everyone or just for your own use.
As a possible pain point starting out I've heard the installer can be a bit finicky (I myself had no problems with it though).
User guide here (.pdf) : https://free.nchc.org.tw/osdn//storage/g/m/ma/manjaro/Manjar...
Yes, I use it daily and it’s been the most reliable distro I’ve ever used. My current install is 6 months old, completely shadowing anything I ever got before that. It’s package repository nixpkgs is the largest and most up to date out there, when counting unique packages.
The learning curve might be very steep in the beginning, but it’s very much worth it!
I run openSUSE (with KDE) pretty much for one reason - the repos available are completely comprehensive. They have everything I ever need in them, even some pretty obscure stuff, and because it's a rolling distro everything is up to date.
The amazing YaST graphical configuration tool is a nice bonus.
It's a ubuntu based with a i3 desktop manager but with newer perfect configurations out of the box.
Really depends on what you want. (I run Gentoo otherwise, but that's probably not everyone's preference. ;)