Comment by sgc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sgc | Hacker News Reader

Given the conversations in this thread about the annoying package management that leads to so much use of curl | bash, I have a question: Which Linux distro is the least annoying in this regard? Specifically, I mean 1) packages are installed in a predictable location (not one of 3-5 legacy locations, or split between directories); 2) configuration files are installed in a predictable location; 3) Packages are up to date; 4) There is a a large selection of software in the repositories; 5) Security is a priority for the distro maintainers; 6) It's not like pulling teeth if I want/need to customize my setup away from the defaults.

I have always used Debian / Ubuntu because I started with my server using them and have wanted to keep the same tech stack between server and desktop - and they have a large repository ecosystem. But the fragmentation and often times byzantine layout is really starting to grind my gears. I sometimes find a couple overlapping packages installed, and it requires research and testing to figure out which one has priority (mainly networking...).

Certainly, there is no perfect answer. I am just trying to discover which ones come close.

Try Arch Linux. It hits all your points except maybe 5.

1. It symlinks redundant bin and lib directories to /usr/bin, and its packages don't install anything to /usr/local.

2. You can keep most config files in /etc or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Occasionally software doesn't follow the standards, but that's hardly the distro's fault.

3. Arch is bleeding edge

4. Arch repos are pretty big, plus thete's the AUR, plus packaging software yourself from source or binaries is practically trivial.

5. Security is not the highest priority over usability. You can configure SELinux and the like, but they're not on by default. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Security.

6. There are few defaults to adhear to on Arch. Users are expected to customize.

I'm using Fedora Kinoite with distrobox. My development envs are containerized. This makes it easy to prevent tech stacks from interfering and also provides some security because any damage should be contained to the container. It does add initial overhead to the setup but once you get going it's great.

I switched to NixOS to solve this sort of problem.

Configuration of system-wide things is done in the nix langauge in one place.

It also has the most packages of any distro.

And I found packaging to be more approachable than other distros, so if something isn't packaged you can do it properly rather than just curl|bash-ing.

The only distros that are cleanly customizable are declarative ones approaches like NixOS or guix.

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