[popcar2]

This was the one to finally stop getting me to distro hop. Cachy is very easy to use and very well maintained. The performance is usually the selling point people talk about, but it's also very customizable and beginner-friendly (especially for an arch-based distro).

It uses an online installer that lets you choose the desktop environment, boot manager, file system, among other things. You can follow the defaults if you're new. Once you install it, it also comes with a few helper applications that can quickly set up things you'd want to use, like a one-click button that installs all the gaming packages you want to use and their flavor of Proton which is (allegedly) faster than the default.

They also have a really good wiki which I contributed a bit to and a very active community if you need help. All around, 10/10 would recommend to anyone. I managed to convince my friend who's new to Linux to use this instead of Zorin and he's had a great time.

[jorvi]

I really dislike that Linux proper doesn't by default have x.xx-server, x.xx-workstation, x.xx-laptop and x.xx-desktop kernel variants. Or just doesn't have defaults, requiring distros to think about what to set during compilation.

A lot of the current defaults stem from the 90s, and often were eyeballed by the creator of said code. They're not good defaults for modern servers nor workstations nor laptops nor desktops. And all of those devices work best with different defaults.

It doesn't seem (yes, appearances can be deceiving) to be that much work, because no extra code needs to be written. For each variant, just set different default parameter values for stuff like swappiness, lazy RCUs and what not. Make it a thing to revisit the defaults every 10 years.

CachyOS and some other distros already do this, but a big chunk of distros doesn't because they think the defaults are well-thought out.

[embedding-shape]

> CachyOS and some other distros already do this, but a big chunk of distros doesn't because they think the defaults are well-thought out.

Based on what I saw 1-2 years ago last time I looked at it, most distributions to customize and don't use the defaults straight up. From memory, so someone correct me if I'm wrong:

- RHEL/SLES - Lots of patches to kernels

- Arch - Closer to just using defaults, some config choices and downstream adjustments (so the opposite of CachyOS almost, which is why we have CachyOS in the first place)

- Ubuntu - Probably the most patched distribution compared to upstream components, also includes a lot of Canonical-specific stuff on top of that.

- Fedora - Has some bleeding edge bits and bobs

- Debian - Bit more conservative than Ubuntu, but still has patches for stability, security and backports.

In my experience, distributions changing the defaults and customizations seems to be the norm rather than the exception.

[bflesch]

I love the separation of concerns. It provides an amazing terminal-first kernel and everything graphical is maintained by various different organizations, and you can choose between many different options.

Maintaining a large distro is extremely difficult and every decision has several trade-offs.

[malwrar]

Why would you want different kernels for different device types?

Genuine question! I maintain my own Linux distro (upstream Linux + portage) for all my devices and haven’t found much reason to go beyond kernel per arch. I’m curious if there’s something I could be missing.

[heresie-dabord]

> This was the one to finally stop getting me to distro hop.

For me it was Debian 12 with Sway (Wayland) followed by Debian 13 with labwc and Sway.

Now I can switch from a tiling window manager (WM) to a floating WM depending on the work task.

[WD-42]

I had not heard of labwc before, super cool that it's compatible with openbox themes! Openbox was one of the first "cool wm" I think I used back in the day, probably like 15 years ago now when it supplanted Fluxbox as the dominant *box.

[tetris11]

> labwc and Sway

Is there an option to stay permanently in floating mode, and allow manual placement? I'm stuck on AwesomeWM using just floating windows with easy keybindings for moving them around/resizing, etc. and am looking to jump from X11 to Wayland

[exe34]

nixos for me. broke it once 9 years ago, but I never figured out how.