You Don't Choose Your Linux Distro. It Chooses You!

The one question that every Linux user asks when beginning their Linux journey is: "Which Linux distro should I choose?" In my opinion, you don't really choose a distro. The distro chooses you!

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[mikacasaubon]

I discovered your channel a few days ago. I installed Arco because I need something very light weight and I'm not ready to go bare bones Arch yet. I found it through your channel and it's looking good.

[RAN-osgz]

It's like a path every Linux user must take, the initial distro hopping and all that comes with it. I started with Mint, then Ubuntu, then Arch because I kept reading how amazing it is, and kept hopping on and on and eventually I landed on OpenSUSE

That was it, not changing ever again, I suppose OpenSUSE chose me!

[CraigLillie]

I agree with you! I remember the day I heard a scratching at my front door, and there was a forlorn Linux Mint USB stick wanting to come in. Of course I installed it and it's been faithful ever since. 🤣
Alright, I hammed it up a bit but after several Ubuntu installs, then Xubuntu when Ubuntu went Unity, then Linux Mint from 18 to the present, I finally found the permanent distro I want to stay on. Going to put LMDE 5 on my laptop soon.

[afelias]

DT: "You don't sign up to join; it's not a team"

Me, after arranging 400 feet of Crhistmas lights to make a "Yeah, I use Arch" sign: *excuse me?*

[gimcrack]

I always say; there are no wrong choices, just choices. After a while you're going to know what you like or dislike. 19 years with Linux I have my go-tos, the ones I like and the ones I don't like so much. Time, knowledge and getting settle in. Like you're saying Linux will choose you.

[gwgux]

Makes sense. I've run so many distros that I can confirm this. Every one and a while a distro changes direction, like with Ubuntu going all in on snaps and how it's splitting the Linux community as some people like snaps while others hate them. At the end of the day, once you get to a certain level of knowledge, distros just become starting points for you to build your system out the way you want it to be. Then it's just a matter of taking their ideas and using them for our own benefit or how much time you want to spend to strip them out and rebuild it the way you want it to be.

[InfernalMonsoon]

I started going full time on Linux about a week ago now and there has definitely been some growing pains, originally wanted to use Linux Mint as its workflow seems very Windows-like as I wanted to move away from Windows 10 but I ended up running into a lot of issues with PulseAudio which kept occurring with other distros like Pop OS, Manjaro and Ubuntu. Despite using Zorin OS just fine on my laptop for about half a year I am still very much a newbie so I eventually found out about PipeWire and researched distros that had that pre-installed for me as I still don't know how to change out audio systems yet; and so I ended up with Garuda Linux and I've been loving it.

There has definitely been a fair few headaches of course, especially with game performance at the start but after trying to tweak a whole bunch of different things, enabling the performance tweaks and more, it's safe to say I've been having a really great time learning this distro and I think I have everything set up in a way that I'm happy with. For hardware as new as mine it seems like Garuda was the perfect beginner's distro to start with for me. But I am definitely going to keep learning other distros as well as how to use more advanced functions of the terminal via VMs, just so I can keep my current install safe from breaking while I'm still learning. It should be a lot of fun as I come to grips with everything!

[tiktok.]

Yes, exactly. Fedora was choose me in my 2nd laptop, Ubuntu in my raspberry pi computer, and Debian in my main Laptop and computer.

[random]

I agree, you can use any distro you like as long as it's Arch

[misterspitfire]

For me personally, it was a journey. I looked at the desktop environments first, and after going through them all, XFCE was the one I kept coming back to. Then the distro hopping started! Eventually I reached the point I am at now, namely, MX Linux. I get given lots of old pc's and laptops, as all my family and friends know that I am quite the enthusiast that loves messing with old hardware, and MX has run on everything I've tried so far! I do have fun trying other distros, but MX is the one I rely on, because it always works. XFCE and MX Linux chose me for sure!

[vid]

I have subscribed recently and appreciate your take on various distro's. It's refreshing to view the video's and get away from some of the sub reddit's were it's an all out personal "war" on defending their distro and cutting down others. I my self when posting "try" to say "this was my experience and what I found like/dont like" to help others make an informed decision and always suggest they take it for a spin regardless and experience the distro for them selves.

Anyways great job on the content and look forward to seeing new content as well as catching up on content from the past! Cheers!

[patriotic]

I agree. Recomendations are good but exploration is the best. I went through soooo many distros befor landing on my current one. Good vid DT

[ashkh]

I think time and job decides the distro. Few years back when i was jobless and exploring linux by myself and had a lot of time to spare ARCH was my choice. Now knowing the core mechanics the distro look and feel doesnt matter at all. I give importance how fast i can set up a distro and start working for clients. POP for last 1 year. Less bloated and i can install pop in 5 min connect with my sync cloud and ready to work on a tightly deadline projects. If it was ubuntu (though pop is ubuntu gnome underneath) i had to set up tilling and other stuff which take out the time i actually can put to work. So based on your theory POP os choose me cause i like to put less time on modifying how wm will work or other stuffs which can basically be pre set by the distro maintainers.

[alphago]

Perfectly timed upload of this video.. I'm currently in the process of installing Slackware 15 on my new desktop. It's almost like a sign.. lol

[MichaelJHathaway]

Linux Mint -> Arch ---> Debian. Simple.

[dylon]

yeah this is pretty true. when I first started using Linux I started with mint, because it was familiar and the idea of rolling release repulsed me because I naively assumed it was always unstable and you were just an eternal beta tester. after using mint for some time I became dissatisfied with cinnamon, x11, and generally the outdatedness of it. I then thought "oh what the hell" and installed manjaro kde. it has plasma (obviously) which is way more customizable, wayland, and my packages are all relatively up to date (my graphics drivers actually worked out of the box unlike mint where I had to update them because the pre-installed kernel ones were older than my gpu itself). it's also a bit more stable than actual arch which is good for me. a couple months later and I'm still happily on manjaro with almost no issues

[TonyLeva]

I completely agree. I’ve tried everything and I keep going back to Slackware. 18 years now.

[ShaneStrife]

Fun to hear from another older Ubuntu user. I started with Feisty back in '07! I agree a lot with this video. I've settled on Gentoo for my personal use for now, but I still use Debian on my servers at work, and Debian is still on my old Samsung Chromebook (though I want to switch it to Gentoo, I just dread the compile times 😅). I think distro hopping is a really good way to learn to get your system back up, too.

Your use case and your personality will definitely play a role into the distro you choose. I would never recommend a source-based distro like Gentoo to someone unless I know they're ready for it (and the potential headaches that can come along with it). You also shouldn't be ashamed to use a "n00b-friendly" distro. If it's working for you, go for it!

[rrowe]

DT I started with early Redhat, Mandrake Linux installation about a year or so later was a Godsend. That’s how long I have been playing with Linux, since the mid to late 1990’s. I’m NOT a programmer or anyone that needs Linux, just a computer user looking for alternatives to windows. I’ve run every major distribution except pure Gentoo or Slackware. You will normally find me running some version of Arch or LMDE. Back in the early days, I ran Redhat discless off a floppy on a 486 just to ping my ISP and keep my connection alive!

[BWGPEI]

Will second your thoughts. Had test bed, tried several distributions, and had some failures to install / reboot that caused me to move on. Yes I tried Ubuntu, but ended up with Linux Mint. Stayed with it because it installed and ran on my laptops, and desktops up to and including Ryzen updates that really rock, whilst still running well on older AMD FX Black test bed and Cetrino laptop. At 69 I am less inclined to want new for the sake of new. Old, dependable and stable rings my chimes.Much appreciate you, and your channel.