I do have a 64-bit machine now, so fear not ;) That was back in around 2011.

Well, once you do get used to something change does start to become more difficult. I was hoping that, if joelandsonja does not like their first choice there would be an incentive to change that could offset the inertia. It would be like Linux tourism.

But the main reason I'm replying to you is that I was thinking of trying out Gentoo. I do have a VM half-installed. Why?
I was curious when it came about and I feel uneasy with systemd. While there are Arch Linux variations without systemd, Gentoo would help me learn more things. Change is good.
And now I read a less pleasant perspective of this distribution.
There are variants of Gentoo and some may cause less problems of the sort you describe. I'll have to think things over now. Perhaps I will be using the system in a different way than you do...?

I have years of accumulated cruft and weird tastes in general. For example, I use what I like to call the newer multilib overlay to support 32-bit software on my machine. The old multilib required that you modify an ebuild in order to add 32-bit support, and the new one you just add a USE flag to your config files (mostly). When gentoo finally got around to adopting multilib support in the main distribution, they chose to basically reimplement the older version. So now I have both multilib variants on my system at the same time, and have to often make weird fixes to get that to work correctly. I have 1049 lines in /var/lib/portage/world (explicitly installed packages) and 3271 total installed packages (including dependencies). Part of the slowness is probably due to the multilib thing, and part is probably because I have too much crap on my system. I've used other peoples' gentoo and never had 20+ minute emerge computation times. I guess I'm just special that way.

As I mentioned in my rant, I don't think any of the other non-systemd distros will cut it. In fact, I expect all of them to die in the next few years. Gentoo at least has the developer of an alternative (openrc) on board, and will be less likely to chuck it.

At least to me, it seems that at least two other non-systemd distros are likely to make it: Alpine Linux and Tiny Core Linux. TCL is meant to be tiny, and systemd would likely inflate the size more than would be acceptable, while Alpine is seeing a lot of use as the OS inside a container (where init is often not needed) and uses musl instead of glibc, while systemd reqires glibc. (The main advantage of musl is significantly reduced disk space requirement.)

Also, I suspect many embedded Linux systems, particularly those with severe RAM and/or storage constraints, will not adopt systemd for these sorts of reasons.

I have exactly that setup on my main laptop (Windows 7/64bit on one internal HDD), and I am dual-booting Linux Mint XFCE on another partition.

I do have an option to update that Windows 7 to 10 (Pro) for free, but by the time Windows 7 supports ends, I have probably bought another main laptop that has Windows 10 preloaded. So, I will probably just keep Windows 7 installed on this (for the games that might have issues on Windows 10 but work fine on 7), but whenever wanting to go online or do some serious stuff, do it on Linux Mint on that PC.

There is no way to objectively declare any Linux distribution as the best, as it is a purely subjective opinion which is based on metrics decided by each individual person which will vary wildly from person to person depending on their software needs, skill level, expectations and many other factors.

No general purpose operating system (Linux, Windows, or anything else) is 100% stable 100% of the time for 100% of the people using it, so it really is a matter of defining what your exact needs are, what specific programs and types of programs you wish to use, what hardware you plan to run it on, what peripherals you want to use and expect to work properly, and then either experimenting to find something that is the closest match to your expectations, or seeking advice based on the details that are unique to your own desires in full detail.

Linux is a great operating system and there are tonnes of distributions out there which provide a wide variety of choices to potentially meet specific needs, as well as customized options such as building one's own distribution from scratch. That doesn't mean that Linux is the best operating system for everyone though, nor that it is even a good choice for some people. It depends on the individual's own needs ultimately whether Linux is even a contender for a given set of needs and expectations.

I've had people come to me in the past and tell me "Tell me why I should use Linux, convince me." as if I stand something to gain from whether or not a random person uses Linux. Sadly, I don't have anything to gain, and so no incentive to convince anyone to do something they've indicated they already have a wall up around not doing, so I refuse to even try to convince someone because it puts the cart before the horse. People should use whatever they think suits their own needs the best, not get convinced by someone else proving something to them like there is something to gain from victoriously converting someone to their personal choice or whatever. :)

Use whatever you want, or don't in the end. You're the one that has to live with it so make sure you do your own research first-hand to determine whether or not something like Linux is for you at all. Other people's opinions on the matter aren't likely to align with your own needs/expectations/expertise and other things that matter to you.

In short, if you need to be convinced by other people on the idea of running Linux, then it most likely is not a solution that is going to work out well for you. I would say instead to define what is important to you and then investigate what will give you the closest match to what your computing expectations are, either in general, or even project-specific. Then choose accordingly.

Life is short, use what works best *for you* and don't get caught up in the noise. :)

Manjaro provides an easier method to install and uses an Arch-based distribution. Arch is a forward-thinking rolling distribution that many expert users swear by. However, Arch is somewhat less forgiving on new users and a level of expertise and a willingness to learn and read is required to get up and running.
[url=https://9apps.ooo/]9apps Showbox

I chose Fedora over Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Debian, because it delivered the best balance of features I want the most: easy setup and upgrades, up-to-date and plentiful packages, a well-integrated Gnome experience and the DNF package manager. Arch would be my runner-up, but the setup is just too tedious and I could not get comfortable with pacman and AUR. Ubuntu just had too many quirks when I used it and it did not integrate as well with Gnome (though this may have changed). Debian was even more tedious to set up than Arch, due to its insistence of not bundling the proprietary drivers I needed for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Debian also bundles too much old software (including the kernel itself). Mint has been to unpredictable for me, having been able to run it without problems only on one of three laptops.

I would prefer FreeBSD or OpenBSD over Linux, but the lack of up-to-date end-user software and Linux’s increasing dependence on systemd makes it unsuitable for me.

NixOS is a new generation distro thats on the rise right now and I highly recommend it. It easily wins over Ubuntu- and Debian-based, Arch-based and Gentoo-based as it the first functional- and hybrid source/binary distro. Also Guix, if you prefer only Free software.

So what's the difference between this and say Fedora Modules or similar ideas?

Did @joelandsonja come back to read any of the responses?

To add to what many already said above, there isn't one best distro. It depends on your needs. So if you want to choose, figure out your preferences. But some things are good to take in account.

Most distros differ in release methodology, and are usually either periodic release based, or rolling (or some combination of the two). Periodic release ones tend to keep packages stable for a long time, at the cost of them becoming stale. Rolling distros aim to have more up to date packages, at the cost of more potential regressions (but with added benefit of newer bug fixes too).

So that is the first thing you should consider when selecting a distro. More than the distro, what affects actual user experience is the desktop environment. Unlike Windows, Linux has many - KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, Lxqt and so on. So that would be normally your second consideration when deciding what to use.

Honestly, I view which distro to use as a bit of a hobbyist question.

I've only used Ubuntu as a host OS (mostly to leverage the community for answers on display/graphics problems which I find uninteresting). I've also used Debian, Ubuntu, Centos and Alpine extensively in containers and/or VMs.

If you want a personal desktop OS for casual use, any of the mainstream distros will probably do the job (the more mainstream, the friendlier it will be as Google will be your friend there), but for sure, agonize over the options if you have time to spare and the inclination.

If you want to work, don't spend more than half a day on this (which distro to pick is not a very interesting problem and it will take time and energy away from more important technical choices you'll have to make)... take a pick among the main ones and unless you encounter major roadblocking issues, don't look back. If you use modern tooling, the bulk of your workflow will happen in containers and vms anyways, meaning you'll be running a myriad of other distros on top of your host distro anyways (making the tooling used in your host distro not that important... whether is can run the versions of Openstack/kvm and/or Docker/Kubernetes that you have in mind is all that really matters).

Long time passed, but if its still actual: OS is built using completely different approach. This is very similar to difference between classical filesystem (like ext) - and metadata-based filesystem(like btrfs) where whole filesystem is journal. Instead of being a pile of random changes, nix is functional OS. Entire OS is evaluated based on functional expression, which calls other expressions. When every expression is evaluated, it and result of it are checksummed. The checksums are used both for security and for locating any specific component. Every update - is a rebuild of the whole OS. Because of checksumming background compilation and use of background compilation services is possible. This results in great deal of learning to use the system, but pays off in that system can be reliably debugged and can never be "updated to mess". On update there is either success or failure, nothing inbetween.

TL;DR.
In classical Linux everything is a file and origin of every file/file change is hard to track back; and you just change files or call programs that change files on update. Direct change of files is main way to manage system.

In NixOS-likes Linux, everything is a result from expression, which can be traced to individual change and builds are 100% verifiable; and on update main expression is evaluated (changed or not) and system assembles itself from updated expressions. System is only managed using main expression, configuration files are never touched directly.

I've tried about 30 different distros. Live distros and rewritable dvds made it a lot easier.

I learned quickly that I wanted good program support, so focused on distros built on Debian since it seemed to have the most useful repositories and widest compatibility.

I used Ubuntu for a while then switched to Linux Mint (which are both built on Debian). For someone wanting to try out Linux or to play games with Linux, I'd suggest starting with Linux Mint.

They were too slow for me though. I want my OS to be light and responsive. While trying out light weight distros I found Crunchbang, which is really just Debian with the openbox window manager.

The original project closed and there are now several forks of Crunchbang. I now use Crunchbang ++ (plus plus) as it feels most like the original.


I wouldn't suggest it for the average person though, since I had to tweak it a lot using config files. I'm able to do most of what I want though.

I dual boot between Linux and Windows to play my games, although I play a few on Linux too.