*or distribution
Having been a (GNU-)Linux user since 2006 (desktop only), I have done what many Linux users have also done: hop around from one thing to another.
That all stopped a few years ago when I decided that I would just stick with Debian. I was happy and comfortable. It worked. I used Stable, Testing, Unstable... no issues.
That is until about 4 months ago I was cleaning and found an older laptop and decided to try something different on it: Alpine Linux.
I even wrote about it on my blog. It was such a nice installation and process that I decided to put it on my main personal laptop.
Since April I have been using Alpine and I must say I am pleased. Differences from one Linux to the next aren't much to write about. With Alpine however, I finally experienced another part of Linux that I hadn't had the opportunity to enjoy: the community.
Package requesting? Easy. Asking for help? No shame. Patience and help provided? Excellent.
None of those comments are to disparage other OS communities. It is simply that I had only ever used popular distros (Debian- and Arch-based) so I never needed to ask for help. Either way, I am still using Alpine.
So, just to repeat the titular question: what have you tried out this year? What are your impressions?
CentOS Stream for fast up and tear down on KVM with ansible. welp, I want to check if it's b2b compatible with RHEL, and it's..
Alpine in WSL2, use it daily on Windows 10 WSL, need for testing stuff when my X220 isn't around. I still need Windows to test software and do Whatsapp Video Call sadly.. No Windows client at the moment...
It's same like old centos, just for dev, I have none in production, but I think I want to try one. Let us see if it's okay like EL Clones, or licensed RHEL in general.
At least now I don't need to buy more RHEL license when needed. and I'm happy with Fedora+CentOS Streams VM on my Thinkpad X220... simple spin up using ansible playbook, viola... I have new env, that's lightweight and without installing (cloud image with cloud init)
For Desktop, after hoping, I always back to Fedora... haha... last time I try ubuntu based, xubuntu I think. Not fond of ubuntu approach for trackpoint on thinkpad, with same fedora X11 config, on Xubuntu with tweak here there, still sucks... so back to fedora xfce spin...
At least we now have distrobox, and I can keep EL env with other distro software... eg arch... in one box without dual boot or other things