From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This is an aberration. You must choose one and never deviate.
Seriously though I think it's pretty normal. When I install Linux i usually pick whatever distro at the time and end up using a couple of different ones. I have arch on my desktop and Pop OS on my laptop at the moment.
When you've hopped between all the major branches of linux you kinda realise they're all the same thing with different package managers anyway
That said you can pry NixOS out of my cold dead hands
I have arch (btw) on my desktop and Pop OS on my laptop
Yeah, my desktop runs arch one laptop runs Ubuntu server and I have a surface 4 running Nobara (a flavour of fesora)
*btw
Touché
Is it weird that you prefer different tools for different jobs?
Nope.
What? You use sandpaper for sanding and saw for sawing??
Are you trying to ruin hammer industry? Back in the day radicals like you would have been burned on a stake.
Just wait until you realize what I do with the screwdriver.
Watch your mouth or Big Hammer will get you.
No, though it is weird that you feel like you should ask such nonsensical questions in public forums.
I just wanted to generate activity on Lemmy
Nah, it’s pretty weird that you enjoy being mean on public forums. If you want to criticize then do so, don’t be an ass about it.
Careful he's verified
No in fact that’s a violation of the GPLv69 and Richard Stallman is going to come to your house and format your hard drive
Using the tool that best fits the use case is not weird. It's common sense.
Yes. It's illegal actually. A Microsoft team has been dispatched and is en route to your place right now to install Win 11 S on all of your devices.
It would be weirder to like Linux and Windows, but hey someone had to write samba 😹
Only reason why that is weird to me, is just how much better Linux is. I'm too old to give a shit about a fanboy mentality. Linux used to be something you suffered through in order to get a tradeoff only available to power users. Now, my 90 year old grandmother has an easier time with Linux. It's more consistent, and doesn't break stuff nearly as often.
A more controversial take, is that I feel the same about MacOS. It was a lot of work in order to reduce how often it is annoying.
Samba is much easier to deal with than NFS. I would use it in a all Linux environment honestly.
I tend to agree - I have no love lost for Microsoft but I’m also willing to admit when they’ve got some good tech.
Is it weird
No. You're fine.
I keep going back and forth between Xubuntu Minimal and Fedora. Im just tooling around on a $38 Lenovo Chromebook, which has only 16GB of flash storage (soldered of course). Fedora has the smaller footprint, and runs pretty smooth. Xubuntu Minimal is, well, minimal so it is pretty snappy. Xfce is where it’s at for me.
Sometimes having so much choice can feel like a hindrance when it comes to trying to find a district that checks all of our boxes.
You also could use Fedora Xfce4
Very true. I’m so used to apt, and am also lazy. I just need to bite the bullet and RTFM lol.
I use both myself, Fedora for desktop work and Debian for server
Is it weird that, although some people prefer blue shirts over red shirts, I wear both colors?
Those are both good distros for those purposes. I'm not a fan of Debian as a desktop distro but it's awesome as a headless server, and Fedora moves too fast for my tastes as a server distro but that's fine in a desktop.
So good choice.
I do the same. Fedora on my laptop because I want a balance of stability and having the newest features. Servers run Debian, because I don't have time to fix and update things.
I like em all to match usually. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on the desktop/laptop, Leap on my home server.
Though I didn't run Arch on my server when I did on my personal computers
Sounds like you're a QubesOS user, which ships with both
I just stick with one because I'm boring. I've used it for a long time, it works, I haven't really changed anything in years. I think it's pretty cool to talk with people who are polydistroamorous though.
I think that is completely normal. I run Arch on my main desktop, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop and Debian on any and all servers I host. And I think they all work wonderfully. Even outside of these distros, I can still see the use case for many other distros. I think many popular distros each have a specific goal in mind and they execute it well.
I use Debian as a default and Fedora when I need a newer kernel/newer libraries. You aren't weird at all. Or, at least we're weird together. :)
I think it's pretty normal. For me, I switch back and forth between NixOS and Arch because neither of them provides me with exactly what I'm looking for i.e a distro that has all the packages I use within its repos (I hate compiling) and is static release (I often forget to update), but is not immutable (sometimes I need special programs for university that can only be obtained via compiling from source on a non-immutable distro). Arch and NixOS both have all the packages I need (only ones that do afaik), and one of them pffers static release but is immutable, while the other is rolling release but is not immutable. Currently I'm on Arch, but when (if) it breaks, I'll just switch to NixOS instead of fixing it, and use distrobox or something similar for any packages that need to be compiled.
I use Debian on my servers, Arch on my laptop and desktop. Different tools for different jobs. I tried Debian on my laptop a few years ago but it wasn't a good fit for me - my hardware was too new for the stable kernel, and the Wayland/wlroots stuff was too far behind. As a server though, especially since I'm mostly running Podman containers, stable and slow-updating is great! I use unattended-upgrades and haven't had a problem yet.
I haven't spent much time with Fedora but I'd probably like it as a desktop OS - fairly fast updates, and sticks pretty close to upstream without a ton of custom theming for example. I would miss the AUR, but Flatpak covers a lot of what I need, and Distrobox could handle anything else.
If you are weird so am I. Fedora desktop + 3 Debian headless boxes. Though I may nix everything some day.
Edit: Why do I catch more stray downvotes on Lemmy than I ever did Reddit? I swear there must be downvote bots out there.
Why should it be? I drive Arch on my desktop and Debian 12 Bookworm on my laptop, they are very different distributions but both serve me very well.
I'm an arch Linux user and I like most of the distros, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, RockyOS... I try different distros too, my problem is that I will always return to Arch Linux and a simple i3wm environment... but I like GNOME, KDE and the awesome Wayland. It's just I like what I am used to and goes faster, and I can use the same tools as always. xdotool for example, the alternative for Wayland is ydotool which is a daemon running as root to emulate a device and I dislike the idea of doing that, root? systemctl daemon? Hmm...
But I could be totally good with fedora, at the end I just want the i3wm environment and the wonderful bash or zsh terminal (like alacritty) to interact with Linux. Best OS than Apple and Windows. Funny how Apple interface sucks so much, they lack from smart UI, Windows 11 forces you to log in, their UI is messed up, good thing is their desktop is smart enough to grid windows, and their terminals sucks, PowerShell has good things, but it's not the same... c:\an\\'t\find\Paths/ and I don't really see the good on Object-oriented on terminal and stuff like apple being able to render high quality image on your terminal so you can see on a normal prompt a 8k image on the same terminal app... wtf, and they are even closed and people/companies pays for it.
Yup. I was a Debian guy back in the day, and eventually gravitated to Arch in it's early days. Then I didn't have time, so I used Fedora for pretty much a decade. Now I'm back to Arch, but have a project to spin up simple routing and NAT'ing VMs in lab environments, that can be used to demonstrate a variety of configuration issues on our platform. Would it be easier for me to do in Arch? Absolutely, both due to familiarity, and the fact that Arch doesn't get in my way nearly as much as Debian does. But Debian is far more stable, configuration-wise, so I'm going that route so I don't have to debug and tweak scripts every few months, or even weeks.
Yep, I hear ya
I'm using Fedora GNOME for my pcie passthrough desktop vm and Debian Bookworm for my hypervisor and virtual servers.
When Bookworm ages I'm sure I'll mix in other distros for vm servers to try out stuff that isn't available in Debian Stable yet.
I'm also curious to set up a virtual NixOS and a virtual Fedora Silverblue/Atomic just to check them out.
I also don't order the same pizza everytime.
I use arch for all of that I'm running vms and host ssh servers also run containers & it never broken for me and to be honest your situation is weird 3 distro for one job.
I wouldn't put Arch in anything production as it is quite unstable.
I'll go against the grain a little bit and say it's a little weird. There's nothing wrong with liking multiple distros, but a lot of people either stick with RPM-based (Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, Rocky, OpenSUSE, Mageia) or Debian-based (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Pop!, Elementary). Then you have weirdos that like Gentoo, where nearly every package you install has to be compiled on the system. Or Arch, where the "installer" throws you in a terminal, and damn near everything has to be done manually to get your system up and running. And updates are "rolling release", and if you try to update just one package without updating the rest of your system things can easily break.
I am mostly a fan of Debian-based distros myself. But I'll use CentOS on a VM if I'm trying to self-host anything that recommends it.
CentOS? You mean Stream?