[TriLUG] Distro choice for desktop

[Steve Litt via TriLUG]

Mauricio Tavares via TriLUG said on Sat, 23 Oct 2021 06:08:11 -0400

[snip]

>I guess it is time to consider the options. Goal is to have an
>installation with as little cruft as I can. Ideally, start from a
>minimalistic install and then add the windows manager and the other
>programs I need (the usual crap: 4+ different browsers, NFS, wifi that
>does say it cannot support my wifi card). It also needs to work with
>Zoom because unfortunately I need that for work.
>
>Candidates:
>
>Centos: Nope. I like the people in the #centos channel (not as
>condescending as the ubuntu and specially fedora), but centos will
>cease to exist in December.
>Fedora: Nope. My condescending quota has been filled thankyouverymuch.
>Debian: I never pictured it as  desktop, but hey
>Suse: Calling Dwaine. Dwaine needed on Aisle 5.
>lubuntu: I have used it before. What kind of support does it have? Its
>irc channel is rather not popular.
>Mint: never used

I'd consider most of the preceding extremely crufty.

If you want to go low-cruft, do what I do: Use Void Linux.

Wide variety of wm/de's (Window Manager/Desktop Environment), and
pretty agnostic about which you choose (if any). The runit init system
they use is georgeously simple, but able to start and maintain pretty
much daemons, regardless of process dependencies. Rolling release that
almost never screws up if you update at least once a week, and updating
is trivial. Does Qemu VM guests very well.

Unlike most, Void can be compiled with musl.

There's a wide variety of packages (though not as many as Ubuntu/Debian
etc), and I find the package manager extremely convenient.

I've used Void Linux since mid 2015 and still like it very much.


SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques