Linux Distros Explained By An Idiot 

Thank you for the explanation. I haven't run anything arch based in years. I'll pin this to make sure no one tries manjaro for no reason.

@@Sirfreelancealot I am certainly saved. Thank you 👍

Surprisingly I had the opposite issue with Garuda just spontaneously functioning more than I would expect and EndeavourOS having inexplicable issues. Garuda is really one of the best linux distros for at least having a working OS at the end of the day.. (if you're not unlucky with your hardware)

Stop hating manjaro GUYS! if manjaro has 100 fans, i'm one of them, if manjaro has 1 fan, that's me, if manjaro has no fans, i'm dead.

Garuda is notorious for having terrible support as well. Imagine all of the condescending douchebaggery of the arch forums, but without even an ounce of the capability. Arch forums will patronize you and insult you and also give you a complete set of instructions for troubleshooting your issue and offer several solutions. Garuda, you'll just be patronized and never offered any assiatance.

I run Arch btw :3

Running Arch-based distros also can come with its own issues that I'd rather avoid

What about SteamOS?

​@@MrDiarukia At that point you're not even a linux user

@@ELEC7RO well isn't it arch based?

Not knowing of it was the bigger crime. Lock me up

@@Sirfreelancealot You're under arrest. 👮‍♂

Ya, I thought you throw in WindowsFX, that Windows Clone Linux OS.

@@SirfreelancealotWe now demand a part 2!

@@cybernit3 its not safe iirc

I think that's fair. Without them linux and foss wouldn't be as good as it is today

That’s why they had to kill CentOS. We started fixing the problems ourselves 😂

I'm currently using Fedora Server on my Server and Nobara (Fedora based gaming distro) on my Laptop and PC. I used arch before but NVIDIA + Wayland + Arch = unusable hell

Well Ansible is nice, and the redhat Dokumentation is also suitable for Debian

That part made me laugh. But it's kinda accurate too, except it's not targeting you, it's targeting big businesses that would save money by having red hat solve their technical issues for them

thanks for reminding me i need to fix my laptop...

Lmao yep Endeavor too But I like

@@lpnp9477 I just switched to endeavor... what's wrong with it?

@@anima94 nothing, this guy is just being weird

@@panmeekNah he has a point. Manjaro is know for doing oopsies. like DDOSing the AUR. forgeting to renew their keys. imploding when you have mismatched packages due to them delaying packages by 2 weeks in combination when you installed things from the AUR. and the list goes on.

That's Gentoo, LFS is like building a Lego factory to mold out all the Lego pieces so that you can build it literally all by yourself

Arch has the best instructions

Arch has really, really good instructions, but othereise that's fair 😂

building car chassis by melting copper wires bit by bit with a soldering iron

I think 3d printing by hand is called sculpture.

UZBEKISTAN MENTIONED

​@@lpnp9477 that's crazy

nixos user here

Void is great. Very little bloat and not exactly as bleeding edge as Arch (I don't like broken systems) + it starts faster bc of runit. Öö, Suomea ei mainittu, mutta tavataan torilla kuitenkin!

SEALAND MENTIONED OMFGG !!!!!!!

Mistakes were made

Mistakes in an understatement, latest updated fucked both gnome and plasma simultaneously

​@@justahumanwithamask4089 eos failed to boot and did the same to plasma within weeks. (I still use it tho😢)

​@@Sirfreelancealotit is nice to have my audio work immediately tho

@@Mr371312 I would've switched to endeavor/ baseline arch a long time ago if they actually booted to the live environment which they didn't so I'm stuck with manjaro

i use arch btw

I use arch btw

I use arch btw

I touch grass btw \[.~.]/

I too use Arch btw

there's ed-mode :^)

words of someone that has never used gnu emacs

*a good text editor.

@@_vsnwprintf_s_l And yet I have for a few years 🤣

@@Leonhart_93 vim supremacy

Do you just not save anything/have everything on github at all times or are you playing sector failure roulette? Im genuinely interested

@@Sirfreelancealot On linux USBs you can re-partition the ISO to have another partition that can store data persistently, but if you dont (And dont have external storage for the USB) everything is amnesic and runs in RAM, so a poweroff or reboot erases everything and dosen't leave a trace, this is how the Tails distro achieves amnesia

T420? I guess that goes without saying.

@@anyvoltage8157 I think he means that usb drives typically use low-quality flash memory, and therefore don't handle many r/w cycles. As a result, data loss is very likely if you don't use backups.

Yep, that's what i meant

i'm a manjaro user and i don't say i use arch... even though it is a lot more like arch than steamos could ever be

Legally, yes. If you ask an arch user. Fuck no 😂

You're not an arch person unless you installed the os yourself, and not from a manjaro or endeavouros installer. But you can still say it, no one's going to question you because nobody fucking cares

I'm gonna put "In everyday life, I use a highly specialized derivative of Arch Linux" on my resume

Isn’t Steam OS Debian based, not arch? (Nvm steam OS 3.0 on the deck is Arch Based, it was OG steam OS that was Debian 8 based)

What puts cachy above endeavouros? I wouldn't mind trying it out on the weekend if it's got something special

@@lpnp9477 "optimized" packages that do not make the slightest performance difference so basically bloated arch with an installer

@@lpnp9477 wait I typed an essay did I not post it 😭 I had 2 points: 1. Compilation for v3 and v4 architecture which makes it measurably faster and 2. QoL. The "cachyos hello" app has a bunch of tweaks and fixes for common issues, they include some AUR packages in the repo, they have a tool for ranking mirrors and actually applying the changes automatically, they have meta packages for stuff like gaming so you don't have to install all the libraries and tools manually. I don't think the difference is very noticeable when you just play in a VM for half an hour but when you use it for a long time the experience is just better. Also you can just add their repos to your existing arch install without losing too much, but imho a clean install is better. Also if you use zsh they have oh-my-zsh built in and preconfigured. I'd say it has the benefits of arch without many of the drawbacks of arch for normal users (not everything has to be configured and ran by hand, but no one is stopping you, if you want to). In the end, it's still lightweight as pretty much nothing is preinstalled, has a better repo and it's still arch so you can delete anything you don't want to (which is like 2-3 apps if you choose not to use them). I wouldn't say migrating from endeavour (or however it's spelled...) makes much sense but if you're installing an OS on a new machine/reinstalling the OS, you might like cachy. But adding the repos anyway never hurts lol. Just make sure to install the cachyos-rate-mirrors because like the only drawback of cachy is that sometimes independent mirrors get out of sync which breaks updates 😐. There's a fix for that in the "cachyos hello" but if you don't know about it you'd have to search for it. Oh yeah, there are also multiple kernels available and you can also choose them in the "cachyos hello" for ease of use (or when installing of course)

I used Manjaro once. The people managing it blew up a lot of people's systems, it was completely unjustified and people told them exactly that, and the response was "well, should've read the notes." The notes that tell you that they're blowing up your PC. Yeah, might as well just use Arch then.

@@lpnp9477 I responded twice with 3 paragraphs but it got deleted both times 😐

it's literally the same thing with arch or any other arch based distro. arch was never ment to be used as a functional, practical distro. just install debian and NEVER look back.

​@@aaaaaa-hh8cqI daily drive and game on arch and it literally just works. Never had any issues I couldn't fix easily.

@@aaaaaa-hh8cqi have been using arch for 2 years and its been great lmao

@@aaaaaa-hh8cq I use Arch frequently, and it's great. I very rarely encounter something I can't fix quickly, and I've never "bricked" my system like people say happens with Arch. EDIT: I use arch btw

@@aaaaaa-hh8cq Arch was never meant for the computing masses; it's pure ubergeek.

I use Arch btw

I use debian btw

literally nobody asked. f*ck that hellish useless unstable af "distro". I use debian btw, the godfather of stability. keep wasting your time with arch 😀😂

I use Mint btw

I use Nobara btw

Yup it's been super easy unless you're on a laptop with nvidia

​@@lpnp9477 or on a laptop requiring windows, for the manufacturer custom fan curve software to work.

@@lpnp9477which is majority of gaming laptops though….

​@@lpnp9477 Even then, a good majority will still work OOTB unless Asus manufactured it. For context, I have a roughly 3 year-old, all AMD Asus laptop and it'll absolutely shit itself if it has any other memory besides what the manufacturer put in and straight up won't post if more than 12GB are in it. Runs Fedora flawlessly, though.

works or not kekekek, yeah that is the problem, most of the games and windows apps don't work.. so you need to run a VM with windows or another pc to work and play games, at this point just run windows.

Trapped inside vim I get, but you managed to install linux in a console setup without being told how to switch tty? That is what saved me a lot of reboots in my starting days. (Alt+Fn (or Ctrl+Alt+Fn if in X), use Alt+sidearrow to scroll through the ttys. X is usually on tty1 or tty7 depending on your setup) That "do as I say" used to be "yes, I understand that this might harm my system" (or something similar) - kinda miss that variant of the prompt, was clearer.

What distro were you using that doesn't have root protection on rm ;p

I'm sorry but this is like the Linux equivalent of that one gif of Homer making cereal light on fire

- Managed to nuke my system by doing chown -R root:root / because I was new and forgot to add a dot before /

@@MthaMenMon Rip Probably recoverable, but a huge pain

Read the textbook on human biology

Yeah manjaro is great if you like headaches but not migraines. If you like migraines use vanilla arch. If you prefer a clear head use endeavouros, just don't ever try to update it.

@@lpnp9477 Not sure if you're reffering to updating Manjaro or Vanilla Arch/Endeavours, but updating is a major problem on Manjaro. It's good as long as you don't use AUR, but using Arch without taking advantage of AUR is pointless in my humble opinion. If you use AUR on Manjaro, held back main repo packages might ruin your AUR packages or your system. It doesn't happen on vanilla Arch and Endeavour, though there is an odd case here and there where a fresh package messes something up. But it's rare these days and you can use AUR as you like.

Ok, Ive been seeing a lot of people bashing on Manjaro in the comments section, but Ive been running it for the past few years with very minimal issues, is there something going on I havent heard of?

@@dalmaronthefirst2237 Do you use the AUR?

@@dalmaronthefirst2237 Nah, it's just popular to hate on Manjaro these days. But they did let their SSL certs expire, so there's that !!

I knew a girl who was like that. Also dressed like a stereotypical tech girl (with the socks and everything). That personality and style was sure jarring on an 11 year old kid when I was only 12 myself, lol. Had to go over to her house to hang out, my parents wouldn't let her come to our place - there wasn't an Incident, Dad just knew her type. Didn't want me hanging around her at all but couldn't come up with a reason Mum would take seriously and didn't want to die on that hill.

@@katanah3195 ur dad sounds smart

Android forever

Idk I use Linux on my computers but use an iPhone for my phone.

Just installed arch on Mac OS with utm 💀

watching from a mac, running macOS. i use arch btw

Not so sure about that. I run macOS for my desktop, Raspbian on my RPis around the house and Debian on my server and am watching this in an iPhone

I mean, if using Manjaro, you might as well use arch after a while. By using manjaro in the past, I got to learn a LOT about how arch works having to fix it when they constantly screwed up my installation. xD You know, tiny things like stuff from systemd suddenly showing up as installed from AUR and such, even though I had zero packages installed from the AUR, just small things like that... I got tired of that soooo... I now use Arch btw...

elementary os was mentioned

​@willi1978 he's referring to endeavorOS

Garuda is just worse Manjaro and endeavour... With a ugly theme. So it's understandable to not mention it.

Contrary to what was said, NixOS is _not_ literally one big configuration file. It _can_ be one big configuration file, but if you've been using it for long enough, you've probably broken that configuration file into several smaller configuration files. (My NixOS is currently 7 configuration files, one of which does nothing but list every single Noto font.) As far as Nix is concerned though, there's no difference (so little difference that it literally won't have anything new to build).

I don't for now, but it's likely by end of summer. Which will mean that half my comments under other stuff will still consist of "I use arch btw" while I don't use arch. Or maybe I'll just remain on arch with home manager forever

nixos-rebuild switch

Nixpkgs and the nix package manager are great if you are caipable of not having a migrane from the nix language

I use Nixos btw

RTFM generally means, I don't know either but I am not going to admit that

It's titled "by an idiot" Bruh

I really like ricin

Yup that shit happens all the time on manjaro and even endeavouros

Mint is also good on most chromebooks, less prone to things not working at all, looking at you manjaro. You have to go to some strange elaborate way to get some hardware to work properly in manjaro. That probably just arch in general with chromebooks.

Every os is unstable lmao But at least on Linux I can control the instability and script my way into a working os

@@lpnp9477 maybe I have rose tinted glasses but windows 7 was pretty stable

Debian and Fedora are the best distros.

Since switching to Fedora 18 months ago, I've had the least amount of issues than on many other distros. Every time I've tried to use Linux Mint Cinnamon I always run into some issues. I want to like it but just can't

Currently using nobara, enjoying it quite a bit. (For context I was dual booting windows 10 with ubuntu a couple months ago, then I uninstalled ubuntu. Well like a week ago power flickered and I booted into grub rescue. couldn't boot into any drive, or windows, so I said fuck it and installed nobara.)

There are many ways you can do that. For example supabase (a database provider) lets you host supabase yourself on your own server but with a few features missing. RedHat developed distributions of linux and gave them for free but if you wanted support (which if you were a massive corp, was a must) you'd pay them X amount. Currently RHEL (as far as I'm aware) is not available for free use and technically is not open source, but is based on other open source technologies and pulls features from Fedora which is open source.

As a side note, "open source" afaik does not mean the source code has to be open for everybody, just the actual users of the software upon request. If you don't pay for RedHat, you are not technically entitled to the source code. This still didn't stop clone distros like Rocky Linux from appearing, but that's a whole other can of worms. Another common monetization model for open source projects is like Aseprite, where the source code is open to everyone, but you have to pay to access any precompiled binaries. You COULD just compile it yourself, but most people are not going to want or know how to.

​@@coolcool5181isn't that just "source available"? Like unreal engine isn't open source but you can access and modify it like it were

IT support can only do so much. If something needs fixing, they cannot do it, while RedHat devs can literally fix the bug upstream (which many times they actively contribute to). Also there is bunch of certifications needed for companies and government, which doesn't come for free and also requires effort. These things are what "support" here means.

Fuck windows

Fuck windows

Fuck windows. Amen

How's the desktop experience with FreeBSD? I know the PS4 uses a custom BSD based software, and it sucks ass

@@meci6625 i run freebsd via ghostbsd on my desktop. works well and feels good using bsd over linux. and freebsd has over 30.000 packages. plus the linux compatibility layer. ive used strigaht up freebsd its kinda like arch in the since you setup everything manually but its not hard plus the community for freebsd is imo better. they do not care about if its foss/gpl they just want it to work how they want it. and i like the MIT license allot better over the GPL license

@@meci6625 I believe only hackers who love to tinker would seriously use BSD as their main OS. BSD is mostly for servers with strict resource limitations since they usually take less ram and storage space than linux. BSD is great for a log less vpn on a cloud server, not as a personal OS.

@meci6625 I had to swap wifi chips in my laptop to get very slow wifi working. Plus a bit tricky for graphics drivers since my laptop has dual graphics. But for coding it's fantastic and it's insanely fast. Plus super stable, I've had debian and fedora crash on my laptop a bunch. That said, I can do the majority of things I'd do on a Linux laptop, but honestly it's not quite as convenient for some things

If you are good with computers/comfortable with terminal commands than the best distro is any distro, just choose one you think looks good/sounds interesting IMO. I would avoid arch as a first distro just because you can already learn a lot on any distro and your experience will be smoother. Good luck!

You can't go wrong with Ubuntu to get started. If you're already on Windows (or this thing called, "the internet") you aren't giving Canonical any data you're not already giving away as is. Ubuntu is sort of the anti-Arch in that you don't need to DIY everything and it mostly just works.

openSUSE is very good distro, especially for beginners

In the name of your son pop os, amen

How good is it? Do Wine and Waydroid work?

​@@addy7445 What a question of course Wine and Waydroid work, they work on every distro. and in the end EndeavourOS is based on Arch so if it work on Arch it should work on EndeavourOS.

Jokes on them, my wife has them securely tucked away 😂

How come i can install AUR packages almost seamlessly on manjaro then?

​@@tulenich9948it's elitism not a factual statement I also prefer endeavouros tho

​@@tulenich9948no one being honest is going to say endeavour OS is better then Manjaro. It's hip to hate in Manjaro cause of 5 year old problems.

@@SeralthSparro yeah no I was using manjaro this year before switching to endeavouros. Manjaro has many little issues that are frustrating and require tweaking but endeavouros irons those out before you even install it.

It isn't a real concern + they reversed the change. There is a comment somewhere here explaining the situation really well.

stop spreading misinfo. it doesn't matter that it has a "good wiki". no one should read a long ars wiki just to install an OS. arch is perfect for people who love wasting time

@@aaaaaa-hh8cq Your opinion of "no one should read a long ars wiki just to install an OS" is not relevant to my point that it has some of the best instructions.

@@aaaaaa-hh8cqshould we not have instructions for how to assemble a table or something? Arch lets people make the distro they want and tells them how to do that. Thats why some people use arch it gives the user all the choices instead of making hardly any for them

gentoo better

I agree with the guy above. Messing with OS is a waste of time. Just let me set it up once and occassionally make changes and be done with it

It doesn't sell your data. It was sending your search results to an amazon api or something (there is a comment explaining it well) and after huge and immediate backlash they reverted the change.

@@Sirfreelancealot ohhhh thanks for clearing that up, i was worried i’d have to learn another distro :)

@@SamIsAran you should learn other distros too, becoming good with multiple makes your experience with each better as you understand them more, and hey, maybe you find a new favorite

It is really good as long as you don't have any silly bells and whistles on your laptop that are important to you. Then you're pretty much stuck with an arch distro

Nobara better

@@lpnp9477 „bells and whistles“?

@@sirultor648 smaller community tho

@@Autismagus can always look up fedora for niche problem solving. And it is more optimised for gaming. Just my opinion tho

Neckbeards unite!! *Tips Fedora 39*

​@@bvd_vlvdIt's on 40 now ;)

Fedora 40 🫡

@@ThatMaverickMojust upgraded to Workstation 40 most of my GNOME extensions worked without issues

been my daily for over 5 years now and i havent had a single problem!

whaaat? Nooo, who told you that :P

Maybe you're a bit young to know this, but a lot of Mac users are cis women.

I mean it's accurate

At first I thought it was gonna be a joke about trans girls and UNIX based systems.

I was going to say that. Now, if you want something with poor documentation where it feels like there's no guide then go for NixOS.

@@brainstormsurge154 Can confirm

Arch Wiki isn't a book of Lego instructions, though-it's a *computer science textbook.* Even the install guide says things like, "And now it's time to install a bootloader! You can read about that in this completely separate ~chapter~ webpage."

@@GSBarlev ya they are like Wikipedia... They say stuff and assume u know it and if u don't then search for a blue hyperlink u noob... Thats insult but if u get used to it then it's the best as no other distros has a wiki that huge

The elder scrolls

why not just use arch btw

​@@icantcomeupwithnames469i value My time

@@icantcomeupwithnames469Endaveour comes with an installer so you dont have to read a wiki and you get some cool space wallpapers. Also it preconfigures the DE for you so you wont have to set that up either.

Good place to start, it generally just works

The distro of choice depends entirely on your needs. For general desktop use, just sticking with Mint is a nice option.

not many differences than arch/endeavoros. if it has pacman i'm happy.

​@@BeTechAwareit doesn't. You can install it but it barely works. Better to just use yay

@@lpnp9477 it has pacman pre installed

but there is no equivalent linux version yet. otherwise i would opt for running linux on my phone too

@@willi1978 yep

It's great if you enjoy spyware

Still better than Apple.

No I get it. You prefer a computer to work for your intended use case rather than spend hours going in circles and getting nowhere. I would definitely use pop if I weren't addicted to gimmick laptops

Haha I appreciate the offer but nothing could make me reinstall that game. RIP 4,000 hours of my life.