I am very happy with mint. I can imagine making arch more of a project and having a lot of fun with it, and as I said, the wiki really seems like a big draw! I probably wouldn't swap my daily driver from mint for a while, but I'm gonna put together a desktop to maybe run 24/7 and run a little plex server or whatever. I am interested in the possibility of even running it headless...maybe even streaming games from it to a laptop (I don't have a very good space for a desktop set up in my home right now...too snug!).

Anyway thanks for your thoughts. Arch does seem really cool but maybe I should stick with something a bit more beginner friendly for a little longer, and come to arch when I'm more "ready," or when my new little obsession with linux has solidified into a habit or whatever!

e: anyone have experience with manjaro as a user-friendly version of arch?

Reproducibility. If I'm spending months configuring my setup then I want it to stay exactly the same and easily rebuildable even if I switch/upgrade my computer. NixOS is the only answer.

Lovely! The hobby aspect definitely appeals, though so does the idea of getting everything running well! Have you heard anything about Manjaro as a user-friendly version of arch? I guess it may cut against the arch ethos of "precisely what you choose to install and nothing more," but I feel like if it's any good I could get the sort of ease-of-use that I have with mint while having the option to dabble and experiment more with the guidance of the arch wiki available?

Spending time thinking about which distro to use is time that could have been spent learning how Linux works as a whole.

Also Arch, but barefoot

This! I've got 7 machines running NixOS already and using Linux on so many machines is only manageable with the reproducibility NixOS provides. Whenever I lay my hands on a new server, PC, laptop, tablet or phone, I just add a few lines for it in my config, run a single nixos-anywhere command and it's good to go. Syncing changes is also just two commands: git pull && nh os switch. Been using NixOS for a year and a half and it still can'st stop to amaze me

Mint. It just works.

Want to live on the wild side? Use the Debian based version.

I would 'free but folks need to learn some Nix basics before the jump in headlong into bad community recommendations like starting with flakes. It’s hard to just drop into Nix without some commitment.

Fedora. It's so easy to use and so stable. Unfortunately my bleeding-edge NVIDIA graphics card does not play nice with it, so I have been stuck with arch.

I'd go with Ubuntu LTS - it receives updates for 5 years and security updates only for another 5 years. In other words, it is explicitly for your use case. Additionally, it offers kernel live patching as a free managed service, which nobody else offers afaik.

Arch. Been 13 years on it. Aur and Wiki are the best resources any Linux distro have.

Debian. The answer is always Debian.

🙋

(°▽°)/

NixOS unstable. I like being able to define my system as code. I also don't need that high of stability and would rather have more up to date software in most cases. I have thought about using stable releases for things like basic http and DNS servers but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I still like Arch the most. Since ~22 years now.

With all the issues and breakages that they had over the years I wouldn't feel good suggesting it. But there are other arch-based distros that you can try out to get an idea. I'm a bit out of the loop, since I moved to nixos 5 years ago.

Also don't fall into the purist distro way of thinking. The PC is yours, you make your own experience.

Debian stable. It just works.

manjaro is no good. It breaks more often than arch and then you still need the whole arch knowledge to fix it.

EndevourOS or CachyOS are somewhat better options.

Yeah i heard that after posting this! I've also heard that archinstall is pretty user-friendly, really! Do you have any thoughts about that?

I remember you saying it might be easier to stick with Mint, which may very well be what i do!

Thanks for the reply

My priorities:

• Secure. Unlike popular belief, the fact that the worlds infrastructure basically runs on Linux does not imply that your average Desktop Linux distro enjoys the same level of scrutiny when it comes to its security. Hence, the security-conscious should carefully pick a distro that can handle their threat model. Or, at least harden it to their liking.
• Stateless. Conventionally, you will be met with a (relatively) minimal system after installation. After which you're expected to configure it to your liking and go smooth sailing afterwards. Occasionally, you might (un)install stuff and/or modify settings; but nothing out of the ordinary, really. While applying some of these changes might seem trivial, they (kinda) lead your system to accumulate cruft. This cruft might seem innocuous, but it's exactly why your system seems so fresh after a reinstall. Foregoing this altogether is referred to as going stateless. This is done by declaring a desired state and 'flushing' all changes that have not been declared. Many other benefits are associated with this, but I digress...

The above^[So, without even going into release cadence etc.] already dictates the use of NixOS with the impermanence and nix-mineral modules.