Went from debian to arch and oh boy i like it.
Bleeding edge for the latest features (most of them stable), Arch Wiki is awesome and the AUR is really nice to have for managing and installing software from external sources.

I think you want something boring. Boring, in terms of “it just works”, which is essential for school. You want to focus on learning, not troubleshooting.

I’ve been looking around a bit more, and now I’m kind of curious about Fedora, specifically the KDE spin (or i3, I haven’t quite decided).

Use Fedora Atomic (immutable versions of Workstation/ KDE spin, etc.). Especially uBlue. It’s a community edition on universal-blue.org, which features very vanilla images of Silverblue for example, but with some QoL-changes, many inofficial DEs/ TWMs, and much more.

The cool thing is, you can just rebase to whatever spin you like, e.g. KDE and i3 and don’t need to decide. It’s like a reinstall, without actually loosing data.

It’s also extremely robust (barely breakable) and in general doesn’t get in your way.

While it’s not rolling release, the stability improvements and user experience compared to something like Arch, or even a more comfortable fork like EndeavourOS, seem quite decent

It’s not only decent, it’s great! Everything “just werks™” and it’s very very reliable.
In terms of stability (update schedule) it’s a great mix between very well tested, but not stale.
I wouldn’t like to update daily like on Arch.

but in your experience, does that make up for the lack of the AUR?

The cool thing is, you don’t loose anything.
I, for example, have an Arch container in Distrobox, and I use it all the time. I even have access to the AUR and all Arch packages on my image based Fedora install.
This gives me bleeding edge software, especially for the terminal, without risking breaking my host OS. Arch seems to be too high maintenance for me, and I’m not willing to spend my time troubleshooting.

My vote is Fedora. It’s offers fresh yet stable packaging, and a polished experience that you can rely on. You can then use flatpaks for even newer apps, or opt to run Arch in a container with distrobox/toolbox and play with as many cutting edge apps as you want, all as if they were installed on the host.

Finally, if you like what you see in Fedora, consider Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite, or any of their other immutable distros.

If you want close to the bare minimum of software needed to run a system, and setup everything exactly as you like it, use arch.

If you want a preconfigured system that is performant, stable, secure, but still able to be customized to your liking, use Fedora.

If your scared of using a comand line, use EndeavorOS.

I have used all 3 of these, in some capacity. I run my servers on Fedora Workstation, because it just works and comes with properly configured sepolicies out of the box. Arch has been the daily driver on my desktop/laptops for almost a decade now, because I often like to experiment with new programs and replacements for commonly used software, and the arch wiki is a wonderful. I tried EndeavorOS on an old PC to play YouTube videos/stream on my TV and it worked fine. I had to uninstall a handful of apps it came preloaded with, but that’s easy enough with an arch base. But IMO, now that the archinstall tool exists and is officially supported, there is actually no reason to use EndeavorOS unless you really don’t want to type a couple commands into a command line.

PopOS beats all if its an Nvidia laptop. I’d use arch for anything else.

Disclaimer: I am by no means a Linux expert, but figured I could give my 2 cents.

I recently installed Fedora on one of my machines that I mainly use for web browsing, file downloading, and general office like activities. And I don’t have much experience with it yet. I specifically went the KDE route, as I am a huge fan of what KDE has to offer. That being said, for the most part everything “just works.” Sorry I don’t have much more to say about Fedora, but I will report back as I use it more.

The distro I have used for a few years now that I quite enjoy is Arch. What drew me to Arch was the fact that it is bleeding edge. That being said, as with anything bleeding edge, you should have backups and other contingency plans for failure. That should be done for all systems, but doubly so with things that are bleeding edge I would argue. Arch has been quite stable for me, but I would say that it is more tailored to someone who is looking to tinker. On my desktop, I unfortunately still run windows due to some proprietary hardware and software that I have yet to figure out how to get working within Arch. The biggest issue I have had with Arch over the few years that I have been using it comes down to the Nvidia graphics card I use in my desktop. I know not everyone has had the same issues I have had with Nvidia, but getting wayland working on it, as well as just general multi-monitor issues, have sort of taken the wind out of my sails for linux on my desktop computer.

Here are a few resources I would recommend checking out to help you make your decision [https://distrochooser.de/](Distro Chooser) - Distro Chooser asks questions about what you are looking for and the like to help you pick a distro to try. [https://linux-hardware.org/](Linux Hardware) - This is Linux Hardware website and is quite handy for looking into getting drivers,and checking to see if there are known bugs for specific hardware you are trying to use on a Linux system.

Also consider Universal Blue Kinoite or Bazzite:

• https://universal-blue.org/
  • https://universal-blue.org/#advantages-over-traditional-linux-desktops
• https://bazzite.gg/
  • https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/#about--features

Think Fedora Kinoite, but with extra goodness.

Miss the AUR? Just spin up an Arch Distrobox with ujust distrobox-arch and export whatever you want. just and distrobox are pretty amazing.

Can also do the same with Ubuntu/Debian distroboxes.

• https://github.com/casey/just
• https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

Atomic Fedora is amazing.

• https://universal-blue.org/introduction/

Have an Nvidia card?

• https://universal-blue.org/images/nvidia/

Images also available for Framework and Surface as well.

Wanna make your own IMG?

• https://universal-blue.org/tinker/make-your-own/

Wanna focus more on work/development?

• https://projectbluefin.io/

I recently distro-hoped to Fedora Silverblue and I am quite pleased with it. This version has in immutable filesystem, thus you might want to look for another version of Fedora.

NixOS is big no go for me too, especially given that you can install the Nix package manager on any distro easily.

Arch Wiki is great and I often use it for non Arch distros well.

1. Endeavour is just Arch with an installation wizard and a pretty theme.

2. Definitely don’t use nix or guix as an OS if you’re making posts like this. They’re great as a supplementary package manager, but extremely difficult and convoluted as an OS.

3. I’ve recently switched from Arch to Nobara after running it for a few years. It’s really nice being able to update without the fear of something breaking. I’m just using flatpak and guix for the few packages that are missing from the repos, no AUR needed.

4. Install i3 on top of whatever DE you want, don’t look for a specific spin. It’s really useful to have tools for stuff like power management. Also, when you break something, you’ve got a backup.

Fedora has been what I’ve been using for years. I used arch before for about a year and I still love it but I’ve just been fuckin with fedora

Honest answer: Gentoo with the new official binary package hosting.

Arch and endeavour should fall under the same category. You are more likely to break your system, but tinkerers love how barebones those are. I have not broken arch in the 4 years that I used it, but I did dodge a few updates which would have nuked my system. Fedora will be more stable, and it will get fewer breaking changes due to it’s point release schedule.

Arch and EndeavourOS are the same once installed. EndeavourOS just helps get your system setup and fully configured more quickly.

Nothing wrong with experimenting though of that is something you enjoy.

I used Fedora for many years and liked it but it was years ago now. I have used Arch. I mostly use EndeavourOS these days.

My “play” installation is Chimera Linux. I want to check-out VanillaOS and LMDE. I have thought about trying Fedora ( or maybe Nobara ) again.

Fedora KDE, if you want extra packages you can check RPMFusion, copr, Nix/Guix and Flatpak.

Arch (and also EndeavourOS) expect the user to be able to troubleshoot and solve problems themselves and also customize things as they want. You have the highest amount of freedom, but also the most responsibility.

I personally go with archinstall for an easy arch install, I recommend that to most of the people