Hello, i am currently looking for a Linux distribution with these criteria:

-it should be more or less stable, comparable to Ubuntu with or without LTS -it should not be related to IBM to any way (so no fedora/redhat) -it should not feature snaps (no Ubuntu or KDE neon) -KDE plasma should be installable manually (best case even installed by default) -no DIY Distros

I’ve been thinking about using an immutable distro, but if anyone can recommend something to me, I’d be very grateful

  • banazir@lemmy.ml
    0·
    9 months ago

    OpenSUSE is good. If corporate scares you off, there’s OpenMandriva Lx or Mageia.

    • Luffy879@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      9 months ago

      With diy distro I meant arch, gentoo, and nixOS The distro is meant to run on a PC which is mainly used by non tech sawwy people. And even tho I will be doing all administration tasks on it, I would like it to be as easy to manage themselves as possible, so they become familiar with Linux more.

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
        0·
        9 months ago

        My mom and grandma are using Manjaro. With grandma I’m the only one doing the updates of course, but with mom she usually can do it herself just using pamac-tray. If that fails a phonecall is usually sufficient. Once in a few years I have to come and do something by myself

        And when that happens I work with a distro that just works, instead of some broken crap

        EDIT: Xfce is very nice in such cases. It looks familiar for them while being manageable for me

          • INeedMana@lemmy.world
            0·
            9 months ago
            1. no rolling-release: around once half a year you have to reinstall the system because it can’t update some core library to a more recent version. And it’s only the distro’s limitation because rolling releases have no issue with it
            2. you can’t just define a package of your own. So if a piece of software is not in packages, you need to compile and install it manually without packager managing it. It tends to break in the long term and when the software suddenly becomes packaged
            3. deb-hell: if you come to the idea to solve the first problem by compiling your own package, the packager will give you hell for that. And compiling your own deb with bumped up version is no easy task. Which means that when your version of the system goes out of life, you have to reinstall. Pray that you thought about this before and put /home and /etc on separate partitions
            4. package dependencies are too baked in or stability is too high priority. Even if your issue got resolved recently, it will take a long time for an updated package to appear. And you can’t roll your own in the meantime (see 2, or even worse 1)
            • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              9 months ago

              Gotcha. The difficulty in upgrading OS versions was my major gripe. Not that this is unique to Mint I’m guessing.

              Second was unavailability of newer versions (or any versions) of some software. At the time, one example was FreeCAD being a couple years behind the current version.

              And in fact this second issue made the first issue worse. I could’ve run an LTS longer. But from day one certain packages were pretty far behind and those packages didn’t get major version upgrades until I switched to the next Mint release.

              Or else I would have to point to another repo. So at one point I had a bunch of different repos. Then one might go down and break the update and upgrade process.

              And if not that approach I would have to find some other way to install but I still want to keep it updated semi automatically which isn’t possible in some cases.

              Idk. I may switch to a rolling release distro at some point. But for now Fedora runs newer versions of the kernel and presumably(?) other software, or at least it hasn’t been an issue, thus far.

      • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
        0·
        9 months ago

        The distro is meant to run on a PC which is mainly used by non tech sawwy people. […], so they become familiar with Linux more.

        In this case I always suggest trying out Linux Mint. It is not “too heavy” and not “too specific/niche”. It’s a good all-purpose distribution for desktops/laptops where basic maintenance can be performed by the user.

      • Nyfure@kbin.social
        0·
        9 months ago

        I dont see how e.g. arch would be super hard to maintain.
        There is a nice GUI program for installing programs and updates. (like many modern distros)
        If you dont want to set everything up, go with Endeavour or Garuda.

        I find rolling release to be easier to maintain and keep up to date than non-rolling.
        Specially if you want up to date packages for desktop use.

      • glibg10b@lemmy.ml
        0·
        9 months ago

        If it will be used by non-tech savvy people, why do you care about snap and IBM? Do the people care about that?

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    9 months ago

    I’ve been running Linux Mint Cinnamon for years. It’s the stablest, most dependable distro I’ve ever run. I’ve installed it, updated it and major-version-upgraded it many times on many machines and it never broke.

    It’s basically Ubuntu with the features that make Ubuntu shite removed (basically Unity and snaps) and a no-nonsense, GTK-based Win95-like desktop environment tacked on.

    • clif@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      I’ve been on mint for ages but when I updated my RAID this year it originally wouldn’t recognize it. I eventually got it recognized but it capped the 16TB drives at 999GB for some reason. For fun, I went up the chain to Ubuntu… Same thing

      In frustration I went to Grandma’s house with Debian and it worked perfect out of the box. I’d spent hours researching it but the best I found was a potential RAID bug (lvm, specifically, I think) introduced in Ubuntu that, of course, filtered into Mint.

      I still don’t know the exact cause but I didn’t it up and running so I’m a Debian guy now, I guess.

      Granted, my use case isn’t super normal since I’m using a BIOS RAID1 (and we all know how fun BIOS RAID can be) with full disk encryption.

      Worked out in the end but it made me sad to ditch Mint

        • clif@lemmy.world
          0·
          9 months ago

          Yep, that’s why I made sure to include that “we all know how fun BIOS RAID is” bit.

          It was fine with the previous 2TB RAID1, but that doesn’t mean anything.

  • glibg10b@lemmy.ml
    0·
    9 months ago

    When you start getting super specific about which distro you want, I think you should start looking towards a DIY distro.

    • Veidenbaums@lemmy.ml
      0·
      9 months ago

      I second opensuse, there is also a non-rolling release option, i think.

      My tumbleweed has been exceptionally stable, updates without problem.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      0·
      9 months ago

      Slowroll. You change to it from Tumbleweed and its not completely finished but should already just work.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          0·
          9 months ago

          Is is as testing as Fedora Rawhide? I just cant imagine it can be that stable, because Rawhide is a mess. But maybe they do way better testing.

          • Dehydrated@lemmy.world
            0·
            9 months ago

            I don’t really know how stable Fedora Rawhide is, because I only used it once. But OpenSuse does a whole lot of testing before shipping any update. From their website:

            Why should you consider openSUSE Tumbleweed over other distributions? The answer lies in its rigorous testing and stability emphasis. OpenSUSE is the base for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, meaning it’s secure, stable, and provides most of the software and tools you may need. While some rolling release distributions may offer the latest software packages, openSUSE Tumbleweed couples this with a strong emphasis on ensuring these updates won’t destabilize your system. Every Tumbleweed snapshot undergoes rigorous automated testing via openQA, openSUSE’s comprehensive testing tool, before its release. This process prevents critical bugs from reaching your system, providing an unexpected level of stability for a rolling release.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      0·
      9 months ago

      Getting the arch experience in software support (has a “community repo” as well) but in a stable way and there is never the need to use the terminal, if you don’t want)

      Love it, recommend it.

      For more stableness check out the slow rolling version or the immutable versions (both in “beta” state)

    • spaghetti_carbanana@krabb.org
      0·
      9 months ago

      Jumping on the OpenSUSE bandwagon. I use it daily, have been running the same install of Tumbleweed for years without issue. I’m using KDE Plasma which it let’s you choose as part of the installation which fulfils that requirement for you as well.

      If you’re familiar with Redhat you’ll feel at home on it. Zypper is the package manager instead of yum/dnf and works really well (particularly when coping with dependency issues.

      I’ve worked with heaps of distros over the years (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, RHEL, old school Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky, Oracle, even a bit of Alpine and some BSD variants) and OpenSUSE is definitely my favourite for a workstation.

  • Snoopy@jlai.lu
    0·
    9 months ago

    Sorry, the closest i came up aren’t good solution but may help in your search :

    • Vanilla OS 2 but its under Gnome DE and in beta phase. Maybe once it go out from beta it will supports other DE ? So around 6th month later or 1 year ?

    But the problem is that their community is very small. If you want something stable, it’s better to look for bigger community so you can benefit from their support and user’s problems

    There is fedora kinoite but you don’t want anything related to IBM.

    • NixOS but i don’t know it. I’m affraid it will be a DIY distro at the beggining.

    So the same OS from my steamdeck :

    • Steam OS ? It’s an immutable OS based on Arch and support KDE by default. Full support of flatpaks. Only downside, i dunno if it supports other machines than the steamdeck. Nor if it uses the latest linux kernel. Maybe some variant ?
  • The Bard in Green@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz
    0·
    9 months ago

    Have you tried Mint? It’s super stable. It’s the least DIY distro ever. You CAN use snaps, but why would anyone want to? I believe there’s an image that comes with KDE, but Cinnamon is a great desktop.