I labeled some of the lesser known logos. The criteria are arbitrary and I made this based on how much I liked using it.

Note that Fedora Sway Atomic isn’t bad, but I had a bad experience because I was trying to install NIri on it and it clearly wasn’t meant for that. Basically, it’s just not for me.

I wanted to rank Manjaro low because I heard bad things about it, but I think I used it for like a few minutes because I wanted to try Gnome, and I didn’t like Gnome after trying it and didn’t want to deal with uninstalling all the Gnome stuff manually, so I just hopped to another distro.

  • Hellfire103@lemmy.caEnglish
    131·
    16 days ago

    Here’s mine:

    • Note 1: This tierlist only includes distros I’ve tried.
    • Note 2: Slackware would rank higher now; I made this about month ago.
    • Note 3: The “noob” tier doesn’t mean the distro is bad. If it weren’t there, Mint would rank higher.
    • Albbi@piefed.caEnglish
      4·
      15 days ago

      Damn, you’ve tried a lot of different distros. I’ve been using Linux for 15 years but only been on like 8 different ones. Installed personally about 5.

    • phorq@lemmy.ml
      2·
      16 days ago

      Redhat and Ubuntu are controversial for me. Don’t want them for desktop, but for any professional server I would choose them over any of the others (and preferably alpine for any docker containers running on them)

      • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        15 days ago

        So, why would you pick RedHat over Rocky or Alma?

        Or Ubuntu over Debian?

        Genuinely curious, not judging

        • phorq@lemmy.ml
          6·
          15 days ago

          It’s way easier to explain to customers “these companies have enterprise commitments and long term support available if needed”, I realize that they all essentially run the same stuff but frankly I can’t guarantee I’m always gonna be the one supporting them and it is an added safety net for when they decide not to upgrade for an eternity. Not to mention just about every VPS provider has at least one of those two options available out of the box, they’re frankly the safe boring choices.

    • 1stQ@feddit.org
      2·
      14 days ago

      Noob here.

      I tried CachyOS because read good things about it. But wifi only worked during installation. After installation it was a hassle to get WiFi running again.

      So Zorin it is for me. Simply runs.

      • Hellfire103@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        15 days ago

        I want to like NixOS. I love the idea of declarative system configuration, but I always found NixOS quite easy to break. It also didn’t seem to like Eduroam much.

        • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
          2·
          13 days ago

          Yep. I found that when I used GuixSD too. Never yet mustered the time and effort for NixOS. Much the same deal though, just with less transferable skills learned. And yeah, contrary to the advertised hype of safety in fallback, I found it too easy to break. I say easy… It was still a lot of hard work involved though.

          • Hellfire103@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            13 days ago

            GuixSD wasn’t an option on Tiermaker, but I have used it. I personally found it hardier than NixOS, but the libre-only package selection was quite restrictive and the lack of the non-free iwlwifi driver prevented me from installing it on any of my boxes other than my 2007 MacBook. I know this is the point, but it’s still annoying.

            Like 9front and Haiku, I hope to daily-drive it someday; but at the moment it is sadly quite unsuitable for my hardware, workflow, and use-case.

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      1·
      13 days ago

      Aw. Why’s PCLinuxOS on the devil tier?

      I always think PCLinuxOS deserves more respect. … But not like that! ;D

      • Hellfire103@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        13 days ago

        For me, it’s the combination of its American base, its lack of disk encryption in the installer, the fact that I’ve never managed to get a usable installation, and the fact that Mageia (another Mandriva derivative) and Salix (a Slackware-based distro with a similar UX) are objectively better.

        If you are happy with PCLOS, however, godspeed.

    • exu@feditown.comEnglish
      1·
      15 days ago

      Why try so many distros? It’s not like most of them are gonna be substantially different.

      • juipeltje@lemmy.world
        2·
        15 days ago

        You never know, the grass might be greener elsewhere. I will say though, to me that only applies to independent distros. At this point i only bother trying distros that are actually different at their core. Arch- or debian-based distros are all kind of the same to me.

      • Hellfire103@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        15 days ago

        I used to run it on my Raspberry Pi 5 without complaint.

        Some stuff did take a while to compile, but the trick is to do other things — like make some tea, go for a walk, or watch TV — instead of staring at the terminal the whole time (I am 100% serious; this is not sarcasm).

      • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        Official binhost exists now.

        I used gentoo on not-powerful-computer, because it was not a powerful computer. Did not care about the compile times. Cared about the performance when I was using it. Even did a ```USE=“-*” setup once or twice, to keep it even more lean on resources, and more focused to meet needs and no more unecessary fluff and bloat than that.

  • gustofwind@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    15 days ago

    I use fedora workstation but it’s so boring because it just does what I need and I never have any problems 🥲

    I might give Debian a spin at some point

    • drcobaltjedi@programming.dev
      6·
      15 days ago

      I’ve been recommending it as the beginner’s distro for years. Default DE is very windows familiar, install is easy, out of box experience is great, built on Debian so it’s stable as fuck. There’s nothing really wrong with it unless you need newer drivers or something

          • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
            51·
            15 days ago

            There’s the Linux Mint main distro build off Ubuntu and a separate Linux Mint Debian distro build directly from Deb.

            Specificity is useful, especially in the context that you said “Mint is built on Debian so it’s stable as fuck” - well actually, not directly. It’s built on Ubuntu, which a lot of people complain has a more bloat and thus less stability than Debian.

            Personally I’ve not had issues with any of the three, they’re all good, but there are differences. Mint includes a number of packages that Debian does not (PPAs, Snap, Wayland infegration), because it’s inherited them all from Ubuntu. Mint is 64-bit whereas Debian supports 32/64 and other architectures, because again… Mint (standard) is based on Ubuntu, which is 64-bit only.

  • juipeltje@lemmy.world
    3·
    15 days ago

    Void and NixOS in S tier is based, my two favorite distros. Because of me using void though i kinda miss using Runit when i want to use a declaritive system like nix. I’m working on a gnu guix config in a vm now to see if i can use that as an alternative instead. It’s not runit per se, but who knows, maybe i’ll still like shepherd better than systemd.

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      Yep. Void’s been surprising me for over a decade, since it was still “new”, at how well kitted out it is, and what a joy of simplicity and cleanliness it is. Rarely any hunting down the superfluous complexity of a package’s name-extra-words-after-the-program-name. A real joy. Very few complaints. Big love for VoidLinux.

      PS, Runit is niiiiice. :)

  • radiouser@crazypeople.online
    3·
    14 days ago

    Why is OpenSUSE at the bottom? I’d heard good things about it. EndeavourOS is my current OS but I’m always looking for a new distro.

    • luciferofastora@feddit.org
      3·
      14 days ago

      It’s in the “Unranked” tier because OP hasn’t used it enough to have an opinion.

      When I used it decades ago, I was a kid. It seemed pleasant enough for me back then. On one hand, I’d say “works for children” is an endorsement. On the other, child-me never tried any of the advanced stuff I’d care about today.

  • Katzenmann@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    15 days ago

    Very nice. I would rank down debian because it has weird defaults like not having /sbin in the user PATH but other than that I agree

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      14 days ago

      I mean, NixOS has lots of weird “defaults” in that sense, too. 🙃

  • nil@piefed.caEnglish
    2·
    15 days ago

    I switched from Arch to Fedora recently and so far I like it. Faster than any distro I’ve ever run on this laptop.

  • VOwOxel@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    16 days ago

    I tried Mint and Bazzite on my laptop, installed Bazzite on my Desktop, wasn’t happy with the atomic style (wanted to install a lot of stuff and switch to the low-latency-kernel for music production),

    switched to OpenSuse Tumbleweed and stayed there. I got a second Desktop PC for cheap from a friend, took out the GPU, installed Debian on it and run Game Servers (Minecraft, Satisfactory, TF2) on it now.

    Very happy with both Tumbleweed (as a daily driver) and Debian (for my server).

    • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      15 days ago

      Out of curiosity, what is it you like about openSUSE? It’s been forever since I’ve messed around with it and was considering switching to it from Mint (having some graphics stability issue possibly coming from my bizarre monitor layout giving X11 headaches while using KDE, which Mint doesn’t really optimize for)

      • VOwOxel@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        15 days ago

        I like the GeekOSDaw Audio packages (especially QJackCTL);

        I prefer KDE Plasma over Cinnamon (I know you can use Mint with Plasma);

        It’s stable, reliable (apart from some issues with Nvidia drivers, though they’ve gotten less frequent and easier to fix), and up to date.

        I probably could have tried more distros, but I’m perfectly happy with where I am and thus see no need to experiment all that much.

        I’ve previously installed CachyOS on the PC I’ve now got Debian on, to use it as a guest Gaming PC, and that was fine as well.

        I’m mostly using X11 since everything runs on it (I’ve got a 3-to-4 monitor setup - 3 normally, with a beamer I can additionaly connect). Wayland works well for the most part, too, but some things are more glitchy on it.

        Also, i found it pretty nice to have a centralized control panel (Yast) for things I didn’t/don’t know how to do in the terminal yet.

        A Point of friction: Printer Drivers didn’t include the one we had when I installed Tumbleweed. Our roommate took the printer when he moved out, so it’s irrelevant for now, but i’m thinking of getting a laser printer sometime.

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        15 days ago

        Personally, the zero-setup filesystem snapshotting was a big argument for it. I do not want to use an OS anymore, which does not have snapshotting or an equivalent.

        Thankfully, this is becoming more commonplace, but for years, openSUSE was the only player in that game.

  • nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    I love nixos for my homelab! Out of curiosity, why C tier for KDE Neon? (My desktop and laptop both daily drive them, and I’ve loved it since abandoning Ubuntu post-Unity)

    • cally [he/they]@pawb.socialOP
      1·
      14 days ago

      Honestly I didn’t use it for very long, and while I liked the customization, I didn’t like the Plasma apps as much as Linux Mint’s apps.

      • nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        14 days ago

        That’s fair enough. I can’t say I’ve used Mint very much, I’ve just known it as something to suggest to newbies. My brother revived his 2009 Macbook Pro with it, but it’s so old he mostly uses it for character sheets during Pathfinder night.

    • cally [he/they]@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      15 days ago

      I can handle it but I wanted a more traditional package manager so I could search the repos from the command line without relying on external tools, so I went back to Void Linux after a year and a half of using NixOS. Also, I tried a lot of those before even knowing about NixOS.

        • cally [he/they]@pawb.socialOPEnglish
          2·
          15 days ago

          I mean like apt search or pacman -Ss

          NixOS also doesn’t show what packages were updated after an update, and doesn’t show which version they changed to, which is slightly annoying.

          • Paulemeister@feddit.org
            3·
            15 days ago

            I can recommend nh. Its a wrapper around the nix* commands and includes nh search, giving you a list of packages (not sure about nixos module options, I think not). It also uses nix-output-monitor giving you a nice dependency graph when building (plus downloads etc) as well as a diff between the current and new generation, with version changes, added, removed etc.

            • cally [he/they]@pawb.socialOP
              1·
              15 days ago

              It would have been nice to know about that, I already heard about it before but only after I’d switched to Void anyway. Maybe one day if I try NixOS again I will use it.

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      I enjoy this comment. I don’t even know, if I’d rank NixOS as S-tier in general, but because I can handle it, yeah, don’t really have a reason to bother with other distros…