As a Linux user or administrator, you are probably familiar with the most popular Linux distribution: Ubuntu. However, have you considered trying out independent Linux distros? In this article, I will explain why independent Linux distros can be an excellent option for curious-minded users. What is an independent Linux distribution? An independent Linux distribution is… continue reading.
Thanks for the feedback! Remember these were just 5 of my favorite. Puppy Linux is an awesome independent distro as well, especially for older hardware since it’s incredibly lightweight.
Updated: However, the 5 remain the same. I think these 5 are still the independent distros we all (well, most of us) tend to overlook throughout our distro-hopping history.
The question then is, can we truly say that we have found our favorite distro(s) if we haven’t at the very least tried ~ 6 to 8 independent distros: Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, Red Hat (Fedora), Debian, OpenSUSE, Solus, and Void? And even KaOS or Alpine Linux.
What would be your shortlist of the absolute 5 MUST-TRY independent Linux distributions Linux users finding their preferences and preferred distros should try?
Independent distributions not mentioned that are quite good: General Purpose: MX Linux and PCLinuxOS, Lightweight: antiX (great tools and support for very old hardware), Lesser known general purpose: Sparky Linux, Solus, Great KDE featured distro: KDE Neon, Two good Arch alternatives: Endeavour OS and Cachy OS.
For independent distros, they are distro built from scratch or not based on or derived from any other distro. So Mx Linux is based on Debian, antiX built from Debian as well.
I have tried OpenSuse and that isn’t too bad. Because it’s RPM based it’s easy to get software for it. I have heard of the other 4, but I haven’t tried it yet. One distro that I have seen written up from time to time is NixOS, it seems to have a niche following.
Can we either start another thread or build an offshoot to this thread since we are specifically mentioning “Independent” Linux distributions?
How about another specific category about our favorite DERIVED Linux distributions that are built on TOP of the iconic distributions and then highly tailored to create something very different, yet still containing a lot of stuff from the distribution they build from?
Can we fork discussions like this; ( do you have a handy way to do it) or do I have to create an entirely different topic thread to accomplish this? A fork, pointing to this thead for the foundation distributions, would be an interesting way to manage this if it’s possible; otherwise if you can turn my post into another thread, with a URL referring to this thread that would be cool too!
What about cachyos? It has been pretty stable since I’ve moved over to it, and has been fast as nails. It includes custom schedulers out of the box like lavd and rusty. Also has some tweaks for things like getting gaming working on it.
I’m with both of you on Cachy OS.
If you want to try something different, it’s proven solid and reliable. I’ve tried it on two different systems with good results on both.
It offers the option of a cutting edge kernel or a stable long term support kernel. If you install it as a regular system I recommend including both. Usually the cutting edge kernels work quite well. Including the long term kernel allows you to get a bit risky with the kernel when you have a solid backup also available.
General application selection and availability is good; using AUR packages to supplement the general selection provides a fantastic range of applications.
Not independent but Arch based so would be recommended here: