So I’m curious. I read in Arch is for experienced users topic that one should choose a distro on the basis of what you’re going to use it for. I can only think of one I would recommend (and that’s tentatively), which is Ubuntu Studio if and only if you are into music production. But it’s just a configuration of Ubuntu.
In all the distros I’ve ever used I’ve only used them for some programming, some GIS work (QGIS and Grass), LaTeX, git, playing a synthesiser or two from my midi keyboard, zoom, browsing the web, shopping.
At work I needed a real-time Linux for a robot control system, which allowed me to choose which cores to run my code on exclusively i.e. deterministic real-time. So I suppose that’s an example.
Am I missing out? Does it matter which Linux I use? (And if it matters, does it matter that it matters? – Douglas Adams)
For desktop use, almost every mainstream distro will run what you listed. The differences are mainly: package freshness, release cadence, and how much you want to babysit it.
None of that is about what you use it for, it’s about how you like to maintain the system.
You picked the distro for robot control so yes there are such cases.
For security, pentest and network admin work you technically can build a Kali equivalent on Arch or Debian, but you’d spend a weekend doing what Kali ships preconfigured. Same logic for REMnux on the malware analysis side.
Servers with a hard support contract. RHEL or Ubuntu LTS, because someone is paying for the SLA, not because the kernel is different.
Anything where the hardware vendor only ships one set of drivers. NVIDIA Jetson, certain industrial boards, some SBCs. The distro is whatever the BSP supports.
Older or very low-RAM hardware. Not really a “use case” but a constraint that narrows choices.
So I’d say for 90% of what most of us do, distro choice is aesthetic and habitual. Whether that matters or that it doesn’t matter, I’ll leave to Adams.
I’d add to the differences above, a distribution’s stance on proprietary licenses and software. Some distributions (e.g., Debian, Fedora) draw a harder line inclusion or not of non-free software. There’s always ways around it of course, but using non-free software such as drivers is easier on distros such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
That is question of means and purposes. It matters when certain Linux distribution fits one’s purposes best. It does not matter until one is subject to a corporate policy or other kind of enforced discipline.
HOWEVER … that statement is incomplete and therefore misleading!
You must
first choose what you plan to do,
identify the tools with preferred GUI interractions,
and only then
choose the Distro(s) on which those tools are verified functional in the way you want them to be!
Otherwise, the consequence is likely Distro-hopping … in search of things working the way you want!
The specific domain of “Real-time Linux” is one where I question the use of the word “Linux” itself, since the Official Kernel is not coded in a structure dictated by real-time requirements.
For real-time, you quite literally need to “strip out” and “replace” key process structures to correctly work as real-time, which is scanning multiple input channels, simultaneously, transforming/processing the values simultaneously, then acting based on priority in a defined-sequence within an absolute-limit timed cycle.
That is not how “standard Linux” is coded or operates.
If you don’t try different distros you will never know whether they suit your needs.
I disagree. At least in the last 5-10 years or so, the capabilities of different distros have converged, even if the look-and-feel hasn’t. Provided the distro has friendly support, I think a newcomer could choose any they want. For a long while at work, I used Scientific Linux (CERN variant of Red Hat) and following that CentOS before it got discarded. With those I found support was good but very formal. I used CentOS as a central server for postgreSQL. So some Linux’s were (still are?) very business oriented without so much going on as the latest popular distros.
I think that Arch can be used for a lot. EndeavourOS is a good choice if you want to learn Arch without the installation, but you won’t have dracut out of the box on vanilla Arch. I have my setup optimised for heavy tasks. I have the CachyOS kernel and repos on my manually installed Arch.
In my (not so) humble opinion, I think that Arch isn’t too difficult to install. You just need to read the wiki. I personally believe that the hardest part of the installation is configuring the bootloader. But I use only Limine (and systemd-boot when the CachyOS kernel breaks and I need to use the normal one), so I can’t really compare.
Totally agree. I’ve seen posts in other forums that Arch is not for beginners but I don’t know the reason why they say that. When I installed “Ubuntu Studio” on my second drive, it merrily reinstalled Grub despite the website saying it supported systemd booting. (I got rid of Ubuntu in the end.)
Furthermore, a person’s experience with a distro depends more on the user front end, i.e. the display manager, the windows manager and the desktop environment than the underlying OS itself. (Admittedly, there is some overlap and certain dependencies across these three, and I am glossing over some inconvenient details here.)
Arch (and no doubt most other distros) allow you to make those choices after installation or during. But like most distros, you can just stay with the vanilla theme and “standard” choices until you want to explore a bit. Customising is great fun. But Arch Linux is still Linux, about the only CLI difference across distros is the command to run the package installer. Be it yay, pacman, yum, or apt. There really is not much to learn for a beginner that isn’t common to all Linux varieties.
For me, the two most amazing things about Linux are its stability (yawn), and the way you can customise everything. You’ll soon have rainbow coloured folder icons, whizzy login screens and splash screens, and menus where you want 'em. Much of all that available on-line from arty folk who specialise in creating themes. It’s all so friggin easy.
Regarding Arch Linux - or any distribution for that matter, nothing is truly difficult for anyone with a fifth grade reading level plus the ability to carefully follow directions.
I can vaguely remember at least thirty years ago when I first tried out Arch Linux. It was not difficult at all to install, but it was necessary to either follow a set of steps or create your own set of steps to install whatever you were interested in and then manually configure any programs or packages that may be automatically set up on some distributions. On the original Arch Linux nothing was configured for you. It wasn’t difficult, but there were details for each installation. The positive was that you could build and then have exactly what you wanted. The cost was that it was all up to the person doing the work.
Endeavour OS and Cachy OS are two of the modern variations based on Arch Linux. Both are very easy to install and ready to use immediately after installation. Both of them offer different interfaces and tools, and in those collections, it’s easy to install and configure additional software with very little incremental effort.
I’m partial to Endeavour IS myself; I like the appearance and the tools are just right. Though I’m mostly a user of Debian-based software, for several years now I’ve added Endeavour OS to my software collection of distributions because it has been a really good addition!
