Linux Distro Choice: How Close to the Edge Are You?

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Hey guys!

Let’s talk about where you stand on the spectrum of stability and cutting-edge software on your Linux distro.

Many of us love the thrill of using the latest and greatest features, but we also know the pain of a system crash at the wrong moment. With distros like Debian offering stable, testing, and unstable branches, and others following similar models, how close do you prefer to be to the bleeding edge?

Personally, I’ve danced near the edge quite a bit more years ago. But I’ve been stung (just once in 10 years) by Arch Linux’s rolling release and faced hiccups with Debian unstable. My work machines have gradually shifted towards more stability, but also STILL notably close to the cutting-edge by way of Kali Linux.

Stripped of its penetration testing tools and without the infamous default root install, Kali is essentially Debian testing with an extra layer of oversight.

How about you? Do you prefer the stability of a well-tested release, or are you willing to risk the occasional bug for the latest features? Share your experiences and let’s see where everyone lands on this spectrum!

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I use BunsenLabs Boron with openbox (no desktop) which runs Debian Bookworm 12. I love BL Boron, because it’s based on Crunchbang - everything opens with a key tap or mouse click. It’s not for everyone though, it takes some adjusting to get used to not having a desktop.

I also use WSL on Win 10 and use Debian there too - I like Debian’s stability and it has every package I could ever need.

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@benslinux BunsenLabs with Openbox sounds like a minimalist dream! I used Crunchbang years ago (and also Archbang), there’s something satisfying about having such a streamlined, keyboard-friendly setup. In that sense, it’s similar to the minimalist i3wm which I use now.

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On my personal laptop (which right now I also have to use for work) I use Ubuntu 24.10 as I haven’t really noticed a huge difference in system stability (in terms of crashes) between the the intermediate releases and the LTS ones. However, for a work PC, I would prefer to use Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, but this might turn out to be Windows :slight_smile:

I would love to use something like Debian stable, but for purposes of using some proprietary wares (such as MATLAB, but I fear also Nvidia GPUs in the near future), I think Ubuntu might be a bit better tailored towards those.

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Yes that’s the beauty of Linux. When you use Windows or Mac you basically just use what they put out and that’s it.

But with Linux my preferences have evolved soo much over the years.

I use to prefer KDE over Gnome, then Gnome over KDE, then window managers over desktop environments.

As for favorite distro history: (Distros used longer than six months) I believe it was Debian then Linux Mint because it just seems so noob friendly. Then I jump into Arch which massively helped me to have a much deeper understanding of Linux, Ubuntu 6.06+, (k)Ubuntu 14/16, Mint 5/6, Crunchbang, Kali, Debian 5/6, Debian 8/9, Debian SID, Fedora 27+, Manjaro + i3, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS w/ Pop Shell i3-like tiling. Currently, I’m using Kali-i3 on both desktop and laptop. The maintainer of Kali I3 is an great guy who’s dedicated to the project long term.

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As I said in a previous post I like more stability then cutting edges distro, such as Arch Linux.
For my experience on Linux distros I tried:

  • Arch Linux is fun because using of aur and it’s fancy repository, but it’s too bleeding edge system in my opinion no suitable for everyday working sessions.
  • Fedora branch is pretty updated and for what I saw more stable then Arch, but I don’t like the rpm packages and in general I don’t like too much using Red Hat
  • Vanilla Debian is the grandaddy, the father that grans the maximum stability, suitable for production machines or servers. I love using it in my workflow, I love Debian philosophy and the APT packet manager, but it’s not the best choice for daily computer usage cause it’s packages that are very old. BTW this is the this distribution I choose for my critical work virtual machine.
  • Debian sid / Debian testing would be a great compromise between stability and system updates. I was in this distribution for a long time, but sometimes I encountred some broken packages while updating the system.
  • Ubuntu is one of the best daily home usage Linux distro, but the fact is Canonical is gathering your data with telemetry. Someone said Ubuntu is the devil for this
  • Linux Mint is one of the best home distribution, I was also trying to stay with this distribution for a while, but some videogames won’t run (still need to understand why)
  • POP!_OS is also one of the best distribution, but still in 22.04 LTS release, who knows when they will release their Cosmic desktop and release 24.04 LTS. I was trying using POP!_OS as well but I find it too old distribution, also as I already said in a previous post I don’t like POP!_OS boot loader. I prefer a distro with native grub. Altough POP_OS is using it’s weird packages as system utility, for example for server audio. For me is a big no.
  • Kali Linux I don’t know very well this distribution, I know it’s for network experts with alot of useful network tools, but I don’t know with packages if it’s updated the same as Debian Vanilla or Debian sid/testing, but for my workflow Kali is un-necessary. Let’s say I’m not too much into Kali.
  • Linux Lite is the choice I did for my workflow, as I already said, because it’s stable, from my point of view one of the most well done balance between system updates and system stability. It’s default shipped with XFCE, quite outdated Kernel version, but I tried to run some games and everything goes very well. Better then what happens in Linux Mint, for what I tested.

So yes that’s my experience, the evaluation and the choice I did in my 5-6 years Linux experience.

Ricky

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I have been using Linux for about 20 years, but more recently it has become my daily driver for the last 3 years at home, and the last year on my work laptop.

At work for our servers we use Debian and Ubuntu, as the stability is rock solid.

At home, when I restarted using Linux 3 years ago, I started with Ubuntu based distributions. I wasn’t pleased by the outdated software, or the need to add a repository to get the latest. So I started looking at distros like Manjaro, Fedora and OpenSuse. I even ventured into Vanilla Arch using KDE. It wasn’t bad but then I got bit a couple times by an update to KDE on Arch.

I figured, that the unstability of Arch finally caught up with me. However when I tried that version of KDE on OpenSuse I got the same bug. This helped me to better understand the different components of the Linux OS and the difference between the distro and the desktop environment.

So I jumped back into Arch and began to try out simpler DEs. I first went to QTile and then eventually landed on i3. My Arch system was stable for months. However I was missing some features of a regular desktop and began distro hopping once again. I looked at Fedora, OpenSuse and again came back to Arch.

When I decided to use Linux on my work laptop, it had to be an Arch Distro as using a tiling window manager was a must for me. I would admit that it crashed on me a few times, but with the Arch Wiki I was back up and running in an hour.

All this to say that even though I am on the edge, I have yet to be bitten so hard that I felt the need to retreat. And although it’s probably not true, I feel that using Windows these days is probably closer to the edge than most people think. If it’s not a virus cleaning you up, it’s the dreaded BSOD.

So in summary, on my home desktop I am now using vanilla Arch with Cosmic DE Alpha for a little over two months now. That’s living on the edge for me. I have ran updates a few times and so far so good. I will see how long this lasts. On my work computer I will soon change to vanilla Arch with i3. I don’t know if I am quite ready for a Wayland DE on my work laptop. So for me, it’s all Arch baby.

:grin:

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@shybry747
How do you feel using Cosmic on Arch? is it stable enough? Or did you encontred some bugs? I asked Chat GPT if I can go Arch with Cosmic and it say me better no because it’s almost unstable. What do you think? Currently I have installed Budgie on my vanilla Arch machine.

ricky

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@ricky89
It’s stable enough for me.

Currently it only has availability for 2 VPN servers. I worked around that by using network-manager-applet. I was surprised that the status bar picked it up quite nicely.

Also because it’s Wayland, some software is glitchy. LibreOffice works so so. The last thing I saw was the menu showing up twice. I also use Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Visual Studio Code. All of these required tweaks so that I can use them.

Cosmic Settings crashes sometimes when it is used. Basically you would open it and find nothing is displaying. In that case I just use killall and restart it and it works.

The Display settings were very jumpy. But of course once I set up my displays the way I wanted them, I haven’t used it again.

The app library seems to be pretty stable. The launcher sometimes misses a few apps. I currently have about 10 to 15 browsers open. Some personal and some for work. When the launcher is used all I am seeing is browser windows so switching to a specific window if it’s minimized can be difficult. But I realized if I type in the specifics of that window I can get it to come up.

That’s all I can think about for now, but like I said I have been using it for over two months now and I am functional.

And just to emphasize, I did try HyprLand. That DE has bling, but after every update it something broke. So that only lasted a few weeks. I have done two updates with Cosmic DE so far, and things only became more stable. That can change in the future of course, but I will just wait and see. I think another update is due out soon. They have promised monthly updates until all the features are enabled.

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Thanks for the detailed breakdown! Sounds like Cosmic DE is improving steadily despite some quirks. Good to hear the updates are making it more stable—monthly updates could definitely help smooth things out over time. Appreciate the comparison with HyprLand too; stability after updates is such a key factor. :ok_hand:

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@shybry747 thanks for the detailed description about Cosmic usability!
For what I understood I think it’s better to wait for final release. Have we a date from System76 yet? Moreover, just for ask, is there an X11 compatibility or Cosmic it’s only available with Wayland?
-r

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@ricky89 I don’t see a date from System76 for a final release as yet.

X11 compatibility for Cosmic DE is attempted using xwayland. If the software attempts to detect Wayland, then it will try to use that instead of xwayland. If the software strictly uses X11 then it will use xwayland. What I have found is that some software’s implementations of wayland is not as good as X11. So in some cases, it would be nice to force a software one way or the other, but of course that depend on how the software is developed.

Wayland implementation continues to grow. Fedora now plans to go Wayland only. Changes/WaylandOnlyGNOMEWorkstationMedia - Fedora Project Wiki as an example. Therefore over the last year I have seen adoption growing and Wayland implementations becoming more stabilized and popular. You can do so much more with Wayland and it is indeed faster. I dare to say in the next two to three years it may be completely useable.

So although, I doubt Wayland can be used as a daily driver in every case, I do realize that it is inevitable. For now on my work laptop, I will stick to i3 because of X11. But on my home computer (Cosmic DE) I have been installing different software just to see how it will work. I just installed GIMP, and so far so good. I have even tried Scribus and that has been okay so far as well. And last I just installed inkscape and that went through good.

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Been living on the edge for several years, started out with Linux Mint Debian and then taking the plunge to Manjaro. Since then I have had multiple issues when major versions changed and therefore tried other, more bleeding edge distros of Arch…but always returned to Manjaro. Probably its because I opted for a windows manager instead of desktop environment, both Mint Debian and later Manjaro Cinnamon provided the best base for my particular setup.

What I arrived at eventually after a lot of trial and error, is a careful approach to updating, thus keeping me stable between versions of Manjaro. Mainly, that means update to newer Kernel before doing major updates and take backups through Timeshift(sometimes also do an image backup).

Of course I like to experiment with newer distros etc. but there is a lot to be said for STAYING on a certain distro and just get to know that distro well. You know what mistakes you did and you know what can be avoided.

So yea, on the edge and happy there. :slight_smile:

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Sometime ago I heard Manjaro was called “Bugjaro” because it was more bugged then Arch: I think the community forgot to renew some SSL certificates and updates on Manjaro were broken for almost 1 week.

I was not involved on this because I was never to Manjaro, I just spectate as external.

:slight_smile:

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yes, but just because one person may have forgotten or done something wrong doesn’t mean the whole distro is bad.
It was definitely cooked too hot for me back then.

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I am currently on Manjaro with i3 on my work laptop. I will be moving off soon.

I chose Manjaro because they had an easy setup and I liked how their i3 was handled. I have been using it for about a year now. My main pain point with Manjaro is pamac. One thing I have learned to do, like @BjornHK, is not to update often. My sweet spot is once a month. But there are times I need to install some software, and I am not quite ready for an update. Pamac forces the update, before installing the software. :person_facepalming:

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My primary desktop, my music computer, and my laptops are all running LinuxMint 22. My media server is running LinuxMint 21.3 (waiting on Plex compatibility before moving it to 22). One of my laptops is a Chromebook I switched to Mr. Chromebox firmware so I could run Linux.

When I moved (almost) totally to Linux a couple years ago, I tried several distros including Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, and others, but settled on LinuxMint because it seemed a safer path as I came up to speed with Linux after many years on Windows. While I still think LinuxMint is one of the best options for people who are new to Linux and coming from Windows, I admit that I’m currently exploring CachyOS as an option.

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Mint is one of the most stable and reliable ones and I like that it’s not just for beginners – it works for all levels because of its tried and tested structure. You’ve had an interesting journey, trying out different distros before settling on Mint.

I’ve been trying out CachyOS as well. Its performance focused approach really caught my attention. For example, I noticed how well it handles resource optimization for more demanding tasks. Not something I need for my main systems, but I like what it does.

What aspects of CachyOS are you exploring? I’m curious if there’s a particular feature or tweak you’re finding useful so far.