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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What distro to choose in parallel to steamos (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello community!

I come to you for advice. Using an m1 macbook air since 2020, I installed popos on my old 2013 macbook pro and I was quite happy with it but... I bought a steamdeck two weeks ago and exploring its desktop mode made me reconsider some choices. Using distros based on different systems, with different commands, desktop environment, etc. gets a little confusing for someone like me, who doesn't use linux as my main machine. Do you have any advice for me? From what I understand, steamos is debian-based while popos is ubuntu-based: is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.? Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin, that are debian-based, or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?

Thanks in advance, I'm a bit lost.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for taking the time to explain my muddied understanding of linux and its various distros! You're completely right about the stuff around packages and updates being the important differentiators, and it's really hard to grasp without using linux and testing different things. Coming from popos and typing apt-get in steamos, but wait I should use pacman and oh what are those AppImage I keep hearing about: that was really confusing because I didn't know what knowledge I lacked and how to look it up. reason was and some information about it was just contradictory. I think the steamos thing changing from debian to arch actually confused me a lot too, plus contradictory information and command lines, etc.

From what I gather, and thinking back on my short and past, while appreciated, incursion into the linux world:

I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that's what's bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)
Typing command line doesn't bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands), but I don't fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I'm more used to apt and I feel like there's more information available, but that's it.

Thank you also for the info about nitrux and the others, there is a lot of confusion between prettiness (or eye-candiness ;) ) and actually good ui/ux, and you were on the point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Glad to hear that I was able to contribute 🙂 ! And thank you for your great reply!

I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)

That could definitely be it. No worries, even the community is somewhat polarized on GNOME; with a big chunk of the community favoring it over all the other desktop environments, while another big chunk doesn't tolerate it at all. However, the reason that everyone has an outspoken opinion on it comes primarily from the fact that a lot of distros come with GNOME by default; with both Ubuntu and Fedora being the big ones (sure; both have flavors/spins with other desktop environments, but their main ISO defaults to GNOME). Regarding recommendations; while any major (independent) distro should technically suffice, I would argue that Kubuntu and openSUSE (contrary to the others; openSUSE actually defaults to KDE) are both excellent choices, with both Fedora's KDE Spin and Debian (on which you can pick KDE during first install) are very good choices as well if you lean more towards minimalism. While Arch deserves a mention regardless, I don't think you're ready (yet).

Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands)

That's great to hear!

but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.

I won't be able to be exhaustive on this, so I instead I'll lean more towards being somewhat oversimplistic for the sake of brevity.

pacman is the package manager on Arch(-based distros)
apt is the package manager on Debian(-based distros)
yum used to be the package manager on Fedora(-based distros), but has since been replaced by dnf. You can still install packages using yum on these distros, however it's just an alias for dnf.

These are not the only package managers out there, as almost all independent distros come with their own package manager; apk (on Alpine), eopkg (on Solus), xbps (on Void) and zypper (on openSUSE) etc. The tasks of the package manager are varied, but all of them are to be interacted with when installing, upgrading and removing software. As the feature-set is different, so too are their performances. A rolling release distro like Arch will receive a constant stream of updates, thus having access to a package manager that's very fast is beneficial. Thus we find that pacman is very optimized for speed. To perhaps illustrate how much difference this can make, I compared Alpine's apk with openSUSE's zypper. Note that Alpine is one of the most minimalist distros out there, and its apk might be the fastest package manager that's in active use. So here are the results:

sudo apk add firefox 0.01s user 0.02s system 0% cpu 8.216 total
sudo zypper install -y firefox 0.02s user 0.06s system 0% cpu 33.727 total

On which the number before total reveals how much time it took in seconds. These tests were done in distrobox containers btw*.

Speed is not the only important metric, however as ultimately one can not engage with packages without waiting for them to be installed/updated/removed, a lot of the discourse is about how fast the package managers are at installing, updating and removing packages.