I have started to see a lot of content about Void linux in my feed recently. And I do not understand the hype it is getting. Not that I tried it but it just seems like any other distros. What am I missing here or not missing?

I want to switch to Linux but I still don't know what to start with. I'm a noob who really wants to learn how to use Linux but Arch seems a bit too much (scared of screwing things up)

Hey everyone,

I’m curious about what Linux distro you guys would recommend mainly for programming.

My current setup is basically split between three operating systems:

• macOS on my MacBook Air, which I use a lot when I’m away from my desk.
• Windows 11 on my main desktop, mostly for gaming and anything that works better on Windows.
• Fedora KDE on a second NVMe in the same desktop, which is currently my Linux/dev environment.

My desktop is a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, RTX 5070 and 32 GB of RAM, so hardware resources aren’t really a concern.

For development, I mostly work with Java/Spring Boot, TypeScript/JavaScript, Angular, Node.js, Docker, PostgreSQL/MySQL, Git and VS Code. I also like using the terminal quite a lot.

Fedora has been working well so far, especially with KDE, but since I’m setting up Linux as a serious long-term development environment, I’m wondering if you would stick with Fedora or choose something else.

Ubuntu? Debian? Arch? openSUSE? Fedora? Something else?

I’m not necessarily looking for the “easiest” distro. I don’t mind learning or fixing things, but I also don’t want to spend more time maintaining my OS than actually writing code.

What would you choose for a developer workstation like this, and why?

I never expected my Linux journey to turn into this much of a rabbit hole.

I originally just wanted to get away from Windows.

Around October 2025, I finally got fed up with Windows and some of the controversial directions Microsoft was taking. I didn't even bother with dual booting — I completely moved over to Linux.

At the time, LMDE 7 had just launched, and the timing felt perfect. I liked the idea of having a Mint-like experience without depending on Ubuntu, and I became pretty comfortable with Cinnamon.

Then I started thinking:

If LMDE is basically Mint on top of Debian, why not try Debian itself?

So I installed Debian 13 with Cinnamon.

And honestly, it was fantastic. I used it for almost three months without any major issues. I even customized it enough to make it look and feel like Mint.

But then curiosity got me.

Whenever I booted the machine, I'd see the kernel version in the boot process. I wondered what it actually meant, so I looked it up and realized Debian 13 was using the 6.12 LTS kernel, while newer LTS kernels were already available.

That's when I learned more about Debian's philosophy: prioritize stability over having the newest everything.

And then the FOMO started.

My machine has a 1 TB NVMe, an i5-12450H and an RTX 4050. I started wondering whether I was leaving performance or hardware support on the table by sticking with Debian.

So I decided to try something newer.

I was still scared of installing Arch, so I went with Fedora KDE instead. I'd used Ubuntu/GNOME before and already knew GNOME wasn't really my thing.

Fedora was great. The newer kernel made me happy, and for a while I just stayed there.

Then came the CVE news.

Around April/May 2026, there were several high-profile Linux vulnerabilities being discussed, including things like Copy-on-Write related issues. And this is where my Linux journey became... somewhat irrational.

I started becoming suspicious of the entire ecosystem.

I had this stupid thought:

"What if there are vulnerabilities sitting in the kernel for years and we simply don't know about them?"

Then my brain went even further down the rabbit hole — wondering about governments, intelligence agencies, corporations, maintainers, etc.

I'm not saying I actually believe Linus Torvalds is secretly working for the CIA or Mossad. 😂

But that paranoia was enough to make me start researching how much trust I was actually putting into the software stack I was using.

That's when I discovered openSUSE Tumbleweed.

And honestly, I fell in love with it.

It doesn't necessarily "excel" at one particular thing, but it feels like they tried to do everything properly.

The QA process before updates, the rolling release model, Btrfs, Snapper, ZRAM, rollback capabilities... everything just worked together incredibly well.

I also discovered how powerful Btrfs could be, and Snapper completely changed the way I thought about system maintenance.

I stayed with openSUSE until July 2026.

But during that time, I started researching something else:

Distros that don't use systemd.

The more I learned about systemd, its adoption across the Linux ecosystem, and the history surrounding Red Hat and systemd, the more I started questioning whether I actually wanted such a huge portion of my system to depend on one ecosystem.

My list started growing:

• Void Linux
• Artix
• antiX
• Devuan
• Alpine
• Gentoo
• the BSDs
• NixOS

I also started thinking more broadly about corporate influence in Linux.

One of the things that bothers me is that Linux was built around openness and choice, yet so much of the modern Linux desktop ecosystem seems to converge around the same technologies and design decisions.

Red Hat and systemd were a big part of why I started thinking about this.

I know the reality is far more complicated than "Red Hat forced systemd on everyone", and I'm not trying to make a serious historical argument here. That's just how it felt to me while going down this rabbit hole.

And then there was Arch.

I never actually moved to Arch.

The various security incidents involving compromised AUR packages were enough to make me uncomfortable with relying heavily on the AUR. Again, I'm not saying Arch is inherently insecure — I just decided that it wasn't something I wanted to depend on.

Eventually, I tried Void Linux.

And almost immediately, I thought:

Yep. This feels like home.

The problem?

Void requires considerably more effort to get everything configured exactly the way I want it.

And then real life happened.

My father had a heart attack in August 2026, so obviously Linux experimentation wasn't exactly my priority anymore. I had much more important things to deal with.

During that period I temporarily moved to Aurora Linux, since it is Fedora/Universal Blue based and gives you a very polished experience out of the box.

And that's where I realized something about myself.

Aurora is really good.

Everything works.

The system is polished.

Updates are convenient.

A lot of decisions are already made for you.

And I hated that. 😂

Not because Aurora is bad — quite the opposite. It's probably great for someone who wants exactly that experience.

But I realized I don't actually want a distro that makes every decision for me.

I want to be able to make the decisions myself, even if that means spending hours fixing something I could have avoided.

So after about two weeks, I moved again.

This time to RakuOS.

I've been using it since then.

They recently transitioned from DNF to their new rum package manager, so there have been quite a few bugs. I've managed to work around/fix the issues I've encountered, though.

But honestly?

I already know where I'm going next.

Back to Void.

Because after all these distros — LMDE → Debian → Fedora → openSUSE Tumbleweed → Void → Aurora → RakuOS — Void is still the one that felt the most like my system.

Maybe I'm overthinking all of this.

Maybe I'm chasing an unrealistic idea of "freedom".

Maybe there is no completely independent, perfectly secure, completely trustworthy operating system.

And maybe that's the biggest thing I've learned from this whole journey:

Linux isn't really about finding the perfect distro. It's about deciding which compromises you're willing to make.

I started this journey because I wanted to escape Windows.

Now I'm sitting here worrying about init systems, package managers, corporate influence, supply-chain attacks, reproducible builds, filesystems, rollback mechanisms and whether I really trust the software running on my own computer.

So yeah...

I guess I became that Linux guy. 😂

And somehow, after all of it, Void Linux still feels like home.

I was looking at Bazzite and found out it's a part of much bigger project with other distros like Aurora and Bluefin. What you guys feel in general about these Fedora based distros over traditional Fedora? Any pros or cons? Would prefer unbiased opinions. Thank you.

Does distro has any role on battery life of a low end laptop ?

I've been using Linux mint for a while, i wanna try more distros than just sticking to one, so let me know

Background

I've been using Linux since 2008. Started with Fedora. Then quickly went with Ubuntu. Had flavors of Ubuntu longest. After about 2 year of Garuda(solid distro), I'm on Fedora now. Love it. Arch base got annoying with maintenance and rolling release. Mainly do Development, browsing web and some media. Don't game anymore, gaming rig is an old turd Jellyfin server now.

With all the massive hype on CachyOS. Is it really worth the hype? Sounds like it's main selling point is gaming ready distro. Is it worth me doing live USB or VM?

Which will make a greater difference to the end user?

Will a user feel a bigger difference between switching distros, but keeping the same Desktop Environment?

Or by switching DE, but keeping the same distro?

I've been on Cachyos since December. I have everything set up how I want it. But I kinda want to switch to NixOS.

I recently put NixOS on a family's old laptop, set it all up for them. I live with them so I can handle all their installs and update for them and I really like it.

On Cachyos, I don't use the AUR at all. I just do pacman > Nix profiles > flatpaks > appimages. The recent malware attacks still make me want to ditch arch and just feel like I want to get as far away from it as I can. And arch doesn't really seem like the 'elitist' distro anymore.

I think it could be a fun new project to work on and NixOS makes my autistic brain happy.

I kinda don't want to do it because I have everything set up how I want it on Cachyos, i'd have to start over on NixOS and i'm worried about missing/forgetting things, or not being able to setup what I already did on Cachyos. But I suppose I can backup all my dot files, make a software list, browser bookmarks, etc. though.

And it would give me something to work on to entertain me. I suppose I could also take this as an opportunity to try distrohopping around before I fully commit again. But i'm not really sure what other distros i'd even want to try. And I just know I already really like NixOS.

Recently, ive been running Nixos (btw), but I want a more lightweight alternative. I am currently leaning toward void linux. Any suggestions anyone?

ps: I'm only twelve and I'm starting school so no gentoo or lfs please

I already used arch linux with kde plasma, my biggest red flag is the aur drama, i dont trust third party packages.
I used CachyOS, my biggest red flag is the same as arch.
I used Omarchy too, I found it really good, I used it for like 2 weeks beacuse it was so satisfying to use (it had a good hyprland setup).
I currently run Fedora Kde for like 2 weeks now, but i have no idea what to try next.

Been a FreeBSD user for 16 years I finally switched to Arch. Instantly I feel it's much more faster and now I get to enjoy full wifi capacity, which is one of the factors that I left the BSD community. Still a lot to explore, good first impression anyway.

Well first time distrohopping after mint. So, I was looking for a distro with no nonsense clear architecture for DE, managers and being an upstream distro and I eventually decided on either of these two, what do y'all recommend?

I've been reading on Reddit about Debian vs Arch-based distros, like CashyiOS or PikaOS. I understand Arch distros tend to have more up-to-date drivers, but Debian’s repos are often too old. I’ve heard that by enabling the Debian testing repo, you can get newer NVIDIA drivers. Is it possible to just enable testing temporarily to grab the latest drivers, then switch back to stable afterward? That way, I keep control and don’t keep the system in testing mode constantly. Would this be a safe approach, or am I missing something?

Are you one to install fresh on bare metal? Do have a distro of choice and use a VM, to play around with and experience new ideas??

I have been using arch linux like my main OS for like 9 months on my shitty pc, but now i am looking for a distro to use on my laptop, i want to learn how to code websites, but i want something that is'nt arch, i want something new and that looks great (i dont want anything like mint, ubuntu or that) i use GNOME but i would like to use Hyprland

I love linux and the community around it but by god can we get really stingy over "bloated" distro's when infact most people dont need to run arch at all for instance. So I wanted to make this post as a little bump in the right direction for new comers.

First things first when choosing a distro you should be considering 3 things what do I want to do with this system, what OS am I coming from and how deep into linux do you want to go. Keeping these things in mind I'm gonna rattle off my reccommened distros for a new user.

Quick tip: no matter the distro arch wiki is one of the best sources of documentation for applications use them in tandum with man pages ( man "insert command here") to view the manual

1. Linux Mint

Good for people who just want the system to work out the box no extra fuss

Best suited for people coming from windows

Requires pretty much zero prior linux knowledge and can largely be managed through GUI

Overall a great distro for new comers though that being said it has a few weirdly linux mint exclusive bugs no idea why but just know this is not gonna stay stable over periods of really long uptime.

1. Debian

Great for people coming from mint who are fed up with the linux mint exclusive bugs and just want a rock solid system that will pretty much never fail

You can select the desktop environment on install so its suited for both macos and windows users (I reccommend KDE plasma for windows users and gnome for macos users)

Its a little less friendly then mint but overall is way easier then it used to be. Debian used to be "hard" to install but it just isn't anymore its got a very easy too use graphical installer

Overall the best choice for anyone who wants a sustem that iw just gonna work and last forever debian will never fail you and is overall my number one pick for anyone who is willing to learn the basics. Also the inclusion of being able to install .deb files is great for new users as well. Very wildly used lots of resources on how to fix issues.

1. Fedora

Pretty much just made for bleeding edge, and has the latest and greatest. apart from getting a rolling release distro this is your best option for getting all the newest features.

Has a gnome/kde addition suitable for both macos/windows users

May require a little more tinkering and fixing then the previous ones mentioned but still a fantastic pick

DISCLAIMER DISTROS BEYOND THIS POINT ARE NOT NEEDED THEY ARE FOR PEOPLE WHO ENJOY USING LINUX AND MESSING WITH THERE SYSTEMS

1. Arch (btw)

Rolling releases for updates as well as the AUR with on of the most customizable instillation processes makes this a great choice for learning more about how your system is built and (atleast in my experience) is surprisingly stable.

This is for people coming from another linux distro I would not jump into arch unless you know your way around CLI

Installing is a procees but is worth it. I highly advise against archinstall as it defeats the point of arch for me. Arch by default is just a CLI but that means you can build whatever you want on top of it

Make sure to use man pages and arch wiki for everything

1. Gentoo

This is a source based distro meaning you compile everything form source code. the ultimate customization experience, though it needs to be kept fairly up to date or its gonna get angry with you.

If you havent at a minimum installed arch manually and daily driven it for a bit I'd steer clear as gentoo does not have a arch install equivilent and is quite complicated

This is gonna take you down into the nitty gritty you get to choose everything even your innit system! You can also compile everything to tailor it to your specific needs and hardware.

Gentoo handbook and gentoo wiki are your new best friends.

TLDR:

if new use mint

If need stable debian

If want bleeding edge fedora

If want learn arch

If want learn plus pain and compile times gentoo

Ps wrote this is insanely sleep deprived