
Ask HN: How to choose a certain GNU/Linux distro? - Raed667
I have been using different flavors of Linux since the past 5 or 6 years.<p>I tried switching between Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Arch, Manjaro, etc.. while keeping the same Desktop Environment for familiarity reasons.<p>I have yet to find a reason to get attached to one flavor over the others.<p>As a laptop user how do you choose which distribution to use (beside out-of-the-box hardware compatibility) ?
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viraptor
Some factors for choice:

\- security policy: how are notifications handled and what's the normal
timeframe for published update (RH and Ubuntu have upper hand here because
they will often get embargoed early notifications)

\- rolling update / stable snapshots: do you prefer to deal with a big upgrade
breakage ~once a year, or small ones potentially at any point?

\- source or binary packages?

\- what security options are integrated? (RH-based: selinux, ubuntu-based:
apparmor, gentoo: grsec/selinux)

\- a year ago I'd say systemd/sanity, but Arch adopted systemd and there are
no big linux distributions without it anymore

\- team behind the project - is it only a handful of people dealing with
issues when they have time, or are they paid enough to work on the weekend if
something terrible happens?

\- kernel - are you getting extra patches for critical issues, or completely
new versions in updates?

\- foss - do you care about splitting software into free/non-free repositories
(debian does it)

The rest is gravy. There's not much real difference between systems after
that.

My choice: Arch for home (CVEs monitored, rolling update, binary packages,
tomoyo lsm, big team, new kernels, don't care about foss split), Ubuntu for
work (security team with quick respose, stable snapshots, apparmor lsm, big
team, kernel patches, kind-of-foss-split).

~~~
Raed667
I went with Arch for over a year, and 'pacman -Syu' was one of my biggest
fears, as when rebooting I didn't know what package was going to get messed
up.

How did you work around that ?

~~~
viraptor
Watch out for notices during the upgrade. Check the forums if anything
warns/fails.

So far I only ran into one issue over 2 years, so it's not bad. But otherwise,
all the data I have is backed up, so I don't mind restoring the system from
scratch if everything fails.

Or to put it more bluntly: if you're afraid of upgrades, that's a good sign
you should fix your backup strategy.

------
irixusr
Pick one that works for you* and plays nice with your hardware. Make sure it
has a very good package manager.

I like Debian with mate myself (never tried arch, but i use their tutorials a
lot). Apt-get works, has almost everything I need and there is a large user
base.

Ubuntu peevs me off trying to be so flashy. But I tap into the know how of
their user base often.

* works for you means that you don't spend your days trying to figure stupid things out, or you battle buggy GUIs. Whatever it is you do on a computer the district/environment is a tool, not the end goal.

~~~
Raed667
> the district/environment is a tool, not the end goal

I went off Arch/Manjaro due to this. Keeping the system working smoothly after
every single change was too much work. I guess I'll be sticking to Mint with
Mate after all.

