(Also extends to people who refuse to use Linux too!)
Every unique Linux Desktop setup tells a story, about the user’s journey and their trials. I feel like every decision, ranging from theming to functional choices, is a direct reflection of who we are on the inside.
An open-ended question for the Linux users here: Why do you use what you do? What are the choices you’ve had to make when planning it out?
I’ll go first: I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with the Niri Scrolling Compositor(Rofi, Alacritty and Waybar), recently switched from CosmicDE
I run this setup because I keep coming back to use shiny new-ish software on a daily basis.
I prefer this over arch(which I used for 2 years in the covid arc), because it’s quite a bit more stable despite being a rolling release distro.
I chose niri because I miss having a dual monitor on the go, and tiling windows isn’t good enough for me. Scrolling feels smooth, fancy and just right. The overview menu is very addicting, and I may not be able to go back to Windows after this!
This was my first standalone WM/Compositor setup, so there were many little pains, but no regrets.
Would love to hear more thoughts, perspectives and experiences!
You’re being very melodramatic about the whole thing…
It’s a computer. We want to use it under our terms. End of story.
Wheres the melodrama in this post ? I’m detecting enthusiasm maybe, but not melodrama. They’re looking for peoples thoughts and experience, i.e what your own terms are for making these choices. Seems reasonable. Sharing that is optional of course and I also choose not to, end of story.
I agree! Tbf that’s why we’re all here in the first place
That’s what I thought. OP made it poetic. I just want to use my PC without distractions and being watched all the time, that’s all.
Debian with xfce. Because I’m old. I don’t want to change, damnit!
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Honestly, I haven messed with any of this. I just installed Mint, made sure everything works and haven’t messed with it since. It’s a tool and nothing more. It is also the reason why I left Windows. They were trying to force too many features and ads on something that I didn’t want to be more than an operating system
The main customization has been that i added app snap store for the software that I couldn’t find in the default software store
The only bad OS is one that won’t do what you want when you want to do it.
I run a mixed environment at home, Windows machine for work, personal Windows machine for interoperability, Linux on the Steam Deck since that what it comes with, external Windows SSD for the Steam Deck since some games absolutely require Windows, Linux NAS for media, Linux Raspberry Pis for some fun side projects, my wife runs MacOS because she’s an Apple Fangirl, Android phone and tablet, iOS work phone for testing. Xbox, Playstation, Switch consoles for gaming.
I use Fedora because I barely have to do any customization to get it how I like. An almost vanilla version of Gnome? Check. Flatpak? Check. Nothing to uninstall (I’m looking at you, snapd)? Check. Steam with just a few clicks? Check.
It’s almost perfect, and making it perfect is trivial. That used to be what I said about Ubuntu.
I haven’t used Windows much since Windows Vista, so I don’t really have any way to compare with Win10/Win11.
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I use NixOS to document all of the choices I make. I can transfer my whole setup between computers and it just works. I don’t have random modifications anywhere
Do you run it impermenant? Or traditional Nix style? I been thinking about running NIX with impermenance and then persisting all the important files so I can hardware swap, or just keep a lean, clean, more secure, self maintained system over time.
Just traditional, since wine prefixes are basically a bunch of state and games are huge
I use whatever the latest Ubuntu LTS is on my desktops and usually laptops (besides my Macbook) at the time, and whatever the latest stable Debian release is at the time on my home lab servers.
I am very much a utilitarian and function over form kind of person so I choose what I do because it is the best fit for the problem I was trying to solve, usually with little thought to looks or UI design. I find I don’t really care so much how something is done on a given platform, just that there is a way. As a result stuff like theme options, dynamic wallpapers, etc are not something I really care about. I have been using the same black image as my wallpaper on every computer I have used for at least a decade now for example. I arrange the UI in whatever way I feel is the most functional for me within the constraints of what the platform supports out of the box. Meaning I couldn’t care less for stuff like the old school Window blinds program and what not.
Ubuntu over Windows because I wanted to get away from the ever increasing ads and general slop that Microsoft was putting into Windows while still retaining some support for gaming(thanks to Valve and Proton) and building my own systems.
Debian on servers over Ubuntu or something RPM based because Debian stable is rock solid and will run whatever you put on it without issue in my experience.
I run Garuda because it’s a more convenient Arch with most relevant things preinstalled. I wanted a rolling release distro because in my experience traditional distros are stable until you have to do a version upgrade, at which point everything breaks and you’re better off just nuking the root partition and reinstalling from scratch. Rolling release distros have minor breakage all the time but don’t have those situations where you have to fix everything at the same time with a barely working emergency shell.
The AUR is kinda nice as well. It certainly beats having to manually configure/make obscure software myself.
For the desktop I use KDE. I like the traditional desktop approach and I like being able to customize my environment. Also, I disagree with just about every decision the Gnome team has made since GTK3 so sticking to Qt programs where possible suits me fine. I prefer Wayland over X11; it works perfectly fine for me and has shiny new features X11 will never have.
I also have to admit I’m happy with systemd as an init system. I do have hangups over the massive scope creep of the project but the init component is pleasant to work with.
Given that after a long spell of using almost exclusively Windows I came back to desktop Linux only after windows 11 was announced, I’m quite happy with how well everything works. Sure, it’s not without issues but neither is Windows (or macOS for that matter).
I also have Linux running on my home server but that’s just a fire-and-forget CoreNAS installation that I tell to self-update every couple months. It does what it has to with no hassle.
I also use openSUSE Tumbleweed for the same reasons as you. In my case I also like the security configuration that openSUSE has (SELinux+Firewalld) and its snapshot restore tool in case of failure (snapper). I think openSUSE is one of the distributions that enforces security the most as soon as you install the system and to maintain that security I try to install only the software I need and I try not to add external repositories. I would like to try Aeon because I think it is a more security-focused distro but I still need to dual-boot with Windows to connect to my work and Aeon doesn’t allow this. In short, I use Tumbleweed as it comes out of the box and just add the packman repository. Many people think that Linux is free of malware and viruses and install many programs from aur, obs, external repositories,… without thinking that they are giving root access to code of dubious origin.
I’m an old coot and comes from preGUI area. My first unix experience were on 80x25 amber terminal. Then X came, I used mwm/twm/fvwm and things like this, it was very tricky to configure to your taste, mainly with config file, you wanted your xeyes, xload, xbiff, xclock etc at this place, transparent, no border, etc, very complicated. Linux didn’t exist.
Then Windows came… and kind of dominated the world with win3/95/98/etc. and at the time linux desktop were still not perfect + you had all kind of driver problems/missing.
As a lot of people I was used to windows GUI so I chose Xfce (also because France). Simple GUI, a button menu bottom left, an app bar, and systray icons and clock bottom right. Don’t need anything else.
I tried LFS, Arch, Cinnamon Mint, I tried Ubuntu, I tried tile, but nah, the simpler the better, Xfce it is.
I am using MX Linux for years now, Debian based, always up to date, .deb packages, no systemd, no snap, no flatpak.
Mint Cinnamon. I’m very new to Linux, only switched about a month ago after using Windows for almost 35 years (my first computer was a windows 95).
Really enjoying it so far, and it’s actually a fun learning experience.
I use NixOS for the atomic updates that I can roll back to at any time, so I can more or less never completely break my system. And even if I somehow manage it, I can just do a fresh install and apply my flake to get my entire setup back.
The drawback is that it does not follow the filsystem hierarchy standard, so a lot of scripts and binaries does not work out of the box. It gives me quite a bit of friction, but I’m sure that is a skill issue.
My desktop started by being inspired by a lot of Linux YouTubers, and I’ve gradually modified it to fit my needs.
I’m using Hyprland, Ghostty, neovim (btw), Rofi, waybar.
But, I’ll have to check out Niri after reading here.
I run Nix but never heard of Hyperland, ghosty, neovim, rofi, waybar? What are those? Extensions or programs?
Nice :)
Hyprland is a window manager (or actually a Wayland compositor if you want to be pedantic) , alternatives would be i3, dwm Niri, etc. A window manager is a more basic alternative to desktop environments like Gnome and KDE Plasma. It requires you to set up more things yourself, which is what most of the other things solve.
I use Rofi as an application launcher (it can be used for a lot more things as well), it basically does the same job as the Windows startmenu.
Waybar is a statusbar, can be configured to display anything really, but it usually displays the date and time, application tray, active workspace, RAM and CPU usage, battery level, etc. It basically does the same job as the the Windows taskbar.
Ghostty is a terminal, alternatives are Kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, foot. All operating systems come with a pre-installed terminal like Windows Terminal on Windows and Gnome Terminal on Gnome. But, you can change it out for some improved functionality.
Neovim is a terminal based text editor. New and improved version of the Vi and Vim text editors. Very steep learning curve, but very fun once you learn it. :q to exit the editor, if you ever feel like testing it.
I see and I’m going to check some of those out. There’s so much software in the open source world it’s hard to keep up, identify what is used for what.
I use conky for most stats on desktop, the default editor, default cinnamon terminal likely gnome, I’m going to look into the waybar though to see if it fills anything different that conky. I’m unsure why someone would need a window manager instead of tiling or dual monitor. Perhaps I don’t fully understand or I’m missing out on something, I’ve seen a lot of posts recently talking about window managers.
I use my PC fairly traditional. Nixos running cinnamon, I’ve tweaked it a bit but nothing outrageous as that’s when shit breaks or you go error hunting more often than I care too. My moving to nix was graduation from mint looking for even more stability through immutability and cutting out system drift with impermanence. I swap hardware as deals come along, so nix allowed for the most customization and ease of backups. Much more friendly for swapping hardware than a traditional OS.
I know right. xD I just have to learn things one at a time as they become relevant, otherwise it’s too overwhelming.
After a quick search of conky, it seems to me that it solves a different problem than waybar does. Waybar can display stats, but that is not its main purpose. Since you use Cinnamon, I doubt you need waybar or Rofi, as Cinnamon comes with pre-installed alternatives for them.
I should have mentioned before when I talked about window managers, I was mainly thinking about tiling window managers. They are really good for a keyboard centric workflow, so if you like using keyboard shortcuts, they’re worth a try. Ideally, you’ll spend less time moving windows around with the mouse, and less time trying to find the window you’re looking for.
But, we’re all different, of course. To each their own. To keep to the trodden path is definitely a good strategy for a stable system :)
I use Arch with hyprland, waybar, walker, pcman-qt, Kitty.
Reason is I hate mouse or touchpads I try to use them less. Hyprland is a tiling wm but I am not a fan of tiling at all. Most of the time I switch through workspaces with command+tab and only one window on each workspace.
I use Mint. Because it’s easy.
I use Arch with KDE Plasma. It just works.
