Until now I’ve had fedora, opensuse and arch. I don’t really like arch nowadays, so I was thinking more of a fedora cinnamon or LXQT. Opensuse is okay I guess. Any suggestions?

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    14·
    20 hours ago

    Linux Mint is not a “rando ubuntu fork”. It’s the most reliable OS for me, along Debian-Stable. It has prefs for almost everything, sane defaults, and a clear release and support schedule. And it uses Cinnamon. I’ve tried everything under the sun, I always come back to Mint. It works.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    2·
    14 hours ago

    Have you tried COSMIC yet? Maybe PopOS is worth a shot.

    Some packages are a bit old at the moment but they have a release coming in April / May that will bring them right up to date.

    Perhaps LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is worth a look as well.

    Both options are similar in that they take a very stable distro base and layer on a quite up-to-date desktop.

    They also feature clear direction and a predicable release schedule.

  • Courant d'air 🍃@jlai.lu
    8·
    22 hours ago

    I think Fedora is a reliable choice, and if you don’t like gnome or plasma any distro will let you install anything else so it’s doesn’t really matter.

    • Luffy@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      22 hours ago

      Yeah, but I’ve had enough cleanup jobs when daily driving Gentoo amd64 branch, I want something OOB

      • RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world
        3·
        22 hours ago

        Start on any standard distro do a net install or equivalent and pick a different DE, I’d recommend Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian/Suse, but YMMV

  • GaumBeist@lemmy.ml
    2·
    18 hours ago

    Reliable, clear release/support schedule: Debian Stable

    Unlike Fedora Spins, most upstream distros don’t come with a DE pre-packaged, you choose it during the install process (or install a custom one from other sources post-install).

    DEs currently offered by the Debian Installer include: Xfce, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Lomiri, and of course Plasma and GNOME.

    Not in the installer, but in the repository: Cinnamon, Budgie, Enlightenment, FVWM-Crystal, GNUstep/Window Maker, Sugar, “and possibly others” (according to the wiki).

    You can also do what I do on my less-powerful laptops and just install a window-manager and associated utilities—just make sure to uncheck all DE options during install (you will be forced to use the console until you have a display server and window manager, tho). Right now I’m rocking i3 on my laptops; I would use Sway, but for some reason it’s more resource intensive.

    Other offerings in the repository include: Openbox, Fluxbox, Compiz, Awesome, dwm, Notion, and Wmii

    My personal recs are i3 (and recommended packages), Xfce, or MATE. I’ve used and liked all 3. I still use GNOME for my desktop, but those 3 are what I go with otherwise.