(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!

    • ☂️-
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      7 days ago

      i’m not that old but i gotta recognize a solid no-bullshit choice when i see it.

  • @[email protected]
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    258 days ago

    Astrology, but penguin themed.

    You are such a Debian.

    Arch and Gentoos never got along.

    If you are a Nix do not install KDE on the first monday of the month, it’s bad luck.

  • @[email protected]
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    56 days ago

    I’m old and not keen on tinkering around anymore, that’s why I use Linux Mint Cinnamon. It just works and doesn’t take much time to maintain.

    • @[email protected]
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      46 days ago

      Same. I have installed so many systems that I just want the defaults to be what I’m used to. The OS itself is just a tool to let me work on the things I actually find interesting.

  • @[email protected]
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    548 days ago

    You’re being very melodramatic about the whole thing…

    It’s a computer. We want to use it under our terms. End of story.

    • @[email protected]
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      228 days ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 days ago

        I would agree with this. I don’t see it as melodramatic.

        Enthusiastic, yeah. And nothing wrong with someone interested in tech to also take the more poetic route of expression.

        Many of the tech enthusiast types are more akin to mindless 1s and 0s. And not everyone is.

        So like you did, rather lack thereof, the response of your own story is optional. I chose to share, because it’s fun to discuss. This isn’t a changelog, or patch notes. This is part or being human and sharing something other than binary data.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 days ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    88 days ago

    I use Windows because

    My pc does not tell a story. It’s a thing I use for work and play. I can’t be bothered, it doesn’t interest me, what niri, alacritty cosmic de is. Why should I care? Why should I invest that time? My pc works already. My framerates are high, it’s stable and all the stuff I need for work, works. Out of the box.

    Every single time I tried linux for the desktop the system failed within weeks. Dependency error after an automatic upgrade. Grub killing itself. Again. X refuses to start. So many config files littered all over the place just waiting for you to fuck something up. Gpu driver bullshittery. Printer hell. Other peripheral shit. (Flightsim gear)

    And honestly, the last time i seriously tried was more then 5 years ago. In IT terms that’s a lifetime. So surely it will be much better now.

    But after the umpteenth fail to start X, I just thought: wtf am I doing? I could also next next finish my ass through a Windows installation, insert a pihole in my network to block the most obnoxious stuff and just do my thing.

    Which is what I did.

    Now, I do use linux. A lot. Just not for my desktop.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 days ago

      I love Linux and run some Fedora flavor on just about every machine I own. I can’t imagine trying to run it on my sim rig with all the specialized hardware and software though. That sounds like a nightmare.

    • @[email protected]
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      48 days ago

      I think you’ve tried a distribution for advanced users… Something like Debian would not have triggered that! Also note that regarding dual boot, most of the time, Microsoft can be in cause (if you’re not using UEFI, if you have secure boot, and others).

  • @[email protected]
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    108 days ago

    I use Fedora with Plasma.

    I hate customizing ui elements, so I wanted something that used plasma and looked good with tweaking things.

    I don’t want to deal with Snap, so my choices were a bit limited, but I’ve used Fedora in the past and liked it. I still do.

    I did try arch with plasma and couldn’t get hardware video decoding to work in the browser, so I switched to Fedora. I was pleasantly surprised that Fedora had so much more configured for my laptop out of the box.

  • @[email protected]
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    56 days ago

    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.

  • Snot Flickerman
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    8 days ago

    Me with every new Linux installation:

    My network looks like George Foreman’s kids names.

    Anyway I use Ubuntu to make other Linux users mad. Stay mad, nerds.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      68 days ago

      Actually, Ubuntu is pretty good if not for the snap issue

      I would unironically use it on a system that can run it fine without the loss in performance being noticeable

  • /home/pineapplelover
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    46 days ago

    I use arch with kde with very little modification apart from changing wallpapers and taskbar stuff to make it more windows like. I’m a boring guy who still can’t get away from the Windows feel

    • @[email protected]OP
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      26 days ago

      It’s something that has followed me to this day! Many of my keybindings are modeled after small windows things

      • /home/pineapplelover
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        26 days ago

        Yeah especially all the keybindings. I’ve become accustomed to them.

        Simple things like ctrl+shift+alt+windows+L for linkedin

  • @[email protected]
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    158 days ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      38 days ago

      Same. It’s an OS not a lifestyle choice. Good OS though - two years now I think, and not complaints.

  • @[email protected]
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    15 days ago

    I use Mint, with little customization.

    Mint basically gets out of my way, I care about the ability to get my work done.

    I also prefer the windows paradigm rather than the Mac paradigm. IMHO Mint does it better than windows now.

  • @[email protected]
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    I’m a fairly new user to Linux and I first got a laptop with Pop OS since I read that it was a beginner friendly distro and great for gaming. Although I didn’t use it for gaming it was great to get to learn how to use Linux and use it for everyday purposes.

    Later with lots of trial and error got Fedora Linux working on an old laptop with bad battery life that was lying around. I wanted to try my hand at a bit more of an advanced distro. So far I’m loving both distributions and learning more each day about how things work.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 days ago

    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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      this is what i say about ubuntu. it has gnome with a nice dock built in, indicators, desktop icons. all it really needs atm is scrapping snapd and the snap store in favour of gnome software with flatpak.

      fedora has more attention to detail put into it though, its very much better overall if you install a couple of extensions.

  • @[email protected]
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    78 days ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      38 days ago

      I run Nix but never heard of Hyperland, ghosty, neovim, rofi, waybar? What are those? Extensions or programs?

      • @[email protected]
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        8 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 days ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 days ago

            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 :)