I’ve been working and testing to switch my main PC (used for work like audio recording, music, and general multimedia) and have been playing with Ubuntu Studio on my laptop. Loving it so far but I keep seeing people talk about CachyOS, Bazzite, or the new Debian Trixie.

I’m having trouble finding what’s really different about all these distros aside from how they look or slight changes in how they do things (I know Ubuntu Studio has a low latency kernel which seems important for what I need to do). Is there a big difference? Like, if I go with Ubuntu Studio am I gonna end up wiping everything and installing CachyOS or Bazzite or something in a month because it’s better? Or are all these distros basically the same thing with a different look and feel and as long as I choose one that gets regular updates, it doesn’t matter fundamentally?

I’m trying to grasp the Linux concept but being a Windows user my whole life I’m struggling to ‘get it’. Instead of trying to understand in the contex of Windows or Mac, is a better comparison Apple/Android? Like iPhones would be similar to both Mac and Windows (you don’t get to choose much) and Android would be Linux (I know it’s built on it haha) and it’s really just a bunch of different options to do the same thing?

  • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    642·
    2 days ago

    I’ve said it here before and I’ll continue to say it. All the Linux nerds (myself included) have strong opinions when it comes to distros or x vs Wayland, or flatpak vs repositories, blah blah blah.

    But in the end - none of it matters. You could randomly eliminate all options except for one distro - and we’d happily pick that over windows. The trick is that you could make any distro like any other - it’s just that the distro did all the work for you. So pick the one that matches how you want to use your pc.

    Maybe the only thing that’s not changeable is the philosophy behind the distro. Debian - older stuff for stability. Arch - bleeding edge rolling release. Fedora somewhere in the middle. You get the idea.

    • edel@lemmy.mlEnglish
      16·
      2 days ago

      “Debian - older stuff for stability. Arch - bleeding edge rolling release. Fedora somewhere in the middle.” Very true. I would add that then there are a bunch of others that fill the gaps in between. For instance, Ubuntu makes Debian easier and Mint makes Ubuntu more open and TuxedoOS makes Debian/Ubuntu far more up-to-date. Then, CachyOS makes Arch more easy and gamable while Manjaro tries to make Arch more stable. Fedora is a perfect blend but those those that have a beef against Redhat/IBM (USA), OpenSUSE is a perfect blend too of the philosophies of Debian and Arch.

      • seralth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        1 day ago

        Arch is also just becoming the standard gaming option.

        A lot of gaming communities that are migrating over are flowing to the aur for their community tools.

        • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          17 hours ago

          A lot of gaming communities that are migrating over are flowing to the aur for their community tools.

          Wasn’t there malware found in the AUR just last week?

          For Linux newbs, AUR is the Arch User Repository where anyone can post packages and scripts. It’s highly recommended to NOT trust anything on there due to the risk of malware. If you don’t use Arch and stick to your distro’s application manager you don’t have to worry about it

    • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      I think Fedora KDE is very refined but I stick to Ubuntu bases as there are some little known programs that I use that only have .deb packages unfortunately

    • tyler@programming.dev
      4·
      2 days ago

      For me it mattered. The majority of distros I tested have had audio or graphical issues (or both). Only bazzite and cachyos have worked straight out of the box.