Hej lemmings! (Hoping this is relevant enough for the selfhosted commjnity)

Quick question for you all: do you stick with the same distro across your PC, laptop, and server, or do you pick different ones based on the device and what you’re doing?

For me, I’ve been mixing and matching depending on the use case, but I’m starting to think it’d be nice to just have one distro (or at least one family like Fedora or Debian) running everywhere. That way I wouldn’t get confused about default settings or constantly have to look up flags for different package managers.

Right now my setup is:

  • Gaming rig: CachyOS
  • Laptop: AuroraOS
  • NAS: Unraid
  • Various project servers: DietPi, Debian, Alpine etc…

I feel like NixOS might be the only distro that could realistically handle all these use cases, but I’m a bit scared of the learning curve and the maintenance work it’d take to migrate everything over.

Am I the only one who feels like having “one distro to rule them all” would be nice? How do you guys handle your setups? All ears! 😊

  • coltn@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    arch on my two laptops, and desktop. proxmox on my server as the hypervisor, and debian on the vm/lxc. my routers are running openwrt.

    one of my laptops i use for testing, and i do switch distro’s… i’ve tried alpine, gentoo and i’d like to try openbsd. but arch is comfy

  • arcine@jlai.luEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    I use NixOS on everything ! This way, I can re-use parts of my configuration as a base, and customise only the few things that need to change from one machine to the other.

    The only exception is my Steam Deck. I trust Valve on that one, and my usage of it is so different from other computers as to make 95% of my config entirely irrelevant anyway.

  • M137@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    Oooh, look at mr. Rich guy here with multiple devices.

    /s… (not really, cries in only computer being a dying laptop from 2011 with no way to get even just another dying 2011 laptop when this one dies.)

  • K3CAN@lemmy.radioEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    Debian on my servers. No drama, it just works.

    Fedora on my laptop and desktop. Still solid, but quicker updates.

    • Teppichbrand@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      I was like you for many years. From Windows to Mint and never changed. Now I got a second hand laptop from a couple of years ago and put ublue Aurora on it. I REALLY like the experience!

  • exu@feditown.comEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    I use Arch (btw) on my desktops and laptops.

    On my servers I’m halfway through replacing Debian with openSUSE.

    My desktop and servers have different use cases and I interact with them in different ways, so there’s little confusion for me.

    • jhdeval@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      I feel the same way. I use fedora on my laptops and desktops and debian on my servers. Generally my servers do not have or need a gui so debian makes it easy to install without. I tried fedora server once and i just was not happy with it.

  • Bakkoda@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    1 Fedora (laptop)

    1 bazzite (old gaming desktop)

    N+1 Debian on everything else than can

  • StellarExtract@lemmy.zipEnglish
    6·
    7 days ago

    NixOS home server, gaming PC will soon move to Bazzite from Windows 10 (whenever I’m done working on my home server). I’m trying Bazzite for that machine because I use it more like a game console hooked up to the TV and don’t need the same level of tweaking and customization.

  • dieTasse@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    Fedora just works for me in every case except NAS where I have TrueNAS, so Fedora it is and I installed it even to couple of people and they also like it.

  • g_blob@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    Debian always. Stablility is good, good is stability. But i am open to trying fedora in the near future

  • sbird@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    For me, I am running EndeavourOS on my laptop (for its rolling release updates and its customisability) and Debian on my homeserver (for its stability). I have also set up a secondary laptop with Linux Mint that is now being used by somebody else for its ease of use :)

  • povario@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    yes, it’s Arch all the way for me. it’s flexible in the way that I can configure it for any system I need, and I usually know what I want from it.

    my installations on my desktop and laptop look fairly similar, but my server and test computers can look different depending on the hardware specifications they have.

    plus, with BTRFS snapshots, if anything breaks I can simply roll back to a previous version of the system.