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1 • Longevity (by Harpo on 2025-06-09 00:51:18 GMT from United States)
Although longevity of a distro does factor in, the 2 most important things to me are stability and large repos.
I switched from Mageia after 3 years due to the small size of their repos. I found there were a lot of apps I wanted to try that just were not there, and trying to install them from alien sources was too much of a hassle. Mageia was very stable, however, even though it did have some paper cuts I did not find on other distros.
2 • Longevity (by penguinx86 on 2025-06-09 01:08:12 GMT from United States)
Yes, I am concerned about my distro's longevity. That's why I avoid lesser known distros that may be gone or unsupported in a year. I only install well know proven distros on my laptops hard drive. Sure, I install new distros in Virtualbox to try them out sometimes. But I'll stick with Linux Mint or LMDE for a permanent install.
3 • @1 re longevity/stability (by Simon on 2025-06-09 01:08:29 GMT from New Zealand)
People often talk about "stability" in the sense of "rarely crashing", but that's reliability, and is just one of the positives that goes with the kind of stability you get with e.g. Debian stable (or Ubuntu LTS or Red Hat or whatever). Yes, the fact that the system is stable (i.e. doesn't move... remains the same for a long time) means that it's also more trustworthy in the sense of reliability, because the same package set gets tested for long enough to iron out bugs; but that's only one way that a stable system saves headaches and time.
Even a perfectly working package wastes time and can require a lot of unnecessary user intervention simply by changing the way it works: changing menus, removing functions or changing the way they work, all this stuff is great fun when you're running a Linux box as a toy for playing around with new software, but a royal pain in the backside when you're just trying to get your work done and a deadline is now threatened because some developer thought it would be cool to change the way an application works. "Stable" means just that, stable rather than shifting: and in that context, longevity is part of the equation.
In other words, what's the use of a wonderful "stable" distribution if it disappears in six months and you're left having to install a different one on all your machines? The whole point of stability is to avoid those kinds of headaches... so longevity is very important, and it's no coincidence that the most popular stable distros (Ubuntu LTS and Debian stable and their derivatives like Mint, and Red Hat and its clones) are also very active communities with very little chance of disappearing overnight. Of course this can still happen (as it did with CentOS) when a corporation or small group of developers controls the project... so I have more faith in Debian, a genuinely open community-led distro with no corporate control that was one of the very first distros and will almost certainly survive to be one of the very last as well.
4 • Longevity (by Pogi Americano on 2025-06-09 01:41:12 GMT from United States)
I really don't care. A lot of times I will use a friend's computer, some run Ubuntu, some run Fedora, others will run something else, something I've never heard of before. When I do use a friend's computer I have to conform to their OS and their ways. ... Normally I'm helping them to fix a problem. I've seen problems where a specific distribution will run on one brand of computer but not on another. Some people have 4 megs ram, some 8, some 16, Some distributions run better on 8 or 16 megs than 4. Then there are video drivers, some distributions run better on one video driver over others. When some one asks me about Linux, I always say try several different ones and use the one you are most comfortable with. I've spent a few weekends with friends, trying out various distributions and explaining the differences and why one might run faster or be more reliable than another. I'm one of those people who are happy there are so many different distributions out there, I know one of them is going to work fine in any given situation. ... The "keyword" is comfortable, if the user isn't comfortable with it he or she won't use it too often.
5 • Longevity (by Friar Tux on 2025-06-09 03:45:20 GMT from Canada)
I voted "Yes, a lot". My preference is an OS that has history and shows signs of being around for years to come; shows stability and won't freeze or break down, even when updating or upgrading; stays consistent over time, meaning that I can use my years and years of muscle memory and not have to search for the "new" location of buttons or menus; and finally, an OS that I can re-theme to my heart's content - especially to get rid of that hideously ugly dark grey (#xxxxxx or rgb(xx, xx, xx)). (Yup, my biggest pet peeve.) For me, the ONLY one to tick all the boxes, is Linux Mint/Cinnamon. But I bet you all knew that already considering I can't stop flapping me guns about it.
6 • Longevity of distribution... (by Bobbie Sellers on 2025-06-09 05:12:41 GMT from United States)
Well I am 87 YOA, so I do not worry too much about how much time my distribution has
left. It is not corporate but PCLinuxOS is younger than me as is the founder/packager.
If I was too lose the updates as I did with Commodore/Amiga and with Mandriva I
would likely use MX-Linux. I have tried the corporate backed distributions and they
seem "corporate" to me. RHEL is very well backed by the corporations and the
review this month points out the problems with that distribution. Fedora is not
so stogy but I am.
bliss-Dell Precision 7730-PCLOS 2025.06-Linux 6.12.32-pclos1-KDE Plasma 5.27.11
7 • Longevity (by Andra on 2025-06-09 05:44:20 GMT from Indonesia)
Yes, of course.
I had fell in love with Solus, until their internal conflict was heard.
The distribution is very good and stable, even with small team they work hard to deliver pleasant experience.
But, it also change my preference. There are many good distribution right there. Some will suitable for us. But, the brain is the vision, and the heart is the people inside it (developer and users in community).
8 • RHEL (by Admin on 2025-06-09 06:44:13 GMT from Germany)
Red Hat seems to feel that a decade of commercial support and two dozen mentions of "AI" in its announcement will be enough for people, but the distribution feels like it's been left behind.
it has and this release is not a reason to return.
1.270 MB of memory to sign into the lumbering gloomy gnome desktop.
Confirm account multiple times. An immediate demo in of inompetence in programming
An artificial time wasting hallucinating idiot AI included
Pushing proprietary Flatpack, actually very fat-pack when size is considered.
9 • RHEL (by Admin on 2025-06-09 06:52:21 GMT from Germany)
Red Hat seems to feel that a decade of commercial support and two dozen mentions of "AI" in its announcement will be enough for people, but the distribution feels like it's been left behind.
it has and this release is not a reason to return.
1.270 MB of memory to sign into the lumbering gloomy gnome desktop.
Confirm account multiple times. An immediate demo in of incompetence in programming
An artificial time wasting hallucinating idiot AI included
Pushing proprietary Flatpack, actually very fat-pack when size is considered.
10 • Longevity (by borgio3 on 2025-06-09 08:31:48 GMT from Italy)
When one pope die, another is made.
11 • Longevity (by DaveT on 2025-06-09 09:59:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Short answer: I want a distribution that will have a long future.
Long answer: distrohopping if Devuan goes down will be a pain. I would probably have to give in and go back to Debian sid. My daily driver is OpenBSD, I only use linux for the things OpenBSD can't do. Music stuff mainly that nobody can be bothered (not even me!) to try and port across.
If the linux universe gets really bad you can build your own distro. Or be welcomed into the BSDs with open arms.
12 • Congratulations (by greetings on 2025-06-09 11:49:49 GMT from Italy)
@6 long live and prosper. Don't put a limit to your future choices.
;-)
13 • Title <> poll question (by Dirk on 2025-06-09 12:40:34 GMT from Germany)
Yes, longevity is a factor in my distro choice.
No, I'm not concerned wether Linux Mint will vanish in the coming years.
Please consider making polls less misunderstandable.
14 • (Still great to see how much could be done with so little money) (by Babids on 2025-06-09 12:46:33 GMT from France)
As "strong corporate backing" feels comforting, we've all seen what the $B company Red Hat has done with Cent OS. Even Fedora and the great corporate backing from Red Hat / IBM cannot be excluded if it's decided it doesn't make enough money (or cost too much).
As for Canonical, after launching many projects last decade (like UBTouch and UBTV), it still only about Ubuntu (and of course *a lot* of cloud, to the point that ubuntu.com is not much about Ubuntu OS), and giving how much it wants to enforce Snap and recently Uutils, it may give a hard time for forks (even if many *Ubuntu are just the base Ubuntu with another DE).
It feels like Debian wouldn't sabotage its own project (mostly because many people, companies and distros are relying on it) but maybe some future controversial decisions could divide a fair share of the community (so far, the only well know fork is Devuan, and doesn't seem to have much popularity).
Also, all theses distros could have disappear if computers were really replaced with (proprietary and source-closed) tablets a decade ago (which have not happen), so what about the next decade product that would replace computers!?
15 • Murena 3.0 (by Geo. on 2025-06-09 12:54:03 GMT from Canada)
Congrats Murena on the release of /e/OS 3.0 I use my phone as PDA so /e/OS is perfect. I cannot recommend it highly enough. 👍
16 • Longevity v. Stability (by picamanic on 2025-06-09 13:11:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Longevity. To me, this is important, but you missed out Stability [in the sense of not undergoing frequent architectural changes]. The distros that are constantly forcing on their users to adopt new technologies, and dropping perfectly good ones that "just work", are not very Stable [my opinion]. Systemd and Wayland are amongst these technologies.
Redhat and Slackware are amongst the oldest distros, but have taken very different paths. I would not consider Redhat as Stable by this test. Disclosure: I use neither.
17 • Redhat (by ghost on 2025-06-09 13:35:31 GMT from Sweden)
Redhat is killing Xorg and pushing Wayland down our throats, just like they did in the past.
I leave it for you to judge, https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-x11/2025-June/006199.html
There's a new fork of Xorg for those of us that gave-up on Linux and found a home at BSD.
18 • Longitivity (by JKL on 2025-06-09 14:33:01 GMT from United States)
When it comes to logitivity being a factor: it depends. Most of the time I do not care because I like experimenting with different distros, there are distros I recommend for less tech savvy users that want it to function and function well for a long time. If I was running a server, longitivity plays a factor as well. Longitivity isn’t my main factor of course, but it is a factor though.
19 • Longevity (by OldManBeave on 2025-06-09 15:03:27 GMT from United States)
Not concerned about it. I don't think Debian is going anywhere anytime soon. I've been using it for over 20 years also.
20 • @17: X[11]Libre (by picamanic on 2025-06-09 15:19:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17: I couldn't tell if X[11]Libre is a portable fork of X11 [ie will run on Linux and BSD], or not. Is it truely Open Source, or are there binary Blobs carried over from proprietary drivers?
21 • xp forever (by Will on 2025-06-09 15:21:14 GMT from United States)
Well, actually, it's prolly mint forever at this point. But if mint goes the way of xp, I'll prolly just find a debian derivative I can live with - maybe even go back to debian :).
22 • Longevity (by Robert on 2025-06-09 15:57:49 GMT from United States)
Longevity isn't completely unimportant, but it really isn't that big a deal to me.
Switching distros is not hard. The biggest differences between the vast majority of them come down to choice of desktop, package manager, and update cycle. And package managers are becoming less important for most people with flatpak and more user-friendly graphical utilities. For the remaining two, there are plenty of distros to fill most any combination of needs.
That said, I would of course prefer a distro switch to be on my own terms without it being forced on me by the death of a project.
Also for me longevity is something likely to come with distros that meet my other requirements. I want up-to-date software (no older than Fedora, rolling preferred) and a large selection of available software (either official repos or something like the AUR or OBS). These are difficult to meet for single devs or small teams that are likely to lead to a dead project.
23 • Longevity (by David on 2025-06-09 16:23:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
When my desktop died 5 years ago, I knew that it was time to abandon the Red Hat family despite having used Red Hat, Fedora, and CentOS for 20 years — it was all too gnomish. I'd tried a lot of distros and I looked at all the reviews. The result was that I chose PCLinuxOS. It had been going for 15 years, so it was not likely to vanish overnight. What's the use of a distro that's guaranteed a long life if its repository lacks the software you need and it's a pain to install and maintain?
24 • Longevity (by Martin on 2025-06-09 18:29:57 GMT from Czechia)
Longevity is one of the main reasons I use Tumbleweed, so I can install new software from the repos a decade after installing the OS without having to make a clean install of a newer version every couple of years.
25 • Longetivity depends on the use case (by vw72 on 2025-06-09 19:36:54 GMT from United States)
Longetivity depends on the use case. If one is setting up an enterprise server, it is much more important that your vendor/distro of choice will be there tomorrow. Setting up desktop linux, less so as most of the user's interaction is with the DE and applications they are running.
While there are differences in package formats, most of the "tools" are fairly standardized these days.
Redhat/Fedora, SUSE/openSUSE and Ubuntu will all be around for a long time because of their enterprise efforts. All three also support, either directly or through "spins", most major desktops.
Choosing a linux distro in 2025, is like choosing a vehicle. Toyota and Honda (or Ford and Chevy) each have their pros and cons, but once you get behind the wheel, they all operate pretty much the same way. True, they might perform differently, but that goes back to one's use case.
26 • Longevity (by Keith S on 2025-06-09 19:51:53 GMT from United States)
I have a situation much like Dave @11, apparently. OpenBSD has been around since 1995 so it fits the bill for longevity and it is my daily driver. (Although frankly I think I spend more time using Android these days.) For my Linux box, it is less important. I have found that I prefer the Debian-based distros over those based on Arch or Gentoo. I have always ended up back with MX Linux the last five or six years after trying out others.
27 • Slackware (by Keith Peter on 2025-06-09 20:05:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
Still plenty of activity if you look in the linuxquestions Slackware forum (google 'linuxquestions slackware'). The gaps between stable releases could be a reflection of the increasing complexity of a desktop linux operating system. Patrick Volkerding is still pumping out the upgrades as people can see by looking at the ChangeLogs (google 'slackware current changelog').
I'm using Slackware 15.0 which is the supported stable release. It's fine for what I need. Doesn't do anything unless I tell it to. Chugs along quite nicely. The base + packages model seems to work well as a result of the volunteer effort at slackbuilds.org.
I expect Slackware to continue to 'defy the odds' for a good few more years yet. No mention of AI in the marketing press release. In fact, there is no marketing press release. Just those ChangeLogs ticking along, and the security update emails that you can subscribe to if you wish.
28 • Longevity (by kc1di on 2025-06-09 21:24:30 GMT from United States)
I use Debian, Mint and PCLinuxOS. PCLinuxOS is the shakiest of the three as far as Longevity goes since Texstar is the primary developer and Could go away at anytime, thus rendering the Distor as well abandoned.
Debian is stable and reliable and I feel it will be around a long time yet and is a safe bet.
Mint is also developed by a great team and they seem to have stick to attitude. 2 out of three. Not Bad!
I have use many distros since 1996 some still around many not. Some just go away overnight.
29 • Redhat seems mostly server oriented (by Sebastien on 2025-06-09 21:49:45 GMT from France)
I am not sure Redhat is really targeting desktops, do they ? maybe Oreon just added to the database would make a better candidate for a Redhat based desktop ?
30 • RHEL (by Mike on 2025-06-09 22:19:52 GMT from United States)
IBM's acquisition of Red Hat had little to do with RHEL and more to do with OpenShift. I'm guessing that RHEL is now simply a base for deploying OpenShift, and is also something that IBM can charge customers to customize during deployment. Other than that, RHEL is probably little more than an afterthought at this point.
31 • Longevity (by Nate on 2025-06-09 23:26:35 GMT from United States)
Longevity isn't in my top criteria for a distribution/OS, but it often comes along for the ride. What I look for is generally simplicity, security, and support. I've settled on three operating systems that I use on a number of computers. I use Arch on my laptop because it is the most convenient for what I need to accomplish with that computer, FreeBSD as a programming environment and Void Linux (with Musl libc) for my home servers.
I like Void, and musl, because I tend to not be affected by a lot of common security concerns. A good example was the Xz rootkit. That exploit relied on a combination of SystemD, Glibc and a version of OpenSSH patched for extra SystemD functionality. Literally none of those things existed on my home servers at the time. FreeBSD gives you a great C and C++ development environment right out of the box, even before you install any additional software. And Arch is my concession to ease of use, because frankly most open source software is developed with Glibc and SystemD in mind. It's security through obscurity, which isn't the world's best security, but every bit helps.
I really doubt any of the three are going away any time soon. Definitely not Arch or FreeBSD, anyway. But all three are also what I consider at the top of the ecosystem, rather than being reliant on another project. They all have significant investments in their own bespoke software such as package managers and system management utilities, and none of them rely on another project to provide their binaries or build systems. Even a project like Mint or Manjaro I think is a poor choice because they are mostly repackaging someone else's distribution rather than being fully responsible for their whole ecosystem. I've seen people struggle with both of those distributions. Generally speaking, almost anything that is tauted as being "user-friendly" gives me a bad feeling, as those distributions seem to break quite easily the moment you try to do something out of the ordinary with them. They have their uses, particularly for bringing new users into Linux, but I need reliable systems and don't mind putting some time into configuration, especially since that's something that generally only has to be done once and never again for the life of the system.
32 • RHEL on steroids (by Theodoro on 2025-06-10 03:53:31 GMT from Brazil)
I have always rejected RHEL as a desktop system not only because of its terrible GNOME graphical environment, but mainly due to the fact that a workstation distro was never intended to deal with multimedia files, Wi-Fi streaming, or any kind of home computer application. Although it can be accomplished by installing a lot of packages from extra repositories and making a lot of tweaks. (Take a look at Dedoimedo`s articles on this subject.)
The good news is that the smart devs of AlmaLinux did all the hard work to create the perfect RHEL variant with Xfce: fully multimedia capable, containing Wi-Fi drivers, and very similar to the best Debian-based distros __ things like MX, Sparky, and Mint __ but not buggy.
In my home PC, AlmaLinux 9.6 Xfce is now the king. It completely replaced MX 21.3 Xfce. And it performs so brilliantly, that even the Wi-Fi connection became faster and more stable!
Then... What are you waiting for to start testing this masterpiece of the Linux world?
33 • Slackware_15 (by eb on 2025-06-10 07:31:20 GMT from France)
@27 : "security update emails"
Yes, very valuable. I have been running Slackware for 20 years ; today :
- with Joe's window manager on my 11 years old home mac-mini (64 bits)
- without GUI on my 19 years old (!) server (mac-mini too, 32 bits).
Both run perfectly.
34 • Longevity (by Kazlu on 2025-06-10 08:38:00 GMT from France)
Do I factor longevity? It depends. On a daily driver desktop, fairly standard and on which I am connected daily so I can add here and there funtionnality I need on the fly, it is not too concerning. However, on a server or media appliance that I tend to set up and forget, I want longevity.
35 • Mageia/OpenMandriva (by Daniel on 2025-06-10 08:39:20 GMT from United States)
The distro graveyard is vast, and project viability does matter to me, but as long as Mageia/OpenMandriva use DNF, RPM 4 (and eventually RPM 6) or another well-established package management system, and more or less stick closely to Fedora (or another major distro) and major/pervasive Linux ecosystem technological developments, I don't feel using either of these is potentially a lost investment, even if either ceases to be down the road (it's not the Linux equivalent of learning Lojban).
While Mageia/OpenMandriva aren't derivatives of Fedora [although the now defunct Mandrake/Mandriva did start as a derivative of the now defunct Red Hat Linux (not to be confused with RHEL)], if both came to an end, I think their users could slot in fairly seamlessly with Fedora (at least as Fedora exists today). Why not use Fedora then? There is certainly an argument for Fedora, but there is also an argument for being more loosely coupled with regard to corporate influence, and there are some differences (e.g., OpenMandriva offers a rolling release, doesn't seem interested at present in becoming primarily an immutable distro which for example I've seen mixed messaging from SUSE developers on and I'm not sure what Red Hat envisions as its future in this regard, OpenMandriva distinguishes itself in its preference for LLVM/Clang over GCC, etc). Neither OpenMandriva nor Mageia offer as many packages as Fedora (either of them is more comparable to openSUSE minus third-party open build service packages), but someone in OpenMandriva must be a gamer, because while I was distrohopping to OpenMandriva, in their repos I found packages for a number of gaming projects (from retro to modern, some of which are relatively obscure) I use without having to rely on third-party sources. Neither OpenMandriva nor Mandriva currently support Secure Boot, which I hope changes in the future (that should not be taken as an endorsement of Secure Boot, just an acknowledgment that it exists and is sometimes situationally unavoidable), and there are undoubtedly some sharp edges that come with either OpenMandriva or Mageia given the smaller number of developers for each project as compared to larger projects like Debian.
If I look at the documentation and community conversations, I believe Mageia as a project probably still promotes urpmi slightly over DNF, but DNF is supported in Mageia. OpenMandriva dropped urpmi in favor of DNF, which I feel was the right call. It was an obviously bad decision at the time for Mandriva to switch from RPM.org to RPM v5 (which OpenMandriva inherited), thankfully the RPM change was later reverted in OpenMandriva. It was also a bad branding decision to adopt the name "OpenMandriva" (not that many of the other suggestions like "Mandala Linux", "Moondrake", etc. were much better), when it was clear at the time that Mandriva S.A. was not long for the world, and with each passing year most new users won't know Mandrake Linux/Mandrakelinux, Conectiva, or Mandriva, but there's probably little to be gained in changing the name now (despite the risk involved of confusing potential users or alienating current users, I kind of wish they would change the name though). I thought Mageia was going to outpace OpenMandriva, but OpenMandriva has surprised me, perhaps because of how it has evolved (e.g., trying new approaches, dropping urpmi rather than holding on to the past, etc.).
36 • long-haul distros (by Kevin on 2025-06-10 09:48:53 GMT from New Zealand)
For me the choice of distro rests on these "legs":
- stay-ability: it will be there in 5 or 10 years because it has a strong user base and a solid dev team
- stabilty: tools, utilities and software that work WITH my workflow not AGAINST it.
- usability: the UI/desktop supplies an environment where I can do the actions I need.
That said, there are, for me, two A-grade distros: Mint and Manjaro.
Purist Debian or Arch are far too fidgety to configure, though I hear Arch are attempting to finally add a human-friendly installer. Also their websites are confusing on which ISO to start where with what. Ubuntu have a track record of doing wierd stuff. I find a lot of the other distros are peripheral noise. That's before you get to the one-man band distros which are interesting to look at, but at high risk of vanishing next Tuesday.
Then we move on, to the desktops. Gnome has turned into a simplified trainsmash. If you like to use your computer this way, fine, good luck, I award you no points, etc. Cinnamon has grown in complexity and weight and was my choice until about 2 years ago. KDE also added complexity until reaching middle-age and then went to the gym. At first (KDE Plasma 5) it was not so good with lots of loose flab and torn tendons, but Plasma 6 is the new six-pack abs rebound.
The other desktops are a bit light on features and functionality. Some are one-man band jobs, do your homework. I need a full-power desktop as I work with images, text and sometimes video; and cannot use the window manager type ones which are more suited in my opinion to sysadmin and system monitoring situations.
What grinds me is when devs of packages unilaterally decide to push out a new version that clearly breaks everything that has gone before. Gnome dumbs down many GNU-set tools and utils like their audience is make only of 3 year olds. GiMP broke scripting with 3.x, sending thousands of users who had custom scripts into the discard pile. For many, those scripts defined the workflow, carefully nurtured over YEARS, only to be destroyed in one upgrade. Love your users, listen to them. 10 years of development in a vacuum does NOT make a 'better' version! Mozilla are showing signs of this kind of development too - unwanted features, sudden UI changes - nevermind their ever-galloping version numbers.
My 2c.
37 • Longevity / RHEL (by Felix on 2025-06-10 07:47:43 GMT from Germany)
Longevity is not a concern for me. I gravitate to projects with high code/documentation quality. I really want reliable software that is well documented so I can do/achieve what I want/need easily. Longevity is just a side effect of high quality anyway.
I was using CentOS back in the days when it was still a thing. When IBM took over fortunately I also quit my job as an administrator and that way I did not have to use RHEL or any compatible OS any more. That was around 2017. RHEL was a good and reliable product then and it was an advantage that all my coworkers used it as well. I have no clue how RHEL, Rocky or Alma feels today. But why bother? They don't want me to use it, so I use something where people want me to use it. I chose FreeBSD.
38 • Longevity (by Dmitry on 2025-06-10 05:14:21 GMT from Russia)
Strong corporate backing for Ubuntu? Do you mean the webpage where they ask for $15 donations?
39 • Longevity - Custom distros eol potential? (by Tom Baker on 2025-06-10 11:38:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
These days i stick to fedora, not because its the best but it has a stable development and funded backing.
I appreciate these custom distros, but i find they can be abandoned at anytime and you are left with a load of custom changes that you do not have the time or energy to debug and resolve.
Also applies to custom repos.
My advise is to stick to a well funded and maintained base distro i.e. like fedora or even ubuntu
Just an opinion.
40 • Longevity of distribution.. (by Bof on 2025-06-10 12:06:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hats off to you Bobbie .. comment number 6.
I am not quite as old as you, but I have been a PcLinuxos man for over 20 years and am extremely happy with it.
I had a friend who owned computer shops and gave me anything that could not be " sold with a warranty ". Consequently, I burnt off cd's and eventually dvd's to see how they compared. Laptops, desktops, etc. Even servers. I have NEVER tried a tablet !
I must admit to having tested possibly every " distro " listed in Distrowatch columns over the past 20 years in one version or another. Always used K3b for burning media and have had a few " FAILURE " screens pop up.
My main machine / machines over the years has never strayed from PcLinuxos..... just like you Bobbie.
Sorry to say this, but there have been some " real lame ducks " as well as some superb ones that suddenly stopped / disappeared. Crunch Bang ! springs to mind. Brilliant and then stopped.
A lot of these " distros " race to release an issue without doing proper testing. A number fail due to not being user friendly OR trying to be a " widows clone " ( spelt correctly ! ) Or are totally unsuitable for day to day use. No thought about applications ! Driver support ? Game support ?
41 • @37 FreeBSD for clueless user (by Jan on 2025-06-10 12:07:34 GMT from The Netherlands)
In this weeks comments I have seen a few remarks to use FreeBSD.
I am am interested in using FreeBSD, however as a user i need a Desktop, which FreeBSD seems not to have after installing.
Now there is GhostBSD, which is the perfect solution to that. However I prefer a management with a big mnagement/community. Which seems to me FreeBSD is is better at.
So is there a save method to add a Desktop-environment (KDE/Gnome) to FreeBSD?
42 • @41 FreeBSD for clueless user (by g on 2025-06-10 19:19:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
The last time I used FreeBSD, which was probably 20+ years ago, all you needed to do was install the Ports, cd into the right directory and do a 'make install' then wait a few minutes/hours for it do its thing. I don't know how much that has changed these days...
43 • Distro longevity (by Slappy McGee on 2025-06-10 19:55:24 GMT from United States)
Which one? Fedora (and Rocky and Nobara) no. MXLinux, mmmmmm... not sure, probably no. GhostBSD, yep. I have a few others that come and go on various machines, but those are my main usage distros. Ghost could go anywhere and suddenly, I keep thinking. I'd probably then switch to FreeBSD and do my best with it.
44 • GhostBSD and FreeBSD (by Jesse on 2025-06-10 20:35:01 GMT from Canada)
@41: "So is there a save method to add a Desktop-environment (KDE/Gnome) to FreeBSD?"
What you want is GhostBSD. GhostBSD _is_ FreeBSD with the desktop pre-installed. It's not a separate "distro" like in the Linux world, it's a layer of convenience on top of FreeBSD, but it's the same operating system. The GhostBSD community is part of the FreeBSD community, not a separate entity.
@42: "The last time I used FreeBSD, which was probably 20+ years ago, all you needed to do was install the Ports, cd into the right directory and do a 'make install' then wait a few minutes/hours for it do its thing. I don't know how much that has changed these days"
A lot has changed. People don't typically use ports anymore or compile their software from source. These days you'd install FreeBSD, then run something like "pkg install kde; sysrc dbus_enable="YES"" and wait two minutes for it to install. You'd probably also install a login manager.
https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/desktop/
45 • RHEL suscription policy and clones (by Sebastien on 2025-06-10 20:59:35 GMT from France)
@30 Sounds nice. I still do not understand well how clones like Rocky, Alma, Oracle and Co are able to use freely RHEL code since Redhat stated that from nowon their code would be available for registered customers only. Did Redhat state back on this and allows everyone to use full RHEL code without paying ?
46 • RHEL suscription policy and clones (by Sébastien on 2025-06-10 21:03:10 GMT from France)
Question @32 actually
47 • THEL (by Jesse on 2025-06-10 21:04:37 GMT from Canada)
@45: "Redhat stated that from nowon their code would be available for registered customers only."
What Red Hat said was their customers could not share the source code with clone projects. Not that the code was available for registered customers only.
Red Hat still makes its source code available publicly through the CentOS git repository, it just isn't packaged up nice and neatly for clones to use. This means clones can use CentOS's repository to basically re-create RHEL.
"Did Redhat state back on this and allows everyone to use full RHEL code without paying?"
The basis for RHEL has always been publicly available without paying. This hasn't changed.
48 • Red Hat (by penguinx86 on 2025-06-10 23:44:26 GMT from United States)
I don't like RHEL because it's too proprietary. I don't want to register a username and pay a fee to use it. Selinux mode is set to Envorcing by default, making it difficult to perform routine sysadmin tasks. Then, there's Gnome desktop which I avold like the plague. Multimedia codecs are missing too. But I have used RHEL to study for Linux certification exams. At least 30% of the exam objectives were based on RHEL. Sure, I passed the certification exam, but I learned that Red Hat just isn't for me.
49 • Longevity of distribution.. (by Steve on 2025-06-11 19:55:56 GMT from Italy)
I am a casual Linux user so longevity is not an issue for me.
I have 3 laptops with PCLinuxOS installed and another one has Artix Linux on it, all of them dual booting Windows 10.
They all fit my limited needs...no server nor enterprise environment here.
I hope these distros will stay for long, if not I will simply pick another one as long as it is a rolling distro, that's the only requirement I really want.
50 • longevity distro (by incconu on 2025-06-12 08:30:10 GMT from Slovenia)
I believe deepin should be listed under strong corporate support linux distribution.
51 • @16 @27 @33 - Seeking a distribution for long-term use (by Geo. on 2025-06-12 13:36:13 GMT from Canada)
I would like to see the Arch and Slackware projects merge. I believe that they are complimentary.
52 • Re: 51 (by jc on 2025-06-12 20:48:05 GMT from Luxembourg)
"Arch and Slackware projects merge."
This is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.
Slackware does not depend on systemd, whereas Arch does.
Another systemd distor is needed like the sea needs more salt.
All hail systemd.
53 • 9nyhhe (by 📩 + 1.937089 BTC.NEXT - https://yandex.com/poll/DCTzwgNQnzCykVhgbhD581?hs=8c202c2881ee4c25ba032a5772531677& 📩 on 2025-06-13 00:13:10 GMT from Sweden)
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54 • rootkit (by jay on 2025-06-13 08:22:51 GMT from United States)
Securonis and root kit scanners? Are they new and improved or same old
55 • Securonis (by fluggel on 2025-06-13 09:56:27 GMT from Australia)
Never heard of this distro Securonis before. One man dev who writes a lot of these extra utilities in python or bash script.
Distro sounds great, but is it safe?
56 • Filesystems (by Daniel on 2025-06-13 13:50:34 GMT from Czechia)
Article somewhat mixed information about filesystems. openSUSE and SLE uses Btrfs for system partitions and XFS for data partition. Ubuntu have poor btrfs support and it uses ext4. Fedora workstation uses Btrfs, but Fedora server uses XFS.
Number of Comments: 56
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| • Issue 1172 (2026-05-11): Fedora 44, dealing with extra fonts, Fedora plans to provide AI tools, problems with Ubuntu's new coreutils, TrueNAS extends its development cycle, postmarktetOS improves the boot splash screen, Redox ports tmux |
| • Issue 1171 (2026-05-04): Xubuntu 26.04, extending memory with VRAM, Ubuntu plans AI features, Devuan developer forks GTK2, Mint introduces hardware enablement builds, Linux running on a PlayStation 5, local kernel exploit found in Linux |
| • Issue 1170 (2026-04-27): ENux 5.2.1, picking a second distro, AlmaLinux expands CPU support, FreeBSD publishes Status Report, Ubuntu MATE skips 26.04 release |
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| • Issue 1165 (2026-03-23): Argent Linux 1.5.3, disk space required by Linux, Manjaro team goes on strike, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA driver support and builds RISC-V packages, systemd introduces age tracking |
| • Issue 1164 (2026-03-16): d77void, age verification laws and Linux, SUSE may be for sale, TrueNAS takes its build system private, Debian publishes updated Trixie media, MidnightBSD and System76 respond to age verification laws |
| • Issue 1163 (2026-03-09): KaOS 2026.02, TinyCore 17.0, NuTyX 26.02.2, Would one big collection of packages help?, Guix offers 64-bit Hurd options, Linux communities discuss age delcaration laws, Mint unveils new screensaver for Cinnamon, Redox ports new COSMIC features |
| • Issue 1162 (2026-03-02): AerynOS 2026.01, anti-virus and firewall tools, Manjaro fixes website certificate, Ubuntu splits firmware package, jails for NetBSD, extended support for some Linux kernel releases, Murena creating a map app |
| • Issue 1161 (2026-02-23): The Guix package manager, quick Q&As, Gentoo migrating its mirrors, Fedora considers more informative kernel panic screens, GhostBSD testing alternative X11 implementation, Asahi makes progress with Apple M3, NetBSD userland ported, FreeBSD improves web-based system management |
| • Issue 1160 (2026-02-16): Noid and AgarimOS, command line tips, KDE Linux introduces delta updates, Redox OS hits development milestone, Linux Mint develops a desktop-neutral account manager, sudo developer seeks sponsorship |
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| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
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Predator-OS
Predator-OS is a Debian-based Linux distribution designed for penetration testing, ethical hacking, privacy and anonymity. It features customised KDE Plasma, LXQT, MATE and LXDE desktops with tailored menus. Predator-OS has over 1,200 pre-installed tools in 40 categories; these tools have been sourced from both Debian repositories and GitHub pages. Most kernel and user configurations are customised by default to prevent hacking attempts, to restrict non-privileged access, and to reduce the chances of an attack. Additionally, numerous built-in firewalls and defensive tools enable end-users to have full control over the system. Predator-OS also supports various privacy and security tools, and it can be run as a live medium or from a USB drive, as well as in installation mode.
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