I’m not the biggest distrohopper but I have tried a few, both on my laptop and desktop. I still keep windows around on a dual-boot but I’m basically only using it for the odd game or two and also onenote (obsidian + excalidraw comes close but nothing really has a seamless transition between pen and typing text like OneNote)

Early 2018 and before:

Windows only

2018-19:

• Ubuntu 18.04 (desktop),
• Ubuntu 18.04/18.10/19.04 (laptop)

2019-2022:

• Manjaro w/ KDE (desktop),
• Arch Linux w/ GNOME (laptop)

2022-2023:

• NixOS (laptop, for literally a day because it didn’t have a package I needed to make my laptop work correctly)
• EndeavourOS (kde on laptop, qtile on desktop)

2024:

• No changes to the desktop setup,
• NixOS w/ KDE and also a half-functioning hyprland setup on the laptop now that the package got added.

Future?

Maybe if I can get my NixOS config to a point where I’m happy with it I’ll switch my desktop setup to that as well, in theory it should be pretty painless since i’m already using a flake setup split across multiple modules. I do really like that I can experiment with my setup without the risk of actually breaking anything since NixOS is semi-immutable.

If I don’t stick with NixOS I’ve also been thinking about trying fedora, opensuse, or an immutable distro, or otherwise just moving my laptop back to either Arch or EndeavourOS since that’s what I’m familiar with.

It’s also worth noting I’ve recently been seeing a lot of Linux posts from people who just switched, this was somewhat of a trend on Reddit as well but imo the Linux posting has gotten noticeably less toxic toward newer users and a lot more understanding of the “using Linux without wanting to spend hours configuring everything” perspective.

Side point that’s somewhat related to that: I wonder how the growth of other platforms FOSS platforms like Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix, etc. has impacted Linux project development. Not sure if it’s just me but it seems like it’s helped a lot with making Linux communities more accessible.

If the fediverse is so cool how come there’s no fediverse 2 huh???

I know I’m late to this but here’s my (probably insane?) take. We use Subject-Verb-Object in English right? So, hear me out:

dialog_create_tab(...)
dialog_open_file(...)
dialog_close_file(...)

If you’re worried about using the terminal you could always install one of the frontends for pacman like the one Manjaro uses. Manjaro might be a pain if you’re using AUR packages (really depends on what packages you use, some niche ones like specific game modloaders or the professional JetBrains IDEs are only on the AUR) because Manjaro’s repos are delayed by around 2 weeks, but the AUR isn’t delayed at all. Depending on the packages you’re using that could break updates sometimes.

Depending on how familiar with programming you are you could also try NixOS which has an absurd number of packages in their official repo but NixOS’s config files can be kind of a pain sometimes.

Edit:

It’s also worth noting that you could start off with Manjaro and then jump over to something like EndeavourOS/Arch once you get more familiarized with using the terminal down the line. That way you wouldn’t have to relearn commands/setups when you switch, since they’re ultimately all arch-based and have the same underlying structure.

Pretty sure that’s a joke, Mali’s TLD is .ml

Software optimization is mostly not a language-level problem. I’ll be dailying my 3-year-old OnePlus 9 Pro until it starts missing out on security updates, but it will probably still be “usable” long after that. Support/updates aside, my 6-year-old galaxy s9 can still run most normal apps. Hell, I got the most recent lineageOS running on a pixel 2 XL from the year before that and it straight up felt fast as long as I wasn’t playing some super intensive game or something. This isn’t an android vs. iOS problem, it’s a “developers of [insert flashy new app here] either not bothering to put effort in to optimize their code or being forced to push out a minimum viable product ASAP” problem.

Edit: fixed my hyphen use

A lot of android apps are built using Java/Kotlin, so you don’t actually need to care about architecture since the JVM supports both x86_64 and arm64.

There are exceptions to this though, since some apps need to run native code. Those apps would need some sort of emulation/translation layer for the arm instructions.

If anything to me gnome always seemed like some weird mix between macos, android, and chrome OS. That might be the material style theming though.

Not really sure how archinstall factors in since it wasn’t around yet when I first installed, but I love EndeavourOS. I’ve installed arch before, but I really can’t be bothered if I’m just going to end up installing all of the same packages the GUI could give me in less time anyway. Yeah, EndeavourOS is just arch with some small extra packages and a GUI installer, but that’s exactly why I like it.

That’s partially my point. You can never be 100% safe, but there’s a lot you can do to increase your safety besides just relying on intuition (edit: because intuition is usually the weakest link, see social engineering/phishing tactics). Anti viruses (when they aren’t just bloatware) are part of that.

Your second point about not meaningfully defending against backdoors and vulnerabilities is kind of against the point. You can totally defend against backdoors by not giving apps admin privileges, limiting network access, etc. so that damage can be limited even if an exploit happens. Then, if some backdoor or exploit is discovered, it’s only as dangerous as the permissions you give that app.

Linux gets viruses too (see recent xz-utils vulnerability that almost got into production environments) and its kind of a shame that corporate antivirus software like Norton and McAfee end up ruining the reputation of antiviruses. In theory the idea of having a software that can scan for common viruses is a great way to increase security, even if it shouldn’t replace common sense. I’m not too sure if there are any good FOSS antiviruses, but if there aren’t there should be.

What makes you think so?

The devs said so. Check r/Suyu, that seems to be where a majority of the updates are being posted. I think there was a link to a pastebin post somewhere there as well.

The SDK mentioned was first party, presumably leaked but I’m not completely sure. And yes, that means it would be present in every other fork as well.

Edit: here are some of the links I’m talking about:

https://www.reddit.com/r/suyu/s/TqSWDlnsGs

https://pastebin.com/6FYdz9Sr

Edit 2: worth noting that the “founder” (as they call themself) still wants to continue on the project but I believe a majority of the devs left.

Edit 3: I found the archive link from someone on the Yuzu team showing they had access to a leaked switch SDK: https://web.archive.org/web/20210114104638/https://twitter.com/Slashiee_/status/1349557173970341890

I don’t know how much of this evidence is real but if any of it is they’re going to have a much harder time finding devs willing to contribute to Suyu, even if development does continue.

Suyu died though. Right now the only actively maintained Yuzu fork is Sudachi, which is only maintained by a single person.

Apparently there was some drama about the Yuzu devs using code which came from a switch SDK as a basis for emulator code, which kind of poisons the whole codebase.

I love not having downvotes federated 😎

Thanks for the explanation! I didn’t realize it was mostly a maintenance limitation, I thought maybe 32-bit instructions could be an extra attack vector on a physical CPU instruction level or something like that.

Isn’t supporting 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS a security concern though? I thought that’s why some linux distros were disabling 32-bit repositories by default on their 64-bit versions

I feel like squash and merge on GitHub/GitLab is nicer for that anyway though, it makes the main branch so much cleaner automatically

Pretty sure the dev mentioned they were going to release the source code as well, so it won’t really be proprietary anymore. Either way I still prefer melonDS but at least there are options

You’ll have to settle for naming your child after one of their public keys, but then your child will only be able to talk to them.