Linux

Terry's personal take on the Linux distro War

Terry was a distro hopper (still is, just less active ;-). It's nice to try new flavours and learn the design principles, goals and implementation behind each distribution (.e.g. NixOS, KISS Linux, etc.).


- The distro war has ended.

- Linux has won (dominating in the cloud, data centres, powering super computers, embedded & mobile devices everywhere ;-)

- All Linux distributions are the same: the Linux kernel, glibc and a bunch of GNU utils.

Key points:

- "Adopting Linux like a religion is stupid." - Thomas Cameron

- "We've all been through my distro is better than yours" thingy.

- "The best Linux distro is the one that does what you need at the best cost."

- Linux is NOT about the distribution but the kernel, it's about what the kernel can do.

- Distribution is a way to wrap up what the kernel can do into a more manageable way.


Linux Distributions (distro-hopping journal)

Arch KMenu 2
Arch

Arch Linux

Arch Linux (KISS, BSD/Slackware Style, technologically simple & cutting-edge, can be bleeding-edge)

Keep It Simple and Stupid, Slackware and BSD like distro, technologically simple & bleeding edge! Famous for its simplicity, user-centric, performance, ABS, AUR, aggressive upgrade strategy and excellent pacman package management tool.

I started my Arch Linux journal in late 2008 so as to understand how to build a highly customised Linux installation without compiling everything from source (you know which distro I am talking about). It is extremely flexible, configurable and customisable, while still simple and liveable, a balance between stability / reliability and bleeding edge if used properly. I am very satisfied with its pacman package management tool, ABS / AUR (yaourt  / yay front-end) and Arch Wiki so far. The only drawback may be its rolling update strategy which can sometimes break the system and cost you time to fix ;-D

From 2010, Arch Linux is my sole Linux distro on the N150 netbook, and it has been up till now (obviously on more hardware, including ARM SoCs like the Pi).

Currently running Arch Linux on

In addition, I maintain the Arch Linux x86_64 vagrant base -> vagrantboxes @ GitHub

What makes Arch Linux popular among Linux Ninjas?

Used maintained OpenVZ powered VPS running Arch Linux from 2010, for about 1.5 years. Migrated from RAM Host to BuyVM (Debian Squeeze) in Feb 2011 (Arch Linux didn't work well with OpenVZ on 2.6.27 kernel, and RAM Host didn't upgrade the host kernel to 2.6.32 soon enough as promised...

Manjaro Linux

Running x86_64 and aarch64 (Pi 4).

KDE / GNOME shell + Pop Shell extension / Xfce4 / LXQt / i3 / sway

Highlights

Red Hat Linux {7,9}

Enterprise Linux and its derivatives

Fedora

Fedora x86_64 on HP MicroServer Gen7 N54L

Fedora aarch64 on Raspberry Pi 4

(previously Fedora Core, my primary distribution when getting started the journey) Fedora Core {1,2,3,4,5}, Fedora {20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38}

From 12 May 2020, the VPS hosting my personal web site has been proudly running Fedora (32 back then). It's a decision I've made for both work related and personal preference reasons

NOTE: Started to run Fedora 20 + KDE after leaving it for 8.5+ years (the last release I ran was Fedora Core 5) because of its relationship with Red Hat (experimental field for Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and derivatives like CentOS, Amazon Linux. Used to test kpatch ;-D

Variants

Ubuntu

Ubuntu Desktop / Ubuntu Server

6.06 was my 1st Ubuntu release (still have the yellowish disk and package ;-), then 7.04, 7.10, 8.04 LTS, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, 10.04 LTS, 10.10, 11.10, 12.04 LTS, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS.

NOTE: Currently I ONLY use Ubuntu for the following purposes

I have been maintaining Ubuntu Server (8.04 LTS -> 8.10 -> 9.04 -> 9.10 -> 10.04 LTS -> 10.10 -> 11.04 -> 11.10 -> 12.04 LTS -> 14.04 LTS -> 16.04 LTS -> 18.04 LTS -> 20.04 LTS) powered LAMP/LEMP boxes hosting Confluence since 2008.

Debian GNU/Linux

Debian GNU/Linux (get the name right ;-)

{3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}, testing and sid. If I have to use Debian, stable ONLY.

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux

NOTE: SystemRescueCD used to be based on Gentoo but moved to Arch later (renamed to SystemRescue not long after).

Linux From Scratch

LFS (Linux From Scratch) & a part of BLFS (Beyond LFS)

Used to learn how Linux distributions are built, how it works all together, very beneficial. It is like the must pass test for a Linux Ninja and the adult ceremony for Linux gurus :-D

 LFS ID

 24565

 Name

Terry Wang 

 First LFS Version

 7.5

Mandrake Linux

Mandrake (Mandriva) Linux 8.1 (my first Linux distribution)

Slackware

Slackware Linux {10.0,12.2}

NixOS

NixOS

NixOS

nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration.

NixOS is

Uses declarative system config model (not new if you work with k8s).

nix package manager is the perfect complimentary package manager (consider it homebrew for LTS Linux distros, but non-sense for rolling releases).

Love the declarative way of system package upgrade: sudo nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade
equivalent to: nix-channel --update nixos; nixos-rebuild switch

It'll be my first preference to run on laptop as workstation if I for some reason move away from Arch / Manjaro.

Misc

Linux Mint 6

Magic Linux 1.0

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) {11,12}

openSUSE {11.3,12.2,13.1,13.2}

Chakra (based on Arch Linux , nice KDE polish - semi rolling release)

Manjaro (same Arch based, nice KDE, LXDE, i3 and other variants, semi-rolling release)

Pop!_OS 20.04 (Auto Tiling via pop shell extension)


KISS Linux

- An independent Linux(R) distribution with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more.

Fedora Silverblue - immutable desktop orientend distro, focusing on container-focused workflow.

Clear Linux (Intel)

ArchBang (Arch Linux + Openbox)

Antergos (AKA Cinnarch) | Endeavour OS (arch - antergos successor)

KaOS (Another Arch Linux + KDE distribution - full rolling release)

CoreOS (Linux kernel + systemd + LXC + Btrfs) / Container Linux / Fedora CoreOS

openmediavault (Debian based NAS solution)

Optware (embedded Linux for NAS ipkg package management inspired by dpkg and APT)

DNS

Firewall

Router OS


Live Distros

Live CD/USB tool distros (Use Ventoy to directly load ISOs on your usb flash drive instead of dd 1 at a time)


UNIX / BSD

Terminal Emulators

Terminal Emulators

With GPU accelerated rendering: alacritty, kitty, iTerm2 (macOS)


Linux Desktop Environment

Desktop Environment



Window Manager

Window Managers

I have tried almost all famous distributions on DistroWatch. Well, obviously I can't use all of them at the same time LoL


KDE history

KDE timeline

Application packaging and distribution format

AppImage / ImageKit is my choice for desktop / GUI apps.

^^^ Linus Torvalds on AppImage  - "This is just very cool"

EOF

To sum up, my favourite distros are Arch Linux / Manjaro followed by Fedora (close to RHEL/CentOS, RHEL's upstream and experiment field) and Ubuntu LTS.

I like the idea of nix package manager (consider it homebrew for LTS Linux complimenting native package manager) and NixOS, and KISS Linux, very freshing ideas.

Gentoo is cool but I DO NOT have the patience to compile everything from source (time wasted and heat produced overweight the benefits / gains (not environmental friendly).

For desktop use cases openSUSE is a good choice (for both KDE and GNOME, very well polished, attention to details! You'll be surprised).

On physical hardware, I run Arch Linux on my N148, Manjaro on MacBook3,1, latest Fedora on HP MicroServer N54L Gen7 and Latitude D630, Fedora aarch64 and Raspberry Pi OS (Pi-hole ONLY).

BTW: I also use Arch Linux and Ubuntu Server in the cloud to provide Infrastructure services like: OpenSSH, OpenVPN, IPsec (strongSwan), WireGuard, Nebula and so on.