Thanks to all for the responses. Very helpful and this gives me a great checklist to work from.
wdtnh
tj0
Oh, and a few more things to save you some headache.
-
Do NOT use Btrfs as your filesystem. It has some fancy features, but the last two times I used it (5+years ago), it lost data. There is a newer filesystem that is also COW which isn’t stable yet called Bcachefs who’s tagline is “The COW filesystem for Linux that won’t eat your data”. This is because Btrfs has eaten so much data. Just use ext4, it works, and it’s stable.
-
Most distros have a livecd which you can install directly from. You can test everything and install straight from the livecds.
- https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started
- Debian -- Live install images
- Enter the void - Downloads
- Also, I took a quick look at distrowatch ratings(the hits/popularity page is meaningless). These are mostly from advanced users and is a decent source for what is broadly good / bad. The reviews on Void really have quite a few former Arch users.
Hope your install goes smoothly.
3
stevensonmt
This is a great post. I would just highlight two things that stand out for Arch for me that are underplayed here:
- The size of the community directly correlates to the ease of troubleshooting both in terms of googling answers because other have already had the same issue you are having and in terms of having a pool of experienced users who can help troubleshoot the issue you are having.
- pacman may not be the speediest package manager (though it’s certainly not slow) but it is very intuitive with a streamlined interface that is easy to pick up.
I guess I’m also going to quibble on the btrfs criticism. I’ve used btrfs on 3 machines for the past 5+ years without any issues. I probably don’t really need the features of btrfs but the potential to use snapshots for rescuing a system was pretty seductive for me. It also made adding capacity very straightforward by just expanding the volume to include a new drive.
0
wdtnh
tj0
Yes, and the https://wiki.archlinux.org/ is the best Linux debugging resource there is. By far. I’d rather go straight to the Arch Wiki than try to search for something even for Debian or Ubuntu. I don’t know what magic happened to create that wiki, but it is incredible.
Yah, I wanted to like it and I’m very glad it’s working for you. I had disk corruption when it started running out of space. The entire partition got wrecked and there was no chance of recovery. Twice. In different years. A quick search shows that this may have improved though:
- BTRFS and free space - emergency response • Oh The Huge Manatee!
- https://old.reddit.com/r/btrfs/comments/hbqyzf/how_is_btrfs_behaving_these_days_with_low_disk/
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35665539
You can also use LVM snapshots for rescue, but, well, it’s not COW, so lots of extra disk usage.
Edit: Added another link to HN.
2
wdtnh
Thanks so much for this. I tend to look at things with a horizon of what’s need after the “new car” smell is long gone. Stable and reliable is my focus here. Adding new features and rapid evolution are not part of the market I’m in (which is the off-road, mobile equipment OEM space - operated by guys who are not “dainty” about things).
1
TWood
If you’re considering Ubuntu, take a look at Mint, I think it’s better.
I personally recommend Fedora.
1
stevensonmt
Could you expand on why you think Mint is better and why you would recommend Fedora? When I used Mint the draw was strictly around media codecs that Ubuntu didn’t have out of the box and I wasn’t comfortable as a newbie adding unofficially supported repositories. That was a very long time ago, so I don’t know if that is even still a thing.
0
sergio-ocon
I am the product manager for SUSE Linux Container Solution, that will be released soon, on top of SL Micro (openSUSE Macro).
Not for development, but for production using containers, should be a good option if you want to have low maintenance and just care about your workloads (it is a transactional OS).
I would be happy to know how it works for you
1
D4no0
I personally used ubuntu for a very long time and for some servers too, as compared to debian, debian is very slow in terms of being up-to-date, it takes the safest approach.
One core thing that ubuntu managed to get right (or maybe linux nowadays) is to not break your OS after updates. This is a deal-break for me these days, as not only my device is crucial for my work and downtime of days cannot be afforded, however it might contain security keys that are crucial for access.
As for everything else related to linux distributions, there are only 2 things that are important for me:
- The package manager, how up-to-date it is kept and how well it operates;
- The desktop environment, especially when it comes to multiple screens and big resolution support.
1