Which Linux Distribution Is More Productive?

I have quite liked NixOS lately. The declarative model does seem to be a bit different than most other distros, and the “one config to rule them all” makes it easy for me to avoid loosing my random little changes I normally make to config files spread throughout the etc directory. So far I haven’t yet removed it from any of the systems I have put it on, and normally I do reinstall every time a system feels the least bit “crufty” to me.

Here are 100 Debian-based Linux distributions: 1. Linux Mint 2. Ubuntu 3. elementary OS 4. Zorin OS 5. Pop!_OS 6. BunsenLabs 7. KNOPPIX 8. BackBox 9. Kali Linux 10. KasperskyOS 11. Knopperdisk 12. CrunchBang 13. NeoKylin 14. HydrantOS 15. GNewSense 16. Qimo 4 Kids 17. NimbleX 18. SparkyLinux 19. Cyclotron 20. Devuan 21. Parsix 22. BunsenLabs Linux 23. GendBuntu 24. Trisquel 25. Bear 26. GhostBSD 27. Linux Deepin 28. FreeNAS 29. Voyager 30. Emmabuntüs 31. Wifislax 32. Siduction 33. Ekaaty 34. OSGeoLive 35. NuTyX 36. Peppermint 37. CUbuntu 38. Fuduntu 39. SimplyMEPIS 40. Skolelinux 41. antiX 42. Hannah Montana Linux 43. StarLinux 44. Liberte Linux 45. Dream Studio 46. Cumulus Clouds 47. SliTaz 48. Münt 49. Kurumin 50. EPIC5 51. PLD Linux 52. GeexBox 53. gNewSense 54. Archbian 55. Apricity 56. FrancesinhaOS 57. Austrumi 58. BOSS 59. Damn Small Linux 60. JacqueLinux 61. KDE neon 62. FeatherLinux 63. Finnix 64. GParted Live 65. Gobolinux 66. Goobuntu 67. Instabuntu 68. Lakka 69. LinuxLite 70. Linspire 71. LliureX 72. Maestro Linux 73. MEPIS 74. Puppy Linux 75. tinyCore Linux 76. Ubuntu Studio 77. Xubuntu 78. LXLE 79. PiCRUST 80. Proxmox VE 81. Q4OS 82. Raspbian 83. Robolinux 84. Sabayon 85. Salix OS 86. Smoothwall 87. Storm 88. Trinity Rescue Kit 89. UberStudent 90. UltraLinux 91. Ultimate Edition 92. Vector Linux 93. Wyliodrin 94. Yellow Dog Linux 95. Zenwalk 96. Cloverleaf 97. Grafpup 98. Hellix 99. Itzjosua 100. LinEx

To say they are pretty much the same all Linux mint is just debian is to completely throw out all their hard work. It would take you weeks to do the same with a stock install of debian and it still wouldn’t be as good. Some of us have other things to do. Same with other distros. I get it, I’ve been using Linux much longer than you. In theory you are correct. In practical application you aren’t. Not everyone wants to do their Linux up from scratch and some sane defaults, background tweaks and themes (Nice IU) are nice for people who have lives but still want to run Linux.

Here are some unique linux distros: debian fedora arch linux NixOS alpine linux Easy os (and maybe puppy linux have also some unique behaviours) Gobo linux Gentoo Void linux OpenSUSE And I am not sure if I should count them but maybe also thinghs like VanillaOS or BlendOS Edit: maybe also, tinycore linux…

It all boils down to, what is the starting point you want to use for your computer? Even people who run Windows change at least some settings to suit their needs from cosmetic stuff like wallpapers or connecting to their wireless printer or installing their browser of choice and any software they need. Nobody runs a general purpose OS on their computer without adding/removing/customizing something on it. Distros just offer more starting points from which to choose for setting up a desktop/laptop. The rest is up to the owner of said desktop/laptop do with it what they want for their needs.

SUSE has been around in some form for like three decades. Not sure how it can be classified as obscure or niche, unless you’re going based purely on perceived popularity and trying to pit it up against Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat-based and Arch. openSUSE is one of those distros that I don’t think gets enough respect.

I agree with this. It’s also important to spread this message because it is confusing for those who are new to linux. Seems like there is an insurmountable amount of choses you have to make. If I understand it right though there is some distributions that actually does something different like fedora silverblue and vanilla os.

Dear Titus: It seems everyone says that Debian based distros have old packages. This is true when it comes to Debian stable. However, do you think that you could do a legit comparison between ARCH and a Debian version that is more in alignment with ARCH (i.e. ??Debian Experimental, Debian Unstable, Debian Testing or Siduction). It gets a little old when the ARCH fanboys crap on the granddaddy of them all: DEBIAN. BTW thanks for having the stones to speak your opinion – I really enjoy the website – and most of the time I agree with you.

MX Snapshot is one tool that makes MX Linux legitimately a different distro from Debian. (It’s funny to say that, because it’s actually very close to being just Debian in every other way.) The other MX tools are easier to get working, from what I have heard. Of course, there was the issue of non-free drivers, but Debian has finally made that easier in their latest stable release. But anyway, the MX Linux users who use MX Snapshot are justified in using MX Linux.

Best Linux distro? The one you have currently installed! Just customize that one. But yeah, I feel like bleeding edge packages work much better for desktop and gaming use. I really only use “stable” repos for servers. OpenSUSE makes me nostalgic, that what was like the 2nd distribution I tried back in 2006 when they put a CD in a computer magazine. Kali Linux for production use? No. That’s like running your production website on XAMPP. Totally agree on the distrohopping. It’s like people are looking for the best defaults instead of customizing their system.

The only Linux distro i have ever successfully daily drove was DSL back in the day. I was forced to use it because my laptop would throw a BSOD during any Windows installation and i happened to have a 64mb flash drive laying around. Fell in love with it but they stopped updating applications for it years ago. Thinking about giving Ubuntu Studio a fair shot. Not sure im comfortable with all the unsolicited AI Microsoft is shoving in my computer without me asking for it.

Opensuse stable as F even the tumbleweed, have one of the best package manager ever. Yast 2-cli was an life saver so many times. Suse is great enterprice and desktop distro. This guy TTT give all generic points about linux. And yet he says from time to time that he try to provoke us to thinking out of the box. Mate try to think out of a box your self.

There are maybe a dozen viable desktops and a couple hundred science projects. That’s a bit reductionist, but it’s the mindset I have when recommending Linux. And when recommending – if I’m not dealing with a gaming or tech enthusiast, Mint or Pop OS. Given how little difference there is under the hood between so many distros, the community HEAVILY overcomplicates things. It’s rare you have a distro that does something so unique with their own customizations or toolset that it will matter to the average user (or even most niche users).

There is Devuan Linux, Artix Linux that are forks but aren’t just “some fork with different packages installed” you can’t just intall debian and transform it into Devuan the same is for Artix… There is void linux, it is not a fork, it’s great, very minimalistic and it does not depend on gnu libc. Gentoo and Slackware are linuxes that still to this day very appealing for learning more how does linux works.

I do still like the odd distro hop. It’s looking at these sets of decisions that brings the value. There’s my hacked up sketchy idea and then there’s trying something someone has dumped a few years of their life into. That comparison leads to the “nailed it” version that I incorporate into my own workflow. I’ve come full circle back to just using emacs and a browser these days but maybe that foray into qubes can influence the way I set up my vms and containers next round… What can we learn from the immutable distros that we want to implement on our vanilla debian and arch builds? Yes you can make your own but the top distros are the best recipes perfected over time by master linux chefs.

It’s about the arrangement of packages. Imagine if macOS came without all that technology. Most Linux distros don’t focus on home users, just the office desk. So projects like Pop OS and Nobara become vitally important for a number of people who aren’t as tech savvy but don’t want Windows. Let’s not discount the value of the age old law: in order for technology to be easy for normal people, it has to be more and more complicated under the hood. There’s a reason I run Fedora, and not because “I could have as easily used Debian”. It’s because no one knows the professional environment more than they. There’s also a stark contrast between the user base: Fedora users seem more chill, and they’re pretty much in the same crowd as the Suse and Debian users in that regard. perusal Ubuntu users and Arch users go at each other is like perusal clowns make fun of jugglers. Like, just enjoy what you’re using and don’t worry what others are using. No one’s standing to become the new Microsoft, so take a seat, ya know lol. Anyway, good article, though a little contradictory. To err is to human, as they say. But I prefer off the cuff honest contradiction over scripted nonsense with no attachment.

Yes, you could eliminate 99% of the Linux distros. For me there are only three distributions; Ubuntu the most successful distro and the one I use since 2008; Fedora that I’ve detected starting with Fedora 33 and the 3rd one Manjaro. All these 3 distro are reliable and run recent Linux kernel releases. Arch is for masochists and Debian is for the true conservatives, since it runs antique Linux kernel releases.

I mainly agree with what you say. It’s mainly those basic flavors… although Ubuntu does give you the simplicity of Debian with more up-to-date software, and then I don’t know I’m not a fan of Arch, it kinda defeats the purpose. Arch is basically a precompiled Gentoo-made-easy. Either you wanna build a system the way you want it, or you want it ready made and precompiled. Arch is like trying both, as if standing in the middle. Not unlike what you said for Kali linux, which I agree – why not do this in Debian? Sounds like someone wants to be a security expert and has no idea on what he needs – preinstalled packages won’t help you, try reading first. In the same way, Arch users wanna have a system exactly the way they want it, up to every aspect of it, yet they want everything ready made and served – again, this won’t help them, why not try reading and actually do this themselves using Gentoo or even LFS if they wanna make their own distro. Having said all this, I’m actually a long time user of Hannah Montana Linux.

Recently got an N100 mini PC with built-in WiFi/Bluetooth and wanted to install Debian on it since Ubuntu tried to trick me into using the snap store last time. But the latest stable Debian didn’t have the drivers for WiFi, so I had to go back to using Ubuntu server LTS (and start by uninstalling snapd).

The 4 distros roots from which other distros tend to be built can be seen as Slackware (such as Suse), Debian, Gentoo (such as Pardus), and Fedora-RedHat. A great thing about Suse is that it can be purchased for the home (without need to buy a “meant primarily for Server OS”) with X-Amount of years support (and multiple peole have bought it on a Disk as an OS). It also means there is a different entry-level for Slackware so people who wish to set up a home server (or even desktop if they then feel confident enough to do the tweaking) and want to go through the Slackware manual can do so and yet can use their other computer for (Open) Suse. People want to fun linux distros in different ways (such as a simple Suse purchase), even of they are seeking to contribute money to Slackware and Debian via the make-contribution route. Another thing that is so great about Slackware is the kernel versions which stand the test of time. Also this affects dependency trees if people so wish to use software that way. One must be mindful of containers which, whilst good, are really “another part of security” and not a replacement for security. Another thing to appreciate about Slackware is the way it does not do 32bit WINE out of the box without changing things when you run a 64bit version. Some people like that known-quantity approach. Not every NIC will work without something like NDISWrapper or similar added software (wrapper-class or otherwise), and thereby in lighter weight systems of Slackware a benefit of using an older 100Mbps NIC RJ45 ethernet card (and yes, specifically that, and not talking about a 1Gbps NIC) is the smaller driver size of a 100Mbps NIC one tends to find. there is of course nostalgia and it is OK to use a distro for it being fun. Using Slackware and (Open) Suse over the years hits the spot in that regard and it is older after all. The new Microsoft online Linux instances a person can rent is an example of how one might use that deliberately to link and somewhat replicate a Microsoft server (e.g. 2012 or 2016) online as a Linux system but also a person might still,nonethless also have a RHEL server online hosting space rented so as to have contingency, and also because it is overtly nostalgic to link a MSwindows desktop home PC (and linux box) to an online Red Hat server because much of the internet ran that way. And there might be some CGI and perl despite some people finding it hard to read. Nostalgia can be a temporal disparity where dispairty is a motivator. As soon as people might try to say they regard Linux solely for the meritocracy of technical solutions, if pressed on the issue as to whether they “love linux”, they’d often have to agree with that alliteration. There seems to be a prevalent dichotomy posed that Linux is used instead of MSWindows for either meritocratic reasons of philosophical (potentially political) reason so as to socially engineer an agenda, but in reality many people use Linux for the reason that they hold an affectionate fondness for it. It is a way of thinking, such that a mentality burgeons from coding style and system set-ups, motivating learning. Yanks largely didn’t “get” the Commodore Amiga, and yet here ins the British Isles and Europe we kept saying “We love your computer”. Escaping into the registers reading the magazines to “improve your hex life” for coding tutorials or awaiting with a friend the next envelope stuffed with demoscene floppy disks and a note from the coders compels decisions to have emotions in them wanting to interogate yet more data or find new ways to relive it. People don’t always remember facts (like homework) of what a person said but they tend to remember how a person made them feel. I’m not alone in knowing that when I can commit something to memory, and when I can remember, finally I can feel again. That is what escaping to the registers does. That is what they linux server linked to a desktop PC can do too. When something lost is regained, disparity can be a motivator. It is of that insatiable hunger craving for more knowledge. A distro is not just a different take on a kernel either but also a different with a shell. It is perhaps even more helpful to impart this concept to a person when describing how one might use BSD without using the Bourne Again Shell. People sometimes are shy to admit their emotive rationale behind their desire for Linux, and, at that, Linux makes people bashful. Be honest, Linux users, to the questions, “Why are you here?” So the answer can easily include sentiment, “For I long to be”. <3 My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.

I never distro hop, cause its like same candy with different wrapping. If you do a research, before what to use for your needs, then you pick one of main 3 for a reason.. that guy is right only 3 main distros are there. Distro hopping is technically lack of knowledge and incompetence to set up your linux correctly. Every linux distro can be set to be identical to any other you want without hoppingXD it is not like you want to try windows than mac os, well that is different..Linux..all the same stuff differently configured and preinstalled software. I use Debian 12, one word.-. everything just works..ultra stable and fast. not a single error message from installation day..just remarkable OS. I choose it cause i have 6 year old hardware with only graphics card bought before 1 year or so. My friend has similar hardware and Fedora and she has a lot of error messages etc..Btw Fedora was my first choice but when i saw how it “works” no way. I will anytime choose stability over cutting edge or bleeding edge which causes in most cases instability..and Debian 12 is pretty much up to date if you dont use current date hardware..

So, if I understand you correctly, Debian could do everything MX allows us to do? All we need to know is how to modify it. Then you could show us how to install the MX tools so that they can do exactly what the Mx distribution lets us do. Otherwise Mx isn’t just another one of those distributions and your public conclusion would become invalid. 99.9% of us are not c++ programmers.

I disagree. Debian great. Don’t get me wrong, if you have an older machine that is. Buy anything new forget about it.. Arch is great if you don’t mind not having a installer like modern operating systems tend to do. And don’t even get me started on Fedora, an OS so afraid of some proprietary code that I have to do a day’s worth of prep just to get it to be usable for gaming and internet.. Most of these forks fix these distros dude. They’re improvements

Love your attitude, Mr. Titus! 🙂 But HELP…this old CAD Designer, since ’82 ( now using ActCAD on MS10 ) who would LOVE using that CAD on ANY Linux-distro! Linux is dandy, sure, but…I have to earn a living (even at 72), and OS “eyecandy” isn’t enough to do that. Thanks!! And, NO…FreeCAD or the other “free” Linux-compatible CAD programs are NOT suitable for real-world architectural planwork. btw…ActCAD is $199-$399 lifetime, and for young (or old))) Designers trying to make a living, that’s the BEST CAD to use. Again…help, and I’ll become Linux-only CAD-dude forever!!

I don’t agree 100% on this, I’ve been on PCLinuxOS since 2003, before that I kept switching between many, of course at that time Linux was in a totally different state. But in the last month, I downloaded all recommended distro’s ISO for testing on a VM and maybe the “base” is the same, but the end user doesn’t care about the base. An End-User wants a Desktop Experience that he doesn’t need to modify everything to get to that specific point, that a “ready” system already did for him. Not to mention it’s not really as easy as just a package manager to modify one thing into another, unless your a super-user who knows all the backend details.

I need debian, but I prefer Ubuntu over debian anyway. I like GUI for doing LTS-upgrades better than doing by command. But this release, i think I will do upgrade with commands, so I dont have to wait. Fedora seems to be a good balance between the stable Debian and the edge bleeding or was it cutting Arch? 🙂

I’m really frustrated. I’ve evaluated 57 different distros and tried 20+ over a year. Every single one has had an update issue causing a problem at one point or another. I’m fed up with it. I just want something like macOS that I can put on x86 systems that just works. If anything like what has happened to me with linux ever happened on a mac there would be uproar. TBH I don’t think any linux distro comes close, but I still want to find the least awful distro to stick to. I’m very close to permanently giving up on linux, and forgetting it even exists at this point.

Great article Chris… So true !! I’ve distro-hopped so many times in the past until as late as 2020 and have settled with Fedora as my main workstation. I still have a fondness and miss Solaris which was my first jump into the realms of non-windows systems. My backup pc runs Ghost-bsd of which I only use maybe 3 – 4 times a year and haven’t updated it for almost 5 years…. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it !!!

All the SUSE users are going “REEEEEeee”…and the six FreeBSD users are standing outside looking in the window, with tears streaming down their cheeks. For work on the server environment I maintain multiple db servers running PG. We’ve used Debian for years and will continue to do so. I play around with Debian, Mint and LMDE on the side with spare desktop hardware just to keep an eye on what’s out there in the desktop world. With the advent of Win 11 (which I run on a desktop and laptop for work ), only a few items hang me up. MSP software with remote access management apps, and Remote Desktop. The past nine months of deal w/ Msoft’s bugs has me tearing my hair out. If I ran QEMU and ran Win in a VM, it’s livable already. But I’m not quite there yet. I’m getting too old now. I can’t generate enough interest in loading many of these other distros to test drive any more. But I hope someday to just use Debian or Mint on all my machines.

I have been using only Debian for many years. I tested almost everything known and always came back to Debian When you get used to Debian everything works, every other operating system is annoying with small bugs and inaccuracies But it’s still old, After all, for new hardware, Debian is a bit behind on things. Arch has become clunky and slow, Fedora has some unfixed 100% stuff, OpenSuse … I had to disable PTT from the BIOS to run an installation

Problem with Fedora is that it has a very fast release cycle. Basically you don’t have a choice after a year or so so your main OS stops getting updates and it’s considered legacy. If after a year you don’t feel like you want to upgrade or don’t want to potentially face offline time on your main machine where you work because of some problem during the upgrade process then you’re out of luck. If you’re going to use it using btrfs on your root partition will give you the most flexibility come upgrade time.

I’m running MX now; has some nice backup tools other distros don’t. Some can be imported into other distros, but some of the MX tools do not work outside MX and Antix. But yes, there’s a ton of “me too” distros out there with no real technical advantage for the user. I’ve thought of doing Linux From Scratch, making up my own distro, and seeing how that goes. How many people can I annoy with my choice of desktop, installer, package manager, applications, etc.? Should I even bother to worry about user support, or telling people incredibly technical ways of reporting bugs that will likely never be fixed? What claims of superiority can I make over other distros? And most importantly, can I come up with a cool logo and stupid version names like “Smoking Blonde” or “Lawn Jarts” as I soar up the Distrowatch chart from 100 to maybe 98 before the whole thing ends in tears?.

I’ve tested plenty of Linux distros over the last years just to end up on Ubuntu due to constant issues with apps like Citrix Workspaces, VMWare Horizon and audio issues while using conferencing apps. Ubuntu is the distro where commercial companies put their effort on they think about releasing software for desktop users… obviously for server it’s a different discussion.

I think another thing that’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook/forget is that it’s easy to make a bootable usb drive and play around with the OS from the usb, so I’d recommend that if a person has narrowed it down to 2 to 4 possibilities, if you have some spare USB drives, just download them and check them out. It helped me rule out a few pretty quickly when it came to my needs.

Very underrated article! Probably one of the very few that actually says it as it should be said: you basically have to try a few linux distros, whether or not in a vm first, before you can decide which one will be better suited for your needs. In my case, I tried several distros before landing on Ubuntu LTS anyway. My argument to pick the most popular distro is based on how ‘good’ I consider myself at working linux, which isn’t all that great but improving, hence I went for the distro that has the most community-powered information available. When I inevitably run into an issue, I know I have the mother load of available information to find a solution to my problem and to learn from the likely mistakes that I made at first. I wouldn’t have known this about Ubuntu if I hadn’t tried several other distros and, while running into issues, finding myself get redirected to Ubuntu user forums and find solutions to issues I wasn’t having in Ubuntu.

I’m on Ubuntu since 2008 and I never changed! However since 2009 I use Virtualbox to look at other distros, but I got tired of it. Now I delete all distros, that caused more than one problem or issue and I kept the ones without problems or issues. So in Virtualbox I have my most reliable distros, that survived years and those are: Manjaro; Fedora; Linux Mint; Zorin; Debian Stable and OpenSUSE Leap. I probably deleted ~15 other (fancy) distros. My hardware is from 2019 based on a Ryzen 3 2200G.

I’ve never seen any “normal” person really wondering what distribution should they use. It’s almost always a matter of using what his teacher, friend or influencer uses. The “distro talk” is some sort of drug that the community is addicted, I’d love to run a survey among the viewers of this article to see how many are actually new users in search for the “best” distro.

im a bit tired of distro discussion >.> i think the linux comunity should talk more about stuff like… what you can do on linux… for example, with blender, with godot, and so on. sure people can use those on windows, but that is kinda of the point. “you dont need windows to make games, to make 3D models, you can use linux with the same tools you are familiar with on windows”

I sadly have to use windows cuz of all the schoolwork in which we are kinda forced to use proprietary software to do assignments. But I use linux on my seperate ssd and thanks to grub I can just switch to windows or linux. I am thinking on going linux only soon and use bottles or vm for windows stuff. I love linux and your website is awesome bro. Keep up the good work!

When I started, I used ubuntu 20, then 22 after I broke it a month later, and popos 22 after that. I thought I was really good when I moved to Garuda because it’s arch based, but it’s also really good for a beginner. I think pop and Garuda would have been pretty easy to learn if I started with them. Other easy ones to set up are arco (the xl) and manjaro.

I tried daily driving Linux for about two months, but I found my workflow relied too much on MS office and my friend circle plays certain multiplayer games that are incompatible with Linux, unfortunately. I want to be convinced otherwise, as I had a pretty nice WIP rice in Arch btw for a while and it took a lot to give that up.

I’lll break it down newbies: ubuntu/linux mint working proffessional who just needs to get things done: -> popos or fedora massocoist who likes spending hours reading docs and taking the hard path? -> arch worships the cult of the masochist guy that loves reading teh docs but cant be bothered? -> manjaro deeply autistic? -> slackware mildly autistic -> gentoo hate yourself? -> lindows/templeos

I used Ubuntu for about a year and a half myself recently, and while it was perfectly fine, I wanted to give Windows 10 another chance to see if it would work better than it did before (since I mainly switched to Linux this time around due to GPU and driver issues on Windows.) Sadly Windows is just as bad off as it was before, so I’m going back to Arch, purely for those sweet sweet AUR packages I was missing out on

Honestly, if someone ask me which Linux distribution to choose as a beginner, I’ll say without hesitance that Linux Mint will always be the best when you just don’t wanna go through all the sh**y parts just to get the OS run as normal. It is integrated with many packages and needed files that you wouldn’t get into any problems. And if you accidentally got yourself into a horrible situation? Google is the best friend for you!

Impressive approach to the world of distros, Michael. In GNU/Linux, as in all things, there is so much fanaticism that it is difficult to find objective opinions like yours. By the way, Windows also has its “stable” version, it is called Windows LTSC or Enterprise, and it comes without pre-installed bloatware and has extended support and is certainly much more stable and less prone to damage because it does not receive “quality” updates, only “security” ones. For those who are tied to Windows for one reason or another, I recommend taking a look.