

Pop!_OS is quite an unorthodox choice for a server OS, ain’t it? I’m genuinely interested in why you chose it specifically over, say, Debian or Ubuntu.
I ran Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint), Arch and derivatives (EndeavourOS, Manjaro), Fedora and OpenSUSE, although each one on a very “user” level; I’m no IT guy, I just value what Linux gives me and am forced to learn to use it well.
Each has their merits. Currently, I go with OpenSUSE because it gives reasonable stability while not going ancient. When set up right, you can rely on it to keep doing things the same way, without needing to intervene manually. It also features correctly set snapper by default, which ensures I, as a generally non-technical user, won’t shoot myself in the foot.
Ideally, I would go with OpenSUSE Slowroll, as I love the concept, but it is still experimental and I don’t want both my machines to rely on beta builds. Still, my laptop has it installed and it works like a charm. The idea of “nearly bleeding-edge, but behind the most adventurous users” is why I chose Manjaro as my first distribution back in the day. Sadly, it is poorly managed, and issues arising with AUR only make things worse. OpenSUSE Slowroll feels to me like Manjaro done right.
As per other distributions I tried:
- Debian gets very ancient very quickly (and even if you rely on flatpaks, system packages are, like, OLD)
- Ubuntu is poorly managed and filled with controversies, I don’t feel like I own my computer
- Mint is nearly a single distribution that doesn’t officially ship with KDE (likely because most of its userbase would ditch Cinnamon immediately, huh) and has caused issues on my machines specifically
- Arch/EndeavourOS is “move fast and break things”, and things DO break unless you manually intervene on numerous occasions based on whatever forums tell you. Also, on all Arch-based systems, I face insane lags and RAM hogging when moving large files. I don’t know why.
- Manjaro, as I said, is well-intentioned, but poorly executed. It breaks from so many things, which makes it lose its novice appeal. Still, it’s cozy and not scary to enter, so this is where I started, and then learning to fight the bugs taught me a lot about Linux
- Fedora needs some work out of the box, but is generally stable and nice. However, the community is too fast to make breaking decisions (like when they ditched X11, which broke my gf’s work because her tools don’t work with Wayland, and she went with Fedora). Also, I’m not thrilled by its association with Red Hat, which turns increasingly…Canonical.
So, OpenSUSE it is. I never knew I would end up here, but here I am. Slowroll on my laptop for the last half a year or so convinced me to ditch EndeavourOS on my desktop and go OpenSUSE as well. Up to a rough start, but hoping it will go well after that.
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