*or distribution

Having been a (GNU-)Linux user since 2006 (desktop only), I have done what many Linux users have also done: hop around from one thing to another.

That all stopped a few years ago when I decided that I would just stick with Debian. I was happy and comfortable. It worked. I used Stable, Testing, Unstable… no issues.

That is until about 4 months ago I was cleaning and found an older laptop and decided to try something different on it: Alpine Linux.

I even wrote about it on my blog. It was such a nice installation and process that I decided to put it on my main personal laptop.

Since April I have been using Alpine and I must say I am pleased. Differences from one Linux to the next aren’t much to write about. With Alpine however, I finally experienced another part of Linux that I hadn’t had the opportunity to enjoy: the community.

Package requesting? Easy. Asking for help? No shame. Patience and help provided? Excellent.

None of those comments are to disparage other OS communities. It is simply that I had only ever used popular distros (Debian- and Arch-based) so I never needed to ask for help. Either way, I am still using Alpine.

So, just to repeat the titular question: what have you tried out this year? What are your impressions?

  • sequential@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I recently installed Arch Linux on my Dell Latitude laptop from 2015, it had been running Ubuntu since 2019. I love it, and now I’m considering also installing it on my gaming desktop which has Fedora 38 on it right now. Most things can be installed with pacman or the AUR and it runs very fast on this oldish laptop. Still using i3 for my window manager, but I started using bumblebee-status for the status_command part of i3bar and customized my theme, highly recommend!