this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
207 points (97.3% liked)

Linux

48413 readers
1185 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hey fellow Linux enthusiasts! I'm curious to know if any of you use a less popular, obscure or exotic Linux distribution. What motivated you to choose that distribution over the more mainstream ones? I'd love to hear about your experiences and any unique features or benefits that drew you to your chosen distribution.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

For some things, they suck. Even NixOS, with its incredible flexibility compared to something like Silverblue, sucks for some things. For example, a Linux-only piece of software I need for University. The supported way to install it, is to download the archive from the university website and unpack it into your root directory, where it will install itself and its dependencies under /usr. You can't exactly do that on an Immutable distro. And I tried to make it work locally, but then in the end, after it didn't, I just gave up.