It's been a bit since my last Linux-related blogpost, so I wanted to pitch in my two cents regarding what I currently use, and what I want to use more often.
*hearing boos from somewhere* I know, I know, Ubuntu sucks because of forced Snaps, politics or what have you. However, due to all that ensued, I adopted a mindset of taking what I need and using it for my own purposes regardless of any intended purpose. However, it works well for my desktop purposes and served as my main Linux OS on my rig. I used to distrohop before I landed on this. It existed alongside Windows 7 before an upgrade left my hard drives look esoteric to the motherboard, so it's on the sidelines until I can get another SSD. I don't trust Win10 to not nuke GRUB.
Ubuntu itself hasn't seen good favor in regards to Snaps and defaulting to GNOME, so I picked up Ubuntu Unity because of what I thought to be a superior desktop environment, mainly because of how it works. Performance wasn't as big an issue as it was with my laptop (which had Bunsenlabs to account for it). Regarding maintenance, I didn't actually have to do that much, perhaps with one or two minor incidents regarding dependencies I forgot to install or didn't get mentioned as dependencies by apt.
For several months I had used Windows 7 until recently, when an upgrade meant that the drivers I need to use won't work on it. Earlier in 2024 I had said "fuck this" and switched back to 7 on the recommendation of a fellow power user, and was also recommended VxKex to add some Win10+ compatibility. It was bliss, albeit after loading up a few browser alternatives like r3dfox and Supermium (I end up bouncing a lot). The loss of DX12 didn't bother me much as I was losing faith in AAA, but DX11 games ran smoothly. Anything that I needed to sort out was quickly done unlike Windows 10.
Little needs to be said of Microsoft's bastard child. Freaking mess and very esoteric to handle if you're not some pleb, worse with Win11. However, once you finally file through the maze and take out the cancer, it's fairly serviceable. In the past, I used various customs and bootlegs that have done the work for me. After realizing the drivers for my new rig won't work on Win7, I opted to make a custom with a website that asks what you want to do to the generated install medium. Right now, it's my main OS because I'm awaiting a new SSD to make way for Ubuntu, and I also use it for my VR stuff.
On my old laptop, this is my distro of choice. Lightweight, Debian-based (useful as I'm used to it), relatively hard to break unless I'm going extra geeky mode or somehow fell for "rm -rf /". I think dev has stopped, but as it's mostly using stuff already available on Debian, I don't believe things will break if I go past Buster. I do need to reinstall it though, I was experimenting with AndroidX86.
Hey! We meet again. This is for my stronger laptop that needs a trip to a repair shop. It mainly served as my low-end entertainment setup, as well as another test environment for Godot before I ended up dropping it until recently.
Void Linux was amazing to use, though I used a minimal ISO to build up a simple i3wm, as I also took the time testing it out when building up in Virtualbox. XBPS generally installed applications faster than Apt did, with the i3 environment I was running cold with about 140MB of RAM, and overall, it was slick. The hitch is that it's fairly new, and doesn't have a lot of packages I would generally need for drivers. However, I would definitely load this up on my old laptop in place of Bunsenlabs.
(Whoa, where did this come from? Isn't this a Linux blog post?) Not exactly, this post is for OSes in general. AmigaOS and its older Workbench incarnations had amazing office-related tools, be it writing software, spreadsheets, etc., but furthermore it's where the tracker music culture was cultivated. To set up a minimal Linux with no internet using FS-UAE, or an AROS distribution using Janus-UAE would be a boon for just focusing on making stuff like promos or materials for gamedev in the old school style.