Ask HN: What Linux distro do you daily drive?

For completeness: I use Windows too because I use some commercial software and can buy used Thinkpads for about $100 any time I want another laptop.

I had been very satisfied with the hardware quality of my Apple laptop, but I had mixed feelings about the Apple software. There were a few things that I liked, but overall I was dissatisfied because there were too many constraints in what I was allowed to do and I like to have absolute control over my computers.

In the beginning, I had experimented with many Linux distributions, but eventually, around 2003 I switched to Gentoo, also because it allowed me even better control of everything that a computer does than most Linux distributions available then (or now).

At that time, Gentoo had exceptional documentation, similar to that of FreeBSD, which had been a major source of inspiration for Gentoo, and I learned a lot of things from that documentation and from configuring and managing Gentoo on various desktops, laptops and servers.

I have continued to use Gentoo until today. Unfortunately, while Gentoo still has a reasonably good documentation for newbies, nowadays no Linux distribution has documentation as good as that from a couple of decades ago, because many new features have been added and a lot of the old features have become obsolete, but much of the documentation, at all Linux distributions, has not been completely updated with everything that has changed.

Until now, I did not have any reason to change from Gentoo, as it continues to allow me the fine control that I want. I have used from time to time other distributions, like Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch, but all were more difficult to customize.

My parents had used Gentoo for more than a decade, until being around ninety years old, and they did not know what "Linux" is. Nonetheless, they did whatever they wanted, like reading and writing various kinds of documents, browsing Internet, watching movies, listening music, watching TV (with a TV tuner card) etc. That was possible because they had me for installing the OS and the applications that they needed. Once everything was installed, nothing was more difficult than it would have been in MacOS or Windows. Actually many things were simpler.

Nevertheless, it is likely that Gentoo is not recommendable for someone who does not have programming experience and who does not have someone to help, like my parents had.

Among the other Linux distributions, the one that implements some features that I want, so it is tempting to try, is NixOS (or its derivative Guix). But until now I have not found time to experiment with it, because there was no pressing need, as Gentoo, with which I am habituated, still works fine.

Gentoo is renowned for slow installations, because typically you must compile all the programs from sources.

But with modern fast computers that is not really true. With a fast CPU with many cores and high frequency, most packages can be compiled in seconds and there are only a few outliers, like Chromium, Webkit, Firefox, LLVM, which may need a long compilation time.

Moreover, for installing Gentoo on a slow laptop or mini-PC, you can run the installation on a fast desktop, where you install everything in a temporary directory after a fast compilation, and then you just copy the contents of the directory into the root file system of the target computer. Running the Gentoo installation can be done even if that desktop uses a different Linux distribution, or even if it does not have Linux, but you boot it from a USB memory containing some live Linux image.

For the past several years, I was running Debian stable & XFCE. It is a great combination. However, I started teaching technology (programming, Linux, and maker-space tech, like laser cutters & CNC routers), and I wanted to see how close I could get to an "easy button" interface, paired with a principles-driven, highly stable base. I gave LMDE a try, with an open mind, and was seriously impressed.

Linux desktop environments have come a long way, and Mint - with the "start" button (with application quick search), window management, "sane" defaults - it just works.

I will also mention that the Software Manager perfectly blends Debian source packages, and FlatPaks. From my experience, nearly all software that I want to install on it "just works" by searching for it. Those that aren't available there, it seems that downloading a .Deb to install it "just works" as well.

As background context, I have used Linux for 20+ years (Mandrake, Gentoo, RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and now LMDE) - LMDE gets my roaring endorsement, and I think more people ought to check it out.