Übercomplicated

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, because it has been the most stable and flexible experience I’ve had that worked out of the box. I have tried a lot of distros over the years, and openSUSE has really held up.

Additionally, I use Nobara for a multi-purpose machine that I also occasionally use for gaming (that’s why Nobara instead of openSUSE: it gets me slightly higher %1 lows and is less effort to set up for gaming) and a Void Linux machine for programming. Nobara is pretty good, by far the best gaming oriented distro I’ve tried, but I do regret that it’s Fedora based. Void is really fantastic, but for some reason it only boots on my System76 laptop, so that’s the only device I use it on 🤷.

Void is an arch-killer for me; it’s faster, has huge repos, and offers a similar experience. I honestly prefer it, and would probably use it on most of my machines if it weren’t for the booting issue (it’s been a few months since I last tried, so things might have changed though). OpenSUSE is king for low-effort stability and flexibility though.

Well, those are my two cents. Good day y’all!

It crushes me, CRUSHES ME, that the wretched Fedora beats my beloved openSUSE Tumbleweed in popularity! Why, oh why!??!

Seriously though, why do people prefer Fedora? I used it for 2 years and was very, very happy after switching my daily driver to Tumbleweed. It felt faster, had better repos, defaults, stability, etc. — aaaaaand it’s rolling release, which is so much easier (ironically) from a stability perspective (every, EVERY, Fedora release something would break for me, gosh-darn-it). I just don’t get it; am I the only one experiencing this?

I remember this from “The C Programming Language // ANSI Edition” — a.k.a. K&R! A great guide to C btw; I still consider it the single most informative and useful thing that happened to me in the realm of computer science.

I was short on time but wanted to recommend a book that drastically changed my life and improved my mental health. I have no moral issues recommending it; one can always look up a summary, or easily read it free of cost using shadow libraries (not that I recommend that).

However, I will humor you, and include a short summary here:

• better memory for stories
• better ability to think three dimensionally
• better ability to think dynamically (changing or uncertain variables)
• and some others I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Hope this helps.

Too much to cover in a comment! Here’s a good book on the subject: https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/

Edit: wait, that may be the wrong link. Here’s the book I meant: https://www.amazon.com/Dyslexic-Advantage-Unlocking-Hidden-Potential/dp/0452297923 (sorry for using an Amazon link)

A note in left-handedness:

In primary school, I first learned to write with a pencil and then with a fountainpen, as you describe (I grew up in Europe). This has made no difference to my experience with writing whatsoever, because our <insert strong swear word> language/cursive/alphabet is designed for right-handed people. I could talk for hours on the subject, but it would involve much swearing — I will spare you the pain. Just know that we should be writing top-to-bottom instead of left to write, and should re-design our alphabet, cursive, fountain pen nibs, and how we teach lefties to write.

Absolutely! In fact, I’d argue that this is true for many conditions that we treat as disabilities, like dyslexia (which is rarely disabling) and the aforementioned autism. Both of these conditions have disadvantages and advantages. The situation is not black and white; simply because society was designed one way, does not mean that everyone who does not perfectly fit in is disabled or has a illness.

Your Fedora vs. OpenSUSE comparison is amusing to me, as I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. Fedora 40 DNF was hella slow for me, fedora broke regularly, etc.

My experience with Fedora (about 2 years of daily driving) has lead me to almost hate it, while my experience with Tumbleweed (approx. 6 months daily driver) has lead me to live it dearly. And I’ve never even used YAST!

Well, I guess a lot of this really depends on what packages you use, how you configure your OS, etc. — it’s good to know both sides of the coin no matter what.

Librewolf is the best ✅

I agree with you on the SPD, but Habeck was pretty fucking clear that Abschiebung is not the way to go. The Linke on the other hand seems great until you see their position on NATO, rearmament, Russia, and Ukraine…

My dad literally voted for Volt instead of Grüne because “the Grüne was to positive about immigration”

OpenSUSE is my favorite distro.

I first installed it after having an abysmal experience with Fedora (bad repos, unstable, etc.). It took me a while to really enjoy, but after figuring out how to update the system properly (it’s zypper dup not zypper up), all my issues were quickly resolved.

OpenSUSE is extremely stable, has great repos (stable, large, up-to-date, good naming and dependency schemes, etc.), has a strong focus on security, provides appealing defaults (much better than fedora’s), while remaining minimalist enough to have good performance and to be useful for someone like me who is going to extensively customize their system anyway.

I’ve tried bazzite but hated it, as it’s difficult to customize, breaks very easily, and doesn’t seem to have a notable performance improvement over something like Nobara (unfortunately fedora based, good otherwise if gaming is your main thing).

To somewhat answer your question: openSUSE Tumbleweed is the best “normal use-case” distro (in my opinion). It is, however, not super beginner friendly, has a smaller community and fewer docs, and isn’t laser-focused on performance. It’s good for someone who wants to settle down in their Linux experience, and find a daily driver for their most used device.

Other, more specialized options, you might find interesting:

• Nobara Linux: by far the best gaming distro, maintained by the glorious glorious eggroll (proton-ge creator). It breaks every once-and-a-while, but everything is always fixed within one update, at most a day apart, and the breaks are never disabling.
• Void Linux: uses runit instead of SystemD, meaning it’s super, super fast. Has a great installer, is stable, and has good defaults, but absolutely a horrible choice for beginners, if you consider yourself such.

Again, openSUSE is absolutely fantastic, and my own daily driver — but I have Nobara installed on my gaming PC, and Void installed on my portable laptop. In the end, it’s all a matter of use-case.

Edit: sorry for the insanely long response, my thoughts have been meandering today…

It’s better than any built-in history tools (including zsh and fish) and I find the sync feature very useful. It’s definitely saved me time in having to re-find old commands I used once. Probably the second best quality-of-life tool for the shell after zoxide (a brilliant cd replacement).

To be fair, both electronic shifting and disc brakes are substantially better than their old-school counter parts. It’s just that both are also wildly expensive and very difficult to do maintenance on (in my experience, at least). They’re also hugely over-kill for city bikes. So I guess I mostly agree with you

My bad, it’s a track from “The Sickness”

Isn’t “down with the sickness” a Disturbed album?

I know that in German horse apples certainly refer to poop—sorry, feces! As well as Kaka; in fact, that was the first word I learned for feces!