I occasionally see love for niche small distros, instead of the major ones…

And it just seems to me like there’s more hurdles than help when it comes to adopting an OS whose users number in the hundreds or dozens. I can understand trying one for fun in a VM, but I prefer sticking to the bigger distros for my daily drivers since the they’ll support more software and not be reliant on upstream sources, and any bugs or other issues are more likely to be documented abd have workarounds/fixes.

So: What distro do you daily drive and why? What drove you to choose it?

  • danA
    2·
    28 days ago

    Kinda enjoying the process of piecing stuff

    At the risk of sounding crazy… You might enjoy Linux From Scratch (LFS) and Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS). Maybe not as a daily driver, but it’s a great way to learn how everything works, since (as the name suggests) you build everything from scratch. No package manager, just tarballs of source code. It really helps with getting an understanding of how everything works.

    BLFS even includes instructions for building Xorg and all the major desktop environments.

    • superkret@feddit.org
      2·
      28 days ago

      I wonder if it would be possible to set up Linux From Scratch in a way so that its file structure is compatible with one of the KISS distros like Arch or Slackware, then install their package manager and turn it into a system you can update and maintain.
      Otherwise I feel like it’s a bit pointless to put so much work into a system that can’t be kept secure, unless you run it disconnected from the internet.

      • danA
        3·
        28 days ago

        Otherwise I feel like it’s a bit pointless to put so much work into a system that can’t be kept secure,

        You just need to recompile stuff when needed :D

        I think it’s designed mostly to be a learning experience rather than as a daily driver. It serves that role very well!