I see often people say that the distro you are using doesn’t matter. One can turn any distro into another. And I do not agree with that. If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions? I always said, if distros don’t matter…
- … why distro hop?
- … why don’t you use Ubuntu then?
- … why don’t you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?
- … why don’t you use Kali Linux as a server?
- … why don’t you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?
- … why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro? (or vice versa)
I don’t think that distros only matter to newcomers. Maybe it matters for experienced users even more.
ontop of other user comments where it boils down to trust in the maintainer and code reviewers of the project, another reason depends on the use case that you plan on using your Linux system. for example, if I were to setup a nextcloud server, i’d generally go with alpine for it’s lightweight design, or Debian for it’s stability. I wouldn’t necessarily use Kali Linux, because with those features it also uses a lot of resources for it to function, and I don’t need that for a server.
in terms of my personal device I generally build those from the tty and add other modules (like DE, utils, etc…) to give it more functionality. Much like my servers I like to have my laptop optimized – take as minimal resources as possible – which is a rather controversial take after seeing users bash at me that I’m not taking advantage of all my memory. anyways, I don’t think there is a specific distro that has everything that I want. I want a system that works that doesn’t use 2 GB from the DE alone and that is accomplished by adding the modules myself.
I don’t trust any other sub-distro other than myself. I generally go with one of the corporate base tty installer (arch) and I build the system from that. I’m not going to switch to say cachy OS for it’s aesthetics, or ease of use, I couldn’t really care less.
Why would you want your OS to use you’re memory? My browser already takes too much, and I really push my system trying to run dev-builds of games built for desktops.
so people reasonings are, that if you don’t use all memory then it’s just going to waste. which is true, but you also need to take into account the applications I use, ~10 GB of memory is used when i run vivado/vitis synthesis and bitstream.
the second thing i was going to add is, Do you know what also makes ram redundant? when the laptop is fucking dead. Which is ultimately why I’m trying to optimize it resource wise to extend battery life.
that said, i’ve optimized it to where I can beat the m1 macbook on idle. again, not something that is a benchmark, but to say an engineering student beat a trillion dollar company. I continue to smear that in apple fanboys faces as just a massive “fuck you.”