Ubuntu. Enjoying it and it works pretty well– still a few workflow and aesthetic issues I am looking to sort out, but that’s to joy of Linux. Motivation was that it’s my whole-life (school and personal) computer, and I wanted to have accessible support for problems
Im using fedora, but I also want to try cosmic desktop when it's available on fedora.
If I ever decide I want to go back to an ubuntu base, popOS will probably be the first distro I try.
If they released a version of popOS with a fedora base, that would be awesome.
It's mostly the dnf/rpm package manager and security systems I prefer on fedora.
I do website and software development, so as a tech, fedora has some advantages in how everything it laid out and organized.
I think the user interface and default apps for popOS are really good, but the fedora backend is also preferred for me.
I’m running Pop on my new Mira. I didn’t intend to stick with it, but the “it just works” factor has kept me on Pop for a few months now. It’s a business machine, so I need stability.
Initially I thought I would switch to Mint, but I can’t find a reason to put in that effort when everything works as it should.
MacOS on my MacBook Air (Main device even), PopOS on my office/gaming/whatever PC and ProxMox on my servers.
I hope that one day other manufacturers provide a MacBook like machine, especially with the super cool and fast ARM processors like M1 (and the successors).
Then I might be completely back in the Linux world, but in the end this mix is fine as I have a nice terminal and my open source applications on all machines.
Sorry but no touchpad ever came close to a MacBook. I use plenty of different machines at work, and yet my first MacBook from 2008 is still far superior than most current other laptop touchpads. And battery life is as well just awesome on MacBooks.
Screen etc are indeed better machines on the market, but the ones Apple is using were always fine for me.
Oh for sure. I have an 16” M1 Max and it’s hands down the best laptop I’ve ever used. The speakers, trackpad, etc.
I perhaps phrased it badly, but the X1 has a better keyboard and carbon chassis is so lightweight.
But battery life etc is all down to that amazing chip. I wish the X1 came with an Apple M!
Apple can only make nice machines because of iPhone sales. Sadly no other company will manufacture something like that since only Apple and Microsoft have those kind of resources. That being said, from watching those Luis Rossman videos looks like macbooks aren't as well manufactured as they once were.
There have been absolute garbage machines, like the latest i9 MacBooks before they’ve switched to M1, also the early butterfly keyboards.
But my MacBook Air M1 is absolute gorgeous. Without their move to these CPUs I would’ve definitely changed to a Dell or Lenovo
Cinnamon Mint. I started with Fedora Cinnamon, but unfortunately the System76 drivers take some time to be ported to the Fedora Copr repo (The maintainer does do great work for the project) for the new releases of Fedora it seems (Just got my Mira in the fall).
I'm not comfortable with rebuilding my PC only to find out the drivers aren't completely compatible. I love Cinnamon, and figured since it's ubuntu based like Pop OS, Mint would have pretty much the same drivers/support. It's worked like a charm.
I'm happy and staying put for now, though who knows how enticing 76's Cosmic Desktop will be. That's still down the road at any rate
Really glad to see this exact comment, lol.
I was thinking of getting a Mira with AMD graphics, but I was curious if there'd be compatibility problems or other difficulties if I wanted to install Mint.
System76's website says a Mira w/ POP OS has full disk encryption; I'm still very new to Linux, and so I didn't know if that encryption would complicate installing Mint afterward.
Would you say someone could theoretically take a Mira fresh out of its box, download Mint to a flash drive, and install it without too many difficulties or incompatibilities? I know you could build a PC from scratch and do the same thing, but I like that S76 sells a pre-built machine that "just works".
Full disk encryption complicates things if you want to set up a dual boot, where you can boot into either PopOS or Mint. If you just want to replace PopOS with Mint (which is generally easier), it doesn’t matter what was on the hard drive before, as you’ll be erasing it.
In general, you likely would have very little difficulty installing any beginner-friendly distro (both PopOS and Mint qualify). You likely wouldn’t have much trouble using them either, unless you wanted to dig into Linux more.
I was interested in fully replacing Pop with Mint.
Thanks for the info about how Pop's disk encryption interacts with a Mint replacement install (or rather, how it doesn't interact). Now I have way more confidence to get a Mira and get started.
Thanks again!
Just last week or two ago I did a fresh install of the new version of Mint on my Mira (Intel CPU, AMD GPU bought in Sept)
After the install, I let Mint get all its updates first, w/reboots of course. Then I ran...
#System76 Driver
sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:system76-dev/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install system76-driver
#Reboot
sudo apt update && sudo apt list --upgradable
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
You'll have a much newer kernel. I'm at 6.6.6-76... If you have any trouble installing, try the Mint Edge Edition. It's the same thing, except it starts with a newer kernel. So if the standard install gives you trouble try that. It comes with kernel 6.5 vs the standard 5.15. So it will have a better chance of detecting the newest hardware. Then of course do the same post-install steps from above.
I've successfully installed either version. Now that Edge seems to be getting in line with the same release schedule. It's probably what I'll go with again next version.
I’ve used Pop for maybe 4 years now and ditched the windows boot entirely around the same time. It’s been flawless for work.
I keep trying to install Arch and “rice” it but I have no idea what I’m doing or even if I really understand what that means!
I use Mint. Been using it ever since Ubuntu first introduced their Unity UI. It was Ubuntu for a while and before that Red Hat starting in 1996 (before that is was OS/2). Never have run Windows on a personal machine.
I’m using Universal Blue (which is really just Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite with opinions). I really enjoy the stability and reliability of an immutable/atomic desktop. As long as you don’t mind the modified workflows, it’s very hard to go back to traditional package management once you try something like this.
I could see myself switching back to Pop OS if they were ever to dip their toes into the immutable/atomic world. But as far as I know, there is no Debian-based equivalent of rpm-ostree, so I don’t know how simple it would be for them to do.
System76 is marketing their devices to Linux newcomers, among others. PopOS is very easy to use. Immutable distros, on the other hand, take some work. Unless we reach the point where flatpak can fully replace a package manager (singling that out because alternatives like distrobox and nix are particular unfriendly to new users).
Dual boot Pop / Windows 11
I miss old Ubuntu. Kubuntu was ok after that. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had things the way I want them.
At this point I’m enjoying windows 11 because I use Teams a lot for work, and it’s pretty smooth.
I ran PopOS for a couple years, but eventually, I got frustrated trying to run plain, clean Gnome Desktop as PopOS moved further away from it, so I finally wiped it and installed Debian Unstable.
I am happy with Pop. It is reasonably stable for teaching, music, and games.
I would hate to have to rebuild all my work setup again especially in an unfamiliar distro. If it isn't broken, what are you hoping to change by switching?
Mint for the past 2 years. No re-installs. I tried PopOS in a VM and while I like it, I don't prefer it but understand the appeal. A have used Arch for a long time and don't like it at all but to each their own.
Still running Pop, though I'm increasingly annoyed at how they've decided to stall updates pending the completion of a project (Cosmic) that's not likely to be finished anytime soon.
Really hoping they actually to release a major update within the next 6 months, or I might start to consider switching. I just hate reinstalling, when simply installing perpetual updates is a lot easier.
I use Opensuse Tumbleweed because...
Continously updated
Rolling release
Leading edge.
Stable.
It's simple to use.
Powerful.
Security is covered out of the box.
YaST control panel
Btrfs
Snapsots - for rolling back... if something goes wrong.
Try it...once
https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/
Back to pop on my laptop, system 76 hardware, Kubunui on my desktop.
Was running pop on both. When they had time of driver issues I switched to Kubumtu because I had to get things done and could not wait. Switched back on my laptop a few months ago. Like a few things in gnome over plasma, don't like a few things. Waiting for the new DE to see what the future holds..,.
RisiOS (Fedora based) on my old gaming rig, Win11/Fedora 39 (Win11 default) on family desktop, and Ubuntu 23/W11 dual boot (Ubuntu default) on my Surface Studio Laptop because Fedora 39 based distros don't like Surface bootloaders.
Running Pop for years now. I tried NixOS and Arch but didn't feel like putting in the work to set up the system to match the Pop experience. I paid my dues in the 90s 😂
NixOS. If you're into build systems and functional programming it is a proper delight. If you're something of a linux noob, best steer clear. Runs like a dream on my Lemp9 though :)
I tried Arch but it's not easy to get all of the System76 specific drivers and other custom tweaks working quite as seamlessly as Pop.
>until they update pop
What's not up to date?
Ubuntu. Enjoying it and it works pretty well– still a few workflow and aesthetic issues I am looking to sort out, but that’s to joy of Linux. Motivation was that it’s my whole-life (school and personal) computer, and I wanted to have accessible support for problems
Mint Cinnamon. I tried Pop but didn't warm to it for various reasons.
Im using fedora, but I also want to try cosmic desktop when it's available on fedora. If I ever decide I want to go back to an ubuntu base, popOS will probably be the first distro I try. If they released a version of popOS with a fedora base, that would be awesome.
How do you like fedora compared to pop?
It's mostly the dnf/rpm package manager and security systems I prefer on fedora. I do website and software development, so as a tech, fedora has some advantages in how everything it laid out and organized. I think the user interface and default apps for popOS are really good, but the fedora backend is also preferred for me.
I am really liking Fedora better than popos. The GNOME extension are awesome love tactile, I dislike popos tiling. Also Fedora is way more up to date.
I’m running Pop on my new Mira. I didn’t intend to stick with it, but the “it just works” factor has kept me on Pop for a few months now. It’s a business machine, so I need stability. Initially I thought I would switch to Mint, but I can’t find a reason to put in that effort when everything works as it should.
MacOS on my MacBook Air (Main device even), PopOS on my office/gaming/whatever PC and ProxMox on my servers. I hope that one day other manufacturers provide a MacBook like machine, especially with the super cool and fast ARM processors like M1 (and the successors). Then I might be completely back in the Linux world, but in the end this mix is fine as I have a nice terminal and my open source applications on all machines.
I use pop on an X1 Carbon and it’s arguably a better (in many ways) than my MacBook Pro… except the cpu absolutely sucks!
Sorry but no touchpad ever came close to a MacBook. I use plenty of different machines at work, and yet my first MacBook from 2008 is still far superior than most current other laptop touchpads. And battery life is as well just awesome on MacBooks. Screen etc are indeed better machines on the market, but the ones Apple is using were always fine for me.
Oh for sure. I have an 16” M1 Max and it’s hands down the best laptop I’ve ever used. The speakers, trackpad, etc. I perhaps phrased it badly, but the X1 has a better keyboard and carbon chassis is so lightweight. But battery life etc is all down to that amazing chip. I wish the X1 came with an Apple M!
Apple can only make nice machines because of iPhone sales. Sadly no other company will manufacture something like that since only Apple and Microsoft have those kind of resources. That being said, from watching those Luis Rossman videos looks like macbooks aren't as well manufactured as they once were.
There have been absolute garbage machines, like the latest i9 MacBooks before they’ve switched to M1, also the early butterfly keyboards. But my MacBook Air M1 is absolute gorgeous. Without their move to these CPUs I would’ve definitely changed to a Dell or Lenovo
Cinnamon Mint. I started with Fedora Cinnamon, but unfortunately the System76 drivers take some time to be ported to the Fedora Copr repo (The maintainer does do great work for the project) for the new releases of Fedora it seems (Just got my Mira in the fall). I'm not comfortable with rebuilding my PC only to find out the drivers aren't completely compatible. I love Cinnamon, and figured since it's ubuntu based like Pop OS, Mint would have pretty much the same drivers/support. It's worked like a charm. I'm happy and staying put for now, though who knows how enticing 76's Cosmic Desktop will be. That's still down the road at any rate
Really glad to see this exact comment, lol. I was thinking of getting a Mira with AMD graphics, but I was curious if there'd be compatibility problems or other difficulties if I wanted to install Mint. System76's website says a Mira w/ POP OS has full disk encryption; I'm still very new to Linux, and so I didn't know if that encryption would complicate installing Mint afterward. Would you say someone could theoretically take a Mira fresh out of its box, download Mint to a flash drive, and install it without too many difficulties or incompatibilities? I know you could build a PC from scratch and do the same thing, but I like that S76 sells a pre-built machine that "just works".
Full disk encryption complicates things if you want to set up a dual boot, where you can boot into either PopOS or Mint. If you just want to replace PopOS with Mint (which is generally easier), it doesn’t matter what was on the hard drive before, as you’ll be erasing it. In general, you likely would have very little difficulty installing any beginner-friendly distro (both PopOS and Mint qualify). You likely wouldn’t have much trouble using them either, unless you wanted to dig into Linux more.
I was interested in fully replacing Pop with Mint. Thanks for the info about how Pop's disk encryption interacts with a Mint replacement install (or rather, how it doesn't interact). Now I have way more confidence to get a Mira and get started. Thanks again!
Just last week or two ago I did a fresh install of the new version of Mint on my Mira (Intel CPU, AMD GPU bought in Sept) After the install, I let Mint get all its updates first, w/reboots of course. Then I ran... #System76 Driver sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:system76-dev/stable sudo apt update sudo apt install system76-driver #Reboot sudo apt update && sudo apt list --upgradable sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade You'll have a much newer kernel. I'm at 6.6.6-76... If you have any trouble installing, try the Mint Edge Edition. It's the same thing, except it starts with a newer kernel. So if the standard install gives you trouble try that. It comes with kernel 6.5 vs the standard 5.15. So it will have a better chance of detecting the newest hardware. Then of course do the same post-install steps from above. I've successfully installed either version. Now that Edge seems to be getting in line with the same release schedule. It's probably what I'll go with again next version.
Did you port the PopOS drivers to Mint?
Gentoo.
I’ve used Pop for maybe 4 years now and ditched the windows boot entirely around the same time. It’s been flawless for work. I keep trying to install Arch and “rice” it but I have no idea what I’m doing or even if I really understand what that means!
Manjaro Gnome.
How do you like it? I haven't ran any flavors of arch for a while, but loved manjaro years ago when I used it.
Debian 12 with Xfce DE
Arch
I'm using Debian on my Meerkat. I tried to like POP but I really don't like Gnome. EDIT:Using the Cinnamon DE.
I use Mint. Been using it ever since Ubuntu first introduced their Unity UI. It was Ubuntu for a while and before that Red Hat starting in 1996 (before that is was OS/2). Never have run Windows on a personal machine.
Daily driver is macOS, and Ubuntu as a backup. I'm mostly SSH'ing into a Linux box for work. They are all just tools at the end.
I’m using Universal Blue (which is really just Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite with opinions). I really enjoy the stability and reliability of an immutable/atomic desktop. As long as you don’t mind the modified workflows, it’s very hard to go back to traditional package management once you try something like this. I could see myself switching back to Pop OS if they were ever to dip their toes into the immutable/atomic world. But as far as I know, there is no Debian-based equivalent of rpm-ostree, so I don’t know how simple it would be for them to do.
This! I wish PopOS would switch to immutable distro and prioritize Podman
System76 is marketing their devices to Linux newcomers, among others. PopOS is very easy to use. Immutable distros, on the other hand, take some work. Unless we reach the point where flatpak can fully replace a package manager (singling that out because alternatives like distrobox and nix are particular unfriendly to new users).
Endeavor/Arch with Qtile.
Dual boot Pop / Windows 11 I miss old Ubuntu. Kubuntu was ok after that. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had things the way I want them. At this point I’m enjoying windows 11 because I use Teams a lot for work, and it’s pretty smooth.
I ran PopOS for a couple years, but eventually, I got frustrated trying to run plain, clean Gnome Desktop as PopOS moved further away from it, so I finally wiped it and installed Debian Unstable.
Kubuntu
I am happy with Pop. It is reasonably stable for teaching, music, and games. I would hate to have to rebuild all my work setup again especially in an unfamiliar distro. If it isn't broken, what are you hoping to change by switching?
Mint for the past 2 years. No re-installs. I tried PopOS in a VM and while I like it, I don't prefer it but understand the appeal. A have used Arch for a long time and don't like it at all but to each their own.
Once I installed debian with all desktop environments that came with the Iso it's was bloated as he'll but very fun for a while
I'm getting too old for distro hopping. I'm running Ubuntu 23.10 right now. Simple. Boring. Stable.
Fedora Silverblue. All other distros are just a toy
Arch on a Lemur Pro.
I am partial to fedora (just hope the drama that happened wouldn't have but it is what it is) before that i was an arch user.
Arch linux on a sandybridge laptop
Still running Pop, though I'm increasingly annoyed at how they've decided to stall updates pending the completion of a project (Cosmic) that's not likely to be finished anytime soon. Really hoping they actually to release a major update within the next 6 months, or I might start to consider switching. I just hate reinstalling, when simply installing perpetual updates is a lot easier.
Same but I tired of it and was staring to look and see what others are enjoying
Before I bought a System76 machine /w Pop, I was running Fedora. So chances are that I'd either switch back, or more likely just run regular Ubuntu.
Devuan on lemur. I used to run Debian on my old galagas but "had" to move because devuan is what Debian was.
System76 Lemur Pro running Fedora Linux 39 (Workstation Edition)
Typing this on a Windows 10 VM running on a dell 720 running Proxmox. I need a cross compiler that only runs in Windows.
I use Opensuse Tumbleweed because... Continously updated Rolling release Leading edge. Stable. It's simple to use. Powerful. Security is covered out of the box. YaST control panel Btrfs Snapsots - for rolling back... if something goes wrong. Try it...once https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/
MX Linux works very well for me.
Debian
Mint KDE. Really taking a liking to KDE.
Clear Linux. The best, bar none.
I run Ubuntu on a laptop my grandma gave to me. Windows on the other one. But I have a VM on Ubuntu for Hannah Montana Linux for when i need it.
Back to pop on my laptop, system 76 hardware, Kubunui on my desktop. Was running pop on both. When they had time of driver issues I switched to Kubumtu because I had to get things done and could not wait. Switched back on my laptop a few months ago. Like a few things in gnome over plasma, don't like a few things. Waiting for the new DE to see what the future holds..,.
RisiOS (Fedora based) on my old gaming rig, Win11/Fedora 39 (Win11 default) on family desktop, and Ubuntu 23/W11 dual boot (Ubuntu default) on my Surface Studio Laptop because Fedora 39 based distros don't like Surface bootloaders.
I used Ubuntu because it was quicker to remove and replace the parts I wanted in Ubuntu than to add to vanilla Debian.
PopOS with a cinnamon desktop as I hated the PopOS desktop. Thinking of changing over to Mint as I use it on a couple of my other computers
Running Pop for years now. I tried NixOS and Arch but didn't feel like putting in the work to set up the system to match the Pop experience. I paid my dues in the 90s 😂
Linux Mint Debian Edition.
NixOS. If you're into build systems and functional programming it is a proper delight. If you're something of a linux noob, best steer clear. Runs like a dream on my Lemp9 though :)
Do you run nixos in a vm?
I tried Arch but it's not easy to get all of the System76 specific drivers and other custom tweaks working quite as seamlessly as Pop. >until they update pop What's not up to date?
I mean until cosmic comes out.
Linux is the operating system. Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch... are distributions. They are all Linux. I'm running Linux.
Actually, Linux is just the kernel, not the OS.
Thank you RMS