Don't use single-maintainer distros
In linux spaces, you've likely encountered recommendations of the latest trendy distros. These distros are generally sold as "gaming" or "performance" versions of existing major distros. While there is sometimes merit to those claims, there are several things to keep in mind. This is especially true if you're a new user or making recommendations to new users.
Maintaining a distro is a major endeavour
A linux distribution, even when based on another distro, is a lot of work to maintain. There's good reason why RedHat can charge what they do for RHEL. They and other distro maintainers are providing long term support and maintenance for thousands of packages. Each of those packages with their own constant flow of changes and security vulnerabilities needing patches. Keep this in mind when examining a linux distro of your choosing. Ask questions like:
- How different is this distro from the distro it's derived from?
- How many maintainers does this distro have?
- How active are this distro's maintainers?
- Is it reasonable to expect the maintainers of this distro to be able to successfully manage the scope of the changes they have made?
Using these questions, especially the last one, you can narrow down eligible distros.
Maintainers bite off more than they can chew
Nothing but respect goes out from me to those who choose to undertake creating and maintaining a distro. There is a large ambition there in taking on big challenges, but it can be a double-edged sword. The same ambition that drives people to create distros can also lead to those distros expanding in scope. This can end up at a point where the scope of changes in the distro are so broad that the maintainers can't effectively maintain it. In other words, they end up biting off more than they can chew. This can be fine for their own systems, or even the systems of advanced users who are comfortable fixing problems themselves without support. However, it makes those distros poor candidates for the systems of new users.
Alternative Distros
| If you've been recommended: | Garuda, CachyOS, ArcoLinux | Nobara |
|---|---|---|
| Consider instead: | EndeavourOS | uBlue |
| Why: | EndeavourOS has a limited scope of changes, a clear and constrained mission, and a solid maintainer base. | uBlue is not a distro at all, but a set of pre-built images based entirely on Fedora silverblue and layered Fedora rpms. |