Packages are out of date even in the unstable branch (I know it’s unfair since it’s not trying to be a rolling release… but… but…)

Sure, some packages are outdated. But in terms of percentage of up-to-date packages, it’s (AFAIK) the best out of any distro repo. And that’s perhaps even more impressive of a feat when realizing it also sports the biggest repo. For actual stats: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/pnewest

I wish you the best of luck at/with whatever you end up doing! May your system be protected from bit rot, config drift and/or problems caused by hidden state!

Thank you! I’m looking forward to what y’all are cooking for us.

Immutable structure creates difficulties for customization (more applicable to desktop systems than handhelds/custom consoles).

FWIW, it seems that 2/3 of Bazzite’s user base uses it (primarily) as a game console anyways.

My apologies fam for not being able to help out much (if at all) 😅. FWIW, for related~ish reasons, I intend to explore the waters of NixOS within a couple of weeks. What are your plans?

Alright, I very much appreciate you for sharing those articles; it allows me to get into the nitty-gritty of things. Thank you!

As someone who champions the (ongoing) paradigm shift towards atomic/declarative/immutable/stateless systems, I can’t but admire the effort to (IIUC):

• Have changing the base of the system without requiring a reboot as a first-class design goal that’s well supported (unlike Fedora Atomic)
• Employ a hash + store system that doesn’t require forsaking the FHS nor enforces a DSL (unlike NixOS)
• Accomplish the above on a long-standing independent project, so that we can (on one hand) trust the longevity of the project AND (on the other hand) know that it isn’t actively resisting its upstream (unlike many other smaller projects, some of which are found here)

While glancing over the many articles, I couldn’t really find anything related to declarative system management. Is this something the project intends to tackle eventually?

This sounds pretty exciting. Thank you so much for your continued contributions!

In the future the plan is for Solus to use AerynOS tooling and on their side development is going rapidly.

Should I interpret this as Solus going ‘immutable’? Or is it something else?

Apologies for the late response. And this is probs not what you’d like to hear. But I’ve heard some industry veterans refer to this as an inevitability of the ‘old’ model. I believe a radical approach is required to prevent this from happening the next time. Wish ya good luck fam!

Fam, with all due respect, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you’ve ‘properly’ engaged with my previous reply. Don’t get me wrong, it’s your absolute prerogative to disregard/move-on/disengage/let-go especially if you’re already moved on. The daunting task to read a wall of text concerning a subject you’ve internally closed/‘solved’ ain’t everyone’s cup of tea anyways. The reason I’ve brought this up, is because most of how I would respond to your latest reply is already contained within my previous reply 😅. As such, I will refrain from reiterating what I’ve said before for the sake of brevity. Instead, I’ll try to strictly address the unaddressed. I’ll also take the liberty to assume that you’re not a fan of consuming long-form content. This will also be reflected in the remainder of this reply.

my phrasing gave everyone else enough information that they could just suggest a distro

Suggesting a distro ain’t hard; CTRL + click here consecutively to get a random stream of distros. Even if we would limit it to the union of gaming distros with (semi-)rolling release distros, there’s a lot to choose from. As such, mentioning what’s out there ain’t impressive. But expertly navigating between them sure as hell is.

Granted, suggesting a (new) distro wasn’t even the objective. You wanted comparisons… Or, rather, I assumed you did.

CachyOS was baremetal on my machine.

It would probably have saved us both a bunch of trouble if you had been transparent/explicit about this. I can’t read your mind nor do I like to assume stuff.

but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you.

They’re all gaming distros, dude. I felt like that was evident.

Please allow me to clarify that it wasn’t entirely clear why these gaming distros were specifically selected, while others like CachyOS, ChimeraOS, DraugerOS, Jovian-NixOS, PikaOS and Regata OS were not.

I’m sorry this whole post discussion has not gone the way you wanted

Fam, I got literally no stakes in this discussion. Apologies if I made you uncomfortable (or something) by making you think otherwise. I was merely in it to help/assist/support/aid you to the best of my abilities. For this, I required more input so that I wouldn’t have to succumb you under multiple walls of text. I didn’t think asking you to answer “could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place? Please, if possible, be explicit.” was unreasonable. But perhaps I was wrong.

but it’s gone the way I wanted. And I believe I’ve found something that works for me.

I sure hope so, fam. I wouldn’t want to see you return with your tail between your legs.

I’ve installed it through secureblue’s ujust script. I think this has been the smoothest experience I’ve had with it on Fedora Atomic.

Previously, I relied on the wireguard profiles I downloaded from ProtonVPN and which I loaded through NetworkManager. While it definitely worked, it was a hassle to redo it every now and then. Furthermore, switching on the go to something else I hadn’t loaded already was never an experience I enjoyed doing.

Though, for completeness’ sake, ProtonVPN^[1] hasn’t fixed its IP leakage on Linux. And, to my knowledge, the workaround is only available with access to the wireguard profiles. And thus, the cumbersome method actually offers a very tangible merit over the comfortable one.

Finally, while I don’t endorse the use of NordVPN, it’s the only other VPN that’s installable as a sysext. Note that systemd system extensions are still experimental, though. Even if they’ve (read: N=1) been reliable to use for me.

Tekte türkçe konuştuğumu bildin.

Ee, ne demişler: Tek akıllı sen değilsin 😉.

Immutable dağıtımlardan birini şu an ki Fedora KDE ile dualboot edeceğim

Eyv, ama dikkat et, o iş biraz karışık bir mesele. Şu bulduğum iki kaynağa mutlaka başvur ki güzelim sistemin b*k uğruna güme gitmesin.

yoksa beni bir yerden tanıyor musun?

Yoo. Sadece “Bu eleman hangi distro’yu kullanıyor acaba?” diye merak edip profiline göz atınca fark ettim ki… meğer babacan Türkiyeliymiş.

İçimden, “Bunca lafın üzerine kankim asaletine yakışanı yapar da bir teşekkürü esirgemez herhalde,” diye düşünmüştüm. Ama maalesef, Türkiyeli olması hasebiyle daha level atlayamamış 😂. Olsun, demek ki henüz kalkınma vakti gelmemiş 🤣.

Apologies for the ‘spam’, but I was afraid editing my previous message would be in vain. If you desire/crave for decent documentation, then Bazzite deserves another endorsement. While its documentation isn’t as expansive as the excellent ArchWiki, it should be more than able to answer your questions.

Secondly, if you happen to come across an issue that has been painstakingly difficult to resolve, then please consider consulting its many community channels for support. There’s a Discourse, a Discord and an AnswerOverflow. So pick your poison 😉. FWIW, I’ve always had great experiences on their Discord.

Excellent choice fam! However, as much as I adore Fedora Kinoite, it might not provide the best onboarding 😅. If you’re fine with that, then please feel free to go ahead and embark on your journey. However, I would suggest you to at least look into uBlue’s offerings:

• All operate within the paradigm of providing a so-called “batteries-included” product. So, going through the whole mumbo jumbo of RPM Fusion’s Howtos to see what’s relevant for you to apply and painstakingly waiting for them to be applied can be skipped.
• Furthermore, based on your precise needs, you can choose to adopt more opinionated variants:
  • Aurora is their general use KDE variant
  • Bazzite, on the other hand, is their game ready variant that defaults to KDE
• Or, if you prefer a minimal installation, you can choose to install their base images instead. These basically offer Fedora’s images (including Kinoite) with the absolute minimal of hardware enablement and other essential uBlue goodies.
• If you are a system crafter at heart, then perhaps you’re more attracted towards creating your own bootc image. This can be achieved by uBlue’s own image-template OR through the community-effort in BlueBuild.

Regardless, fam, enjoy! And please consider to report back on your findings 😉! I would love to read your adventures of venturing the exotic waters of Fedora Atomic 😊!

Sure fam. This is actually a situation that might come up a lot. Basically any instance of dependency hell caused by conflicting dependencies would be resolved if two different versions of the same software could coexist.

• Peeps that are maintaining packages probably have to deal with this every once in a while as well. Especially if the packaged software relies on some very niche (and possibly questionable) dependencies*. To point towards one of the most openly discussed cases of this, consider watching this video by Brodie in which the takedown of the unofficial packages of Bottles is being discussed.
• E.g. whenever one tries to compile software themselves OR install/use them as/from binaries/tarballs.
• E.g. installing packages as PPAs or other third party repositories (like e.g. the AUR) can also come with dependency hell and are often the reason why breakage occurs.

Q: Would a normal system (read: I’m not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?

A: No. This is literally unsupported.

Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?

I will agree with you that Desktop Linux leaves a lot to be desired from a security perspective. But, I’m not sure if these are its biggest problems.

Not all distros ship SELinux and the ones that do, don’t actually configure it securely.

Is SELinux employed on Desktop Linux the very same way we find on Android? Unfortunately, no. So, there’s definitely a ton of mileage to be had here. But, there’s literally nothing that stops you from making a fortress out of it. So, the ones that are intimately familiar with SELinux will leverage it to perfectly suit their needs. Which, is the only truly sensible way one should use SELinux to lock their system. Being dictated by the defaults set by the distro is only a counterproductive exercise of comparing/contrasting threat models.

New users are expected to keep copying and pasting commands from their browsers to their terminal which compromises some Linux security defenses.

They’re absolutely not expected to do so. What makes you even think that’s the case?

KDE, GNOME and Sway are the only functional Desktop Environments/Window Managers that support Wayland all, while the Other DEs are not even close to shipping with Wayland.

This is your best point. I agree that other DEs should haste in supporting Wayland. Though, at least I find solace in GNOME and KDE Plasma being the most used DEs/WMs to begin with. Hence, even if only those two would support Wayland, we would still have allowed over half of Linux’ users to choose Wayland.

Most if not all of the Linux Distros in 2025 ship with Grub bootloader, which suffers from a lot of problems, instead of using the bootloaders that does not support BIOS and will improve the reliability of booting and provide a more stable experience.

Sorry, I’m not familiar with this problem/issue. Would you please be so kind to explain why I (or anyone else, for that matter) should worry about this? Like, what “problems” are we talking about? How is (allegedly) GRUB not reliable or stable compared to the others?

Btw, just curious, what are your thoughts on secureblue?

First of all, thank you for that response!

Do you think I am using this thread and this thread alone as my only source of information on these distros?

No, I don’t think that. I’d even challenge that notion as your query didn’t start with a simple “What’s best?” but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you. Please feel free to enlighten me on what made you even consider the premise of your above question. Though, as this is not that important to begin with, it’s also perfectly fine to ignore that 👍.

I feel as though this thread has delved into the essence of the matter perfectly well. That matter being, of course, people’s opinions on the three distros I laid out.

If you lay it out like that, then; yeah, surely. However, it seems we fundamentally differ on what the essence of the matter is. And, perhaps I’m at fault for thinking this is a beneficial exercise to begin with. Regardless, I feel I at least owe you an explanation that goes over where I’m coming from:

Fundamentally, literally none of your original three distros serve you well for the purposes of “I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize”. Each one is pretty opinionated (by default^[1]) and -heck- both Bazzite and Nobara come with (highly) specialized tools required for system maintenance. This is because they’ve identified that there’s a very serious disconnect between the freedom they’d like to allow their users and the (otherwise almost insurmountable) complexity this adds to how upgrades are managed. Bazzite trusts Fedora Atomic’s tooling for this, while Nobara has created their own.

Being (highly) opinionated isn’t necessarily bad. But it’s undeniably easier to tweak/tinker/configure a more minimal system. Hence, you’re better served by a lean install (with sane defaults). Thankfully, community members either recognized this and tried to sway you towards other options. With success*. Or, you were able to discern distros that better serve you from the communities’ input. However it may be, both CachyOS and Solus are definitely better in that regard. Though, crucially, if the community strictly kept to discussing the original three distros and didn’t go out of their way to venture into unexplored waters, then you wouldn’t have arrived where you are right now.

Anyhow, all of the above could as well be disregarded the very moment you (hypothetically) state that your idea of customization is limited to the avenues KDE Plasma offers. Because, the original three are perfectly suited for that. So, your ideas on what tweaking/tinkering/customization entails is fundamentally linked to the distro that’s most fit for the job.

And thus, I would distill the essence of the matter to be a clear idea on what kind of balance between “stability” and “customization” is envisioned as desirable by you. And, while at it, proper delineations of what is and isn’t understood as stability and customization. Is the requirement of stability only satisfied if you can easily rollback to a proper working state? Or, is borking on a random update simply unforgivable? On the other hand, do you really want to compile your own kernel and install it? Or were you merely interested in KDE’s knobs? Etc. etc.

and start an in-depth discussion

Not necessarily, answering “Or…, like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place?” would probably have been sufficient.

something I can crack open and break while tweaking - for the learning experience

There’s so much we could go over in the paragraph the above text is found, but I’ll instead limit myself to just the above text. I find myself in a conundrum when you present that the above was implied and that (somehow) you came to consider Bazzite. While Bazzite is a lot more customizable than people give it credit for, I would not describe any part of the experience as “cracking it open”. So, when met with an oxymoron as such, I literally have to ask for a clarification.

Fedora has lost my favor due to being a fixed release distro.

You’ve stated somewhere that you “Love the idea of rolling releases”. So, if Solus passes as a rolling release distro ^[2], but has less uptodate packages than Fedora’s previous release^[3]. Then, what is it intrinsically that makes it favorable as a rolling release? And I haven’t even delved into why Fedora’s release cadence is referred to as semi-rolling or how the latest updates to packages like GNOME arrive earlier in Fedora compared to even Arch. Btw, this is not meant as one big advertisement for Fedora. Instead, I want to point out the many many nuances that exist within the Linux landscape.

After CachyOS was brought to my attention, and I researched it a little bit, it seemed to fit my desires pretty well. It’s optimized for speed, which is perfect for games, and it’s rolling release so I still get to feel like an uber haxx0r.

But, I think I’ll stick with CachyOS for now, I’m excited to use Arch btw.

I agree that CachyOS is one of the better fits. And if you’re not interested to check out Arch, EndeavourOS or openSUSE Tumbleweed(/Slowroll), then I can’t even think of another rolling release worth considering for you.

I love that it’s a small team.

I don’t know why this would be preferred over a big team 🤔. Mind helping me understand this?

Btw, to be clear, Solus, as a project, is currently not very healthy. While it could compete with Fedora and openSUSE in the past, the last couple of years haven’t been very kind to it. I’d propose the idea that the departure of its founder (i.e. Ikey Doherty) from the project has left it (relatively) visionless. And the turbulent times that followed made nurturing its community a great challenge. One, I’d argue, they weren’t able to handle gracefully. Regardless, it’s undoubtedly a shell of its former glory. This is also reflected by how relatively bare-bones its repository is. Or how absent it is within the discourse. Hopefully it will be able to bounce back after goodies from Doherty’s latest project (i.e. AerynOS) trinkle down to benefit Solus. But, until then, it would be very irresponsible of me if I didn’t discourage you from daily-driving it…

the performance will take a hit

This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.

I suppose that’s fine, and please feel free to act however way you wish.

The fact remains, however, that no one actually delved into the essence of the matter.

Furthermore, I find it rather troublesome that you deflected the question rather than answering it head-on. Perhaps you didn’t think it through yet, and are just waiting to be swayed by whoever advertises best.

To illustrate my point, would you (at least) be so kind to explain me where/why Fedora has lost your favor? While, on the other hand, what Solus provides (in contrast) to justify your interest in it?