This month I was done fafoing with Linux until gone insane, missing the sun and sleep deprived. So here is the showdown, the opinionated conclusion for human to choose:
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If you want to use Linux as a normal human being, everything works, safe, ready to game & dev:
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Choose a distro from Universal Blue: Bazzite for gaming or Bluefin for workstation.
- It’s based on Fedora Atomic derivative, but better for user experience.
- The best immutable and imperative/normal system.
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If you want to use Linux for optimization and performance, easy to use, Arch without the “Arch btw”: choose CachyOS.
- The optimization is unreal: i game at 120 fps without stutter.
- The configuration and user experience is good for mere mortals.
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If you want to use Linux to be as a fancy hacky user, get easy taste of the window manager workflow, the nerd way to use Arch without sacrificing everything from the beginning:
- Choose Omarchy.
- The user experience is smooth for introducing window manager (Hyprland) and the fancy way to do things.
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You’d better try TailsOS on your flashdrive.
- It’s the perfect place to practice safer computing, to use the internet with security and privacy in mind.
- Or if you’re ultra paranoid, use QubesOS.
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If you want to experiment with Linux without installing, ready plug and play:
- Use a virtual machine image from OSboxes.
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If you want to go declarative, shift your computer experience, like to tinker, and have a systems thinking approach:
- Choose NixOS.
- Or install Nix package manager on your distro of choice.
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If you want to go nerd, niche, “I’m built different” the ones many refer to as “systemd free”:
- For the imperative approach: Void, Artix, Devuan, etc
- For the declarative approach: Guix (it’s the perfect place if you like Lisp & Emacs).
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If you want everything from scratch, to build and compile yourself:
- Choose Gentoo,
- Or go fullblown Linux From Scratch.
Now I’m using NixOS with the Flake approach as my main host system. Apart from any noise on the internet, I find pure excitement and enjoyment in its design. I feel excited just looking at the whole system as a configuration blueprint.
- I operate my NixOS with an AI agent connected to the MCP-NixOS server. I tackle scattered source documentation with NotebookLM, it helps me understand and troubleshoot the system 10× easier.
- I switched the kernel to Cachy, the gaming experience is as smooth as barebone Windows.
- I run software like DaVinci Resolve (not as smooth in Windows), Blender, local AI, and I can install different versions of software and dependencies all at once.
- For the desktop I simply use KDE as the main environment, since everything just works.
- Further, I like to experiment with Hyprland and the Quickshell panel.
- It feels futuristic to me.
NixOS is not for everyone, especially for daily driving use cases, but I’m crazy unemployed, I use it for daily driving, I’m not recommending it to mere mortals who want their computer to just work immediately. It’s for the person who does not seek convenience.
Just by using NixOS I’ve learned about devops, sysadmin, understanding my system as infrastructure that can be put into almost anywhere, learning functional programming, overall learning how to do computers better.
Reproducibility is not my core reason for using Nix, I like to think about creativity, clarity, sustainability, and incremental improvement, it answers my wonder to “What if I use and learn this operating system for the next decade?”
That’s it, hopefully that will help someone lost out there.
I’m pretty sure one month of stumbling through this Linux abyss can open a more exciting future. My dose of hopium justifies the effort to waste time, it just feels pleasure man.
For now, w-well… it’s not entirely stable, but it does what it’s supposed to, which is… lmao