this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Hey fellow Linux enthusiasts! I'm curious to know if any of you use a less popular, obscure or exotic Linux distribution. What motivated you to choose that distribution over the more mainstream ones? I'd love to hear about your experiences and any unique features or benefits that drew you to your chosen distribution.

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess SteamOS? It's immutable and... well runs on the SteamDeck which is pretty cool. I use it to play, obviously, but also to work. Love it.

[–] wolf@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Happy SteamOS / SteamDeck user here, too. SteamOS would be mainstream in my book. (Nonetheless, Valve did a great job with it, never experienced any problems with it and everything just works.)

[–] rentar42@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not to diminish what Valve has achieved there (it's an amazing PC/console hybrid, love mine).

But a smooth experience without any hitches is much easier to achieve when your hardware variation basically boils down to "how big is the SSD". The fact that all Steamdecks run the same hardware helps keep things simple.

I guess that's also the reason why they are not (yet?) pushing the new SteamOS as a general-purpose distribution for everyone to use. Doing that would/will require much more manpower.

[–] wolf@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

Good point and I agree 100%.

Funnily enough, I am looking forward to the Apple silicon distributions from Fedora etc., because the lack of hardware variation in the Apple ecosystem helps here, too. :-)