this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Help me choose a distro (piefed.blahaj.zone)
submitted 19 hours ago by akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I have literally never whined about distros before. I went through some Debian based ones, some Arch based one and also installed a base version of Gentoo.

I am most fond of Arch, but after trying Artix, I found that I'm more comfortable with OpenRC as init and process management.

In addition to the latest Artix making my NIC unrecognized by the OS, the Artix forums also seem to house at least some transphobia. This is as good as any opportunity for me to finally ask the question to the world wide web:

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T480 on which I want to use mpv to play video. What Linux flavor do you recommend for a non desktop setup? I looked briefly at Slackware, but it seemed somewhat prepackaged, as opposed to configured by me.

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[–] akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

But what is it that you like about Arch in the first place? The ability to keep it small and customize from there. Going basically kernel + base (which includes some packages I remove afterwards anyway).

Like, do you want to limit your options to distros that are well supported by OpenRC? Or, is this simply a preference kind of thing? I'm not well versed enough in OpenRC to understand what a distro that has "bad" support for it looks like, but I did find it easy to understand it's layout/directories and the syntax of its scripts.

Do you want to engage in distro-specific forums or was your engagement in there mostly out of necessity? I was investigating whether a certain thread had been closed to the public, requiring sign-up, or not.

Excellent, so you’re a builder/tinkerer that prefers a clean slate to work from. Yes. Litterally, give me CLI and I'll take it from there. xD

[–] throwaway403@programming.dev 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Alright, excellent. Thank you for the reply!

So, IIUC, you want a clean slate. Furthermore, you want plenty of tinkerability. And, finally, OpenRC enjoys a preference.

Still, I want to limit our search (for now) to (relatively) upstream distros on which OpenRC is known to work pretty well. We have to start our search from somewhere and this seems to be the most sensible starting point at this point.

If you've dismissed Artix, that basically leaves us (in alphabetical order) with:

  • Alpine
  • Debian
  • Devuan
  • Gentoo

IIRC, most (if not all) of these offer very minimal images. So, hopefully you'll enjoy those.

Thankfully, these are meaningfully different from eachother (for the most part). So choosing between these shouldn't be too much to ask.

FWIW, Gentoo comes undoubtedly with the least amount of defaults and thus behaves the most like a blank slate.