I have always been discovering new things about Linux distros while distro hopping. And when I get something I really like, I just copy the package name and make sure I install it in every distro I use in the future.
Let me start:
- Clipboard manager (Gpaste)
- KDE connect
BTRFS snapshots like openSUSE and now also Fedora has it. I don’t want to use a distro without them anymore. Unfortunately, configuring them yourself is a bit more involved than just installing a package…
Everything NixOS (https://nixos.org) does. I am 99% sure that if anyone tries it out and gets comfortable with it they will never change again.
- Your configuration is written in code, it is therefore persistent. Do you know that annoying feeling of “oh shit, how did I configure x program that I want to install on this other machine”? Never again.
- You can wipe your machine and recover your config in no time. I have 3 machines working with the same config except for small variations. If I change the command to take a screenshot it changes in all of them. If I change my firefox bookmarks it is persisted accross them too. Its awesome.
- NixOS generates revisions of your config automatically. Ifyou change something and it breaks you can always use a previous version of your system that you know works to fix it.
- The Nix package repository is the largest (by far) in all the linux ecosystem. And, even if a package you want is missing, adding it yourself is not that hard.
I am probably missing other nice things, but those are awesome already. It’s true that the learning curve it a bit steeper than usual, but there is no distro quite like it and even for non coders you can get a lot out of it.
I’d probably say the vast amount of packages that can be installed via the AUR, but since the rising popularity of Flatpak, we’re getting incredibly close to this.
My next want would be having the ability to make your system declarative (at least, the initial config) in a fashion that NixOS and Guix do.
I would say AUR access with either Xfce or MATE as a default and first-class option for DEs. It’s hard to go to a distro without AUR access for a lot of what I use, doable, but hard.
@Owell1984 Having #vim and #tmux in liveOS should be standard practice.
I didn’t know about tmux. I haven’t heard much about it. What’s it’s purpose and what use would it have for a general user?
@Owell1984 @eshep tmux and Vim are the 2 things I return to every couple of years. I commit to using them everywhere so everything gets stuck in muscle memory and it all becomes second nature. And then I get sick of it and say screw that (for a year or two).
