Mehrad, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux
The #Guix would be my nominee. It has some advantages compared to NixOS including:

1. Being rolling release

2. No need for Flake-style experimental stuff to add other repositories

3. Uses Guile Scheme for everything (package management, systemctl-like stuff, etc.) which I like way more than Nix syntax as Scheme is a real fully fledged language

4. It's a GNU project, so no proprietary dependency (of course you can add non-gnu repos to have any software you like)

Mehrad, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux
And just to add to the argument, here is advantages of NixOS:

1. It has much larger community

2. Has more software packaged for it

3. Contributing to Nix is as simple as creating a PR on Github, but in Guix you have to send patch through mailing list 🙄

4. Guix has no forum/discourse and all there is, is an IRC channel (which in my experience were very helpful)

5. There are already some tooling and wrappers available for Nix (like rix R package)

stfn, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux NixOS, because once a coworker gave us an hour and a half lecture on it, and I still did not understand how it works

thelinuxcast, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux I know it's not really non-mainstream, but openSUSE is my answer. It doesn't get nearly enough attention. Tumbleweed is astonishingly stable for a rolling release, it has a lot of software support, and the community is great.

ianp5a, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux
Solus!
Yeah, you'd forgotten about that one, hey?

anthropy, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux what would you count as non-mainstream? anything below Ubuntu level popularity? below Fedora level? below Arch? below Nix? Gentoo? OpenWRT? Puppy Linux? Hanna Montana Linux? 🤔

My personal fav distro is Fedora + KDE but I'm not sure if that's non-mainstream enough..

If we're talking about esoteric non-mainstream distros that aren't specifically aiming to be the biggest and best at anything or to be a specific tool, probably Puppy Linux, but e.g Linux From Scratch is also great 🧑‍🔬

5am, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux Kali Linux isn't necessarily the best but it's certainly an important one, so it deserves an honourable mention.

linmob, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux postmarketOS

NormanDunbar, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux Good question. And I unfortunately don't have an answer, I use @linuxmint and have done for years. On my old, sad, slow 32 bit laptop, I have LMDE which runs acceptably well.

I've heard that Puppy Linux is a good one, but I have no experience with it.

Have fun.

popey, 1 month ago

@LateNightLinux
Clonezilla. It's a dependable, up-to-date product that is very underrated. Does exactly what it sets out to do, and no more.