What are the best independent Linux distributions?

Init-System:runit

Default Desktop Environment:CLI, XFCE, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, GNOME

A brand new package manager that is fast, full-featured, and tailored specifically for Void Linux. See More

Top Pro

XBPS (X Binary Package System)

Top Con

Not popular

Void Linux is not a popular Linux distro. So, if you run into a problem then it's likely you won't find any fix except from the maintainers. See More

WorthyPuhaorangi's Experience

I would not say it is any faster to boot up than Arch Linux and systemd is not a crook, just a modern alternative. See More

Top Pro

Runit init system

An init system with the "do one thing and do it right" mentality. Void Linux does not support systemd. See More

Top Pro

Very lightweight

Base installation can idle at less than 250 megabytes of RAM. See More

Top Pro

Rolling release

A single instance of Void will be supported forever without needing to reinstall. See More

Top Pro

Xbps-src

Xbps-src is a source packages collection which is pretty similar to FreeBSD's ports and may replace AUR for Void users. See More

Top Pro

Many packages

There are some packages in official repos, than may be found only in AUR. See More

Top Pro

Friendly forum

Unlike the Arch Forum, it is a friendly forum (although small). See More

Top Pro

Runit is fast and easy to configure

Runit init system is incredibly fast to boot and very simple to use. See More

Top Pro

Musl image available

Musl libc is lighter and faster than bloated glibc. Musl has been argued to be more secure overall than glibc also but is also not supported by all software. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use installer

Unlike it's closest competitor, Arch, Void includes a very user-friendly and simple installer in the ISO. See More

Top Pro

Different DE's live ISO's are available

Arch Linux doesn't make ISO's with different DE's. One need to manually install it through CLI version. But Void which is competitor of Arch, provides a wide range of DE's ISOs. See More

Top Pro

BSD-like improvements with Linux

Full support for LibreSSL, an OpenSSL fork focused on maximizing security. The xbps-src package builder works in a similar manner to BSD's ports collection. See More

Top Pro

Updated version of IceCat included in the default repositories

GNU IceCat is available and updated. See More

Debian offers stable and testing CD images specifically built for GNOME (the default), KDE Plasma Workspaces, Xfce and LXDE. Less common window managers such as Enlightenment, Openbox, Fluxbox, GNUstep, IceWM, Window Maker and others can also be installed. See More

score 12 · Answer 2

Debian GNU/Linux

Top Pro

Wide choice in desktop environments

Top Con

Stable release contains extremely outdated packages

If you want the newest packages, you'll have to do a minimal installation of Debian stable then upgrade to testing or you need to install testing directly. See More

PrivateHemera's Experience

The debian kernel is so old, my hardware could not recognize it. See More

Specs

Release Schedule:approximately every 24 months

OS Family:GNU/Linux

Release Type:Binary

Package Manager:dpkg (Debian Package Manager)

Debian has a Stable branch, where packages are thoroughly tested before release. Furthermore Debian is know to be the definition of stable when it comes to production systems. See More

Top Pro

Very stable

Top Con

Systemd is everywhere

Systemd is very hard to debug by itself, and can break in very strange ways (such as not being able to mount a single partition on bootup), but the increasing number of desktops that are relying on specific functionality provided only by systemd (policy kit, dbus, etc) makes the entire system more fragile and harder to debug. See More

Top Pro

Comes with over 55.500 packages

Because of its popularity, Debian has a lot of applications available which range from productivity programs to business software, games and development tools. It comes with over 55.500 packages (software that is precompiled and ready to be installed on a local machine) -- all of them for free. See More

Top Con

No good choices of fresh desktop environments

GNOME is quite outdated and buggy; KDE is too old, even in Sid it is at 5.14 branch (at Jun 13 2019 Plasma 5.16 is available in many rolling/fresh distros); XFCE behaves like crooked, visual artifacts at the taskbar and so on; Cinnamon as far as I know works better in Linux Mint compared to (almost) any other distro; For other desktop environments (e.g. MATE) can't say - these are too new (as projects) and possibly incomplete, thus might have many bugs. See More

Top Pro

Wide choice of hardware platforms

Debian has the widest choice of hardware platforms, including: amd64, armel, armhf, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-i386, kfreebsd-amd64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, sparc, s390, s390x, source, multi-arch. See More

Top Con

Running old software is dangerous...

Old browser versions have known vulnerabilities that can be exploited online... See More

Top Pro

Widely supported

Almost any software that is available for Linux provides a Debian package. See More

Top Con

Hard to learn

Top Pro

Strict separation of non-free software

Debian is one of the few distros that let the user choose if he wants a free system or not. See More

Top Con

Buggy and non-user friendly

You need to know almost as much as Arch and deal with documentation not as good as the Arch wiki in order for Debian to work. See More

Top Pro

Live install images for CDs, DVDs and USB thumb drives

Debian releases live install images for CDs, DVDs and USB thumb drives, for the i386 and amd64 architectures, and with a choice of desktop environments. These Debian Live images allow the user to boot from a removable media and run Debian without affecting the contents of their computer. See More

Top Con

Inconsistent init systems

While Linux uses systemd, non-Linux ports use the traditional sysvinit. See More

Top Pro

Easy to find help with any problem

Debian is one of the oldest and most popular distros out there. Debian's popularity means that you will always be able to find a solution for your problem just by searching on Google, or if by chance nobody has had the problem you are having it's very easy to ask the community and quickly get a solution. See More

Top Con

No default support for unfree drivers

Debian does not official support unfree software so if you have a wifi card or anything elese that requires an unfree driver you will need to download the unofficial/non-advertised non-free iso image which contains all unfree driver packages. See More

Top Pro

Standard vanilla Linux desktop

Debian runs standard Gnome, XFCE, KDE - it doesn't use its own special desktop environment or debian specific modifications or customisations, which means that users benefit from the work of the whole Linux community, Debian developers can focus on the distribution itself, and any support for your desktop environment on other distributions should work on Debian as well. See More

Top Con

Breaks if you suspend/resume

Breaks when you resume the activity on the system if you use nvidia cards. See More

Top Pro

The Debian Social Contract

Guaranteed commitment to adherence to values, principles, priorities, requirements and guidelines by the Debian project. See More

Top Con

Not designed for general desktop usage

By default, Debian Stable is not that great of a distro for general desktop usage, since the packages are very outdated. You'll have to spend a while configuring the system in order to make it work. See More

Top Pro

A lot of ways to install software

You can either use aptitude, apt or apt-build to install software from the Debian package archives. See More

Top Con

Ridiculous package splitting

Even though it makes sense to split devel and the actual binary of an application, the splitting has become as mess in debian and its derivates: for example the nvidia driver is splitted into over 40 different packages. See More

Top Pro

Big open-source project

The Debian project is one of the biggest open source projects with over 5000 active contributors. See More

Top Con

No choices

Debian basically doesn't give you any choices, even dpkg supports this feature with virtual packages: for example, it is very hard to use a different sound system than ALSA, like OSS4 or to use ALSA with pulse audio emulation, and the same goes for different init systems. See More

Top Pro

Supports SecureBoot

You don't have to disable SecureBoot if you use it, which is useful for LiveUSB or dualboot setups. See More

Top Con

Outdated kernel of the live system

Since the LiveCD is based on Debian stable the kernel is old, outdated but stable. See More

Top Pro

Install and forget

Once installed you can almost forget about it and start to use your desktop for your daily tasks. See More

Top Con

Internal quarrels harm the project

Instead of working all together to provide the best Operating System, some maintainers are just ignorant and aggressive to new ideas or new maintainers. That led to many crises and controversy in Debian's history. See More

Top Pro

Standard archives

Debs are normal ar and tar archives with shell scripting and additional gz, bz, lzma or xz compression. See More

Top Pro

Highly secure system

Known for being consistent in maintaining a highly secure system. Several other popular distros use Debian as a base or core for their own Linux OS, the security being one of the main factors why it's so commonly used. See More

Top Pro

Well-working team

The developer works very well so the the code is one of the best written out there. See More

Top Pro

Great for gaming

As Debian is the base for SteamOS and because Ubuntu is based on it, it's almost certain that all Linux games will run properly and require no hacks like creating symbolic links because of some hardcoded paths. See More

Top Pro

Many ports

Debian supports almost any Kernel maintained CPU instructions set. It has also a few non Linux Ports. See More

Top Pro

A real installer

Unlike other distributions that just extract their Live image, Debian offers a real traditional and modular installer to customize the installation. See More

Top Pro

Unique release cycle

The most Linux distros have one or two stages before a release, but Debian has five before a new stable version is released (experimental > unstable > testing > code-freeze/bug hunting > stable). See More

Top Pro

Rolling or Release based

Every Debian Release can either use a Rolling or Release based model. See More

Top Pro

Has small amount of today's bugs (e.g. no duplicate web cameras in Skype - likely not Skype's fault)

But has quite a few bugs from 2016-2017, apparently for long term. See More

Top Pro

Guix can be installed over it!

Top Pro

Apt-build

It is possible to rebuild the entire system and optimize it for your hardware (of course, it is not as detailed as Gentoo's USE flags). See More

Top Pro

Great choice for returning Linux users

If you haven't used Linux for a long time, say 5-10 years, it's a great distro in which you can quickly get in the boat again. You don't have to worry about falling back. Everything is in its place. See More

Top Pro

TUI installer

The Debian installer can still be launched as text/curses-like installer which is more compatible and keyboard-friendly than the graphical version. See More

Top Pro

Debconf

Depending how it is configured debconf does the most of the hard work for you and only asks you with configuration /file conflicts. See More

No need to worry about upgrading to next release or end of life, but it's stable See More

score 14 · Answer 3

Solus

Top Pro

Rolling release

Top Con

There is often a black screen after update

SmartMneme's Experience

solus is simple, light weight and got everything i need for daily use. i could install it in the usb drive and for convenience. very impressive in the first use See More

Specs

Based On:Scratch

Init-System:systemd

Package Manager:eopkg package manager (PiSi fork)

The system itself is very stable. All packages in the repository seem to be carefully picked, well prepared and run stable. See More

Top Pro

Stable

Top Con

There isn't much software to install

With eopkg as a package manager, there isn't much software that you can find in others such as deb, rpm, or even aur. See More

Top Pro

Modern desktop environment

The default desktop environment used by Solus is called Budgie and is quite nice and minimalistic. See More

Top Pro

Well curated software

The software is well curated in the repos, you have access to flatpaks and snaps, so virtually, all the software you'll ever need is there for you. See More

Top Pro

Rock-solid distro

Very stable and well curated. See More

Top Pro

Responsive

System boots quickly and stays responsive. Does what operating system should do, and does it really well. See More

Top Pro

Lightning fast boot time

Top Pro

Friendly towards proprietary codecs, firmware and drivers

So you won't have to enable PPAs or extra repos for that. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

The only community who values the newcomers. Very helpful community. See More

Top Pro

Default experience is clean and easy

The default desktop experience on the Budgie version is very clean and streamlined. Although the Budgie DE isn't the most customisable, but it's customisable enough for me to recreate the desktop style of ElementaryOS with the dock and bar at the top. See More

Top Pro

Friendly towards proprietary codecs, firmware and drivers.

So you won't have to enable PPAs or extra repos for that. See More

Top Pro

Most stable Rolling Release Distro

Top Pro

Easy installation

The installation procedure for this distribution is quite simple. It's GUI based and all you have to do is to follow the instructions given by the installation window itself. See More

Top Pro

Seamless packages

It may not have the most obscure packages, but the packages it does have is a good number of everything a Linux user needs. Gamers, developers, desktop users, etc. all have the necessary packages and then some. The packages themselves are integrated perfectly and are very well updated. See More

Top Pro

Exclusively for desktop systems

Top Pro

Great package management

The software center makes it really easy to install the latest software through Snappy and Flatpak. Including third party software. See More

score 13 · Answer 4

NixOS

Top Pro

No package dependecy hell

Specs

Init-System:SystemD

Release Schedule:Fixed

Package Manager:Nix

Top Pro

No package conflicts

Top Pro

Reuse configuration

Top Pro

Roll back updates

It is the default file system in Fedora. See More

score 6 · Answer 5

Fedora

Top Pro

Btrfs

Top Con

Dnf

While DNF is slow, there are improvements that can make it install and upgrade packages quicker. See More

Specs

Release Schedule:Point (6 Months)

Init-System:Systemd

Default Desktop Environment:GNOME

Fedora is backed by RedHat, the 2nd biggest Linux kernel contributor in the world. Using a distribution made by RedHat means that it will be fine-tuned to work as efficiently as possible since it's made by the same people who work extensively on the kernel and know its ins and outs. See More

Top Pro

Backed by one of the biggest Linux kernel contributors

Top Con

Wayland still needs to mature

Some apps and GNOME extensions don't work well under Wayland. Best to stick with X.org for now until it improves. See More

Top Pro

Spins and Labs

Spins are images with a different WM/DE, and Labs are filled with a specific theme of packages. See More

Top Con

Dnfdragora needs work

As the default package installer, this piece of software needs a lot more polish. It's not explicit in saying things are installed, more granularity in package selection is needed, and the ability to move columns around to see if you're installing the correct version. See More

Top Pro

Frequent updates to latest versions of software, so quick security and other bug fixes

Latest version software often means quick bug fixes, more useful features. For example, for a daily user of TeX, the latest TeX distro is a must. It's also useful to be able to use recent external hardware such as USB Wi-Fi dongles or printers. See More

Top Con

86'ed

Support for 32-bit architecture ended with Fedora Release 30. See More

Top Pro

Fast performance

Top Pro

Focuses on innovation

By using bleeding edge software, Fedora allows for innovation to take place by testing out things which other distros are not willing to try due to fears of having instability issues. See More

Most package maintainers look for issues that the packages might have ispecifically for arch. Which means if a package has a bug that applies to all Linux distros regardless of the flavor, the maintainer may not be able to: A) catch it before pushing a update or B) have to wait for the packages developers to fix it. This is a minor issue because most issues are often patched before the end of the day if many users rely on it, or if its a less used package there will be specific troubleshooting instructions on the arch site. See More

score 8 · Answer 6

Arch Linux

Top Con

Occasional upstream package bugs

Top Pro

A package for almost everything

If you need to install something, chances are someone in the Arch community has already made a package for it. This makes it incredibly easy for you to install and maintain all of the non-media content on your computer. See More

PrivateHemera's Experience

Systemd bloats it and slows it down See More

Specs

Init-System:Systemd

There's a new package called SystemdUI. It's a Shame, Arch is slowly becoming a small part of Systemd. See More

Top Con

Systemd UI

Top Pro

Cutting edge rolling release

Arch Linux follows a rolling release model, which allows users to stay on the most up-to-date versions of the software they are using. See More

Top Con

Manual install process

The installation requires a lot of manual intervention/decisions. See More

Top Pro

Excellent documentation

Arch's goal of simplicity means there's usually one preferred way to get things done - through organized and well documented configuration files. This focus, combined with the community's recognition that configuration files can be intimidating, has resulted in excellent documentation that's accessible to newcomers, and very instructive about how Linux actually works. The documentation is often so thorough that, when searching for solutions to problems while using other distributions, such as with video card drivers, oftentimes you'll find the most effective solution in the Arch Linux wiki or on the forums. See More

Top Con

Works only on AMD64

It is the only official supported instruction set of CPUs. See More

Top Pro

You actually learn a LOT of the inner workings of your OS

Since you do everything by hand and a LOT of it, you actually learn very useful things even for other distros. See More

Top Con

Requires some background with Linux and the command-line to setup

Going in with zero Linux knowledge is not really recommended when wanting to install Arch, though it can be a good learning experience for those that are dedicated to trial and error as well as reading many faqs. See More

Top Pro

Arch can be whatever you want

You just have to install and customize it. See More

Top Con

Instability can be an issue

Sometimes you can have a surprise, but in most cases it can be fixed quickly. See More

Top Pro

Helpful 3rd-party installers

There are extremely helpful 3rd-party installers such as Anarchy Linux (Formerly Arch Anywhere). See More

Top Con

Not for the faint of heart

You need to be very carefully with updates. See More

Top Pro

It is Linux at the core

This distro is barebones enough to make a new distro from. See More

Top Pro

Helpful for understanding how Linux is installed

Arch does not come with an automatic installation process. The user is expected to walk through the installation steps published on the Arch wiki. This is very useful if, later, something happens to the installation as the user will be more familiar with the foundational steps required to get a full blown Arch installation working. See More

Top Pro

Rolling updates

Updating will keep the whole OS up to date (unlike Ubuntu/Debian/etc. where occasionally you will need to perform major version updates). See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Tailor the system to your needs. See More

Top Pro

An opportunity to improve

The process of learning to setup and use Arch will improve your skills with Linux and computers in general. See More

Top Pro

Arch Linux Wiki

The Arch Linux Wiki is very useful not just for Arch Linux users, but for anyone who uses Linux. See More

Top Pro

No restrictive handholding, pure control over everything

Arch is mainly aimed at experienced Linux users, there is no hand-holding and not much in a way of UI elements when trying to install or tweak settings. See More

Since Bedrock lets you pick and choose the best parts from each distro, every single pro from each distro applies to Bedrock. See More

score 8 · Answer 7

Bedrock Linux

Top Pro

Virtually every pro from every linux distro

Top Con

Not handle everything

Atleast not yet... See More

zenobit's Experience

One meta-distro to rule them all... See More

Specs

Based On:N/A

Init-System:N/A

Release Schedule:N/A

Want Debian's stable base and Arch's pacman for bleeding edge packages? Want the security of Qubes OS and Gentoo's portage? With the correct setup all this can be achieved. See More

Top Pro

Pick and choose what you want from other distros

Top Con

Often increases boot times

Since Bedrock has to load the strata before handing control to the chosen init system, it can make booting your machine take longer. See More

DashingSeker's Experience

Truly a pleasant expreience See More

Top Pro

Choose your package manager

Top Con

Difficulty setting up

Bedrock can be challenging to setup properly with the correct strata. See More

Top Pro

Choose your init system

The core liveCD is only 35 megabytes. The boot-from-internet option fits on a floppy. See More

score 5 · Answer 8

SliTaz

Top Pro

One of the smallest distributions with desktop GUI

Top Pro

Very fast

score 8 · Answer 9

GoboLinux

Init-System:SysVinit + Bootscripts

Release Schedule:Point

Default Desktop Environment:Awesome

Especially Scheme, Guille, Elisp and Bash. See More

score 4 · Answer 10

Guix

Top Con

You need to have some knowledge

Top Pro

The easiest Linux distro to deal with

Easy, secure and fast. See More

PrivateHemera's Experience

The Best Linux Distro Ever See More

Specs

Based On:N/A

Init-System:GNU Shepherd

Default Desktop Environment:GNOME

OS Family:GNU/Linux

It is an extremely difficult distribution for beginners because it is not out of the box. It is a steep learning curve that is best suited for advanced users. See More

score 6 · Answer 11

Gentoo Linux

Top Con

Not suitable for beginners

Top Pro

Portage's emerge is powerful

Portage is a package management system with a huge amount of options and features. See More

Top Pro

Full control of the software

You build the package from a source you can see and read. You decide which features you want to build in and which aren't needed. You can choose build options, optimisation and whatever else fancy stuff you want modified. With a binary distribution this simply isn't possible. See More

Top Pro

Plenty of available optimization

Since everything is compiled from source, you can control how the compilation is done via one of Gentoo's most powerful features - USE flags. For example, if you won't be using IPv6, you can add the flag -ipv6 to your make.conf. Now, when you install a package with Portage, it will be compiled without support for IPv6, saving resources. See More

score 1 · Answer 12

Alpine Linux

Based On:LEAF Project

Init-System:OpenRC

If you install a package with dependencies and try to delete it after some time, you'll have to delete more packages than package needs, and apt-rpm is slow and seems like the development of it is dead. See More

score 1 · Answer 13

ALT Linux

Top Con

Broken dependencies and APT-RPM

Top Pro

Stable release and rolling release, have an alternative to ubuntu flavors

You can always move from stable ALT Linux release to Sisyphus, the rolling release version of distro. Also, if you don't want to install ALT linux with mate/xfce/KDE desktop environment, you can install an ALT starterkits with various DE's and init systems. See More

Specs

Based On:N/A

Init-System:Systemd

Release Schedule:N/A

Default Desktop Environment:KDE, Xfce

score 3 · Answer 14

Linux From Scratch

Init-System:SysV-init

Release Schedule:N/A

Default Desktop Environment:IceWM, spectrwm, Xfce

score 1 · Answer 15

Dragora

OS Family:GNU/Linux

Default Desktop Environment:FLWM

score 5 · Answer 16

Plop Linux

Add Video or Image

score 1 · Answer 17

Tiny Core Linux

Release Schedule:Point