When comparing Chakra vs Pop!_OS, the Slant community recommends Pop!_OS for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distributions for desktops?” Pop!_OS is ranked 16th while Chakra is ranked 77th. The most important reason people chose Pop!_OS is:
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Focuses on KDE/Qt Apps
comes with none GTK apps per default
Pro Independent from Arch
its not just another Arch Spin-off
Pro Keeps Gnome apps tidier even than Gnome distros
Pro Pop! makes GNOME look really good
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Pro User-friendly installer
The visually appealing and easy to use installer makes dual booting as easy as it can be.
Pro Nice gnome theme dy default
Has nice gnome theme looks really good.
Pro Ready to play games, out of the box
If you still miss how easy it was to just click-install and play games in Windows, Pop! will give you that similar expectation.
Pro A separate NVIDIA version
Most linux distros seem to hate Nvidia's graphics cards e.g. Fedora and OpenSUSE. System76 have decided to be kind. They have decided to form a good relationship with Nvidia fans and Nvidia itself. By creating a separate installation media that is dedicated for providing support to Nvidia's graphics cards. Even going as far as putting Nvidia's driver updates on Pop!_Shop for users to easily access and install.
Pro Optimized for modern hardware
Whereas normally, to use a brand new computer with a Linux OS, you would typically try to use unstable and sometimes buggy drivers - or struggle without hardware support until a stable release comes along.
Pro Made by a hardware seller
System76 is a hardware company. It configures machines to ship with Linux pre-installed. This means its entire business model centers around delivering a quality desktop Linux experience.
As a result, the company pours more attention onto the desktop. It can fix visual issues and may be able to provide a smoother overall experience than you would have installing a different version of Linux on your machine yourself. Providing Pop!_OS also empowers System76 to make certain fixes for users directly rather than having to coordinate with Canonical or the broader Ubuntu community.
Cons
Con Weak base
Sometimes updates will not execute hooks(full update always misses to run mkinitcpio) so you get an unbootable system.
Con Small development team
The team is very small
Con No real installer
Has no installer just a big bloated LiveCD that gets unpacked to your disk.
Con Pacman
Compared to deb or rpm it takes ages to update the system, it's also very dumb in dependency tracking.
Con Unreliable Servers
The CCR or the community forums are often down or unreachable.
Con Overwrites your default EFI config
It overwrites your default EFI config wich can make you PC unbootable if something goes wrong.
Con Uses systemd
Which is very hard to debug and not a *nix standard.
Con Only available for x86-based CPUs
Con Wont let you install the system to USB drives
Chakras weak installer Calamares does not allow you to install it to a USB drive.
Con Weak update process to a recent release
For example, you can install the Goedel Release and update it to the current release which then fails to boot due to some systemd-errors.
Con 64-bit only
Some older PCs still have 32 Bit processors. This limitation will be a major con for those who use an older PC since they will not be able to install, run it in a VM or live media