Learning to Use and Love Linux
Last edited 6 days, 5 hours ago
I've been using GNU/Linux (from now on referred to as Linux) for many years with a bit of "distro hopping" to learn and experience the vast array of options. If you go searching for the "best distro," you'll find plenty of opinions. And beyond that are all the flavors or spins for the various desktop environments and/or window managers which I'd argue is more important.
The current problem (which prompted the following research) is a desktop running an older spin of Ubuntu, Pop!_OS 22.04, that is making it difficult to run some newer window managers. Specifically, I've been using the scrolling-tiling Wayland compositor, Niri, on some laptops and love it.
Side note: Tiling window managers are not for everyone. They are primarily keyboard driven. If you like moving floating windows around with a mouse, stick with KDE or GNOME.
Pop!_OS 22.04 already has a tiling window manager option which is somewhat manageable/tolerable. They are also working on COSMIC as their new desktop environment and have been holding off on updates to the core until it is released. As of this writing, it's been in alpha for a long time and is scheduled for beta release on September 25, 2025. (The date doesn't matter. It's just for reference.)
What's wrong with most Linux distros
The rationale for Project Bluefin is a good starting point. "Why spend decades documenting workarounds when you can just remove the problem entirely!"
Some atomic distributions try to solve this in a particular way.
An atomic Linux distribution is a type of operating system designed with a read-only, immutable core system, meaning the fundamental parts of the OS cannot be easily modified during normal use. This design ensures the base system remains stable and protected from accidental changes, corruption, or unauthorized modifications. Updates are applied as a single, all-or-nothing transaction, known as an atomic upgrade, which replaces the entire system image at once during a reboot. If an update fails or causes issues, the system can instantly roll back to its previous stable state, preventing the system from being left in a broken condition.
However, in an atomic distribution, you're basically stuck with whatever desktop environment or window manager they package. I still need to learn more and figure out workarounds / best solutions. It looks like a promising path forward though.
NixOS comes at it from a different angle.
NixOS solves fundamental problems in system administration and software dependency management by providing a purely functional, declarative operating system.
NixOS also solves the problem of reproducible environments. By declaring the entire system state—packages, configurations, services, and user settings—in a single, version-controlled configuration file, it becomes trivial to replicate the exact same setup on any machine by simply cloning the configuration repository and running a single command.
But with NixOS, you have to learn a whole new declarative language. The documentation is all over the place and hard to decipher. For instance, people still argue over whether flakes are the future or if they should be used at all. (They've been marked as experimental since the dark ages...or maybe 2021.)
blendOS
Arch Linux made declarative, immutable and atomic. With Android app support and Fedora, Debian, CentOS Stream and Ubuntu containers available, as well as system packages/DEs/kernels from Arch Linux and the AUR.
Seems to do what NixOS does but using Arch for initial packages and a much simpler declaration file. Because it uses Arch and AUR at build, it's fairly simple to change window managers and reboot. Sounds almost too good to be true but not quite as baked as Fedora Atomic or microOS.
Aeryn OS - "Beyond the distro model"
That’s exactly what we’re planning to do. In a similar vein to Gentoo or Nix, the intent is a global file to explicitly state the desired state of the system, whilst the tooling will simply fulfil it based on the moss plugin cascade.
Hopefully this becomes a better version of what Nix and NixOS intended.
What happens next?
One thing is certain, I love using Linux. Windows is in an atrocious spyware state while Linux allows much more fine tuning with little to no drawbacks. Many distros cater to newcomers from Windows and Mac.
For myself: I'm not sure but will update this space when I get there. Right now I have Manjaro (Arch based) on two laptops with the Niri window manager, NixOS on one laptop, and the aforementioned Pop!_OS that needs updating. I like the idea of moving away from release cycles permanently (Ubuntu 25.04, Fedora 42, etc). They become stale and will have package management and dependency issues eventually. In that regard, I also see myself moving away from rolling (Arch) towards atomic or maybe Aeryn once it is more hashed out. Ideally, I'd like to run something like Bluefin but with COSMIC+Niri or DankMaterialShell. I may be better served starting with Fedora COSMIC Atomic and adding cosmic-ext-extra-sessions or just rolling my own thing.
Update 9/30: I'm running Fedora Silverblue with PaperWM and Switcher extensions. So far I'm happy and consider it a huge upgrade over Pop!_OS.
For my parents: Fedora Aurora from universal blue looks promising and easy to maintain.
For gamers: Bazzite from universal blue.
Other resources: https://github.com/Malix-Labs/Awesome-Atomic https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-coreos/getting-started/