I’ve been distrohopping for a while now, and eventually I landed on Arch. Part of the reason I have stuck with it is I think I had a balanced introduction, since I was exposed to both praise and criticism. We often discuss our favorite distros, but I think it’s equally important to talk about the ones that didn’t quite hit the mark for us because it can be very helpful.
So, I’d like to ask: What is your least favorite Linux distribution and why? Please remember, this is not about bashing or belittling any specific distribution. The aim is to have a constructive discussion where we can learn about each other’s experiences.
My personal least favorite is probably Manjaro.
Consider:
- What specific features/lack thereof made it less appealing?
- Did you face any specific challenges?
- How was your experience with the community?
- If given a chance, what improvements would you suggest?
Ubuntu: It’s not a lack of features that pushed me away; it’s more about the way things are going. I am not a fan of snap packages. I have run into odd issues trying to use them. I used Ubuntu server for my Dell Poweredge and I shut it down until I can find a suitable replacement. I struggled with it respecting my DNS settings which in turn killed my reverse proxy setup.
Manjaro: While I love Arch and some of its derivatives, I can’t stand by Manjaro. I thought it would have been a good OS to use since I was familiar with Arch, but it had enough dependency issues where updates broke them. Funny enough, never have I had a dependency issue with just plain old Arch.
I use Arch btw. But besides the meme on it, I legitimately eo use arch and couldn’t be happier.
Same. Both started out good but kept becoming more and more… not good. If nothing else Manjaro taught me how to chroot from a live distro to fix catastrophic failures. Ubuntu really ruined my week when they decided to try becoming a smart phone with the very touch centric looking UI at the time when I didn’t have time to revert or change distros, which is what finally pushed me to run servers headless and use ssh. Last I tried none of the phone like de’s are particularly intuitive as touch interfaces either.
I use KDE on Arch on my Lenovo Yoga 7i, and I don’t particularly use the touchscreen as much as I would have thought. Though for Waydroid it does work fairly nicely.