Support me, Get Merch! shop.thelinuxcast.org 0:00 Intro 1:31 Our Week in FOSS 1:55 Tyler's Week in FOSS 6:02 Matt's Week in FOSS 18:54 Linux Distro Tier List 1:27:30 Nuggies of the Week 1:27:54 Tyler's Nuggie of the Week 1:29:27 Matt's Nuggie of the Week 1:32:23 Contact Info and Goodbyes

This was a hilarious disaster in retrospect.

Linux Mint should be A tier, simply because of the amount of people they bring into the Linux world, me included. They also do a lot to add the community by working on their Cinnamon desktop and other projects like Timeshift that add to Linux world as a whole. Now with the inclusion of LMDE development, basically Debian for Newbs is just awesome. I just love their whole philosophy and you can't argue that it's got to be one of the most polished and stable systems out there.

Nix and Pop! being in A tier are crimes. But Mint being B tier is a war crime. It is easily the best debian-derivative distro along with MX for a lot of reasons, but the man behind Mint is based to say the least

The best linux distro is the one that makes you feel like at home. Your house, your little digital house. My first serious go at distro was Arch Linux. And I loved it, because I was following Muta (SomeOrdinaryGamers) walkthrough and ended up built a system for myself, the joy was almost like when I built my rig on my own. But the constant attention to maintain the distro, and chance that things might break and I was so spoiled by Windows so I can't be bothered to fix it, and reinstalling is a long journey, prompted me to hop. OpenSUSE and Fedora Silverblue, great distro but I was not at ease because both have deep ties to the enterprise. And then came Void Linux. Easier to install than Arch with the XFCE iso, I learned how to partition the drive too so it was easy. I also like XFCE minimalism. Manual maintainance is still require but I'm ok with that, and Void is break-resistant compare to Arch. Finally I found what I want: A distro that is: non-reliant, independent (Void doesn't rely on systemd nor an enterprise), minimalist (even with XFCE iso still less packages than OpenSUSE or Fedora out of the box), not likely to break during an upgrade like Arch, plus Void allows partial upgrades without breaking the system, in Arch it is always full upgrades each time, and you want to extend it functionalities, you have to go find the packages or flatpacks for it. I am spoiled by 6 years worth of Windows, I use VS Code. Now on Void I can run Rust code in Geany.

After installing debian 12 i just forgot anything else exists. Not single crash or error message. Pure class

I really can't believe you didn't even have Puppy Linux in your icons! Puppy got me into linux for real. It served the same purpose that Tails does today. The big thing for me was that I could have a live CD that would boot into RAM and my userspace was portable. It allowed me to learn without pissing off my parents by wiping their computer.

After spending years honing my skills on gentoo, now using MX, and that is one well managed distro.

I was just watching one of your older vids, was gonna comment asking for a tier list cause you've looked over so many distros, then BANG here it is

Pumped for this one! :) Keep up the great work.

Also going to post this here, if I were to do this again, I'd argue for Arch to be higher. That's definitely one I wish we had back. So don't kill us Arch fans. It's a great distro.

I have spent very little time messing with init systems. Did removing systemd provide any upstream value in abstracting things that would otherwise have remained hard-coded to systemd? If so, then said "protest distro" could have some utilitarian purpose. And possibly having a distro dedicated to that decision could be more useful than just having an unpopular config option in a different distro.

I enjoyed this. Absolutely hilarious. Hard to take it too serious when the criteria was amendable in application. A tiered distro list is pretty much impossible.

Tyler, thank you very much for the wiki you wrote. I hope that copilot, openai, google bard .... will read it.

FYI almost none of our tools have anything to do with systemd. in fact, we go out of our way to make sure that systemd and sysVinit are supported.

For me S tier will always be reserved for independent distribution. They are foundation for every other distro. So S tier would be Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, Slackware, Gentoo, NixOS etc. Everything below is just personal preference based on hardware support, software availability, community, documentation quality, and level of tinkering desire.

Hi Matt & Tyler, Thanks for your Video. I've been laughing aloud quite time! I love your attitude, knowledge, free without compromised talking, joyfulness... Can't give opinion about distro Tier cause ain't on your level Been a pleasure. Thanks again!

20:50 Nobara worked wonders on my hybrid laptop right from the beginning. No additional configuration needed, and Glorious Eggroll really cares about not releasing unstable packages.

Fedora is solid as a rock. And it´s pushing Linux forward. Clearly an S-tier.

Pop_OS didnt work out of the box for me on an Acer / Intel laptop. Touch pad was very glitchy and unusable.

Manjaro is getting so much hate from every corner and it's true that the Manjaro team have messed up several times, but from my perspective, the fact remains that Manjaro has just been the slickest, most polished and most stable experience I've had with any Arch-based distro. Sure, in theory AUR packages can break stuff due by holding back packages from the Arch repos, but in practice it's never happened to me. Maybe that's just my good (or bad) luck, but when it comes down to it my own experience is what matters most to me. So, Manjaro's an A-tier for me, personally. MX also deserves to go higher. It's super stable and it's a better first distro than Mint these days. As such, it should be higher than Mint in my opinion. I haven't used Cinnamon in a few years, but last time I did it felt like the mission statement was to make the most boring and characterless desktop environment imaginable. Mint's main advantage as a first distro now could be that after a few months, it's likely to bore new Linux users into trying something more interesting. Anyway, currently using Nobara on my desktop and Manjaro on my laptop, and seriously thinking about having a play around with NixOS.

I'm unbelievably impressed by Void Linux. I switched over to it a bit ago. It's been so smooth and it boots up wicked fast. Plus their IRC community has been the most helpful I've ever experienced (as opposed to Arch where it's always "RTFM"). It hurts me to say, but I might prefer Void over Debian. And Debian has always been #1 in my heart. Void is just that freaking good.

Put Cinnamon Mint in S and Deepin in F, and I'm happy.

10:10 game loading does not disappear, you will be cpu-bound because game data is unpacked during loading, it doesn't matter if you do it in ram, unpacking will be slower than the RAM itself. Maybe it isn't true for some games which support quick loading, but I think such games only exist on consoles right now.

What so you think of Cachy OS?

I’m using Zorin OS Pro on a MacBook Air from 2015. I was running version 16 and just upgraded to 17. I had to paid for the upgrade but 20% off. It was $38.40. I also tweaked it a little bit to look like macOS. Then I got an iMac from 2011 running POP! OS. That is like the only distro I found that works right out of the box for everything. I just got this iMac about a couple months ago off craigslist for $30. It had a flashing folder on the boot up screen. I opened it up and there’s no hard drive in it so I installed the 500 GB SSD. I use this computer to watch ESPN plus and KZfaq. The only thing is that it gets super hot and it freezes my streaming after 30 mins or 2hrs. It varies.

Finally, a good Linux podcast. You guys are a joy to listen to!

Which Distro would you recommend for the greatest variety of FONTS, similar to what Microsoft Windows has?

Is there CachyOS in here?

Linux Lite is based on Ubuntu LTS... is quite good to put into old laptop/pc for daily use. Zorin OS Pro is $48 , and if I'm not mistaken is one time purchase. For me zorin is just ubuntu with different style of UI, and easy to adapt for new user coming to linux.

Matt: you mentioned in one of your videos that you have a very good computer: what hardware exactly do you have?

I agree that Arco is the Arch sweet-spot. I also use Manjaro, the reason that some broken things get pushed through is a lack of bodies. Not every user is going to use the Testing branch as a daily driver. If 1% or less of the users help test....then things will be broken.

I switched from PopOS to MX and don't regret.

I have been running void in a VM for about two months now the only thing keeping me from making it my daily driver is i want to learn more about it before i commit. i love how light on resources it runs it runs with 450-550 pkgs i don't even see how that's possible. give it a while and void may be the next distro on everyone's lips.

Linux mint will always be my number 1.

Slackware is one of the original distros. Many distros have their roots from Slackware. Though, I think Slackware should have been C tier. Slackware, Debian and Red Hat are the 3 main distributions. Just about every Linux distro is based on those 3. The order is Slackware ( Jul 1993), Debian (Sep 1993), then Red Hat (May 1995).

So Linux From Scratch is like the punch line of the old joke. "Dear Grandmother, thank you for the book. It tells me more than I want to know about penguins."

Out of all the tier lists, this is the most pointless one. It is the view of 2 Linux nerds or hobbyists. Gentoo on S? It is definitely not helping to spread Linux to the users. NixOS and ArcoLinx in A? No normal user or business would use it. I think with ArcoLinux you are mixing up the distro itself with great work of Erik. Guys, please first set up the criteria for ranking. E.g. example Titus made an excellent tier list (and I only partially agree with him). But his criteria are clear. E.g. he prefers community-based distros, and the original ones - not the derivatives. One can agree or disagree, but his view on the distros is very clear and from his view the ranking is logical. I think that some distros just shout very loud. It does not mean, they are good. Even I understand Arch and I used it for a while, there are too many updates. So, no daily driver. NixOS is so far away from adhering to Linux standard, that it ruins all the efforts to harmonize Linux. Nevertheless an interesting concept. You can argue about the list on distrowatch. But it reflects the hit ranking - also in the long term. Not the worst critera. At least Debian is commonly accepted. So Matt, I watched a lot of your videos, but I am a bit disappointed. Please set up first the criteria for ranking the distros. Personally I prefer the view from the point of an end user, wanting to replace Windows or MacOS. I.e., install the Linux distro and forget about it. Just use it. I can also understand different views (e.g. special distros, distros for servers, distros for learning, ...), just make it clear. After all, it is only my opinion.

Maybe I missed it, but before ranking distros or anything for that matter, the criteria or metrics need to be established. As much as I enjoyed this show, it seemed that the ranking system was made up as they went along. These guys got plenty right though. Just came off of Opensuse. I'm currently running Endeavour OS, but MX Tools is YAST without all of the redundancy. Also MX recognized my Brother printer immediately.

These days I use Void. And I strongly disagree that it's just a "protest distro", it's simply a distro that follows proper engineering principles better than most. Avoiding systemd is just one of the inevitable consequences of following those engineering principles, because systemd doesn't. Void is widely considered to be the most UNIX-like Linux, and that can only be a good thing as far as I'm concerned. If Void didn't exist, it's quite likely I would actually just switch to OpenBSD or FreeBSD, at least for a significant portion of what I do.

I revived my old laptop. First i put Debian gnome on it, but I couldn't get used to working in gnome, so I installed mint, but mint was too slow, ultimately elementary worked great. Applications load up pretty fast, it's a good desktop to use. So I'm sticking with elementary for now.

Arch is awesome but I agree the community is horrendous. I see why it's tough to rate.

Fedora should be A tier. Same with Kinoite. Both solid distros both very user friendly they technically are upstream of RH so in theory they could easily be forked if needed. In terms of freshness they are also as up to date as Arch and Suse

Is there a DIFFERENCE between running Linux on an Apple ( A R.M.), and running it on an X-86 processor?

In regards to KDE neon, I wpuld say D tier or even F tier is reasonable. Nicco from Nicco loves linux who works on KDE, explicitly recommends not to use it and calls it horrible because of its issues lol

S-tiers: Slackware, Debian, Fedora & OpenSuSE, IMO. What do I use? Solus. . KDE neon has a user edition.

+1 for libby. I use it all the time. They also do audiobooks if you're into that.

I don't understand this argument about AUR in manjaro - just wait a little bit with updating packages form AUR. From personal experience, I use manjaro few years (around 5) and I've occurrence only few issues. Community is big, so it's a good start for someone who wants to try a arch based distro.

Years ago I used Debian and I've recently switched back. I'm surprised at how little customization I had to do to get my system configured the way I like it. Far less than Ubuntu. (removing snaps, etc)

P.S. One of the things the makers of Nix OS did not properly consider is - its NAME! You could think that you want to NIX it - after only one use!

I moved from Windows like 2 months ago. Tried the most used distros. OpenSUSE Tumbleweek use recent kernel and pretty easy for new linux user. Tried Ubuntu 2-3 in the past 5 years and could not leave windows with this distro. I didn't knew better distro at this time. Now OpenSUSE! Nvidia 550 soon to fix wayland, KDE Plasma 6 soon, gaming way better. It's now the time to switch to open source for Windows user. At least try it. IMO: KDE for windows user. Gnome for IOS/android kind experience.

Mint should have made it to the A tier at least. It literally saves peoples' souls, freeing them from Win and possibly other bad OS and gives them an open gate to the world of Linux. It has a solid collection of software to make it a versatile OS for many people, it is stable, well established, well supported. I don't know why you've placed it so low. (not a Mint user, so no bias)

Haha this is a total mess. Did you really think you and Tyler were gonna rank all the distros you've barely even heard of let alone used. But funny though. 😂 Hey, tier lists get all the comments and clicks. I respect the hustle.

MX Linux is an A tier distro. Their developers, forum, user support, tools and dedication in general to it's new adoptees ... is awesome! How Mint in any flavor compares as higher ... nah ... just for adopting warpinator alone ... grrr! lol

This was an excellent High Level very comprehensive - overview of Linux ISO distros. I just wish I could understand or work with... Many Ubuntu distros - only post the name Ubuntu into the boot menu - even though it might be Ubuntu "something else". Why don't Distros write a better (more identifiable) name into the Boot Menu.

Zyper isn't slow. Most original repo servers are located in germany. You are in US now - get that map. Im in Poland German servers are bit slower then Polish ones yet they are way more stable / up to date, especialy when it comes to / boils down to tubleweed ones.

Next time do a Distrowatch topx distros, so you rate the most known distros of the month/year/ all time.

I think Arch should be at least an A distro, all things considered. Yes, the community is toxic af, but there are people who are willing to help, and with scripts like archinstall, more and more noobs are going to use it, meaning noob support naturally is going to be better. Furthermore, Arch is still by far and away the best user of the AUR, which is probably the greatest software repo on the planet. And as you’ve said, Arch spawned other great distros. Another point is that while Arch is not that great for noobs, I’d say that it’s convenience if you know what you’re doing. You get a basic system and then you install the things that you want and pull your own dotfiles and you’re done. It is a great gateway to something more barebones such as Gentoo. Also like it or not, the Arch Wiki along with the Gentoo and Debian handbooks are probably the best documentation of Linux on Earth. As great as Eric is, he is translating the wiki to normal people, much like I imagine a priest reading the Bible to common folks (heavy exaggerations here), but if that’s the case, are you ranking the priest higher than the Bible itself? (Before anyone flame me, Eric is a god for making videos that are so accessible and understandable for normal people). I initially thought it would be an S tier (for me) but then you mentioned GRUB. Yeah, there’s no defending there. It just breaks. But I also think that it’s in software’s nature to break, breaking means it’s developing, so while GRUB alone would firmly knock Arch out of S tier, it wouldn’t knock Arch down to B for me.

StormOS previous iso I would have ranked b or a it worked well for me and had visual appeal. Current iso is d or f if I can get it installed the desktop causes vertigo 😢 Arch is a S sorry all I can say 😷

LFS is not a distribution. Its a paper for thosw that will learn how linux works. For me as a lecturer, I use the documentation from LFS as a source for training for my students

Omitted completely; Garuda & Rhino. I could excuse Rhino given it's relatively new on the scene but still, it's rolling Ubuntu so it should be on here somewhere. Garuda on the other hand, there's no excuse for omitting it. Yes, it has been my daily driver for the past 7 months or so. For me, it's an A-tier distro. Their unofficial Hyprland edition is fantastic.

This is gonna be interesting...

I use Archcraft i think its good linux distro for people that want to get into window managers , at least that's how i started. I installed Archcraft and then i installed hyprland on it works great. Yes i know i can do that easier with Nixos , problem last time i tried that not sure what happend after enabling hyprland , i updated nixos config reboot pc and after that i was not able to boot into nixos backups did not worked either.

The problem with Arch is their "community" that puts them in F tier for me, if not below. It'll never go on any machine of mine no matter what.

I run endevour os on my gaming pc debian stable with kde for my everyday office pc and on my media pc fedora kinoite on my laptop

Why did I sleep instead of watching this stream?

Why go with the distributions that are based on some precursor - why not use the ONES BASED ON? (like: Arch, Debian, Red Hat, Suse?)

Linux From Scratch is awesome for the purpose they've created: education. No other distro lets you dig into so deep how a linux OS is built. So, that is an "S", definitely. :)

I find it funny it's classified as a "protest distro" even though MX Linux is quite successful without SystemD.

My favs together ❤️

I tried Linux suse 25 years a go couldn't get anything installed no printer Tried it last week it's improved but still dint install my printer so much for suse no drag drop on desktop 😢 Top Debian LM Fedora

You forgot Garuda linux, WTF! Haha. Now serious: the best distro is a distro perfectly suitable with your workflow. Period! P.S. I use arch btw.

no fedora silverblue???

Linux lite is based on ubuntu not debian, and i prefer and like linux mint xfce than linux lite

I honestly don't see any value in arco linux and endeavouros. They are both just Arch with a slower installer and larger ISO.

Such a shame LFS is so low. No, I'm definitely not a LFS propagandist, not me! edit: yes i did get steam on lfs, a showcase is on my channel, and even now, im currently streaming building lfs again, and trying to compile wine as well steam. it is indeed possible.

Love that Debian hit the S tier, great Distro.

Use ZFS and Software Raid is super easy.

TLDR. Let me guess. OpenSuse S tier?

Started with Zorin Core two years ago when I saw that it that wasn't ugly. Tried a dozen distros on Ventoy but see no reason to switch. I'm in Chrome 90% of the time and can now do that without Windows bloat, nagging, spying or refusing to install. I use Android so Google is spying on me anyway. At least I get customized news. Pinta is perfect for light photo editing. I run old quad core biz desktops that I get for $60 so older kernels don't bother me. I have no interest in becoming a Linux hobbyist. I believe I have found the best system for normies. The end.

your intro music is so good. Do you have tabs for it?

Neon UE. should be F tier. (used it for a while) Gentoo S tier, omg :|

Next, video 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 please. Linux distros for laptops. I dualbooted endeavourOS and since then, I rarely touch windows. But the battery life on Linux is HORRIBLE! Please make that video. (I prefer kde and I also prefer arch based stuff but not arch itself and don't want to use manjaro. Manjaro is ok but battery life is bad) also, I want some solution for Wayland. It has graphical issues. Specs: Intel pentium silver n6000 Intel jasperlake 32 eu 8gb ram 256gb storage nvme ssd. Screen 1920x1080

That animated logo has to go.

1:35h for a tier list...

Arco higher than Fedora? Seriously? That is possibly the dumbest thing I have ever heard. (Edit) now I’ve seen it’s higher than Arch. OK clearly you are trolling

VOID LINUX S TIER

Very bad tier list ….pop os better than void linux really ? I mean come on its not only a question of system fucking D or not void is clean and indestructible..in comparison with the Arch gang ..that by itself makes void much higher ..

Pop OS above Fedora 🤣

I feel sad for seeing Linux mint at b not a

Dislike for making mint and arch into B tier.

lost interest at mint, you made arguement why nixOS should be low cuz not many can use it, but then show your ass at mint because you dont like something

Linux mint is A in my opinion

@TheLinuxCast your killing me! Linux Mint is an A-teir Distro, B teir at best. They listen to their users and is "Ubuntu with sane defaults"

Manjaro doesn't deserve bottom tier because you have an apparent and obvious bias against them. Someone from their company must've hurt your feelings and ever since you've held on to the grudge. It's quite obvious to anyone who studies your comments and videos to know that this is the case. Nevertheless, Manjaro is still King as far as I'm concerned and is heads above the majority of "joke" distros you mentioned. You're right, it's our opinion; it's also YOUR opinion as well.

I'm sorry, but Debian is by far the most overrated distro. It is true that if weren't for Debian, hundreds of other distros wouldn't exist(most importantly, Ubuntu), but its not Debian that is responsible for Linux becoming more accessible or more user friendly. That honor goes to Ubuntu and it's derivatives. There is literally more innovation going on downstream that Debian benefits from! Not to mention the fact that even Ubuntu gets security patches earlier than Debian. If you were applying your own logic consistently, Debian should be viewed in the same vein as Arch, in that they are both great foundations to build your distro off of.