Hej lemmings! (Hoping this is relevant enough for the selfhosted commjnity)
Quick question for you all: do you stick with the same distro across your PC, laptop, and server, or do you pick different ones based on the device and what you’re doing?
For me, I’ve been mixing and matching depending on the use case, but I’m starting to think it’d be nice to just have one distro (or at least one family like Fedora or Debian) running everywhere. That way I wouldn’t get confused about default settings or constantly have to look up flags for different package managers.
Right now my setup is:
- Gaming rig: CachyOS
- Laptop: AuroraOS
- NAS: Unraid
- Various project servers: DietPi, Debian, Alpine etc…
I feel like NixOS might be the only distro that could realistically handle all these use cases, but I’m a bit scared of the learning curve and the maintenance work it’d take to migrate everything over.
Am I the only one who feels like having “one distro to rule them all” would be nice? How do you guys handle your setups? All ears! 😊
Debian on my servers. No drama, it just works.
Fedora on my laptop and desktop. Still solid, but quicker updates.
Oooh, look at mr. Rich guy here with multiple devices.
/s… (not really, cries in only computer being a dying laptop from 2011 with no way to get even just another dying 2011 laptop when this one dies.)
My main desktop is Mint - I feel like most of the random pieces of software I find myself wanting to run are built for Ubuntu or at the very least a lfh distro.
My server and random devices run NixOS, and I’m acrually considering combining all the config into a monorepo…
My Raspberry PI I think runs Raspbian though. I should see if I can nixify it.
NixOS home server, gaming PC will soon move to Bazzite from Windows 10 (whenever I’m done working on my home server). I’m trying Bazzite for that machine because I use it more like a game console hooked up to the TV and don’t need the same level of tweaking and customization.
Gentoo, Qubes on desktops. Cent, Gentoo, Alpine and OpenBSD for servers.
Then there’s weird stuff like MirageOS, DuskOS, openwrt, opnsense and I’m 90% sure there’s a laptop with Kali purple in my trunk.
For other people I usually install fedora spins or bazzite.
I run unraid for my main servers (mostly out of convenience/ease), and pop-os for everything else. I treat my laptop as my beta tester for my desktop which is stable, but both use the same underlying os. Who has the time to troubleshoot more than one?
Fedora KDE for anything I need a GUI for, Debian for anything headless.
I’ve used damn near everything else in 30 years of Linux, but I’m pretty sure my tombstone will run Debian.
Jup, Debian stable on my three servers an on my laptop. I think its just way easier to run the same system everywhere. Also, Debian is a great distribution.
Laptop arch
Web servers Debian or fedora.
Looking into slackware for self hosting
All my kubernetes nodes are Ubuntu but when I rebuild my cluster I’ll probably moved to Talos. My Gaming Rig/Workstation runs Bazzite. My Dev laptop runs Aurora. The little differences between Aurora and Bazzite are a little irritating so if I ever have a reason to rebuild one I’ll probably switch it.
The PIs run whatever is most convenient for their purpose.
My next NAS will probably run Unraid or TrueNAS, but for now its Synology.
Yep. Debian. I like
apt, and I like shit that just…works. Very form after function. So what if a bunch of packages are on “old” versions. They work. The kernel works. KDE Plasma works. I can do everything I want to do without having to constantly be on the bleeding edge. If you prefer newer things, great. I prefer older, proven things. That’s also why I drive Toyota cars and Honda motorcycles.My Proxmox cluster runs…uh…Proxmox, which is based on Debian. NAS runs OMV which runs on top of Debian. Laptops all run Linux Mint Debian Edition, and so does my 5800X3D/7900XTX gaming PC. The only non-Debian machines in my house are my wife’s iMac and Macbook Pro, and the Home Assistant mini PC.
My work PC and gaming PC are Kubuntu, my media server is Debian, and my Home Assistant server is macOS, because it’s an M1 mini. So yeah, kinda. I thought about putting the server on Kubuntu, but in the end figured I’d go for as stable as possible.
ZorinOS for the desktop and PopOS on the laptop which also serves as a Plex server.
Welcome to Lemmy 🫶
I used to with LMDE (client) and Debian (server), but Cinnamon was a little bit too stuttery on the rickety old hardware I have (i5-5200U NUC and i5-5250U MBA), so now the NUC runs CachyOS with Xfce and the MBA runs Win10 LTSC because sometimes Windows is needed for my studies or certain voxel game leaks.
I do, but it’s more out of laziness than anything else. I hate having to remember sixteen different ways of doing things, so I tend to configure all my stuff as identical as reasonably possible. Is this the best way of doing things? Probably not. But it keeps my blood pressure down.







