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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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What distro to choose in parallel to steamos (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello community!

I come to you for advice. Using an m1 macbook air since 2020, I installed popos on my old 2013 macbook pro and I was quite happy with it but... I bought a steamdeck two weeks ago and exploring its desktop mode made me reconsider some choices. Using distros based on different systems, with different commands, desktop environment, etc. gets a little confusing for someone like me, who doesn't use linux as my main machine. Do you have any advice for me? From what I understand, steamos is debian-based while popos is ubuntu-based: is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.? Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin, that are debian-based, or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?

Thanks in advance, I'm a bit lost.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

on SteamOS you don't install things to your system (i.e. the equivalent to apt/yum/pacman/portage in other distros) because it's immutable, but there is a store to install Flatpaks for your user which I'm sure you can install on other distros (or something similar enough)

That's exactly what I didn't understand without knowing I didn't understand it!

SteamOS used to be debian based, it's now Arch based, not that that should matter to you because 90% of using a Linux for day to day will be through the DE or with commands that are the same for all distros, so anything with Plasma/KDE will look and behave the same as SteamOS.

While that's true, 10% is a big percentage!Especially when you first discover a distro, you spend a lot of time trying to understand how to install this and why is that not working, at least for me: not being unable to replicate what little knowledge I had about linux (from ubuntu and popos) on steamos really confused me, even though I tried to gather as much information as I could.

I guess steamos being immutable also played a big part in my confusion...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I get what you mean, when you're starting those 10% feel like a lot because it's one of the main things you do when you first grab a system, but over time you install less and less stuff. Even if you're not using Arch, the documentation there is really good, for example they have a Rosetta Stone for package managers, so if you know the command you want to do on one you can check the equivalent on other https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Rosetta so for example if you know in Debian based distros you would do apt-get install you'll see that in Arch is pacman -S .

At the end of the day once you're familiar with Linux the way you install packages is not that relevant to how you use your system. I currently have 3 machines, with 3 different distros, 2 of them look exactly the same and you wouldn't be able to tell which is which, except one is Ubuntu (company issued laptop) and the other is Arch (Personal computer), sometimes I run Pacman on Ubuntu or apt on Arch and get a command not found error, but other than that they're completely interchangeable.