Ranking Linux Distributions for 2024: a tier list for my use case !

did you know we moved into 2024 now which means I now have the right to do another Linux drro tier list because yeah I'm limiting myself to one of these per year and since the last one I tried a lot of other distributions either in a video on the channel or in my own time and the dros I ranked last time have also evolved so let's see how I would rank everything at the beginning of 2024 and what I would personally use and what I would pass on but what I wouldn't pass on is this segue to our sponsor this video is sponsored by square X and if you like to browse the web privately and securely you really should give them a shot Square X can be installed as a browser extension for chromium based browsers and it also has a web app for any other browser and it will give you access to a suite of disposable tools that open everything in the cloud instead of locally so your system and your data are never at risk with square X you get a burner browser that will block ads and trackers and give you 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likely I would be to use them for my own use case which is content production and running a business and everyone will have different criteria so don't get offended if I ranked your drro lower than what you would have and don't hesitate to let me know in the comments if you would have ranked it higher and why so we'll have the following categories we'll have great as in I could absolutely recommend this with my closed we'll have good which is I would use that drro we'll have average which is it's good but it's not for me we'll have no thanks as in I would not run that and we have hell no as in I'm not touching that ever so let's start with the big one obuntu I feel it has progressed a lot since last time the obuntu team has a renewed focus on improving their implementation of gnome with plenty of patches to improve performance and newer addition in the form of extensions like a tiling assistant you know it is going to work reliably it has tons of help online and if an app exists on Linux it has an auntu package but their insistence on pushing snap packages for desktop applications really irritates me because I feel flat pack would be a far superior solution and also I'm not a big fan of how canonical treats various open- Source projects recently so I'm only putting this one in average it's like last time it's not incredible and to use it I would have to remove snap and reinstall some stuff so it's not great it's just decent and I would place all its derivatives at the same spot because they suffer from the same problem Linux Mint though I feel still deserves its place in the great category not only does it provide the most complete graphical experience out of the box with utilities for everything but they also fixed most of my annoying with it as in they have started work on whan support to Future proof their drro and their first draft of a whan session is actually not bad at all and they now have an edge ISO with a newer kernel so you can actually install it on recent Hardware so it is definitely still a great Linux Dr recommended for any beginner or even for advanced users the only reason I'm not using Linux Mint as a daily driver is because I'm not a huge fan of the cinnamon desktop for myself now zorinos is going to move up to the average category it's not a bad Dr it looks good it has plenty of improvements and layouts for Gnome but for a desktop drro it is still moving way too slow zorinos S7 just came out and it's based on auntu 22.4 which is going to be replaced in a few months by a new LTS it's not a terrible choice but with their current release reschedule you will get something that is half recent in 2025 and that's just not acceptable for a desktop in my opinion it is not as much of a problem as it once was because with flatback you can basically get recent applications even if your base is pretty old but the desktop they use is old and I just could not see myself sticking with that for 2 years Elementary OS will unfortunately stay in the no thanks category for now as well I love the drro I love their desktop but I just cannot use it nowadays it's updated way too slowly and Elementary os8 will bring some cool stuff they'll finish the transition to gtk4 they'll bring a Wayland session so it will move into the modern Linux era but it just doesn't offer enough for me anymore today it's not a bad drro but as it stands right now with Elementary os7 it is just not for me now for Dora is a drro I used for a long while as a daily driver until very recently and this drro I'll place in the great category it is very stable it is updated often it is pushing the new Linux desktop stack with portals whan pipe wire and flatback and it's the embodiment of everything I enjoy about Linux constant improvements and Innovation and risk taking that pays off and sure it's a red hat thing red hat is not my favorite company right now but as a distribution it's one I could recommend to everyone especially if you want to move into the present or the future of Linux they're not afraid to drop all the things to help everyone progress and I love that as per Debian I only ever used the stable version and I will put it in average for my use case deian 12 was released relatively recently and so it is not utter L outdated yet but it will be utterly outdated by the time Debian 13 gets updated the desktop it uses the apps in the repost they will all be terribly terribly old and for apps it's not as much of a problem because obviously now you have flat pack that can solve the problem but for the desktop you use it's just not for me I like my stuff to get updates when the new desktops comes out and Debian just doesn't give me that maybe the unstable version would be worth a shot to see if it changes my opinion still Dean offers a solid experience it's easy to use there's plenty of documentation and they now have proprietary firmware ready to be installed if you need it so it's a solid drro no matter the use case now open soua tumble weed is next and I will put this one in the good category it's a really good rolling release and while my experience with soua is limited they do have some really good admin tools to configure a bunch of things that other disos simply do not have a graphical user interface for and in my testing it was rock solid as far as rolling releases go I could definitely see myself using it as per op soua leap I'll put it in average it's virtually the same experience as with tumble weed in terms of the benefits of using open Souza but it's just not interesting to me as a distribution it it's a bit too slow moving it's a bit too Enterprise focused for my own tastes and the current way this dis R Works will be changed soon with the future of leap lying with Alp making it an image-based operating system so it is not bad not at all but I just don't find it interesting or suitable for my needs now the good old Arch Linux will go in average for me because I would personally not use it on my computer but it's not not because it's a bad Dro it's because it's not for me all my experiences with Arch and Arch based dros were cut short by issues after updating my computer and I cannot deal with that on a daily basis I need a system where I can just click the update button with my eyes closed reboot and expect everything to work when the computer comes back alive without having to read update notes or look over various install scripts to check if they are safe or not and Arch just does not provide that experience for me and I understand why people love and use Arch and a bunch of its derivatives and if you have the time to invest in making sure it's solid it can be very very stable but for me it's just not cutting it and speaking of arge derivatives manaro I will place in the no thanks category again this year the way it is built just doesn't make sense to me you're getting access to the a but since you're also not using the latest Arch packages you will have issues with that as there will be mismatches between libraries and package versions and if you don't use the Aur on it you're left with a roding release that takes bad decisions like shipping unstable versions of apps that developers don't want them to ship yet and not testing updates that come from Arch adequately like the grub incident I feel there are better rolling releases to use like tumble wheat for example so yeah it's just not for me it's too unstable now tuxedo OS is the Dr I use these days and I will place it in good it's a semi- rolling release meaning you don't get major updates every six months like what obuntu does but you're getting regular updates to the kernel to the drivers and the apps plus a rolling release model for the KD plasma desktop it has been super stable for me it's the best KD distribution I have ever used and while it is based on a bunch to 22.4 since you're getting updates to the critical Hardware support components it's not really an issue and the tools tuxedo ads like their control center are also really good on a tuxedo laptop so I love using it and the only reason why it's not in the great category is they're still basing themselves on a b 2 LTS and yes they do update the hardware support components like drivers and the kernel but the packages in the repos are pretty damn old it's not been a big issue for me but it could be so I'll wait to see how fast they will rebase on 24.4 before placing this one in the great category now as per popos it will be in the no thanks category for me this year it is not a bad disc R it's pretty much the same behavior as tuxedo OS you get updates to the drivers and the kernel but the desktop they ship is just completely outdated it's based on a very old gnome version with a bunch of extensions and the experience has not changed in 2 years and that's just not acceptable for me and I would expect that to change by the time 24.4 releases for pop OS which is going to be apparently in the Summer with the brand new Rewritten from scratch Cosmic desktop but for now installing 22.4 on my desktop or on my laptop would be a big big regression in terms of workflow and performance and features now Solus is a Dr I expected to not even mention in that tier list since it was pretty much dead last year but since then it apparently revived and it looks like they have plans now it is still going to go in hell no for me because I cannot tell if this is a temporary Revival or if it is here to stay I need more time to see if they will repeat the mistakes of the past and since they also want to completely change how the drro is built and works for soless 5 I cannot place any long-term trust in them for now when I install something I like it to last for a year or two and soless just does not give me the confidence I need to reliably have that experience so it's in hell no for me now Gen 2 I will put in no thanks for my own use case again I understand why people want to use it but personally I do not find it a compelling proposition at all I don't want to compile any of my programs to gain one to 3% performance and using the binary packages on Gen 2 why just use any other drro that has binary packages so if you love Gen 2 that's cool but the very concept is simply just not working for me at all now KD neon will go in average I like the rolling release model for the desktop and the rebasing on a new LTS when it's available but also it hasn't been extremely stable the last time I tried it and I feel that nowadays tuxa os does the same job but much better so I just wouldn't use neon personally now aahi Linux and Fedora aahi are in a weird spot here I cannot use any of these myself but it's not because they're bad it's because it runs on Hardware I don't like my MacBook Pro M1 will be sold soon it's way too heavy and it lacks useful ports and it is arm so there is no D Vinci resolve on that meaning that I can just not use these disos but aahi as a Dr is awesome and almost feature complete so I will put it in average because placing it lower would not really be justified now let's talk about NY OS and this one will make some people grid their teeth but it's only going in average for me meaning I could see myself using it but currently I don't see the point having a reproducible system is great and I loved learning the syntax to configure the system but some things were just annoying to get to work like the Venture res which the studio version I could never run or NVIDIA drivers and for my use case there is no point really I don't reinstall often enough that I need a config file that would recreate my own system and other dros are stable enough that I don't feel like I need to use something like NYX it is a really good Dr and I loved experimenting with it but I just don't see the point for my own use case personally now Holo ISO is a weird one because you don't use it for desktop use it's for gaming related stuff and for that specific use case I will place it in great I have recently reinstalled it on my own console which is basically just a tower PC from toxedo and this time I had nothing to configure or change it just installed and worked perfectly right at the bat so for my gaming needs it's basically the steam deck experience on a big TV with good hardware and performance and for that it's wonderful now for more mixed gaming and desktop usage I would place nobara in good it's a solid improvement over Fedora it actually delivers better performance the suite of tools that are pre-installed is great the only thing I don't quite like is that it's a smaller project and as such I would be wary of running it as a daily driver because it's not seeing a ton of external contributions and I am not sure I would find enough help online if I needed it now for vanilla OS I would place that in no thanks for my own use case I like the concept of running dros in containers to get access to any package or app you want but also I don't need that I can already run any app on any dros these days and it's more men for development purposes and that is not my use case so I would not run vanilla OS as my main operating system now for fun I will include Chrome OS Flex because it's basically a regular Linux dis these days with a proprietary desktop and I will place it in hell no because well it completely sucks it lags the most basic of features the desktop is Bare Bones and performs badly and installing anything that is not a web app requires you to use but it's basically a VM so performance is really bad it is a bad operating system a bad desktop there's proprietary stuff all around and it's also privacy invasive so hell no for chromos flex and as per deepen it's still going in hell no as well because it has Telemetry baked in it's using a very old Debian base and the desktop might look nice but all of its apps are super limited and installing anything else on top of that just breaks the unified look and feel I would never use that Dro but if you like the desktop the deep in desktop I would recommend maybe using it on another Dro because it can look really good so that's it for all the dros I have used on my own time or on the channel and how I would rank them for my own use case obviously yours might be different so let me know where you would have placed all those distributions yourself using the same ranking system and in the meantime I will let you know about sponsor it's tuxedo computers if you need a new device to run Linux on you should probably stop buying devices from bigname manufacturers that only support Windows natively and trying to install Linux on that and fighting the various Hardware that is not well supported you should buy something that supports Linux natively and that's tuxedo computers they have laptops desktops and N at all form factors all performance levels all price points all the hardware is very customizable and it is picked specifically because it works well with Linux and if it didn't in their testing they actually submit patches Upstream to fix those issues for everyone you can customize the keyboard layout you can have your own logo on the LD of your laptop you can open the laptop repair it and upgrade it these are really good it's all I use these days I run this channel on a tuxedo Infiniti Book Pro 16 and all my gaming is done on a tuxedo Cube which is just a PC I install Holo ISO on so if you want a new computer you want to Linux on it and you want to support linux's development click the link in the description below and get yourself a computer from tuxedo I can only recommend them so thanks everyone for watching the tier list I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications and to write a comment and if you didn't like the video well you can always click the dislike button and let me know why in the comments it's probably because I rated Arch not in the great category probably so if you and also if you really like the channel there are plenty of ways to support it in the description below just check out any of those links and you'll get access to some cool stuff so thanks for watching and I guess you'll see me in the next one [Music] bye

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 185,554

Keywords: linux, distribution, linux distro, linux tutorial, linux 2023, distro, linux vs windows, linux distribution tier list, distro tier list, linux experiment distro tier list, distribution tier list, linux distro tier list for programming, best linux distro 2023, best linux distro, best linux os, best linux distro 2024, best linux distro for gaming, best linux laptop, best linux for gaming, best linux desktop environment, best linux distro for beginners, best linux for programming

Id: MuP-9O7gNIc

Length: 20min 35sec (1235 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2024