The Linux Tier List

we choose violence when we do a Linux tier list and honestly people get really upset especially when it's an honest tier list about where you are in your Linux Journey you'll learn a lot in this video I've already filled in the S tier it's Debbie in an arch nothing else goes in the S tier Debian Arch when it comes to Linux desktop are Supreme nobody can debate this I just won't accept any other thing so let's move on from that explain the other tiers here hopefully you learn a lot the pointless tier is going to make everybody mad because more than half of these distributions all 40 or something that we have down here will probably end up in the pointless tier which is going to make some folks mad but I will explain why I put those things in the pointless tier and how possibly some of them can get out of the pointless tier uh let's explain the tiers real fast to break it down amazing for new users these are your noobs just fresh coming from like Windows or Mac or some other operating system they don't know anything about Lin Linux typically this is where I point them and most people will move on from The Amazing tier but some people will not and that's okay so that's what's going to end up here best for business kind of self-explanatory business distributions creative and unique these are distributions that are kind of around but they are so unique that nobody really uses them or the real niche but they're they're unique enough to where they're not just a copy or a fork the devil tier this is going to be your big companies that do just silly things and ah there's usually a lot of drama around the devil tier so that's what's going to end up here I think you already know what's going to end up in there if you've watched many of my past videos the lightweight tier this is where you put distros on anything and everything this could be as small as a a toaster a sea Gate Drive I've installed some Linux distributions on uh things that almost have no compute power old net books that might be thrown out that 10 year old laptop sitting in that drawer typically the distributions here will end up in those low power devices and then the pointless tier where most everything will reside uh is just a fork a copy um a slow gimmick maybe a couple pre-installed programs that you should install yourself on like a Debian or Arch there's going to be a lot of stuff in here and I'll I'll label those as such let's get into it not waste any time Alma Linux best for business honestly if I had Rocky's icon I'd also put Rock in Almond here Oracle would also reside into the best for business these are one-to-one equivalents of red hat red hat is the devil I think we can easily establish that because they destroyed Centos and made it uh from Downstream to Upstream so Cintas used to be something completely different fun fact Centos was my very first Linux distribution that I worked with for years professionally installing stuff Cintas stream is not Centos Centos stream is a bastardized version that red hat changed around after they bottom mount they've recently closed their source code a lot of drama there I'm not going to go into it but that's why these end up in the devil tier and controversially Fedora will also end up in here I actually recommended the Fedora this past year I thought the releases have gotten so much better and then I was like maybe maybe that Centos 8 drama it's behind us maybe a red hat has changed their ways and then everything coming out uh Fedora makes it into here especially this week with them proposing opt out uh Telemetry so Fedora is in the devil tier nothing I'd ever recommend using anymore everything from Red Hat kind of goes into here why we're got people mad from the red hat crowd let's just upset the Ubuntu people let's just toss Ubuntu in here come on I'm going to explain this in one word apt install Firefox actually that's three words but one command I should say and that is why does that change it to a snap what's up Ubuntu you've just gone from this uh great OG original Noob friendly distribution to just stay the hell away from it as far as desktop goes you'll still see Ubuntu unlike servers and they do have some kind of business-esque server type thing but this is Linux desktop we're talking about nobody really wants to use Ubuntu anymore and that's why it makes it in the devil tier next we got Alpine Linux Alpine Linux is amazing it uses I think openrc and it's just such a great distribution to load up on containers you see it all the time in containers it uses an APK package manager super super light and you're going to run into it a lot in the business realm especially when you're dealing with Docker containers or kubernetes you're going to run into a lot of uh Alpine stuff so really kind of cool check it out I did a 10 minute video over on Titus Tech talk you should check out just kind of overviewing a quick install in configuration of Alpine uh Antics this is a lightweight distro kind of a really cool one it boots up really fast much like Alpine it uses a kind of a really unique system it doesn't use systemd I think it's also like a run it init system so it starts up super fast you can load it up up on anything it's probably one of my favorite lightweight distros that doesn't get enough love love it Arco Linux this is we're gonna start making people mad again arcolinux is in the pointless tier I love their git I steal a lot of stuff from Arco they have so many cool customizations and they do a great job of kind of making a new user feel at home the problem is it's on Arch and honestly if you don't know how to install Arch and you don't know the inner workings of arch I don't think you should be in an arch distribution it's not to downplay any of the contributions they make and I like to steal stuff from Marco all the time it's really kind of cool but at the same time I don't think the distribution should exist those people those talented individuals over there should move on and probably just recontribute to to Upstream Arch you know because uh Arch is what makes this possible and you could just take the customizations they make and put it into Arch and you better understand it and you'd be less likely to break so now that we've said that there's a bunch of distributions we kind of need to toss in here along with it with that same explanation Manjaro pointless what happens with Manjaro you're like wait a second had some of the best customization Titus noobs can install Manjaro and Arch same problem right the noob will go to the Aur they will download a bunch of crap and they will break Manjaro I know because I did it and honestly Manjaro itself even though Philip Mueller the the main uh Dev over at Manjaro is very talented as well the problem with it is hell I remember in 2019 I just did a Pac-Man syu to upgrade the entire system it broke because I didn't read the patch notes and it should have been like a syyuc or some uh different kind of upgrade path and because I didn't do it according to that specific patch it broke my Manjaro it that shouldn't happen it just shouldn't happen Manjaro shouldn't exist and if you're you need that type of level of expert expertise you shouldn't be using Manjaro you should just use the Supreme Arch Linux so that's where that is um now I think arctix is kind of a unique one I kind of want to put it in the pointless tier but I kind of don't I almost want to put this in the creative unique tier because it's like Arch but it differs in one way that I was corrected originally I did put it in the pointless tier because I just thought of hey it's just another Arch Fork but it doesn't use system D so the init system is different and it starts up really really fast so if you're really into Arch and you kind of want to change your init system but kind of want to be have your hand held a little bit Ardex can be in that creative unique system so I'm going to change it from my earlier designation clear Linux is nest and I'm going to throw clear Linux in the uh creative unique because it's a really amazing distribution from Intel but I would never use it as a desktop it's really fast if you have an Intel chip you'll see that it does usually have a little higher performance than many other Linux distributions but it's weird because the package manager swap D is really hard to work with and uh you can't really build a whole bunch creating a Dev environment and clearly it's not the not the most fun thing now if you're heavily into using flat pack and you're okay with kind of having that immutable operating system that doesn't change very much it's almost impossible to break clear Linux it's Unique enough I love how they leverage every single bit of systemd they don't even use FS tab for mounting drives they use systemd Auto Mount they changed they were one of the first distributions really to use system D Boot and really leverage all those system D services without adding grub and all these other packages that many other distributions use so it's Unique enough to where I'm like you know what I like what they're doing in clear Linux kind of goes into that creative unique category for me deep in oh all right let's keep going with that it's pointless now people are like wait a second deep ends a desktop environment it's amazing Titus what do you what's wrong with your head I'm like okay don't worry deep in is an amazing desktop environment it has some of the best scaling it's great but as a distribution it's kind of pointless like I'd much rather just install Debian and then toss the deep end desktop environment on top of it and then I'm not worried about what's going on in the back end with with deep in same kind of goes with many of these distributions KDE neon people love I know I love KDE it's a great desktop environment but as a distribution KDE neon is just silly like what is going on why do they have apt and then they have another package manager on top of it I I get that's your Dev environment but you really want to distribute that to a whole bunch of noobs no stay away from KDE neon stay away from deep in stay away from elementary honestly if we're going down this road it's just it just doesn't doesn't jive with me so we're gonna grab Elementary toss it in here too there's a lot of desktop environments that are great but them making a distribution to go along with the desktop environment doesn't make any sense to me just go grab a good distro that's a base and then go right here because what happens when you start forking off of these because all three of these are Debian Forks which come from you know Ubuntu is a fork of Debian and then it Forks off of Ubuntu into these that's a fork of a fork going all the way to Upstream there's there's many things they do and then they're like oh crap we probably should rebase things or come back into these and grab these fixes it just gets messy and I just don't like that like why wouldn't you just use the OG Debian I just don't understand it debian's gotten so good over the past couple years that I just don't see a purpose to these distributions I like the contributions I like the desktop environment but it's where it kind of Falls for me in that same realm we got Endeavor and gruda too let's just grab both the archbase spins really cool customizations huge amount of programs same same problem as menjaro we're gonna kind of leave it there fair and Os that's this one used to have a really good place years back when you're like your Debian installer was not very good and it looked kind of like crap it had really good defaults but nowadays it's like why why does it exist same thing Gen 2 gen 2. creative and unique nothing needs to be said about this other than jitu's great at building your own Linux kernel let's say you want to make uh where I would like the world to go with Gentoo is kiosks and let's say that menu at your favorite restaurant seeing like Windows blue screens of death when I'm going into like a big high-rise building I'm like why is this using Windows why isn't it just using like a stripped down version of Linux but will never break that's where Gen 2 comes in it you can create it to do one thing and do it amazingly and then it'll never change it'll be really minimal and just very secure so um Gen 2 is amazing for custom versions where you can debloat the Linux kernel build it yourself and then have a couple packages that are really easy using it as a daily driver that's really for tryhards and people that just have a lot of time on their hands so for Gen 2 I just throw it in the creative unique category because of that now this one is going to cause a lot of people to be mad and originally I was really concerned because when it comes to security and security researchers out there in ethical hackers Kali Linux oh man they they really love their Kali Linux but guess what pointless it's absolutely pointless they just have a whole bunch of pre-installed programs yeah they have like some gimmicks like Windows mode and stuff like that but really if you're going into security researching you need to learn the fundamentals you need to learn networking you need to learn uh the basics of a Linux system you need to learn all these things and you should be using its Upstream of Debian and installing those things specifically you need to use the burp sweep to do stomach or you need to use Metasploit to exploit something install it on Debian because that's all Kali Linux is and if you can install those programs and you can't make those customizations well you're just a script Kitty at that point to me and would emphasize this point just by saying all the people were upset about Kali Linux but truly the the security researchers that uh are really good A lot of them aren't even using Kali Linux a lot of them you know they're just like I'm kind of lazy I don't want to customize a version of Debian and they'll just install parrot parrots actually I think better than Cali it's a little more lightweight has a lot of the same tool set but less of the gimmicks less of the bloat so a lot of security researchers actually end up on parrot instead of Cali so I'm more worried about Nissan parrots in the pointless tier based on everything I just said I'd still put them into pointless tier and that's not good for my own self-preservation because there's many talented people that do use these distributions but honestly they probably should just use Debian so that's where I kind of put these ones they do have really good tool sets but at the end of the day it's just pre-installed stuff that you could easily add to a supreme distro that's all I'm saying next up let's grab something that isn't in the pointless tier because I feel like I've gotten down on on some distros some you just want to give to a new user and this one's going to make some people mad probably my most controversial pick out of this entire tier list and that's kubuntu and I think it's because it's a weak spot for me with Ubuntu I really love it for new users it's so gentle for the windows user coming over you should move past coupon to but from a KDE perspective I think it has some of the best defaults and you learn some of this stuff but it's not just learning this stuff a lot of it is is learning some of the tools that of the stuff that comes with the distribution and in coupon to kind of a kid gloves approach to KDE for a new user and that's why I love it for new users and then people move past it usually but it does have a really good collection of tools something I'd recommend way more than all these other distros I put in the pointless tier so if you like KD you want to try it for the first time kubuntu is usually what I recommend even though it's a fork of Ubuntu and I'm not a really big fan of Ubuntu so yeah yeah that's kind of where I put it for amazing for new users I would also put Linux Mint here as well Linux Mint has both a Debian Spin and an Ubuntu spin in it but it is another really good collection that's a very solid setup for a new user to where I'd say hey most new users coming over or maybe maybe I set up something like my grandpa or some something where I'm like hey you just need a web browser you don't want to get it infected and you just want it to work I'd throw like Linux men on there because it's just so intuitive there's graphic tools for everything really good tool self built in but at the end of the day it's really good for just a new user now for lubuntu lightweight distro uh it's it's okay it has a good tool set so if someone not as familiar with Linux that has like a potato tier kind of thing where they just need that super lightweight will run on anything and they'll have you know system D it'll have all the stuff that they're just accustomed to it does use lxqt which is a little bit different environment but still pretty cool MX Linux you know I would put this in the amazing for new users realm because it was a Debian Fork but debian's just gotten so good to where MX Linux used to fill this niche in anymore I'm just like install Debian sorry MX Linux crowd that was that's rough for me because I really did like MX Linux it's just I don't see a point in installing it these days NYX OS I just did a video on it it's reproducible builds for Linux you can install anything reproduce it really easily and deploy it to a thousand computers obviously best for business PC Linux OS is one thing that was kind of interesting you know four or five years ago PC Linux OS would make it into like the amazing for new users because they'd use a lot of compatibility let's see you had a webcam that didn't work you could use PC Linux OS and it might work where Debian might not but these days it hasn't seen many updates in I think several years now and I just can't recommend it and it ends up being the pointless tier because everything it used to do real well Debian does now so there's no point in it peppermint same thing in a lightweight I would say peppermint has a little bit better package selection than Ubuntu that's why it makes it a lightweight realm for me I really like it and for the next one pop OS oh man two years ago it'd end up right here it was an amazing distribution I've even done a lot of videos and even had like my daughter my nine-year-old daughter at the time install pop OS it was great for new users but it is a fork of Ubuntu using the known desktop environment and they really haven't evolved yet into another tier I could totally see this coming back to here or maybe even right here with the cosmic tool set they're moving on from gtk they just haven't yet and all they have going for it is like an Nvidia spin that's good but to me it's pointless right now but as Cosmic comes out and it becomes more unique and there's actually more stuff that's just not copies with some tweaks because you know hey Pop OS back in the day one cool thing it did where like a Debian didn't would make it up to here was like it did uh I think it was like a u limit and you could do f-sync and some other cool things but all those settings got kind of pushed back into Upstream Debian and there's no real customizations in pop OS I miss anymore so right now it's the pointless here however I know system D has some really talented people over there and they could move out of the pointless tier next up is Puppy Linux uh it's either lightweight or creative and unique it's weird it's a strange distro it's lightweight they make custom it has a strange package manager of like wolf and bark and these weird commands I'm gonna put it in the lightweight tier it could also go to here just because of how its design but um not something I would use and I probably should use a little more so I can give a little bit more better feedback but right now I'm gonna just throw it in lightweight here slack wears next creative and unique slackware is the original desktop the Linux distribution really it's one of the very first Linux distributions I want to say it's the oldest active Linux distribution it's a little bit rough to work with though the package manager and some of the weirdness to the slack where if you love compiling and building your own programs slackware is cool there's a lot of ogs and slackware I don't want to say anything bad about it because it is the OG of Linux distributions it's just not not my cup of tea but I want to put it there next up is Solus which has like a budgie environment so it's like its own unique desktop environment so they're not really copying much it's not a fork of Debian it's not a fork of anything really they create their own kernel so Solas it's real Niche there's not a lot of guides on Solis which makes it hard for new users or even intermediate users to use it but if you're really familiar with Linux and you love the budgie desktop environment Solace actually does a really good job of keeping up these things and honestly there's no Forks they build all their stuff so into in Solus is kind of an amazing unique distribution next up is going to be Souza well it's in the name you know it's it's Enterprise Linux and it's good for Linux uh businesses using Linux with a I think the entire German government used it for several years and uh yeah it's one of those if you're a business you need support and you want a desktop Souza's probably one of the ones I'd point to as far as using it for day to day for a normal user opensuse is there and it's okay it has some unique package managers with zipper it has a really unique like control panel-esque type thing with yast but it's not something I like because it's just a little too Niche but if I was in a business and I needed a sport plan I'd probably choose Souza for uh like workstation environments next up is going to be tails and Tails is cool it's obviously creative unique it's meant to run off of either a USB or CD and it loads the entire Linux distro into memory and then once you're done you basically turn your computer off and everything's gone so it's really good for like a one-off task that maybe you don't want any remnants of whatever happened there I think even some governments ban Tails because they're they're afraid people use it for malicious purposes and then there won't be any way to track what they did uh for me it's like eh I mean honestly I wish I had another distribution to toss in the creative unique cubes OS which is Edward snowden's one where if you're interested in privacy instead of using like a Tails I'd use cubes it teaches compartmentalization I did a couple videos an entire series on cubes that was really kind of amazing check it out if you want um next up void Linux this is another creative and unique one you have a unique on non-system D1 everything's built it's not like a fork of a fork it's a really cool distribution in void highly recommend checking it out I need to do a deeper dive on it but it's a very unique distribution and then we have tiny core this one is like obviously the king of lightweight I think it runs on 20 or 40 Megs of memory something just ridiculously small so tiny core is kind of cool and then we got two more zorin and nubara zorin is something where I struggle it's either the devil it's either a new user or it's pointless and those are like the three categories where I throw zorin it has a Pro Plan where you pay thirty dollars and it's a paid distribution but at the same time I'm like ah but it's really kind of It kind of like chromebook-esque feel to it to where anybody could pick it up and use it and if I was just gonna say a one-off person that needed maybe a support plan zoren's kind of where I'd lean them to if I wasn't the support and I would be like hey just call them and you can you can get some support for it I think zorin would be okay for that me personally it's pointless but I don't want to knock it because it might be good for new users and then I added one more and that's nabara this is a fedora Fork made by glorious egg roll that is made for gaming glorious egg roll knows Linux gaming better than pretty much anybody and if you need just the best stock defaults and you just want to game in Linux new bar is where you should be so if you're you're a gamer in Windows and you're like I want to try Linux gaming new bar is where you go because everything out of the gate is set you don't have to know a whole lot about Linux you can just install Navara and go it's it's really a well done distribution even though I give it kind of a knock these days being based on Fedora but to be expected because glorious egg roll who makes it actually works at red hat so he knows it the best and he he does some of the best work out there when it comes to Linux gaming because almost anybody that does Linux gaming knows about proton GE which is made by glorious egg roll which makes nubara and he does all these great customizations to make Linux gaming a thing so this is the Linux tier list let me know your hate down in the comments below because I trashed your distribution sorry but I want to say you get my rationale for each one of these distributions as you've gone through this gives you kind of an idea of why I put things in certain categories and know that this tier list could look different for you and know that just because I I don't want people to choose a distribution because the look and feel because the look and feel can be done on any of these distributions you can give me any one of these I can change the desktop environment I can change obviously the background the icons the theming the file managers all that stuff can be changed you should never pick a distribution based on its look and I see too many like people that look at Groot and I'm like man I love that neon feel to it I'm going to do that or they'll look at these other ones in the pointless tier and go well it just has a good look I feel like I'm going to move to that I've even seen people go from like pop to fahren to Parrot and all these different ones in here and it's really like all Debian based distributions and not much is changing for them it's just changing like the look and feel I'm like you should have just installed Debian and learned how to change all these things yourself that would have kept you from distro hopping so much and that's kind of where I'm at with this tier list why it's structured the way it is and hopefully you learn something and with that be gentle in the comments please please just know that's why I did it this way is just to hopefully educate people in a certain areas over why you choose certain distributions and not to get so overwhelmed with Wow we could we could easily added another 50 in here but most of those would have been in the pointless tier in people's eyes we just glazed over so with that I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Chris Titus Tech

Views: 89,479

Keywords: chris titus tech

Id: KyADkmRVe0U

Length: 27min 33sec (1653 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/evk6713]

There's still people debating about which distro is better ? I mean, use whatever tf fits your needs, there is no right answer, just enjoy Linux

[u/imB0Bo]

"Why dont just use debian?"

"HOW TF I DOWNLOAD THE ISO IMAGE OF DEBIAN?!" ~ A New User.

[u/Uppity-Eldian]

No it shouldn't because, Red Hat & their new potential release of 'privacy protecting telemetry' that will probably get implemented in Fedora 40.

That's not something you'd ever worry about on Debian or Arch.

Now is Fedora a well put together distro with plenty of options and opinionated defaults? Sure.

Also, Manjarno definitely belongs in the pointless tier 😂

[u/Daathchild]

Things that are wrong with this list:

1. Gentoo should be S-tier. He says it's for tryhards and people with "too much time on their hands", but the truth of the matter is that it's not that much harder than Arch, and the only truly time-consuming bit is the installation and initial compilation. A few packages can take time to compile, but those are rare, and there's usually a binary version provided if you don't have the time to maintain that. And he doesn't touch at all on the main benefits of a Gentoo desktop, like being able to fine-tune compilation flags and hyper-optimize the software directly for your system. When configured properly, it's like having Clear Linux, but for any set of hardware.
2. While I would also put Debian in S-tier, distros like MX Linux aren't "pointless", because MX Linux, for example, includes a special kernel that supports more hardware than Debian. This can be a deal-breaker on some newer laptops that don't have kernel support in Debian and don't have an Ethernet port to install a newer kernel.
3. All of the Ubuntu spins should be in Devil tier. It doesn't make sense to put Ubuntu in Devil tier and then put its various spins in a better tier when they do all the same things wrong, and the only difference is the desktop environment.
4. I'd probably put Void in low S-tier. It's a great, minimalist, general-purpose operating system. It does everything, and it does some things better than most distributions.
5. I'd probably put Pop in the New User tier. It takes everything that's great about Ubuntu and removes everything that's horrible, and it's an excellent alternative for those of us who aren't big fans of Mint. It does use GNOME for the time being, but it's a heavily-customized version of GNOME that is better for new users than stock GNOME that a lot of distros ship with.

[u/ZulkarnaenRafif]

My opinion is that everyone has an opinion.

And everyone's opinion is wrong.

... wait, does that mean I'm also wrong???

[u/Okbudhaha]

Tumbleweed should be higher but Chris has been taking shots at openSUSE for years for not having the calamares installer or whatever.

[u/ansithethird]

Well, CTT is always based.

[u/anewhype]

If you are using Linux that is the only thing I care about. Distro tier lists are not necessary imo.

[u/kranker]

Ubuntu in "devil" but kubuntu in "amazing" eh?

Also the pentesting distro analysis is off. Sure, you just have to install the apps on another distro but why would I want to waste my time doing that? I can install these distros in a VM in a minute. They aren't typically used as your daily driver.