Comparing 10 Popular Linux Distros: Which One Rules Your Desktop?
Todays video looks at some of the performance factors you may be interested in when choosing a linux distro which is both fast but also has the type of features you might be looking for. The choice of Linux distro should not be made just on performance numbers alone. There are other factors, and this video talks about what some of those might be.
AI Thumbnail: The Six Distros which completed all the tests and four which didn’t
Benchmark Link: https://openbenchmarking.org/user/djware
Ignore the ones marked ubi, i was testing a few of the phoroniix benchmarks
00:00 – Intro
00:26 – Choosing A Linux Distro
01:20 – Where to begin?
02:41 – Tier List?
04:46 – Which Linux Distros am I testing?
10:39 – Test Methodology
12:25 – Useablity
14:29 – Benchmarks
14:46 – Phoronix Tests
15:07 – Benchmark Results
21:22 – Conclusions
23:01 – About System76
23:47 – King of the Linux Distros
24:38 – Benchmark results (low level)
by DJ Ware
linux foundation
One thing, I did set Fedora up with an ext4 filesystem
Linux Mint for me, XFCE4 version for older machines, cinnamon if you want more bling. In my experience Mint just works better than any other distribution I've tried (tried maybe a dozen or so). I really like that I often have a choice between distribution packages or flatpacks for new applications. For some reason many Ubuntu based distributions have some issue with the package manager GUI. When I want to install new applications, searches or looking into categories just give empty lists with three dots. In Mint it just works properly, out of the box. IMO a distribution's package manager/GUI should work properly on a default install. I liked Mint so much I actually donated, first time I thought a distribution was worth it.
There might be an update OS step missing before running the performance tests. Why? Because my Ububtu 22.04 LTS is now running 6.2 kernel and not 5-dot-something as DJWare mentioned. And I didn't do anything on purpose for that, was just running regular apt update & upgrade.
But I loved the idea of benchmarking distros on your own hardware, it gives some interesting insights
You know what I feel it's missing from the Linux YT space ? A guide for the intermediary – advanced. I mean, there's a lot of focus on things like "which distro is the most newbie-friendly?" or "which distro is the easiest to use" etcetc.
I think it would be useful if somebody also made a video about "ok, after you pass the begginer phase, what would be best fitting for you ? If the learning curve and to an extent, ease of use are no longer a factor, what should somebody consider and why ? What could be the distro you settle for long term?". Also here it would also be nice to mention or take into account the things that can be reasonably easy be changed from the defaults. So if a distro by default comes with btrfs or with ext4 but you happen to like or want the other one and the distro offers an easy option to change, then it shouldn't be counted against that distro that it doesn't default to that FS. Or whatever other choice.
I guess it would simply be too difficult of a video to make. But I think it would be useful to exist, as a peek into what's to come for the begginers who are already in linux already and could use help to see where to go next.
Gentoo FTW!
These are all problematic, I'm always cussing my system,whichever one I'm running. Of course, they'd probably work better if an idiot wasn't running them.
I WANT to use Arch btw, but I keep coming back to Pop OS. It performs well, has tiling and sensible keyboard shortcuts out of the box, and I can use GNOME extensions such as Focus that do not work in GNOME 45+ to rice it. When Pop switches to COSMIC, I'll lose those extensions, unfortunately.
Look, DJ, I really do appreciate you doing all of this and giving us real information. I'm looking to choose a new desktop OS so this helps a lot! BUT….(always a but)….We cannot see your screen. When you bring up the web browser, and it's not "zoomed," we cannot see (well) the graphs and text along with them. AND when we try to zoom it, the text is unreadable. Some of us are old and cannot see as well as we would like too. 🙂
Could you fix this in the future? It would help many of your viewers.
Keep up doing the great videos!
Hi, tkana food this Vizio, why not add also Manjaro, Garuda and Novara?
Finally a tier list that explains its tiers and is oriented towards use cases.
Using Fedora 39 KDE…….this week
One time I was using random() function in xinitrc from 5 DEs and lots of WMs. Every login I had a different candy flavour. I bet you can do something similar with distro itself, but it has to be virtualized in some form.
The non-kde one with 1-line panel. KDE issue for me: it uses so much memory. Ubuntu: a left panel + a top panel: a waste of screen estate. OpenBox + tint2 or Hyprland + waybar suite me (both use 1.6GB of ram in cachyos), but all the themes, configurations for hyprland + waybar that I've seen until now waste a lot of screen space. So, finally, as I don't have much energy and time to configure hyprland and waybar, I come back to Windows 11 with a 2-line bottom panel 🙁
Great video DJ. Us old timers remember the good old days mate. My career started on system V, 4.2BSD and went on from there. I remember the days of SLS Linux so I’m going back. 😂😂
After all the servers and mainframes I’ve administered over the years I don’t know about you but I just sit back and shake my head at the tribalism of the Linux community. Back when it started everyone helped everyone now it’s a mines better than yours attitude and it all over a god damn operating system 😂😂😂 something that helps you get your work done. Thanks for the video and your insight. Great channel. Now I’m going back to my Linux Mint 😂😂
Another great video Dj!
EndeavourOS fanboys will go crazy now! Lol! 😛 My favourite distro's are Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Fedora, Debian & Manjaro. I would loved to see how Manjaro performs in these tests, something tells me that it would perform better than EndeavourOS.
Use the fork Luke! 😂
Desktop: I used Mint 17-20, then switched to Ubuntu Gnome(18.04 – 20.04) and now I begin to feel that I stayed for too long in a "safe corner" and there're lots of other distros to try out without compromising my security, UX or software/HW support. I got my hands on pretty much every major distro out there, but a gacha moment of "it just works" on Ubuntu was a selling point for years…
Any suggestions what to look for?
Ubuntu, right or wrong my distro, since Windows Vista.
I use over 600 distros on a daily basis.
If Fedora is set with ext4, what would be the cause of having such low scores on the benchmarks?
One of the main reasons why I like PopOS. They rollout kernel and mesa drivers fairly often but only after they go through testing for stability. It's a great OS for gaming and general use.
I've been on Pop_OS for a few weeks now myself. Switched from Garuda (Arch based distro) that I was and am a huge fan of after a switch in GPU's from an AMD card to Nvidia one. I''d used Pop in the past and thought it kinda meh, but having used and daily drove it for the last couple of weeks I gotta say it's solid.
Nice video, DJ! I would just point out that you can pretty easily upgrade the kernel in stable distros like Debian and RHEL/RHEL clones. Linux Mint even includes a GUI option for doing this (which makes me wonder how Edge is different). I know kernel upgrades would mean it's no longer the default OOB experience and could make your stable distro less stable, but folks shouldn't rule these distros out simply because the kernel is older.
Moved to Arch 20 years ago.
probably installed it on more than 250 computers & VMs
I've lost count of how many computers I've had, but it's always been roughly the same.
pacman export of installed package names on the old system
copy the home directory then pacman install of the packages on the list.
I still have the same Openbox config from that era and use it from time to time.
It's like Christmas listening to you. My first distribution was redhat 5.1, I believe. Back in 98sh. After a year or to switched to Debian and that's what I run today. I've always stuck 2 kde. I first discovered BeOs and had no idea what I was looking at.Listening to you takes me to my happy place. Free Software and Linux Club, back in the days of the LUGs. We had a visit from Richard Stalman, and others. 🎅
I always wondered why I've always had such a good time with the “beginner distro” Linux mint, was not expecting to rank so high.
I am a Fedora user. But to view mp4 files, I have to boot to Manjaro. And I noted that Manjaro has the look and feel that I have with Fedora 39. I also take the time to help out the Fedora developers by beta testing new releases.
Do you do a lot of /etc/fstab manipulation or updates? I wrote a software that validates every /etc/fstab table, with string validation. The program reformats the fields into neat columns,
The /etc/fstab equivalent that is produced can be used to replace the existing fstab table.
Interested in a complementary copy? I am the author, and I make it available gpl3.
Thank you for the quality content. I am always looking forward to a new video.
opensuse tumbleweed running here
I still feel at home with openSuse leap and Plasma, but I've spent the last 30 days with Fedora and I'm impressed.
Another great DJ video!
Thanks DJ, few surprises here I guess. Very surprised with POP_OS performance (good) and very dissapointed with OpenSuse. But it seems to be correct, when I did simillar tests OpenSuse Thumbleweed vs Leap, somehow Leap always does slightly better. But with so many variations in hardware, you can never assume that this or that distribution will perform as good on different types of hardware. Thanks again. Still hoping for studio tour and your hardware setup tour, look your audience is mostly geeks, I run everything from old Celeron 1GHz with MS-DOS, Core2Duo Windows XP, i3 with Windows 7, i5 Windows 10, i3 with Debian 9, i5 Ubuntu 22.04, i3 OpenSuse Leap, RPi 4 with Raspberry Pi OS. We just curious what's in your cupboards 😉
Mint + Mate. No question.
I didn't think much of Win 95 overall, but I rather liked the visual front end.
First Linux I ever saw was headless (Slackware) but the 2nd, a couple of months later, had the Xorg on it.
From that point about '96 until Ubuntu busted the gnome2 and tried to force Unity down all our throats, I was happy with gnome2. When it became impossible to keep using the old desktop on Ubuntu, I went looking. First place I looked was DistroWatch, and the item at number 1 was called Mint, and when I clicked that, they had a new thing to try, called Mate, which was a fork / continuation / resuscitation of the gnome2 desktop.
Fry : "Shut up and take my money!"
And that's how I met your mother. That's what I've used as my home / daily driver ever since.
I do have and use VirtualBox, and I have about a dozen guests, including one window$ 11 and a smattering of the most popular and interesting Linux's. I have looked at KDE Neon, and a couple of others, but for the most part, all my guests also run Mate. I have been at this for a while now, I know what I like.
My view of gnome3 ~ er, it has got a lot better since the days I left and went to Mint, but I still don't like it. The feel, the workflow patterns, they're just not the same, and no, I don't think they're a whole lot better and newer and more sensible.
Hmm. huh… Aaaaahhhh. Debian for production. Arch (or Gentoo) for performance. One whopper of an overlook though is Proton. You don't have a game category. Oppsies. Funny thing, that proton was first developed on/for Debian, and is now coupled with Arch. Well, according to wikipedia. Awesome videos DJ Ware! Thank you!!
Another amazing video! Thank you once again and have a beautiful day!
Hola DJ Ware como me recomienda instalar endeavourOS con systemd-boot o grub y que sistema de archivo btrfs o ext4 saludos
I am so thankful to the people who develop and support these Linux distros . without Linux we would have unnecessary E waste computers filling up landfill sites . I migrated to Linux mint 3 years ago when support for my old imac was stopped . it still runs perfect today . Thank you Linux developers 😘
As a grumpy old Slackware user my benchmark is "Does the system piss me off?". I don't care if another distro has 7% faster disk I/O. I don't care if another distro has more packages in their repository. I don't care if my apps are a couple of versions behind.
I care about a complete lack of WTF moments. I want stuff to be done the same way it "has always been". And I will under no circumstances, what-so-ever, tolerate the distro talking back to me. If I say "shoot your brains out" the only acceptable response is "BANG!". If I said that by mistake, that's on me.
The thing is that I perfectly understand this style of distro is not for everyone. People like to promote the distro they're running, and I think that's stupid. "One size fits nobody" and all that.
I have been SuSE/openSUSE user for over 20 years, as my primary OS for daily use, on desktops and laptops, except @office and @gaming. Tumbleweed is the best rolling for me, using nearly since day 1, currently it is on my latest EliteBook 835 G10 7840U/32GB/5G with 2TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD … all is working out of box, including ambient light/5G/fingerprint, etc. Also have to mention that KDE/Plasma is my choice. Next best distro, if I ever had to switch would be Fedora, or Arch but man I wish it becomes much more user friendly starting with initial install.
Beard of knowledge has spoken!
Fedora broke my system few times…
Well done presentation DJ. We are in the age of retirees who are on fixed pensions that were good before the inflation hit. Ero, no membrship for some of us. I do appreciate your professionalism and your well designed presentations.
"OOBANTOO" doesn't exist.
If I was looking for a clean GNOME implementation, openSUSE Aeon, their atomic/immutable. It's probably a better fit for my laptop; not so much for my development workstation where I'm more inclined to run a dynamic tiling window manager for keyboard efficiency.
But… I'm much more likely to run Void (with a musl rather than glibc userland, they offer both) and increasingly these days Chimera Linux (musl only and no GNU – they use bsdutils rather than coreutils). Both have a ports tree reminiscent of BSDs and feel comfortable for this long time (but former)
FreeBSDer. My desktop OS is always a reflection of personal preferences. I run openSUSE MicroOS and containers on servers.
Surprised by the performance (or lack thereof) of EndavourOS.
It will still be my go to, the Arch repos especially with the AUR on top are to bountiful, and being able to use the Arch Wiki without limitations is also very nice.
But I wonder if it had something to do with the setup… You pinned a comment that you used ext4 for Fedora, did you do the same for EndavourOS? I believe that it does use BTRFS by default these days… Oh well. Not as if I don't use BTRFS anyways. And it sure feels snappy, though that might be due to my use of a ridiculously fast SSD.
Linux mint cinnamon… Because it just works..
The only exception in my opinion, from my experience of using it since late 2010….. Is whenever Nemo file manager Has a temporary 5 to 12 2nd freeze. Whenever I am refreshing, my 16 TB. 7200 RPM Toshiba hard drive that is literally field to the brim. With blue ray movies that I am trying to shrink using Handbrake
Nixos for me, I love the way it does things, having everything in one config file makes reinstalling for trying out different file systems a breeze, not worrying about breakages when updating, the ability to have different versions of the same software installed like having both stable and unstable installed, having a snapshot like feature for your OS without having to use the slower btrfs.
as always: Debian for servers, Archlinux for desktop
If you don't want to become crazy the only feasible distribution is an ubuntu-based like Linux Mint.
Not sure if anybody is talking about it, but it looks like Damn Small Linux is making a comeback.