Linux has over 6% of the desktop market

[Night Wing]

I've grown bored of Debian and distros based on it. The older packages don't really "bother" me, it's pretty reliable and everything works, but I get curious when new software or updates come out and there's many new features and fixes.

At the time of this post, my backup linux distro is Debian 13.5 (Infinity) Xfce. You may find this Debian distro boring. But I have a different viewpoint. I find Debian to be "rock solid" when it comes to "stability". Also, many business servers in the world use Debian.

Since you stated you are bored with other distros based on Debian, have you tried taking Debian based MX Linux for a test drive? Say for a two week period? In my opinion, MX Linux, the one in my signature, MX is definitely not boring. It has lots of customization right out of the box too.

And you can have your choice of three different desktop environments to choose from and they are: Xfce, KDE and Fluxbox.

https://mxlinux.org/download-links/

[athenian200]

I've grown bored of Debian and distros based on it. The older packages don't really "bother" me, it's pretty reliable and everything works, but I get curious when new software or updates come out and there's many new features and fixes. I've been considering Fedora since it seems great for me, but I'm too lazy to switch everything over right now, especially since it requires more effort to do so with a Raspberry Pi as one's only computer.

I'd say Fedora's kind of a middle ground between a fast-moving distro like Arch with a rolling release, and something a bit slower like Debian stable. And really it is a pretty good baseline for what to expect from an average Linux distro. It's why a lot of times when I want to see how something would fare on an average modern Linux distro, I test Fedora first. Not everyone would agree with that rule of thumb, but it's worked pretty well for me over the years.

In general, it does feel like people either want something slower and more conservative like Debian or an older enterprise Linux that just gets security updates to avoid surprises, or they want bleeding-edge rolling release like Arch or something. There's not as many people in-between, but Fedora and a few others like it seem to sit there for those looking for something that's "just right" in that regard.

[Moonchild]

Fedora-based AlamaLinux and Rocky Linux strike a pretty decent middle while not being beholden to the Red Hat commercialism.

[andyprough]

I'd say Fedora's kind of a middle ground between a fast-moving distro like Arch with a rolling release, and something a bit slower like Debian stable.

Fedora is an experimental testing area for finding bugs in packages prior to landing in CentOS Stream, which itself is the beta for RedHat. And yes, Fedora is widely acknowledged to be bleeding edge. If you are going to use a bleeding edge distro you would be much better off using Arch, which itself is a final product and not a testing ground for anyone. A true middle ground between Debian and bleeding edge would be MX, which has Debian stable plus about 2.5k additional packages that the MX devs (mostly Steve Pusser) backport from their latest releases.

[sofrosune]

which has Debian stable plus about 2.5k additional packages that the MX devs (mostly Steve Pusser) backport from their latest releases.

Hey, that's the guy that used to offer Pale Moon builds for Debian! interesting.

[solitude]

A true middle ground between Debian and bleeding edge would be MX, which has Debian stable plus about 2.5k additional packages that the MX devs (mostly Steve Pusser) backport from their latest releases.

One man behind thousands of packages... How sustainable will that be in the long term?

[Night Wing]

A true middle ground between Debian and bleeding edge would be MX, which has Debian stable plus about 2.5k additional packages that the MX devs (mostly Steve Pusser) backport from their latest releases.

One man behind thousands of packages... How sustainable will that be in the long term?

Steve Pusser is not a "one man show" in MX Linux. I will be quoting and combining from a few websites info wise to make this post so you can get the gist of what MX Linux is. And on a side note, since MX Linux is based on Debian, Debian was created in the year 1993 so I think MX will be around for a long time due to the popularity and stability of Debian. To make my point, MX was created in 2014. So Debian and MX both have long track records time wise.

MX Linux does not have a single centralized headquarters. It is a global, decentralized open-source project. It operates through an international team of developers and community members originating heavily from Europe (particularly Greece) and North America.

The operating system was formed from a collaborative development effort between two distinct communities: The antiX community: An operating system project originally based in Greece. The MEPIS community: A Linux community with deep roots in the United States. The name "MX" is a direct homage to these roots—the "M" comes from MEPIS and the "X" comes from antiX.

While the developers operate remotely across the globe, the underlying software is built directly on top of the Debian operating system, which is a massive, globally distributed open-source software project.

[andyprough]

One man behind thousands of packages... How sustainable will that be in the long term?

I think I first ran into Steve Pusser 15 years ago when he was making tons of backports for openSUSE, Debian and MX. He's kind of an amazing person in that regard. I think he works smart and automates a lot of package builds. But you can still go on the MX forum today and request a special package, and usually within a few days he'll have it in the MX testing repo for you.

He's been packaging Pale Moon for various distros and architectures for as long as I remember. He probably single-handedly supplies the Raspberry Pi community with their only workable Pale Moon builds.

[mr tribute]

I'd say Fedora's kind of a middle ground between a fast-moving distro like Arch with a rolling release, and something a bit slower like Debian stable.

Fedora is an experimental testing area for finding bugs in packages prior to landing in CentOS Stream, which itself is the beta for RedHat. And yes, Fedora is widely acknowledged to be bleeding edge. If you are going to use a bleeding edge distro you would be much better off using Arch, which itself is a final product and not a testing ground for anyone. A true middle ground between Debian and bleeding edge would be MX, which has Debian stable plus about 2.5k additional packages that the MX devs (mostly Steve Pusser) backport from their latest releases.

Agree.
Personally I wouldn’t use Fedora because I dislike systemd, Wayland and Rust.
I also think it might be hard to find another Pale Moon user on Fedora. Pale Moon users tend to be in the “legacy” camp, even on Windows.

The MX Linux base and all the MX tools made it possible for me to create a FOSS Windows clone. Also, on the Debian base I have never run into a situation where I can’t run the newest version of a piece of software. All the necessary package managers and repos are available.

Only thing lacking is that it can be hard to install the latest version of all desktop environments if you aren’t able to compile them yourself.

[andyprough]

Only thing lacking is that it can be hard to install the latest version of all desktop environments if you aren’t able to compile them yourself.

Yes for sure, and especially if you want the latest Gnome or KDE, you absolutely must use a bleeding edge distro like Fedora or Arch. If Gnome or KDE came out with a new release two weeks before launch date, Fedora would include it, whereas Debian would test it for about a year first. Any stable or LTS distro is just going to be nearly impossible to backport a full Gnome or KDE to. But in terms of applications, most of them are pretty straightforward to backport the latest versions to a recent LTS distro.

[moonbat]

if you want the latest Gnome or KDE, you absolutely must use a bleeding edge distro like Fedora or Arch.

Not really, I got my laptop preinstalled with KDE Neon and it works great as a showcase of the latest from KDE. Currently running KDE Plasma 6.6.5.

[andyprough]

if you want the latest Gnome or KDE, you absolutely must use a bleeding edge distro like Fedora or Arch.

Not really, I got my laptop preinstalled with KDE Neon and it works great as a showcase of the latest from KDE. Currently running KDE Plasma 6.6.5.

True KDE Neon is made specifically to run the latest version of KDE by the KDE project, so yes that's an option. But that's pretty bleeding edge from my understanding, and if you wanted a big, general use distro with huge repos, you'd still be pushed toward Fedora and Arch probably. If KDE Neon is using more of an LTS system underneath, I'd be interested to hear about it.

[moonbat]

But that's pretty bleeding edge from my understanding

It's not. Works fine and is built on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The underlying Ubuntu doesn't get updated between LTS releases, just the KDE Plasma part, and that runs fine; you get to see incremental improvements and fixes.

[_JaSn]

I also think it might be hard to find another Pale Moon user on Fedora.

Hi

[browserman]

Agree.
Personally I wouldn’t use Fedora because I dislike systemd, Wayland and Rust.
I also think it might be hard to find another Pale Moon user on Fedora. Pale Moon users tend to be in the “legacy” camp, even on Windows.

Acctually, systemd, Wayland and Rust is just (mainly Microsoft's) trick to get control of Linux because it's much worse for them than they pretend (ever increasing debt). Big companies cooperating to push back Linux usage, have a look at statcounter.com, desktop usage: there's this unknown giant operating system which they pretend to know nothing about (40% in Africa, 10-20% in Europe for example). It's Linux.

Age checks (or the EU chat control) is another trick to get control over everybody and say open source is not good = you need Windows / Ios etc

Same reason they are working hard to constantly changing the web frameworks/scripts and so on, so Palemoon & no-control-browsers always have some problem with sites, deliberate sabotage.

[athenian200]

Acctually, systemd, Wayland and Rust is just (mainly Microsoft's) trick to get control of Linux because it's much worse for them than they pretend (ever increasing debt). Big companies cooperating to push back Linux usage, have a look at statcounter.com, desktop usage: there's this unknown giant operating system which they pretend to know nothing about (40% in Africa, 10-20% in Europe for example). It's Linux.

I'd say if anyone is trying to "get control of Linux" here, it's IBM, not Microsoft. It's why they bought Red Hat. And Rust... that was being being pushed by Mozilla and then became popular among the younger generation of programmers, so now companies want to use it to appeal to the young. We were complaining about Rust before anyone else, we would know...

Same reason they are working hard to constantly changing the web frameworks/scripts and so on, so Palemoon & no-control-browsers always have some problem with sites, deliberate sabotage.

Well, I think it's more that Google wants to maintain their monopoly, and they benefit from increased ad revenue if people can't block ads because they use Chrome, no big conspiracy is required to explain that one. Speaking of ad-blockers, I think Firefox may be shooting themselves in the foot with that built-in adblocker thing, advertisers may push for websites to drop Firefox support because of that.

[Mæstro]

Well, I think it's more that Google wants to maintain their monopoly, and they benefit from increased ad revenue if people can't block ads because they use Chrome, no big conspiracy is required to explain that one. Speaking of ad-blockers, I think Firefox may be shooting themselves in the foot with that built-in adblocker thing, advertisers may push for websites to drop Firefox support because of that.

When you mention the facts side by side like that, it suggests to me the speculation that Firefox’s inbuilt advert-blocker is meant to anticipate any future shift to Manifest 3. We are all here because we learnt a decade ago what Mozilla thinks about disobeying Mother Google’s instructions about browser extensions, but Google still needs Mozilla alive, if just barely, to maintain enough of an illusion of choice to avoid too much legal scrutiny.

[_JaSn]

Firefox is not planning to use it as a built-in adblocker. It is to experiment with changing some part of the implementation of ETP. (By using RUST!!! )

Mozilla may be slow, inconsistent and misaligned, but they are not idiots. It hasn't been more a couple years since Firefox became the only safe place for uBlock Origin. They may cuck to MV3 someday, but IMO that day definitely isn't coming for at least a few years.

[Night Wing]

Thought I would do a little update on the "Age Verification" checks status for Linux. Looks like Linux (distros) will not have to worry about this since California is making an exception for Linux.

https://www.ghacks.net/2026/05/27/calif ... ge-checks/

[Gemmaugr]

Thought I would do a little update on the "Age Verification" checks status for Linux. Looks like Linux (distros) will not have to worry about this since California is making an exception for Linux.

https://www.ghacks.net/2026/05/27/calif ... ge-checks/

And yet, they simultaneously expand the tracking to the open web; https://reclaimthenet.org/california-wa ... -whole-web

California fixed the most obvious problem with its age-tracking law but replaced it with a version that follows you across the entire internet.

California Assembly Bill 1856 is getting friendly press coverage because it now exempts Linux from the state’s age-tracking mandate. The part nobody’s talking about is that it simultaneously expands the surveillance to your web browser.

Any software distributed under a license that lets users “copy, redistribute, and modify the software” would no longer be covered. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, and Mint all walk free. That sounds like a win and tech outlets are reporting it as one. It’s also a distraction from what the bill adds.

The original law, AB 1043, required operating systems to harvest users’ ages during device setup and feed that data to app stores and app developers through a real-time API.

AB 1856 keeps all of that and extends the data pipeline to browser providers and website operators. Browsers would now be required to collect age signal data from the OS and pass it along to any website subject to online age verification laws.

[More, much more, text in the article about the how's and why's and history]