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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1147 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've been thinking about installing Linux, but I can't pick a distro. Arch is the obvious candidate so I can tell everyone about it, but something RPM-based is better for career-applicable skills.

The value you get in terms of career skills will be from daily driving Linux, and being forced to work through any issues that might come up. Whether your distro uses RPM or anything else won't matter.

I am talking about specific system tools. Like iptables vs firewalld, AppArmor vs SELinux. If I have to touch RHEL-based distros at work it makes sense to use the same distro family at home to get used to the same tools.

I strongly discourage Arch for your first desktop Linux install, unless you have an Arch-specific package or function you're looking for. It's a lot less painful than it was even five years ago, and it can be useful as a way to learn about fundamental parts of the modern boot process and distribution of functionality, but it's a lot of tedium to eventually end up with a machine that wants to update (literally) every time you boot it up, and often multiple times, and may be harder to find support for less common use cases.

If you want to get more familiar with RPM specifically, your main bets are gonna be limited to either Fedora or OpenSUSE as a desktop tool. They're not my first choice as a daily driver, but they are functional for most purposes. Mandriva/Oracle/Alma exist, but they're going to be harder to jump into, and to find support around. EDIT: if I had to pick, I'd go with OpenSUSE. /EDIT.

(Technically, you can just install most package managers on most linux distros. I wouldn't recommend it, though, and for RPM specifically you're likely to be stuck compiling from source.)

I would love to know what your top choices are for a daily driver... and if they would differ if you were considering choosing a daily driver for a less-techy wife.

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