Those who don’t have the time or appetite to tweak/modify/troubleshoot their computers: What is your setup for a reliable and low-maintenance system?
Context:
I switched to Linux a couple of years ago (Debian 11/12). It took me a little while to learn new software and get things set up how I wanted, which I did and was fine.
I’ve had to replace my laptop though and install a distro (Fedora 41) with a newer kernel to make it work but even so, have had to fix a number of issues. This has also coincided with me having a lot less free time and being less interested in crafting my system and more interested in using it efficiently for tasks and creativity. I believe Debian 13 will have a new enough kernel to support my hardware out of the box and although it will still be a hassle for me to reinstall my OS again, I like the idea of getting it over with, starting again with something thoroughly tested and then not having to really touch anything for a couple of years. I don’t need the latest software at all times.
I know there are others here who have similar priorities, whether due to time constraints, age etc.
Do you have any other recommendations?
I use fedora and Ansible to fix things I want to be different all the time. After I install the OS I run Ansible pull and it makes all the changes I want
avoid nixos
Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is my pick.
I’ve got two study laptops and apart from Tailscale giving me some grief very recently with DNS resolution, I literally haven’t had any problems with either machine. Both have been going for 1.5 years.
I like the LMDE route for the DE already having pretty decent defaults and not requiring much tweaking from the get-go. Xfce (as it ships by default in Debian) absolutely works, but I end up spending an hour theming it and adding panel applets and rearranging everything so that it… ends up looking similar to Cinnamon anyway, because default Xfce looks horrible in my opinion
Debian XFCE or Xubuntu LTS.
xfce is stubbornly slow at introducing new features, but it is absolutely rock-solid. Hell I don’t think they’ve changed their icon set in some 20 years.
Debian and *buntu LTS are also likewise slow feature updaters that focus on stability.
fedora with gnome for me.
Peppermint , based on debian. “Everything you need and nothing you don’t”
Xubuntu LTS. I’ve been meaning to switch to Debian Stable when something breaks, but it’s my third LTS on the desktop and 5th on the laptop and there was just no opportunity. I also learned to avoid PPAs and other 3rd party repos, and just use appimages when possible.
You can have a kernel from Testing or even Sid, I believe, but yeah, it’s what we want to avoid - tweaking.
LTS is released every 2 years, for reference.
fedora has been this for myself. maybe tweaking every now and then to fix whatever edge cases I’ve run into but it’s the least painful distro I’ve used so far
My Arch Linux setup on my desktop and my servers are low-maintenance. I do updates on my servers every month or so (unless some security issue was announced, that will be patched right away) and my desktop a few times a week.
Nearly anything can be low-maintenance with the proper care and consideration.
For your constraints I would use just use Debian, Alma Linux or Linux Mint and stick with the official packages, flathub and default configuration on the system level. Those are low-maintenance out of the box in general.
- yet another vote for Debian Stable
- second the comment on: if you need a newer kernel for hardware reasons, use backports
- Xfce
- stick to flatpaks when dealing with wanting to try out a new program (if you like it, then make the decision to use apt or not)
- don’t confuse “hasn’t been updated” with “hasn’t needed to be updated”
Get a big mainstream distro and stop tinkering with it.
This really is the answer. The more services you add, the more of your attention they will require. Granted, for most services already integrated into the distro’s repo, the added admin overhead will likely be minimal, but it can add up. That’s not to say the admin overhead can’t be addressed. That’s why scripting and crons, among some other utilities, exist!
i think its more about modifying the system behavior, esp on desktop oses. i have many local services running on my server, and if set up right, its pretty much no maintenance at all.
i want to try another distro than ubuntu, but the damn thing isnt giving me a single excuse to format my system. it doesnt break if you don’t fuck with it.
Such a bad comment, what does tinkering mean? Not use any software besides the default one? So only browsing and text apps? facepalm
Tinkering, in my personal definition, would mean installing third party repositories for the package manager (or something like the AUR on Arch) or performing configuration changes on the system level… Just keep away as most as possible from accessing the root user (including su/sudo) is a general a good advice I would say.
Keeping away from sudo, got it.
If you want to take that from my text then feel free.
If you like debian and just need a newer kernel you could just add backports to your debian install then install the kernel during the install process.
Running exotic niche server images out in the wild…
It’s just Fedora CoreOS with some QoL packages added at build time. Not niche at all. The very minor changes made are all transparent on GitHub.
Choose CoreOS if you prefer, it’s equally zero maintenance.
Yeah, sure. I was running Bluefin-DX. One day image maintainers decided to replace something and things break. UBlue is an amazing project. Team is trying hard but it’s definitely not zero mainainace. I fear they are chasing so many UBlue flavours, recently an LTS one based on CoreOS, spreading thin.
If you depend on third party modules you’ll end up with third party maintenance - we didn’t purposely decide to break this we don’t work at Nvidia.
Jorge, OP asked about “not having to really touch anything for a couple of years”. I am just sharing my experience. Big fan of containers and really appreciate your efforts of pulling containers tech into Linux desktop. Thank you!
I don’t understand the answer though. Maybe I am missing something here. There’s an official Bluefin-DX-Nvidia iso. Nvidia-containers-toolkit was part of that iso.
On a separate note, I liked the idea of GTS edition. Since few weeks ago iso became unavailable pending some fix. At the same time I see loads of new LTS edition buzz. It’s still in Alpha though. I feel confused.
I don’t understand the answer though.
The answer is if you’re depending on software that is closed and out of your control (aka. you have an Nvidia card) then you should have support expectations around that hardware and linux.
There are no GTS ISOs because we don’t have a reliable way to make ISOs (the ones we have now are workarounds) but that should be finished soon.
🤷 I’ve been running Aurora and uCore for over a year and have yet to do any maintenance.
You can roll back to the previous working build by simply restarting, it’s pretty much the easiest fix ever and still zero maintenance (since you didn’t have to reconfigure or troubleshoot anything, just restart).
This is the way. The uBlue derivatives benefit from the most shared knowledge and problem-solving skills being delivered directly to users.
Between that, and using a decorative distrobox config, I get an actually reliable system with packages from any distro I want.
Doesn’t ucore also have to restart to apply updates?
Not super ideal for a server as far as maintenance and uptime to have unexpected, frequent restarts as opposed to in-place updates, unless one’s startup is completely automated and drives are on-device keyfile decrypted, but that probably fits some threat models for security.
The desktop versions are great!
Not super ideal for a server as far as maintenance and uptime to have unexpected, frequent restarts
This is such a weird take given that 99.9% of people here are just running this on their home servers which aren’t dictated by a SLA, so it’s not like people need to worry about reboots. Just reboot once a month unless there’s some odd CVE you need to hit sooner than later.
So why would somebody run that on their homeserver compared to tried and true staples with tons of documentation? 🍿
You’re right, they should be running Windows Server as God intended 😆
It’s just Fedora CoreOS with some small quality-of-life packages added to the build.
There’s tons of documentation for CoreOS and it’s been around for more than a decade.
If you’re running a container workload, it can’t be beat in my opinion. All the security and configuration issues are handled for you, which is especially ideal for a home user who is generally not a security expert.
That is very fair!!
But on the other hand, 99.9% of users don’t read all of the change notes for their packages and don’t have notifications for CVEs. In that case, in my opinion just doing updates as they come would be easier and safer.
They won’t apply unexpectedly, so you can reboot at a time that suits. Unless there’s a specific security risk there’s no need to apply them frequently. Total downtime is the length of a restart, which is also nice and easy.
It won’t fit every use-case, but if you’re looking for a zero-maintenance containerized-workload option, it can’t be beat.
Run k3s on top and run your stateless services on a lightweight kubernetes, then you won’t care you have to reboot your hosts to apply updates?
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Debian stable + XFCE for me. Missing newer packages though. I’m interested in what problems you had with Fedora
I had problems with waking from sleep/hibernate, audio issues (total dropouts as well as distortion in screen-recording apps), choppy video playback and refusal to enter fullscreen, wonky cursor scaling, apps not working as expected or not running at all. I’ve managed to fix most of these or find temporary workarounds (grateful for flatpaks for once!) or alternative applications. But the experience was not fun, particularly as there was only a 2 week return window for the laptop and I needed to be sure the problems weren’t hardware design/choice related. And I’m finding it 50/50 whether an app actually works when I install it from the repo. There’s a lot less documentation for manually installing things as well and DNF is slow compared to apt…
I don’t want to say for certain that Fedora as a distro is to blame but I suspect that it is. I miss my Debian days.
(grateful for flatpaks for once!)
That’s how I run my system right now. Fedora KDE + pretty much everything as Flatpak.
Gives me a recent enough kernel and KDE version so I don’t have to worry when I get new hardware or new features drop but also restricts major updates to new Fedora versions so I can hold those back for a few weeks.
I made a similar switch as you but from Ubuntu to Fedora because of outdated firmware and kernel.
Let’s hope Debian fits you. I had to change to an Intel WiFi card but everything else worked OOTB for me on my laptop
I had problems with waking from sleep/hibernate
what graphics do you have? Don’t expect that to go away with nvidia. no such issues on AMD though, intel should be fine though
Intel Arc integrated graphics.
This! Debian with Gnome or others is the answer. Take an afternoon to make it yours, then forget it. You can use backported kernels on Debian, to support newer hardware. Try this or upgrade to Debian 13 right now by changing the sourcefile to trixie instead of bookworm. Note : if you use Gnome, let gnome-software handle the updates for you (there’s an equivalent for kde). If you use others, configure unattented-upgrades for automatic updates.
I’ve been distro hopping for decades. I got exhausted with things constantly breaking. I’ve been using mint for the past six months with zero issues. It’s so refreshing that everything just works.
Every time I stray from Mint I am reminded why I go back to it.
Same here. I got to a point I wanted to use the OS rather than play with and fix it. Went back to Mint and stayed there.
I second Mint. I’ve installed it on my laptop with zero issues, although that thing is pretty old so your mileage may vary on newer hardware. But mint comes with pretty up to date kernels these days so it’s definitely worth a try.
