Hey folks! I'm getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I'm planning to convert into a "cyberdeck" with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in breadboard, and other hardware hacking fun.
On the OS, I'm planning to try NixOS as a baremetal hypervisor (KVM/QEMU) and run my "primary" OSes in VMs with hardware passthrough. If perf is horrible, I'll probably switch back to baremetal after a bit. But, I'm not likely going to be gaming on it so, I'm not likely to have much issue.
Once the hypervisor is working in a manner that I like, I should have an easy time backing up, rolling back, swapping out my "desktop" OS. I've been using Linux as my pretty much my only OS for over a decade (I use MacOS as a glorified SSH client for work). Most of my time has been on distros in the Debian or RHEL families (*buntu, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, CentOS, etc) and I pretty much live in the terminal these days.
With all of this said, I am coming to you folks for help. I would like you folks to share distros, desktop environments, window managers that you think I should give a try, or would like to inflict on me and what makes them noteworthy.
I can't guarantee that I'll get through suggestions, as my ADHD has been playing up lately, but I'll give it an attempt. Seriously. If you want me to try Hannah Montana Linux, I'll do it and report back on the experience.
EDIT: Thank you all for your fantastic suggestions. I'm going to start compiling them into a list this weekend.
I'm slightly biased, but if you already know a bit of Linux and desire more control / customisation, or want to understand how a system is put together, then I highly recommend Gentoo Linux. The install process is pretty simple, and with the new binary package hosts you have the option of quickly installing precompiled packages to get a system installed or up-to-date.
The
USEflags on packages, combined with portage the package manage enable an unparalleled level of configurability, the community is welcoming and respect user choice about how they want to configure / use their system, and the documentation on the wiki is top notch - I'd say better than the arch wiki in terms of quality overall.If you still want Gentoo, but you are human who don't have infitive amount of time - Arch would do.
Or try Gentoo's new binary repo.
why though? what is. the point of gentoo than
Choice. Customisation. Building from source is a means to an end, not an end itself.
Why not? Best of all worlds. Convenience of a binary package repo along with the benefits of still being able to use portage and use flags for packages where the default build doesn't meet your needs.
you can build from source on any distro though
You typically cannot have the package manager handle, track, and manage all of that for you though. Especially not USE flags / toggling package features
oh I didn't know that the gentoo package manager could do that, that answers my question