Free and Open Source Software

I just was curious what other people are using in this community.

I'm on Fedora Silverblue. Well..., actually, to be more precise; secureblue with the bluefin-dx-main-userns-hardened image 😅. I will elaborate on this in the answer of your next question.

was also wondering what made you fall on your current one.

For my system, I require the following (in alphabetical order):

• Atomic updates; an update either occurs or doesn't. Not even a power outage in the middle of an update can disturb this. This is one of the basic requirements for a well-defined system.
• Built-in rollback functionality; this allows me to get right back to a fully functioning system if my most recent update happens to cause some issues.
• Declarative system configuration. Most of us own multiple devices. Wouldn't it be nice if changes applied to one get carried over to all others (without necessarily foregoing system-specific changes)? This also comes with the added benefit that all changes are being tracked. Carrying over all of this to a new device also becomes a breeze with this. Especially useful for the tweakers amongst us.
• Excellent security standards. Desktop Linux, contrary to its sibling on servers, can't be complimented for its security. For over a decade it has been established how keystrokes can be sniffed due to X11. Yet, only relatively recently did we actually receive a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on cyber security. Therefore, I will rely on the heavy lifting provided by the distro maintainer(s). So, a distro with a focus on hardening is required.
• Reproducibility; a well-defined system can also be reproduced i.e. rebuilding the system from scratch should return nothing else but the same system from before the rebuild. Useful for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly; polish well beyond what's customary otherwise. This is related to the fact that the one(s) maintaining the distro can reproduce my environment with ease. Hence, bugs, issues, troubles and what not can be tackled a lot more efficiently.

Together, they enable my system to be up to date, rock solid and receive automatic updates in the background without fearing breakage. Furthermore, it minimizes all kinds of issues related to or caused by bit rot, configuration drift and hidden/unknown states.

With the above, I've basically defined a declarative distro with an extra emphasis towards security. Which is best represented by the distro called Spectrum. Unfortunately, Spectrum is still under heavy development. Then, there is Qubes OS, but it wreaks havoc on system requirements. Besides, Qubes OS isn't declarative anyways. Thus, I'd have to resort to the next^[1]^ best thing: Fedora Atomic. I prefer GNOME, therefore Fedora Silverblue is picked.

Finally, secureblue is a project and distro that provides hardened images. Its relation to Fedora Silverblue is explained in short as follows: Fedora's atomic images enter the pipeline of uBlue. There, it receives packages related to hardware enablement, video acceleration, codecs etc that Fedora is not able to provide you directly due to being restricted by law; you'd want to receive/install these anyways. The uBlue pipeline spits out these images after applying their changes. Then, the Silverblue image spat from uBlue enters the pipeline of Bluefin and gets a wonderful glow-up by a team of expert veterans to provide their vision of the best workstation for development (and more). This image is spit out as Bluefin-DX. Finally, this image enters the pipeline of secureblue and receives some proper hardening by a team of security experts. After that image is spit out, I receive it with my very next update. This process repeats every day. So daily, I receive an image that Fedora had spit out within the last 24 hours, but has since been through multiple pipelines and has received all kinds of lovely goodies to provide me the best experience I could have wished for. The aforementioned pipelines are btw automated*. There's also the aspect of 'managed' system, but I'll leave it at that.

what are some distros you’ve tried but didn’t like?

I've tried a bunch of traditional distros like Arch, EndeavourOS, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Nobara and Zorin OS Lite. Unfortunately, their (traditional) model feels outdated at this point... All but openSUSE Tumbleweed and Zorin OS Lite eventually borked... This is just anecdotal, but stability can be a serious concern on traditional distros. While Zorin OS Lite is still going strong, I simply prefer GNOME over Xfce. As for openSUSE Tumbleweed, it was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately it's not atomic, declarative nor reproducible. Therefore it didn't satisfy my requirements. Though I'm looking forward to revisit it through its atomic sibling in Aeon after it has had more time to mature.

what about a distro you want to try eventually?

In alphabetical order:

• Gentoo: Freedom on Gentoo is simply unparalleled. Gotta satiate the desire to experiment with it somehow. Furthermore, it can actually be setup to have pretty good security standards. So there will definitely be a thing or two that I will learn through it.
• Guix System: Perhaps NixOS done right? Unfortunately, the user base is pretty small by comparison. At least its organizational structure is a lot more robust.
• NixOS: The OG declarative distro. Spectrum is heavily inspired by it and Qubes OS. Hence, becoming more accustomed to it will benefit me in the long run. It also has some very interesting perks by which even Gentoo would blush. Will probably rely on it and Fedora for my VMs in Qubes OS (and eventually Spectrum).
• OpenBSD: Not a Linux distro. Excellent networking standards. Is often used for the network facing VM in Qubes OS.
• Qubes OS: Technically not a Linux distro. The most secure general use Desktop operating system we currently have. I'll probably install it eventually on a Qubes OS certified device and use it sparingly for specific purposes; at least, until Spectrum has matured.
• Spectrum: In an ideal world, this is probably the perfect distro for me. Unfortunately, it's not ready yet.

1. Technically, one should at least mention the likes of Guix System and NixOS. While both of these definitely score better in the declarative department, security does leave some to be desired compared to Fedora Atomic. As Fedora Silverblue is the first distro I started using, I desired for something that was relatively easy for a new user. And in that department, Fedora Atomic simply scores better than Guix System and NixOS. Though, at this point, I would actually consider switching to NixOS if its 'secureblue' would exist.