Which GNU/Linux distros are you most excited about at the moment? For me it would be Qubes OS, Whonix, Solus, GuixSD, RancherOS, and NixOS.
Not because I use all of the above every day, but because they are catching my interest for different kind of reasons, and I want to follow their development. I guess I could add Antergos, Tails, and Alpine Linux as well. I do use other distros that aren't listed, no offense to them. ☺
@Vega of these I only use Tails. But what features/philosophies grab your attention here?
@Vega or highlights. No pressure intended. But to me it's an expanding list of names. I'm not up on the news/details and life is intervening for at least another month.
@perigee No problem at all. I will try to make it fairly short. The things I include will be a bit random and I can't guarantee everything is true/right.
Qubes OS: A security-oriented distro. It let's you run multiple distros side-by-side using virtualization technology, in a neat way. An interesting feature is Disposable VMs: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/dispvm/. And Qubes OS can run Whonix, for example. ==>
@perigee Whonix: Another security-oriented distro using virtualization. Privacy is also important here and that is why all Internet traffic goes through Tor. Whonix needs to run on top of another distro and uses two virtual machines (VMs), which you set up under VirtualBox, or similar. One as a workstation and the other for routing your Internet traffic through Tor (the gateway). ==>
@perigee Solus: An interesting new distro "built from scratch". It uses its own desktop environment called Budgie. Solus is fairly new and modern looking. ==>
@perigee GuixSD: 100% free software and a GNU distro (as in a GNU project). They are working on support for the GNU Hurd kernel, as far as I know. It uses the GNU Guix package manager, which "supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and more." The interesting stuff with this distro is pretty technical, so you could have a look at their website yourself: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/. The distro is also pretty new. ==>
@perigee RancherOS: A distro for server use. It's built on Docker, for Docker. It's small in size (54 MB download). It ships with only the bare minimum of software to run Docker. You can get it up and running in no time. ==>
@perigee NixOS: This one is pretty technical to explain as well. The unique/different part of NixOS is how the packages and configuration of the distro are handled. It uses the Nix package manager which provides safe upgrading of software with the support for rollbacks. The system configuration is easy to reproduce on another machine (for the kernel, applications, system services, and so on). ==>
@perigee Antergos: Arch Linux the easy way. I prefer it over Manjaro, but that's probably mostly personal preferences. They develop their own installer called Cnchi. Their defaults seem sane. Primarily an easy way into the Arch Linux world, and a way to get a nice looking distro that has a rolling release model and new software in the repositories. ==>
@perigee Alpine Linux: A lot of people using Docker probably know about this one. It's REALLY small, which is nice for using it in containers. It has several versions, not just the one that is good for container use. It doesn't use systemd, but OpenRC, BusyBox instead of GNU Core Utilities, and musl instead of glibc. Not like there aren't any other possibilities, but that was just example comparisons. It has its own package manager. Security is a central piece of the distro.
@perigee For all the distros I listed?