If not solus, what distro would you be using

Solarmass My current laptop SSD is like 80% full, so it's kind of no bueno to dual boot at the moment otherwise I would just do that. If I installed any Steam games, this SSD wouldn't even cut it (only Minecraft installed atm)! But for now it's all I got; no spare hard drives and I don't have any extra laptops laying around otherwise of course I'd use that. Now if you have any spare hardware you want to donate, well then now we're talking!

Scotty-Trees Now if you have any spare hardware you want to donate, well then now we're talking!

Sure, I would donate it to you if I had 100000000

Dude Arch i3wm

Scotty-Trees Side note, my hats off to the PopOS team btw, if you don't mind static releases in a Ubuntu-base (without all the Canonical baggage, FYI), they put out one of the most polished distros, especially great for Nvidia users & gamers (an MX150 user myself).

I always wanted to try PopOS, but then again it is just a yet another distro based on Ubuntu. There is nothing wrong with that at all but I don't like the fixed release model of ubuntu (more specifically debian as ubuntu itself is based on debian). I also tried Arch, Manjaro, Endeavour etc..etc.. all of those arch based distros, but I abandoned those as I don't have that much time (or sanity) to fix some errors and setup the OS. Also I couldn't at all use the AUR as I was always skeptical about it and I couldn't use any software from there without a pinch of fear. And with each arch update, there was that fear of breaking my setup. Ofcourse I could fix the issues, but still I don't wanna go throught that hassle.

Only Solus and Opensuse TW are the two distros that I think I could use. As Solus is stable as a rock while being a rolling distro and has that out-of-box experience. And on the other hand, OpenSUSE TW is also rolling while somehow being 100% more stable than arch. Also I just love snapper and yast in openSUSE. I currently planning to use Opensuse TW on my laptop while solus being on the main desktop computer. So for answering this thread's topic, I would use Opensuse TW if Solus wasn't here anymore (which I hope will never happen ).

Infamous711

I also tried Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS etc..etc.. all of those arch based distros, but I abandoned those as I don't have that much time (or sanity) to fix some errors and setup the OS.

I can't argue with that, not all of us have the time or the need/want to spend extra time setting up or fixing things. As for myself, Solus only ever required like 2-3 additional commands and I'm up and running with that out of the box experience where things just work. EndeavourOS doesn't have nearly as much installed or turned on by default (they leave most of that up to the user), so I had to do at least two dozen or more different commands and .conf file edits before I got it working to get that out of the box feeling. Granted, their wiki solved 90% of my issues and their forums solved the other 10%, so now that I know what to do, it would only take me like 10 minutes to do again if I did a fresh install. But by all accounts, Solus is the easier set up hands down for sure.

Infamous711 Also I couldn't at all use the AUR as I was always skeptical about it and I couldn't use any software from there without a pinch of fear.

I'm no expert, still very much learning of course, but from my understanding many things on Arch repos first started out in the AUR and once they got stable and/or popular enough that got added into the main repos. As long as you inspect the pkgbuild and know what to look for and know what you're doing, the AUR is not something to fear, but I understand your hesitancy. I don't use the AUR unless I have to, and for certain things I don't have any other choice, but you can see who maintains it, see if they maintain any other packages as well, see if other users have commented anything about it, and have other users (up)vote a package to help other users out. Is it a perfect system? Probably not, but like I said I'm no AUR expert, but so far I'm taking my time, asking any questions I can, and making sure I'm doing things the right way.

Infamous711 And with each arch update, there was that fear of breaking my setup. Of course I could fix the issues, but still I don't wanna go through that hassle.

I don't quite have the same issue, in the sense that I try to be like methodically cautious. Do I expect things to break? From time to time, of course. Do I also expect things to be fixed or reverted? Definitely. But I suppose just from a bit of experience, I generally know what packages could be system breaking, like the mainline kernel, nvidia driver updates, xorg, systemd and a handful of other packages that if I see an update for them, I'll hold off updating for a day or two and see if anyone reports any issues. Usually any point releases of these are fine to update, it's just when it's a major update that I'll definitely wait for any reports to hit the wall. On the Solus Unstable branch, you may run into a bug from time to time no doubt, but it's not usually system breaking, if ever. And for anything like that, the Devs have always been extremely responsive to resolve the issue.

Infamous711 Only Solus and Opensuse TW are the two distros that I think I could use.

I actually used openSUSE Tumbleweed right before EndeavourOS for some of the reasons you mentioned, but I found it a bit more like a haven for developers than just a simple average user like myself. Nothing wrong with that at all, I think I was just looking for something I was already a bit more familiar with and there was a time many moons ago where I used Manjaro, so EndeavourOS seemed like a decent compromise at the time. If I was more technically inclined I'm sure I could settle on openSUSE just as well. I agree it's a great distro to consider and YaST is a wonderful piece of software no doubt!

Infamous711 So for answering this thread's topic, I would use Opensuse TW if Solus wasn't here anymore (which I hope will never happen ).

Don't worry Solus isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so keep on keeping on and enjoy Solus on the high seas of the open source waters for many, many more years to come! P.S. I didn't intend to write this much, my bad!

I use Solus, Manjaro, and Linux Mint on three different machines. Solus on an HP Compaq Elite 8300, Manjaro on an Acer14 Chromebook, and Linux Mint on a MintBox Mini Pro2

I would most likely go back to the more mainstream ones:

Solus -> openSUSE (TW) -> Kubuntu -> Fedora (KDE)

I like a lot of things about Fedora, but the out of the box KDE experience is so much worse than Solus/openSUSE/Kubuntu.

If none of these would work out, it would most likel be something Arch based like EndeavourOS or Manjaro, maybe even Arch proper.

Well, I have been running Linux Mint right along, from ca. 17.2 or .3 up through 20.2. So I guess if Solus didn't exist, then apart from LM, I guess either Ubuntu or maybe even something like openSUSE.

Scotty-Trees i have tried endeavourOS on a vm, and discovered that it doesnt have a graphical package manager! this was tough for a novice user like me. So i feel endeavour is mostly restricted to command line Enthusiasts.

[deleted] I think there are some good arch based distros out there to ease people into "btw, I use arch". Garuda is arch based, and Arco Linux offers multiple iso'd depending on how much archiness you want. Also it's set up to teach you from basic install and run all the way up to build your own arch iso, which is nice.

[deleted] Well it's a bad idea in general to use anything Arch-based if one's terrified of the command line.

i am sure i wont have any problem in SteamOS 3

Scotty-Trees

yeah sure i will try the vm again, thanks for the information!

[deleted] I'm definitely curious to see how SteamOS 3 turns out.

Umm... whatever gets forked from it.. I don't want another lol. Love Solus, hope it stays around forever. There is no other distro quite like it and I don't want to have to switch.

I mostly used Arch based distros ( Manjaro, Endeavour os) , tried to use Elementay os , Zorin os ( but had issues). I am satisfied with Solus for now, I hope it will stay like this

Garuda with XFCE or Gnome

ill be giving the new manjaro release a spin on a secondary drive. seems its got btrfs and snapshots now which imo definitely is the way to go. wish it was available on solus as well, then again solus is probably the rolling distro that needs a safety net like that the least