I'm trying to figure out primary distro for framework 16. Currently using fedora for about year. I've package installation automated through ansible so technically using new distro is not big hassle still want to see if there is any other way of easily distro-hoping on bare metal.

I'm long time user of Ubuntu and now pop os so that's one option and other is bazzite (or similar immutable). I would like to try at least those 2.

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[–] 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (11 children)

Ventoy or LiveUSB if you just want to poke around. There honestly isn't much difference between all distros anymore aside from package management, and that is somewhat being a bit pushed aside due to portable package distribution.

What exactly are you hoping to find or test?

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (5 children)

    Ventoy is risky and a bit sus for such a security-critical software.

    Glim is another solution for ISO-multiboot-USB that doesn't require as much trust.

    https://glee.thias.es/GLIM

    https://github.com/thias/glim

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Why is it "sus"? Isn't it basically a bootloader for isos?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    It's not any more sus than running any FOSS project binaries obtained from github. And OP wants to test a bunch of live environments, so that's not really a security-critical environment.

    I'd suggest it's collective laziness over any even potentially malicious intent. The author listed about the 180 blobs they are aware of, the vast majority from FOSS projects.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    Ventoy or liveusb is good for installing something but doesn't seem good idea to actually run long term.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

    It's not for long term anything at all, it's just running a live distro to poke around.

    This is why I asked my second question: what kind of things are you looking to check out or compare? That's helpful in pointing you in the right direction.

    If you're unfamiliar, there is literally almost zero difference between distros aside from very tiny customizations and the underlying package management system.

    You won't find some distro with massive performance gains for any average task. You also won't find a distro with some optimization that is special that can't also be applied to any other distro.

    So if you find something you like about one distro, you just put that on whatever you're running (unless you're talking about package mgmt). Easy Peasy.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Sorry didn't notice second part as soon as I saw ventoy/liveusb. What I'm looking for is very superficial (apart from atomic distro). I'm looking to see if I like using distro. I've exact same packages on my fedora (laptop) and pop os (desktop), I keep thinking I still like pop os (maybe just what I'm used to).

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    You can split your ssd into a bunch of partitions install different distros in each, edit your bootloader config to make entries for the other partitions

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    If you install one of the Fedora Atomic distros e.g., Silverblue, you can rebase to other atomic distros e.g., Bazzite very simply with a single command and reboot.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Oh interesting, I may need to look into atomic distro more. As of now I don't understand what are features, pros/cons. I'll read up but it's definitely looking like way forward for me. If u have resources please link them.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The basic idea is read-only system files with flatpak for apps. A 'rebase' more or less downloads another system image to boot into. You can even rollback to prior images i.e., rollback to Silverblue.

    The Fedora project explains it better and has additional resources here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/atomic-desktops/

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago

    I'll check this, when it's VM I don't generally spend required time to use it (my problem). I just get on primary os, do whatever I wanted and log off. This is the main reason I'm hesitant of VM.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    A better question is what do you think is missing from the distribution you are currently using?

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 months ago

    Nothing really, I mostly want to experiment (but trying to do it without changing my workflow much), from suggestions both atomic and qubes options r looking interesting

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    You can use LiveUSB. If you want to try them with their installation processes, you can try them on VM (e.g. QEMU).

    Using VM may not reflect real hardware, tho. For this, I'd suggest more than one laptop. If you don't have a spare, some cheap office surplus might help.

    If you want to just use that one laptop, but don't want to burn out your disk drive when you try out different installations, you can always use external drives.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago
    [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I'll preface my comment with I understand my setup is no where similar to yours, but I'll share my setup to hopefully give you an idea as to what you can do.

    My desktop is running Unraid, and I've set it up with GPU pass through. This lets me spin up a machine with its own virtual drive with the OS installed. My other main folders (Documents, pictures, etc...) connect via network folders.

    Pro: Can try out a bunch of OSs easily, and I don't really care if I nuke my OS drive.

    Con: The GPU passthrough can be very finicky. Admittedly, It was a struggle to get everything setup initially; but I think Unraid is working on streamlining that process.

    I'd also recommend looking into setting it up in Proxmox first if you want to try this route. Proxmox is free, and Unraid is paid; so if you just want to play around with the idea, try the free version first.

    Hope this helps!

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I actually run proxmox on my homelab. What does unraid bring over pve? I didn't think of running proxmox on desktop

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