 What is the hardest Linux distribution that I've ever personally tried? This is a question that I get a lot from viewers of the channel. They want to know what the hardest distribution I've ever tried because I've tried so many. What's the hardest as far as difficulty? What's the hardest as far as ease of use? You know a lot of people imagine that some of these Linux distributions some of the ones I try on camera Some of these I guess look more difficult or less user-friendly than others and people want to know Which ones I guess caused me the most pain the most grief and you know We should actually talk about this because this is actually not a very easy question to answer and Like so many things. It's subjective. You know, what's difficult for me It's not what's going to be difficult for you for example arch Linux You guys know how much I love arch Linux and arch Linux based distributions But arch Linux mainline arch I find to be a really easy Linux distribution I find it to be rather New user-friendly in a lot of ways because the installation process for arch Linux really isn't that hard Yes, you have to enter some stuff at the command line, but it's pretty simple You know, I don't know 10 15 things at the command line and in under 10 minutes You've got the base arch Linux installed and that's really easy really simple in my opinion and then maintaining Arch Linux after you've got it installed is also Rather simple and for me for my workflow The things I want to do on my computer if I was ranking these distributions One to ten with ten being the hardest to use the most difficult one being the easiest Honestly, I put arch Linux at around a three, you know Maybe even as low as a two right? It's really low on my skill of difficulty Another distribution a lot of people imagine is really hard really difficult is gen 2 and I've Installed gen 2 many times over the years played around with the gen 2 I've also played around with a lot of gen 2 based distributions. I've installed Several gen 2 based distributions actually on this workstation behind me a few years back I remember I ran a Sabion Linux, which is gen 2 based for a while on my machine like for a few weeks I ran calculate Linux for a month or two on my main production machine both of them gen 2 based But gen 2 much like arch Linux. It's a command line installation, but it's not difficult The only thing with gen 2 is it's time-consuming. It's tedious because all the packages have to compile Right when you install software right it compiles the software which takes a lot of time It's not hard. It's just a lot of time That's why I don't typically run gen 2 or gen 2 based distributions nowadays It's just I just don't have the time to fool with them. They're not difficult They're no more difficult than say something like arch Linux, which I've already told you arch is really kind of user-friendly I think gen 2 in a lot of ways is user-friendly other than the time aspect Involved so if I was gonna rank gen 2 from 1 to 10 on you know one being easy to use 10 being the most difficult I probably ranked gen 2 somewhere in the I don't know that four to five category Maybe kind of mid-range and when I look back on the history of my channel and some of these Distribution installations and first looks that I've done over the years One of the distros that caused me the most frustration on camera And it was mostly my fault was Nix OS when I first took a look at Nix OS for the very first time About five years ago, you know that thing I struggled getting Nix OS Installed and working properly mainly because I didn't research it at all Which I typically don't with these distribution installation and first looks I don't want to do too much Research in it because I do want to approach it as kind of a average user average user You know computer user they don't read the manuals, right? They just install something and go and Nix OS was definitely not a distribution that you could do that with at least not when I first tried it five years ago now very recently here in the last Six months or so just in the last few months Nix OS now has a graphical installer uses the Calamari's installer So now your grandmother could install Nix OS But when I first tried it you had to write a config file in this Nix OS specific syntax language you had to write a config file that actually Determined how your installation went when you went through the command line installer and man that thing that was a chore It wasn't a chore if I'd actually knew what I was getting into going in but that's certainly That's on a more difficult level having to do that then say Reading the arch wiki and going through a arch install or reading the gen 2 wiki and going through the gen 2 installation You know I would say that at least the older versions of Nix without the graphical installer If I was grading it on a scale of 1 to 10 as far as difficulty I put that thing up there You know like a 7 or an 8 right that that's that's getting up there because again I struggled with that now I'm a very experienced Linux user and the first time I installed Nix it was it was a disaster if you guys I don't recommend you go watch my very first video on Nix OS because it's a complete total train wreck It's not a good representation of what Nix OS is but if you want to you can go back and watch that and laugh at how Horrible it was trying to get that thing to work some other distributions that have frustrated me both on camera and off camera are distributions like GNU Geeks and parabola and Trisco and some of the free software foundation approved distros those distros that are 100% Fully free and by fully free I mean they use a 100% fully freed Linux kernel the Linux Libre kernel and the reason I Struggle with those is because I actually don't have any hardware that can run any of those Linux Libre distributions Without issue because of graphics drivers Wi-Fi drivers Sometimes I can't even get the distributions to boot up. You know to actually run through an installation I've had that problem actually with Geeks on this machine Not lately. I had this the last time I tried to install Geeks on this machine I couldn't even like get the ISO to boot up, right? I couldn't even get to the installation itself So, you know, these Linux Libre distributions are they difficult? It's not necessarily that they're difficult. It's just I can't run them because of hardware in Compatibilities, right? It's because I don't have equipment that can run that fully freed Linux kernel as such You know where would I place those on a difficulty scale? Well, if I could run them many of them would be rather easy Trisco as a boom-to-based parabola. It's arch-based I'm sure they're they're just lovely distributions Good new Geeks is a little more difficult and I have played with GNU Geeks on some of my test laptops Where I can get it to install although I still have Wi-Fi issues because of the Wi-Fi chips in those machines But GNU Geeks very similar to Nix and that you got to write a config file that config file has to be written in Scheme, which is kind of a lisp variant and it's not new user friendly I would say if I was judging that on a scale of 1 to 10 I probably put that very similar to Nix OS the old versions of Nix OS without the GUI installer No around a seven or an eight is probably where I put GNU Geeks now the new versions of Nix with the Calamari Installer now we got a bump Nix back down to like a two or three right Nix OS now I would say is rather easy to use for Anyone that has used Linux probably for six months or more, but again this whole thing is subjective You know me saying what I find easy what I find difficult it'll be different for me then it will be for you mainly because of Different workflows different experiences the number of years I've used Linux compared to maybe how many years you've used Linux and some of the distributions that I have more experience with You might have less experience or vice versa one of the things I can tell you You know I've had this question posed to me hundreds maybe even thousands of times What's the hardest Linux distribution you've ever used ET and I will say the reason I have such trouble answering that not Typically, I don't answer it is because many people imagine that I'm going to base that decision on how hard the Linux distribution is To install right I'm gonna base it on the installation process And the truth is I don't find the installation process of any Linux distribution To be all that difficult right they're all easy if you follow the instructions all of them There's no Linux distribution that if you read the instructions you will say it's difficult Unless there's no documentation unless it's something that's like beta software alpha quality software But any standard Linux distribution that's been around for a while and has some documentation Anybody can install those things so I I don't base how difficult a Linux distribution is necessarily On the installation process for me what makes a Linux distribution hard for me is really How often I have to Upgrade from one major version to the next that's something that really bothers me Especially when I first switched to rolling release distributions about five years ago when I started the YouTube channel especially I needed to move to rolling release distributions to have the latest and greatest software and Even before then I was really bothered by the fact that distributions like the Interim releases of Ubuntu or the releases of Fedora that I would always have to Upgrade from one major version of Ubuntu or one major version of Fedora to the next and many times What I would do is I would format the drive and just do a clean install of that new major version because I've had so many Upgrades break like the major upgrades from you know one version of Ubuntu to the next so many of those have filled on me Over the years in the past that I just don't trust them So I would it's like every nine months I was wiping out my Ubuntu machines and moving to the next or with Fedora You would have to move like every 12 or 13 months. It's about a year But Fedora never releases on time so typically you get about 13 maybe 14 months of support on the Fedora releases But it's about a year and then you got to move to the next one and I hated that right I found that very tedious like you know people find things like Gen2 tedious for the compilations right for the compile times I find having to upgrade from one major version of a distribution to the next a very tedious process a process that even after going through hours of the upgrade process Many times that upgrade fails. I don't like that I find those distributions the interim releases of Ubuntu the the Fedora releases, right? I actually find those distributions are to use for me And I know that's gonna shock some people because most of you watching this probably use Ubuntu or an Ubuntu based distribution or Fedora right those are two very popular GNU slash Linux distributions and everybody will tell you Ubuntu is easy to use Everybody will tell you Fedora is easy to use and for me You know, I'm not gonna say they're they're difficult But I for what I want to do on my machines I find that those distributions get in my way more than something like Arch Linux for example As you can see with me trying to answer this and rambling on for a little while This is a difficult question to answer It's one of the reasons why I never answer these kinds of questions as far as what's the hardest Linux distribution What's the most difficult Linux distribution? It's because It's again, it's subjective It's all opinion and these opinions everyone's gonna have a different take on this a lot of this depends on What you're trying to do on your computer because for certain jobs Certain Linux distributions are better at that particular task than others So picking the wrong distribution for the wrong job. Yeah, that's gonna make things very difficult But typically if you pick an appropriate Linux distribution that's designed for what you're trying to do on your computer honestly There's no hard ones. I To be honest somebody that's tried probably 300 Linux distributions over the last 15 years, you know tested them out on either physical hardware or in virtual machines I've probably installed Linux various distributions Maybe even as as many as a thousand times and I've never found any of them Difficult as far as there was something challenging to them There's there's nothing challenging But if you don't know something going and reading the wiki or reading a man page or whatever it happens to be going and reading the Documentation is almost always the answer and if that's not the answer then that distribution is probably broken Right if there's something you can't go read documentation and overcome Then that's not a you problem That's not some kind of deficiency in you. You're just not smart enough to get that Linux distribution No, no, you're not the problem that distribution is the problem. It's probably not ready for prime time It's probably either beta quality software that shouldn't have a public release yet, or it's probably been abandoned Nobody's really actively maintaining it and I typically don't I don't showcase those kinds of Linux distributions on my channel I never show something that I know is broken or after testing it for a while. I discover is broken I don't do that all the Linux distributions though that you guys have seen me show on camera. I don't think any of them are difficult and Honestly, I don't think you should find any of them difficult either if you go into these things with the right mindset These guys