 Just a few more weeks left in 2020 the year is coming to a close and as the year comes to a close You start seeing more and more people Authors writing their top five or top ten best Linux distributions of the year and video content creators giving their top five Linux distributions of 2020 and I thought I would Contribute a little bit to that discussion as well I'm going to give you guys my personal top five Linux distributions of 2020 now We need to talk about how I'm going to come up with my top five Linux distributions These are going to be distributions that were released in 2020 and that I took a look at so you saw these Distributions sometime on my Linux YouTube channel and these are going to be my personal Favorite that I took a look at as far as distributions that impressed me that I would run on my personal equipment This is not going to be what everybody else does for a top five Linux distribution list because they're typical top five list are You know, these are the best distributions for the new user These are the best distributions to gain mass adoption things like that. No, no, no, I'm not even considering that I'm going to tell you these are my personal favorite top five Linux distributions of 2020 This is just my opinion. I'm not trying to come at it from any kind of weird angles These are just the ones that I enjoyed the most so looking back at all of the Linux distributions that I featured on the channel during 2020 I covered probably about 15 or 20 of these distributions on camera and The ones that will not make the top five list But I did take a look at during 2020 were Calculate Linux endeavor OS may box the various flavors of a boon to 2004 and 2010 Linux mint 20 for door 32 Devwan instant OS Archcraft. They even covered a couple of nine Linux operating systems I did a video on free PSD. I did a video about react OS But none of those are going to make the top five although all of them were fantastic operating systems Really a lot of people when they do top five list they oftentimes give you a bonus You know the top six really because they give you that one Thing that just missed the top five and I'm gonna do that too just barely not making my top five I wanted to find a spot for it, but I just couldn't it couldn't crack the top five, but elive Fantastic distribution based on Debian uses the Enlightenment desktop and it's just blazing fast and it just looks cool It's got that old-school retro kind of look it looks like Linux did back 15 years ago when Linux was still kind of a niche operating system Not quite as mainstream as it is today and it's just really cool stuff I mean the the Enlightenment desktop is really nice it uses you know like 200 megs of RAM or something something crazy and This just barely didn't make my top five. I wanted to find a spot for But it just misses out. So that's your bonus pick now. Let's get into the actual top five and Coming in at number five is GNU Geeks. Now Geeks is just a really interesting GNU slash Linux distribution It is one of the free distributions 100% free as in freedom. It uses the Linux Libre kernel and Because of that, I really couldn't place it higher than number five on the list because as Fascinating as GNU Geeks is and I played with it on one of my laptops for a couple of months I kept a VM of it around for a couple of months and you know Finally what made me kind of have to move off from Geeks is because it's one of these 100% free as in freedom distributions and uses the Linux Libre kernel and has absolutely no proprietary blobs or anything You're very limited on the hardware that you can actually install GNU Geeks to for example I had it on a laptop a physical laptop that I ran for a couple months I never had Wi-Fi working because I was gonna have to change the Wi-Fi chip in that laptop If I was ever gonna have Wi-Fi working with Geeks I tried to install Geeks on my main production machine and the installer wouldn't even work On my main production machine. So yeah, it's a very specialized kind of distribution But very fascinating because it's one of these Distributions where you write a config file during the installation process the config file is written in GNU scheme No, it's in GNU gal, which is a dialect of scheme, which is a dialect of list Anyway, you write your config file and then it pulls down all your packages and stores them in a really unique way And they call it the Geeks store. It's it's very much like Nix OS It's so, you know geeks has come at it from a different kind of Slant because it's 100% free where Nix is not 100% free Also, GNU Geeks used the GNU shepherd a knit system where Nix of course uses system D But overall, I thought GNU Geeks was just a really cool distribution I wish I could have made it work on my main production machine I would have loved to have ran this thing Unfortunately, I just the hardware I have is just not compatible with it But the little bit of time that I did play with it on some of my test laptops and in VMs I thought it definitely deserved coverage on the YouTube channel. I did two videos about geeks One of them the very first one was good GNU Geeks is an advanced GNU operating system for freedom lovers Check that out. If you haven't anyway, it was really cool operating system I think I had installed it with a XFCE on that video. So we did a desktop environment I also played around a little bit with some window managers with GNU Geeks on camera I would show you guys GNU Geeks in a VM But I'd lost the VM that I had of GNU Geeks because I've distro hop since then and I didn't back up that VM Now, let's go to number four on DT's personal top five Linux distributions of 2020 And this is going to be the only one That is probably a little shocking to people because it is in a boontube based distribution And it actually has a desktop environment. You guys know DT doesn't use desktop environments, but I really like this distribution Linux Lite it's one of those I've always kind of played with I've kept many versions of Linux Lite over the years on USB sticks I have installed Linux Lite many times on friends and family computers You know, they bring me their old windows 7 laptops that's riddled with viruses and they want something new And Linux Lite is great because it has this very light fast XFCE desktop environment And it's very reminiscent of windows now the windows workflow the windows paradigm as far as they've got a panel at the bottom The XFCE menu kind of looks kind of like a traditional kind of windows panel And it's very easy for people that have never run Linux before and even though I don't know if I would personally run it on my own equipment It is one of those distributions that every time they have a new release I always go grab that ISO and I keep it on a USB stick And if you guys haven't ever checked out Linux Lite I strongly urge you to check it out, especially if you or XFCE lover because they do a really nice XFCE desktop environment Now moving on to number three in my top five distributions of 2020 receiving the bronze medal Antics 19.3 What a fantastic distribution. I've always loved antics. It's another Debian based distribution based on Debian stable And it's designed for older hardware. They even still have 32 bit images It's one of the rare Linux distributions that still has 32 bit images So if you've got something really ancient, so if you got some machines that are 15 even 20 years old You know, most of your Linux distributions are not going to be able to be installed to those machines But chances are you'll get antics running. This is antics with the ICE WM window manager the ice window manager That's the default one that it logs into also on the ISO or actually already installed You can quickly switch to other desktop environments and window managers by go to desktop here other desktops Other than ICE WM, we have a flux box that we can log into But just by clicking that and now I'm in flux box here And let's see if I go to the desktop category in flux box. We could also change over to JWM, which is fantastic JWM is one of the lightest window managers you will ever run. I've gotten JWM You know down to using jump like 100 megs of ram before like it's one of the craziest Window managers as far as system resource usage JWM is very much a clone of open box In matter of fact, the right click menu you can pipe dynamic menus through it and everything just like you can in open box It's really a fascinating window manager. So top three of 2020 antics 19.3 and our silver medalist coming in at number two is NixOS and this is a VM of NixOS running the Qtile window manager But I actually have NixOS running on that laptop behind me I've been running NixOS now for I don't know three four weeks on that laptop and that's NixOS I installed Qtile and Xmonad both on that laptop So I've got two different window managers Wi-Fi works and everything works And the reason that NixOS is number two on my list and GNU Geeks is number five Even though they're very similar is because NixOS uses the standard Linux kernel, right? Which means I can install it on pretty much anything, right? All Linux distributions all use basically the same kernel You know the kernel is what takes care of all your hardware support and the drivers and everything So that's why there's really not much difference as far as Hardware support between the various Linux distributions, but that's not the case with a Linux distribution that doesn't use the standard Linux kernels such as GNU Geeks that you they use the Linux library kernel And it's very limited on hardware support So unfortunately as much as I would have loved to have had GNU Geeks up higher in the list Geeks is at five NixOS is all the way up at number two And I did a video about NixOS and this is just a fascinating distribution because kind of like Geeks You know during the installation process the installation process is really you write a config file This config file tells Nix how to install everything what to install how to configure everything How to set up the system everything is done with this one config file And then if you want to you can save that config file push it to your github or your github that way you've always got it It's kind of like having a dot file But a dot file that actually configures your entire operating system for you. It's Fascinating really a matter of fact. I think that's what I titled the video I did about NixOS Yeah, NixOS is a fascinating Linux distribution and I agree I also said it's a truly unique distribution and which it absolutely is it and GNU Geeks are very similar Geeks is kind of patterned after NixOS NixOS is a little older than GNU Geeks And uh, basically Geeks is a clone of NixOS from the GNU guys where they wanted to use A bit more of the GNU utilities and you know, they wanted a fully 100% GNU kind of operating system You can even with GNU Geeks use the herd kernel the GNU herd kernel If you want to if you want even less hardware support But NixOS is definitely deserving of being a number two on my top five Linux distributions of 2020 And the number one Distribution of 2020 according to dt Is there any doubt any of you guys that have been following the channel probably can guess what my number one Linux distribution of 2020 is going to be It's probably the one that would have been my favorite distribution of 2019 as well Because i've been running this for a while and that is arco linux arco linux is just fantastic now. This is arco linux with Xmonad i logged in to xmonad to do this video But i have several different window managers installed arco linux comes in a wide variety of flavors They have something like 20 some odd different isos you can get arco linux with fully configured i3 bspwm Herbs to look i think awesome Xmonad qtile they were the first distribution i've ever heard of Was doing a qtile version And that's really what got me interested in arco a couple of years ago is because they actually released a qtile version and an xmonad version And nobody had ever done that i know for sure Nobody had ever done a qtile version of the linux distribution because qtile was kind of unheard of at the time And they keep doing new releases and adding new features and even new desktop environments and window managers They just had a big release arco linux just had a big release today as i'm recording this actually They released version 20 dot 11 dot 9 And it's got all the standard desktop environments and window managers They've been doing but they added a new one now they have a d w m edition of arco linux So that may be something i want to check out Check out their own customized version of d w m even though i have my own config files for all these window managers So i don't necessarily use arco linux Like their desktops because i have my config files for every window manager i've ever used so i just always pulled down my own But what i really like about arco linux is during the installation process It asks you things to install like what web browser you want to install what office suite Do you want to install if you want to install one? You know text editors and terminal emulators and things like that the installer is really fantastic And it's a very easy way to get up and running with an arch based system But it's a very powerful installer because it lets you pick and choose exactly what you want to install And depending on how comfortable you are with a command line installer They actually have a version of arco called arco linux d that's kind of a command line installer where you Basically install a bunch of shell scripts, you know that Take care of all the package installations and everything you could edit those scripts You know depending on what package is you won't install and whatnot It's just a fantastic distribution of the guy. That's the main dev of arco linux at eric dubois He has a fantastic youtube channel. Let me pull up the browser again. Yeah, here's eric's channel here It's just his name eric dubois And again, he's got like two three thousand videos or some some crazy number because he posts almost every day Sometimes multiple videos a day and it's always about arco linux the latest that's going on tutorials tips Anything you want to know and I think that is one of the best things I've ever seen anybody do with their linux distribution is they have a video channel And they actually show you how to fix things and how to tweet things and That's something that really no other linux distribution has and I think that's why arco linux is my top linux distribution of 2020 Now again, that is my personal top five You guys probably have a different top five than me and if you do I want to hear about it So post your top five linux distributions of 2020 in the comments below I would be fascinated to know what some of you guys were impressed with as far as releases in 2020 Because all of us have probably tried different things, right? There's a ton of linux distributions that I did not try in 2020 So I really can't judge those and some of the ones I tried you guys probably didn't try So it's fascinating if we share what our experiences have been and before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of the show michael gabe corbinium michael devon fran arch 55 30 akami chuck laudio Donnie dylan george gregery kelev devils luis paul scott and willy. They are the producers of the show They're my high steered patrons over on patreon without these guys This video about my top five linux distributions of 2020 wouldn't have been possible The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen all these names are seen on the screen right now These are all my supporters over on patreon because this channel is supported by you guys the community If you'd like to support my work look for distro tube over on patreon. All right guys peace