 Hello and welcome to Chris's open-source TV show today, and today we're going to answer the age-old question Which Linux distro is the best and I've got the answer right here after all these years We're gonna find out the truth. Which Linux distro is the best the answer is Debian. Have a great day Doobie doobie theme music do do do do open source do do I mean free software? It's called free software do do do the technically two different things do do do no seriously though It's such a flawed question, which is the best what is your definition of best, you know It's like saying which car is the best are we talking about? acceleration top speed ability to tow something Fuel economy Electric versus gas it all depends on what you need and it's the same with links distributions now I can give Suggestions, but which is the best for me is not gonna be the best for you and your uses and lots of distros are our geared towards Something specific like I don't know if it still exists. There used to be one called scientific Linux Which had a lot of applications pre-installed for doing scientific calculations and math calculation stuff I don't know I never used it Another example is like Cali Linux Cali Linux is used for pen testing It's not meant to be your primary desktop. I mean you can use it as your primary desktop Operating system distribution whatever But it's not geared towards that. So here are my picks on different situations That I personally prefer but again, I'm not saying the other distributions are bad My first choice almost all the time is Debian I run Debian on my servers on my laptops on my desktops Debian is just it's very stable and easy to install and many many of the other distributions you're going to use are probably gonna be based on Debian And you know what it is okay when you first start using Linux To be distro hopping it is normal try this to restore try that distro my first two years of using Linux Like 15 years ago. I every month. I tried a different distro and you know, I'd liked features of this one I like features of this one. I like features of that one and You know when it came down to it almost all them were Debian based and I realized well if I just start with Debian I can add whatever the features I want from the other ones in most cases and that's just how I am I like to start with a somewhat minimal system And and build from there if you don't want to start with a minimal system here might maybe you especially if you're new to Linux You want something that already has all the basic stuff pre-installed office software music software all the drivers You might need in that case I personally my suggestion today and a year or two from now may vary but lately for that I would suggest MX Linux And that's MX. I'm assuming you pronounce it MX Linux And I that's actually my preferred Distribution for carrying on a keychain. I actually have a multi-boot keychain But it is just it has so many options for running as a live system off a USB drive To where you can save settings and have all these different configurations It's easy to load to RAM and it's just a nice Setup if you just want something out of the box again That's just my recommendation is not the only option out there If you have old hardware and you're looking for a live distro a lot of people would suggest tiny core I personally prefer slit as that's how I say it. It's probably pronounced wrong But slit as is an operating system. That's very lightweight used to only be about 30 megabytes compressed on a CD or flash drive I think it's closer to 40 or 50 megabytes now But super lightweight can load to RAM if the machine's really really old And you have like under 120 megabytes of RAM you can do a frugal boot where I think it's what it's called where it Instead of copying a whole thing around will actually run off your your drive or CD ROM And from as far as I'm concerned as far as live Distributions that are lightweight that is the best but again if I'm going to install something on an old machine And I don't mind taking the time to set up how I want I would still go with Debian But that's just again me so No arguing no fighting comment below. What is your current favorite distro for different situations again? Just like me I like actually on all my desktops and laptops. I read Debian Sid unstable I've been doing that for close to ten years now and have had very few problems, but on my servers I run Debian stable so In case you're unaware of this Debian usually comes in three Varieties you have Sid which is always called Sid and it's unstable Then you have testing and then testing eventually becomes stable and for servers usually want stable You don't care if the software is a little old as long as it's locked down and and stable for my desktop if something breaks I can you know uninstall it and reinstall it you know whatever But like I said, I've been using Sid my kids use Sid my wife uses Debian I think I recently switched her over to Sid just because she was writing different versions of software than I was Because she was running stable, which is going to be a little bit older So I think I last time I messed with her computer. I upgraded her upgrade her. I switched her over to Sid But yeah, let me know what you think And this is not a war. I mean you're using Linux. You're using legs. You got the Linux kernel Everything else you do is up to you. So let me know below Yeah