Haha nice try. If everyone starts liking it then it won't be niche anymore. So I won't share it! /s
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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It's Puppy Linux, isn't it?
Nah I just posted this as a joke. I am on Fedora + KDE. Mainstream and boring as they come. Rock solid and stable though.
I was just making a joke about your username being a distro tbh
Oops, self swoosh to me.
I think nixos is still niche, but seems to be gaining momentum. It has some unique features:
- Every package has its own dependencies, so you can install a 7 year old firefox alongside the latest, and have no interference.
- Packages with dependencies in common still share them (for space savings).
- Abandons the HFS, but can still fake it for apps that need it.
- Can make dev environments that are exactly reproducible across machines, and only exist within a specific shell session. So you can have a project that relies on an out of date version of a compiler, and another that uses the latest, and run both at the same time.
- Make your own packages that other people can install using a git repo address.
- The package language can also describe a machine's configuration; systemd services, default packages, user accounts, etc.
- You can build and remotely deploy a machine config in one line.
- You can cross compile a machine config for another cpu architecture, like ARM.
- OS upgrades are atomic, and reversible. If it doesn't work out, you can go back to the previous config.
- No reason to ever reinstall. Recently upgraded a machine that had sat in a closet for 5 years to the newest release. Flawless upgrade.
- Nixos boasts more packages than any other distro, over 100,000.
There are certainly downsides - poor docs, confusing core language. Instructions for installing something on say debian will not work on nixos. I do think this style of package management is the future, if perhaps not this specific implementation. It can be a pain but its also super solid.
I use NixOS on my workstations, and I'm slowly migrating many of my server VMs over to it.
NixOS w/flakes + home-manager + impermanence on zfs + disko w/ nixos-anywhere is amazing and gives an insane amount of declarative control over your system.
That said, the current state of the leadership gives me pause to recommend it to anyone, and I do have a few devil's advocate responses to some of what you said:
Every package has its own dependencies, so you can install a 7 year old firefox alongside the latest, and have no interference.
Unless the dependency is Qt, then it better all be the same version.
Abandons the HFS, but can still fake it for apps that need it.
Using ldd and nix-alien to patch in dynamic libraries still sucks, and often doesn't work without a lot of extra effort. If what I want isn't in nixpkgs, and I can't get nix-alien to work on the first try, I just end up not using whatever I was trying to run.
I hear you, its great for most cases, but when a package isn't available or downloads binaries that depend on hfs it sucks. I've been going through hell with android dev lately and am currently doing my compiles on debian, lol.
Obligatory GNU Guix mention
Alpine. The Linux, not GNU/Linux joke aside, Alpine's kinda great. Light, fast, stable, great package manager. I've daily driven it on both a server and as my main distro and it's pretty nice for both... Unless you're on Nvidia.
My first intro to it was with postmarketOS, and I have to say it felt super light and stable
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I'm not sure if it's niche but openSUSE Tumbleweed isn't as popular as it deserves to be. If you are looking for more niche, back in my distro hopping days I enjoyed Kaos and Solus
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Void is my favourite distro, although I haven't used it for a while. Extremely fast package manager, rolling release but not bleeding edge, super simple, very fun to tinker with (more than Arch imo). I stopped using it because I wanted something more popular for easier troubleshooting. But if I ever get a secondary PC/laptop I'll probably start using it again.
take a look at Alpine Linux – Alpine, Void, and Gentoo all grew out of a similar “Linux plus BSD” attitude – Alpine’s package manager is as fast or faster than Void’s – Alpine is pretty under-represented (but not absent) on the desktop side of things while being rather over-represented in the container, VM, server side of things (meaning the small community tends to be rather admin heavy)
If that is what you are looking for, try Chimera Linux. It was created by a Void maintainer.
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Not a distro but Qubes. Incredible security and privacy out of the box. Not for everyone but absolutely one of the most interesting developments in the OS world in the past decade or two.
Qubes isn't a distro?
Not the person you asked, but they might have referred to the fact that (technically) Qubes OS is not a Linux distro because it's based on Xen instead. Though, even then, we might refer to it as a Xen distro (if anything).
Guix - It's basically an abstraction over software compilation and distribution. It uses guile lisp language as glue to bind it all together. (Full programming language to configure with)
The beauty arises if you want to get a minimal os running with a single application and package it either as a full iso or a docker container you can. Or if you need to get an OS to run as your router.
It's also highly encourages free software to the point, that proprietary software actually feels like huge downgrade to include. (Compilation from source is always available)
I've been using this only for 11 months. I've barely scratched the surface on what is possible. So I'm pretty sure I'm not making it justice on what a gem it is. For example: Only recently I started to use programs in an immutable way.
https://www.crunchbangplusplus.org/
Crunchbang was one of the first Linux experiences I had and then found ++, I stopped using it recently to try out pop!os but the idea of crunchbang++ never leaves me. It was great on my little thin client laptop
My first linux install was crunchbang. I don't remember why I picked it. Perhaps i liked the minimalistic look. Ended up not really liking openbox and I vaguely remember running into some problem with debian's old packages, though I honestly can't remember what. So I switched to ubuntu, which was great for me as a linux noob.
I started using Crunchbang because it was so lightweight and ran great on Virtual Box on Windows 7. I stopped using it, when they stopped developing it. I wasn't aware of ++. I will be installing it this evening.
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May as well contribute my own 😜.
I'm an absolute sucker for exquisitely hardened distros. Hence, distros like Qubes OS and Kicksecure have rightfully caught my interest. However, the former's hardware requirements are too harsh on the devices I currently own. While the latter relies on backports for security updates; which I'm not a fan of. Thankfully, there is also secureblue.
Contrary to the others, secureblue is built on top of an 'immutable' and/or atomic base distro; namely Fedora Atomic. By which:
- It's protected against certain attacks.
- Enables it to benefit from more recent advancements and developments that benefit security without foregoing robustness.
If security is your top priority, Qubes OS is the gold standard. However, secureblue is a decent (albeit inferior) alternative if you prefer current and/or 'immutable'/atomic distros.
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Is Bazzite still niche?
The atomicity probably counts as an interesting feature, but it does seem to be getting more popular.
I installed it on my Desktop, replacing LMDE. Unfortunately I have trouble running the one game that I play even though it works on Linux with Steam. It worked in Linux Mint, but for some reason it won't start in Bazzite. Surely it's because I have an Nvidia graphics card, but that wasn't a problem with Linux Mint.
Another problem that I ran into was Firefox (flatpak) crashing all the time. Luckily you just have to disable wayland using Flatseal, but I still get graphics glitches with it.
I'm thinking of restoring my Linux Mint backup.
I don't know why I'm responding to your comment, I just wanted to share my experience, I guess.
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Not niche, but surely exotic: NixOS, a distribution that is configured via a purely functional language. There is no such thing as installing or uninstalling packages, you add or remove things from your configuration and then simply apply that configuration.
I really wanted to like NixOS (and I do, theoretically), but I couldn't dedicate more than 5 full days over Christmas to learn how to get to a working development system.
May I ask what the issue actually was? Was it about "working system" or about "working development system"?
I don't recall needing more than two days for getting a system up and running for the first time, and in fact it worked so well that I switched all my machines to it by now; granted, I have changed a lot about the configuration ever since and there seem to be a lot of paths to take in the beginning and it's not always clear which one to take. But getting a working system, even one suited for development (personally, I'd recommend a nix development shell for that), shouldn't really take that long.
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Not so much a niche distribution, but I would like to recommend Chimera Linux, because it combines musl with BSD userland.
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Dietpi for me. It is meant for sbc's, but it can (also) be installed on x86 pcs. And its focus is on minimalism -- as much as possible.
I love dietpi. The entire software install is a huge 1000 line bash script. If that sounds horrific, it's genuinely well structured and readable
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Not gonna lie, I thought elementaryOS was gonna take off and I guess it never did. I used it on my school laptop when I was in college for most of the time there. It was fine but mostly just a sleaker looking Mint basically.
CyclopOS I haven't use it but apparently it has its own Remote Desktop app on play store
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TAILS for security
Three days and nobody mentioned TempleOS? If attempting to build The Third Temple in the form of an OS isn't niche and exotic, I don't know what is. 🤣
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