Linux as a desktop OS

# Intro

Linux works well on server. However on desktop, there are more things to consider: multimedia codecs, Wi-Fi drivers, GPU drivers (possible screen tearing/stuttering/flickering), CPU microcode, printers drivers, ... Problems may happen. Never expect popular distros to make things work out-of-the-box as they pretend to do. Better study the configuration files and CLI utilities by reading the Arch wiki or the Gentoo wiki. A good Linux user doesn't need GUI system configuration tools besides the installer.

# Thoughs on security

Opinions about bloat are divided. Security experts think that complex software is prone to vulnerabilities. Some pieces of software contain tremendous amounts of totally unnecessary attack surface and follows poor security practices. In addition, new features can increase the attack surface and introduce a large amount of new bugs. More infos at my website about init freedom.

FSF-approved Trisquel GNU/Linux gives a good idea about what to avoid. Trisquel doesn't have a Gnome edition, so I don't use Gnome. Trisquel default DE is MATE, which depends on GVFS. For security reason, I don't want GVFS to be installed on my system. Goodbye MATE. I use IceWM: a stacking window manager. One big advantage of window managers is to be able to run apps of different desktop environments without any stability/performance loss. I use MouseWinTabbing to merge windows and form a tab. This feature was originally developped for Haiku and later implemented in IceWM. Here are some of the tools I use:

	A terminal emulator with some nice features (paths bookmarks, notification, ...)
Midnight Commander	A CLI-based file manager
	A text editor with basic IDE features
	It enables differences between source files to be viewed and merged. It can be used to compare differences on files or the contents of folders recursively.
	A search tool that can be integrated into file explorers. It allows you to find files by name, type or content.
	A timer applet
	A document viewer
	A fast and modern file manager
Badwolf	A minimalist and privacy-oriented WebKitGTK browser
Sayonara	A lightweight audio player
Flameshot	A lightweight Screenshot software

My favorite distro is Void Linux. This distro is praised for its speed, small attack surface, and flexibility.

For maximum security, I install my dev tools on a secondary OS in dual-boot. Indeed these tools have vulnerabilities. For instance, there are more and more malicious VS Code extensions. Most people avoid dual booting because it is time consuming. Here is a summary of my dual-boot setup:

# My opinion on some Linux distros

Ubuntu: Too much bloat preinstalled. Snap has terrible bloat. Telemetry is probably increasing. Some Ubuntu derivatives don't come with Snap: Bodhi Linux, Pop!_OS and Linux Mint for example. It may change.

Fedora Workstation : A user-friendly net installer called 'Everything installer' is available since 2025. Fedora has a strict policy of including only open source software in its official repositories... but there is a lot of non-free firmware/drivers preinstalled. Fedora is therefore not FSF-approved. There is also telemetry since Fedora 42.

Silverblue/Kinoite: minimalistic but it's not suitable for everybody because updates are delivered as full images. That's time consuming and disk space consuming. Flatpak apps are recommended to keep the image small, but Flatpak apps have more issues (bugs and audio or storage permissions problems). Here is a quote from a devs chat: Flatpak doesn’t allow important parts of the Chromium sandbox to work as it should. Chromium browsers and Electron apps distributed on Flathub all rely on a 3rd-party package called Zypak to trick Chromium into thinking its SUID sandbox is present.

Manjaro : Unsigned packages from time to time. More and more bloat and telemetry. I strongly recommend Manjaro users to switch to KaOS or PCLinuxOS which are saner stable rolling distro.

Debian : No bloat but outdated software, especially browsers. No graphical minimal installer, only a CLI installer. Some Debian derivatives have a graphical minimal installer, namely PeppermintOS and Q4OS.

Debian testing: The debian testing branch can move very fast and many users have broken their system. Security patches are not immediately available. The unstable branch is more secure.

MX Linux : Not so bloated. Latest firefox available. It's like Debian++ to me. Very good distro.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed : Zypper is slower and less reliable than dnf. Many Tumbleweed users have to use Flatpak because OpenSUSE multimedia codec repos are messy and can lead to dependencies issues. Packman repo is maintained by external people who don't follow SUSE policy. Some Packman RPMs might be malicious.

Arch Linux : No bloat. Bleeding edge, so unstability might come from update to update, namely broken glibc and kernel panic at boot. It's generally fixed after 2-3 days. Tip: dual-boot Arch with a stable rescue distro to remain operational during these days.

KaOS : No bloat, user-friendly, more stable than Arch Linux. Downside: it's only for KDE users, no kernels choice, limited software choice. However its clean and lean packages dependencies makes KaOS superior to Manjaro KDE edition.

Void Linux: No bloat, more stable than Arch Linux. The xbps tools are amazing. Use xbps-src and git to locally install/update packages like Brave browser. Very good distro.

Gentoo : Source-based distro, no bloat, more stable than Arch Linux. It takes time to build packages. Better use Gentoo with a window manager like icewm to build quickly. Not suitable for users who need to quickly install big software like libreoffice and chromium.

PCLinuxOS : A minimal KDE edition is available. It's a very stable rolling distro.