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 free of multimedia framework dependencies
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 PDF viewer free of multimedia framework dependencies. Much more suckless than alternatives.
Spacefm	A fast file manager free of GVFS
Badwolf	A minimalist and privacy-oriented WebKitGTK browser
DeaDBeeF	A lightweight audio player free of Gstreamer
ScreenGrab	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. Isn't that suspicious? More and more bloat and telemetry. Manjaro buggy tools has caused a denial-of-service on AUR. Isn't that scandalous? Manjaro shouldn't be installed.

Debian : Less bloat than Ubuntu but outdated software, especially browsers. The graphical installer installs some bloat. No graphical minimal installer, only a CLI installer. Some Debian derivatives have a graphical minimal installer, namely PeppermintOS and Q4OS. Sparky Linux is also a great Debian derivative.

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 : Some bloat, namely useless firmware and lot of preinstalled apps. Latest firefox available. It's like Debian++ to me. After debloating MX, it becomes a very good OS.

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: limited software choice. However it provides makepkg to easily build additional software. Its clean and lean packages dependencies makes KaOS superior to Manjaro.

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 for advanced users.

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.

Redcore : Less bloat than MX. Very good distro based on Gentoo with pre-built binary packages. The graphical installer and the package manager are user-friendly.

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