Finding The Right Distro

After Microslop forcing AI features and questionable security practices down our throats, I decided it was time to migrate my daily workstation to Linux, better or for worse.

Finding a Linux distribution stable enough for long-term use turned out to be more challenging than expected. By trade, I’m a System Administrator / DevOps engineer, with the slightly more glamorous title of Cybersecurity Engineer. Naturally, I wanted to stay close to RHEL-based systems as that’s what we run in production and what I’m most familiar with.

I started with Fedora, which made perfect sense on paper. Also, there was a slight desire to feel at least 5% as cool as Linus Torvalds, as that’s his operating system of choice. In practice, new hardware made things… exciting. I ran into issues with a Realtek network adapter, early support challenges for an Intel B580 GPU, and a series of updates that occasionally turned my workstation into a very expensive paperweight. While some of this was undoubtedly user error (I am not, sadly, a l33t kernel wizard), I realized I didn’t want my personal machine to feel like a second troubleshooting shift after work.
I experimented with Arch-based distributions like CachyOS and encountered similar instability. Debian and Ubuntu were also on the list, but their older package versions didn’t play well with my newer hardware—no real surprises there.

So far, OpenSUSE has been the sweet spot. While it’s technically leading edge rather than bleeding edge, that distinction matters. Things generally work. Packages are tested before release, offering a level of stability that many rolling-release distributions struggle to maintain. As someone who enjoys troubleshooting but doesn’t want to do it constantly, this balance has been refreshing. I’d like to think I can troubleshoot more than the average user; I even built GeckoGlue, a repo born from problems I ran into.

Another feature that has genuinely saved me hours is Snapper, OpenSUSE’s snapshot and rollback tool. With Btrfs as the default filesystem, the system automatically creates snapshots before and after package updates. When an update inevitably breaks something—and on a rolling release, it eventually will—I can simply boot into a previous snapshot and restore a working system in minutes. No more late-night troubleshooting sessions trying to figure out which package update corrupted my graphics drivers or broke a critical dependency. The peace of mind knowing I can always roll back has been invaluable, especially coming from distributions where a bad update meant hours of manual intervention or a fresh reinstall.

One standout feature of OpenSUSE is YaST, a powerful GUI-based system configuration tool. While command-line interfaces are second nature to many Linux users, tools like YaST can be incredibly helpful for newer users or those transitioning from Windows.

Finally, a quick shout-out to Claude Code. It has significantly improved my workflow, accelerating both professional tasks and personal projects.

I’m looking forward to continuing this journey, learning along the way, and—hopefully—breaking fewer systems in the process. Thanks for following along!