If I like the stripped and smooth nature of PureOS, but need x86 support and don’t want to have to jury rig it in, what distro could I use. Just the latest Debian with the most current Gnome?
Do you need x86 support for your because that’s the hardware you have or just for some backwards-compatibility with software?
Debian should be the closest to PureOS of course, but I do actually like Fedora a fair bit. I haven’t used Debian testing much, but Fedora stays way more current than Debian stable (though I’m sure some would argue that comes at the cost of that stability, but the only issues I’ve had have been with Nvidia stuff, and that’s a constant across pretty much all distros).
What x86 support do you lack in PureOS? Debian should provide the same x86 support as PureOS. Do you need some non-free stuff?
Because I have to install third party server software that only runs in stable releases, I have switched to Debian Buster + buster-backports and the Cinnamon interface, and it is very trouble-free.
Are you limiting your scope to FSF-endorsed distros only?
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Thanks everyone for the quick responses. Basically I want x86 support for Steam and Wine / Proton.
I’m looking into helping do some development work on Wine, and therefore would like to be able to use it without complicated repo hacks, etc.
I am not concerned about FSF endorsement in the slightest.
I do however like how very little bloat is in PureOS. It runs really smoothly as a result. Ubuntu is sometimes choppy because of what I feel is unnecessary overhead.
So I want lightweight as possible, but also able to support as much current hardware as possible.
Does that included devices or peripherals that require proprietary drivers or firmware like NVIDIA or AMD GPU’s? Or laptops/MB that only offer EFI Boot?
All of the above. I have no problem using proprietary drivers, etc.
I think Fedora is a sleek, GNOME-focused distro with fairly minimal bloat. I used it happily for several years, but with my Nvidia card blacklisted, because I never got it working well otherwise.
For Nvidia support, Pop!_OS has the best I’ve used. It is what I currently use on my Dell XPS 15. It is based on Ubuntu, so maybe it has more bloat (and it even seems to pull a handful of things from Elementary OS, mainly the Application Store/Software Center/whatever you want to call it). But I have very much liked using it, as I can actually make use of my Nvidia card with it.
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Debian + XFCE is pretty lightweight but still functional (but you will probably want to reconfigure the default top and bottom panels). I’ve tried some of the lighter windows managers, but they forced me to use the command line too much. LXDE is usable, but not my cup of tea.
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Then PureOS isn’t the distro for you since its FOSS only and no EFI support yet. The most “pragmatic” distro I find is Manjaro if you’re wanting stability, use of current components/peripherals and don’t care about using only FOSS.
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Debian-Testing, the latest Fedora and Manjaro should all be quite close in terms of the kernel version they are using and also the Mesa driver. Debian-Testing is as usual a little bit more conservative (1-2 months behind at most ussually)
i hover have had issues with Debian-testing when i tried a bare-metal install on my other closed-hw desktop class components with AMD stamp. i think that if you try the full-upgrade path from the latest Debian Stable non-free .iso into /etc/sources-list Debian-Testing then you should be fine … it probably was just a temporary fluke and i would try it out directly if you’re up for it
the major distros that are going to release soon (1-2 months from now) should come with the latest GNOME (3.38) so that is a plus if your GPU and RAM are not a problem … they probably aren’t right ?
Can we get Zilog Z80 support too?
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Can we get Zilog Z80 support too?
apt install openmsx 
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I do like that Red Hat is basically behind Fedora, but I’m turned off by their FOSS zeal. I was really pumped when it was announced that Thinkpads could now be bought with Fedora, and the Lenovo would respect all of the FOSS principles that Fedora embodies. Not because I think it is necessary but just because it was cool to see a company like Lenovo accept a premise like that.
Manjaro looks nice.
I am wary of small teams being behind a distro though. However, Manjaro’s team seems pretty competent. So maybe I’ll dock my horse at their camp for a while and see how it goes. I see that Manjaro is based on Arch Linux, which I’ve never tried.
I was under the impression that adding x86 support to PureOS would break things, or require hack-fu.
If there was a clear tutorial on adding the necessary repos to PureOS, I’d be super appreciative, and would put PureOS back on my Librem 13 today.
I get that it is really just a matter of adding the right repos, but finding the names and addresses of the repos are nebulas. I can’t break the code on that it seems.
As a matter of fact, it would be great if Purism would add this to their wiki. Things like using proprietary Bluetooth drivers, and adding x86 support are things that I’m sure their customer base would be interested in. They could have their obligatory warning about proprietary software being evil on top of all the pages, but then, for those who need the functionality include the how-to.
So are you talking about 32 bit support? i.e. i386 v. amd64? or if you prefer x86 v. x86_64?
I’m not particular, I just want those things to work.
steam wine and proton etc. are basically (mostly?) used by the gamer crowd so i’d imagine that unless you’d want to install Chessmaster you would only want to deal with the 64-bit variety (it’s a little bit bigger but also faster than 32-bit)
If you run into issues with manjaro (they seem to come and go for me), I’d suggest you give solus a try. It is the least-problematic distro I’ve ever used, which says a lot considering its built from scratch from a relatively small group. The budgie desktop is pretty fantastic as well.
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Looks nice, thanks! I am wary of small teams like this though. I don’t want to get really dependent on the distro and then they all loose interest or abandon the thing. (I’ve seen it happen several times)