If you didn't use PureOS what would be your next choice of a libre distro?

Software PureOS
1

Hi - have been using and enjoying Byzantium on my Mini v2.

Have been wondering what other distros are reasonably libre/private/secure/stable.

What distros would you choose if you didn’t run PureOS?

Thanks

2

I use KDE/Plasma Neon without any Problems.

3

I would probably be using something source-based. I like controlling dependencies and whatnot. So probably Gentoo, Nix/Guix, Bedrock, or LFS itself.

As for binary distros, PureOS runs off of Debian, so I could just add the testing repo and BOOM, it’s Debian. DEB files are everywhere.

I’m running PureOS for now until I know exactly what needs packaging for other distros. From what I can tell, it’s only the EC firmware and a few other things that really need babysitting when switching distros.

Would love to see a Purism developer write a guide on what needs to be copied or repackaged when changing distros. I enjoy the hardware so far and would like to put those 12 cores to good use!

2 Likes
4

I was using Trisquel up until recently. It is a great distro that is easy to setup and use but some of the programs I needed either were no longer available or were too out of date to use. Pure OS 10 solved that issue for me.

5

I run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NixOS on all my Linux devices as that neatly combines very robust package management with configuration management (like puppet or ansible).

In NixOS you declare what you want to have installed and/or configured, instead of actually typing in the installation commands and editing the configuration files.

Have a look at https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/unstable/options to see what can be declared.