Looking for some suggestions, preferably with existing tested compatibility with the Framework laptop hardware so I can do more well rounded research. I’m the most familiar with Ubuntu and CentOS. Picked Ubuntu initially for mid 2000s nostalgia purposes but it’s time to move on.
EDIT: As some people have pointed out, “more privacy oriented” was probably not the best phrase to use here. I am looking to move off of a Linux OS with corporate sponsorship and also looking forward to exploring Linux OSes that are privacy focused.
NixOS is great, but it has a steep learning curve (too steep for some, it took me 5 installs to actually get my complete configuration sorted with me ending up frustrated and back to Arch very quickly, but then again, I’m a tiling WM user with very specific needs, so there’s that)
You have to get used to the Nix language and the ecosystem. Like Home manager, flakes, Disko etc. NixOS wiki is your best friend.
NixOS’ lack of docs is its biggest weakpoint. The wiki is pretty barebones, and NixOS options aren’t always as helpful as they could be
But you can always copy-paste from it. There’s also official wiki on nix.dev.
You don’t have to use the full eco system of Nix to be happy with it like flakes and home manager. I still stuff everything in one configuration.nix and it has everything I need. Eventually I’ll dive into it but for right now I’m happy.
I recently tried NixOS, I’m a embedded firmware dev so I need certain special SDKs that rely on being installed in a specific way. My biggest problem was that some things needed to be able to run pip install in the background, and understanding how to get it to work on an imutable OS was way to much work.
It sounds great to be able to reproduce my dev environment for the rest of my team, but I need to work, not fiddle with the OS each time there’s a new SDK or driver I need for my IoT devices.
I may try again in the future, but the project I’m working on is on a heavy time crunch so Ubuntu will have to continue to be enough for now 😆