Seeking Advice on Stable Distro Switch from EndeavourOS with XFCE Desktop

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Hi there!

I’ve been using EndeavourOS with the XFCE desktop environment for about 2 years now. Lately, I’ve been facing update nightmares that have even led to OS reinstalls. This has prompted me to consider switching to a different distribution. I have a multitude of apps that require careful setup after installation, and with 100-300 packages updating every 2-3 days, it’s become impossible to read up on each update in advance.

My main laptop serves as my workspace, and I’m looking for a new distribution that offers the stability of a server while still providing the convenience of using AUR. I’m also a fan of dark themes, but I’ve had difficulty achieving consistent theming across GTK, QT, and Flatpak applications. XFCE was my choice initially due to its ability to maintain a uniform theme across all app types.

My laptop features an Intel processor, and I rely heavily on software like DaVinci Resolve. I need a distribution that supports the latest Intel processors and meets the dependencies of DaVinci Resolve. The kernel of the Arch distribution was the only one that worked without overheating my processor.

I hold a strong open-source mindset, so distributions based on Ubuntu, openSUSE, Manjaro or Fedora aren’t under consideration for me.

Here’s what I’m looking for in a new distro:

  1. I want to be able to install all my apps in their latest versions through a single package manager.
  2. A consistent dark theme that extends beyond just window framing for General, AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap applications.
  3. Latest Intel processor support along with all the necessary dependencies for DaVinci Resolve.
  4. I’d like to avoid upgrade nightmares with endless dependencies each time I update.
  5. Containerized apps to prevent one app’s upgrade from breaking another.
  6. Core stability is crucial; I’m at a stage where I can’t invest much time in maintaining my laptop, so I need all my apps to be stable and functional.
  7. I’m open to suggestions except for distros based on Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro or Ubuntu.

I would greatly appreciate any recommendations or insights from the community. Your help will be invaluable in guiding my decision for a new distribution. Thanks in advance!

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I haven’t distro-hopped for a long long time, so I might not be the best person to give you the answer that you were hoping for.

That said, a couple of points:

  • Applying a theme universally is not something your DE can “force” as far as I know. The best thing your DE can do, is tell software “user prefers <theme>”. If the software provides an API to respect/apply such theme, is that software’s responsibility.

  • You state that Ubuntu based, openSUSE and Fedora are out of the question, while at the same time wanting the “latest packages” and a “more stable” distribution. Choose one. Even stability aside, if you want the latest versions your best choices would be among things like Tumbleweed, Fedora and Arch. Given you reject 2 of those choices, you’re left with Arch (which you are essentially already on with EOS).

  • What does having an open-source mindset have to do with Fedora and Suse? I’m guessing you might be upset about Red Hat’s latest controversies (and to be honest, I’m not happy about that either), but Red Hat is still one of (if not the) biggest contributors to open source… Fedora is in fact so “open-source mindset” that it comes without what others would call “essential” codecs because they consider patented software as “unacceptable”.

  • Lastly, this might have been better suited in the Lounge category. You would probably have a better chance of people seeing and making suggestions to your post there. :slight_smile:

I hope someone else comes along and makes a suggestion that hopefully fits your needs. That said I would suggest your reconsider your requirements and priorities and be more open to any suggestions the community might offer.

Kind regards and have a beautiful day :slight_smile:

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I can’t really comment on the other requirements you mentioned, but as far as Intel processor support is concerned: What do you mean with ‘latest’? Do you intend on upgrading you CPU regularly? Or does the distribution only need to support the processor you have right now? If the former is the case, you will most likely not be able to avoid updating every once in a while. If the latter is the case, any distribution with a fairly recent release (Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora etc.) should be fine.

I’m open to suggestions except for distros based on Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro or Ubuntu.

With that you’re excluding most (if not all, to my knowledge) distributions that offer a LTS release, which I think is what you want stability wise. You might find some smaller distributions, but I’m not aware any that aren’t based on the aforementioned distributions or based on rolling release distros (Arch, Gentoo etc…)

My recommendation (although it contradicts your point 7) is to go with Ubuntu LTS. It should be roughly in line with 1-6 of your recommendations. Other than that only server distros (Alma Linux is my preffered choice) come to mind, but they are (as the name suggests), aimed at servers. (And mostly based on RedHat or Debian, so your restriction 7 eliminates a large fraction of all distros out there).

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Not suggesting other distro but making a note on consistence themes over difefrent apps:
there are only two DEs that have something implemented doing this without the need to create the setup manually, and decide what way to go…

  1. Gnome
  2. KDE

All others only doing this partly or you need to domit completly using third party apps.

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Thank you for your reply. I completely agree with you. I set those strict requirements because I thought I could answer my own question if I left some out. I wanted to know if there’s a “best distro” like I described. If the answer is “no,” then I think I’ll stick with EndeavourOS since I know it well and feel most comfortable using it in my daily life.

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It’s interesting, I’ve had a different experience. On the surface, KDE and Gnome seem like the most polished desktop environments, and the consistent appearance feature should be a highlight. However, in practice, I’ve encountered numerous apps that don’t adhere to the light/dark settings, and some even disregard the overall design. Personally, I’m not a fan of the default KDE look; it’s quite challenging for me to read anything on it. As for Gnome, the plugin system isn’t to my liking due to the same update concerns. So, for EndeavourOS, I found XFCE to be the best fit as the default. I did have to make adjustments using qt5, kvantum, and flatpak themes. It’s not perfect, but most apps now have a consistent appearance.

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Other distros more stable that still have the AUR? None I can think of other than Arch proper. And that’s still debatable because it’s really how you set it up if it is or not.

I daily drive Fedora for the last year and pretty much don’t do anything other than update and play games, but you obviously don’t have the AUR. But with flatpak and copr, there’s nothing missing for me.

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yes with some work it is possible even using WM to get this working.
But KDE and Gnome have implementations that do work without using any extra apps. and changing environment variables manually e.t.c

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Debian 12 offers the 6.4 Kernel through backports and pretty much everything can be installed either through the default repos, Flatpak or Distrobox (even AUR applications). If you want stability you can’t get more stable than that.

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I don’t get nearly that many packages, in updates, nor have I had any stability issues either and also use a lot of AUR packages which are often said to be the cause, but something tells me that is no longer as prevalent, maybe they started screening them better a few years back. I am although using KDE, so just maybe look into if it’s XFCE, as whenever a DE is switching to a new version of programming languages, Like QT4 to QT5 or making other major changes, they have to make changes to many libraries, files, and components adding up to many packages, and it also can come with all kinds of issues, and then they upload another bunch of packages to fix the bugs, and sometimes it can take a few weeks to return to normal depending on what the problems are and how many people are tasked with fixing stuff. Also I update almost daily, so that also reduces the number of packages in each.

Otherwise, there are many things that can effect system stability including hardware issues, so you may want to look into that too, in case you haven’t yet.

I think you may be better served if you get to the bottom of what the causes are, but I can only help a tiny bit as I have been there myself and when all is resolved I only remember a small fraction of what all I had to do to get there due to a bad case of brainsieveitis :smile:! There is a “logs for troubleshooting” tool in the Welcome app that will gather vital info to aid in troubleshooting and plenty of people here that know what to look for, and what it all means, so you can also use the tool to upload the logs automatically so they can help find the problem.

If you save your home folder, and reuse it after a reinstall, then all of your configuration settings for both the OS and apps will be retained and when you reinstall your apps, they will find them. You will still have some OS settings and very few app settings if any that will not be retained, but it literally can save hours of work. It can be done with a backup of your home folder, but it requires a bit of trickery to do it that way after install, so it’s better to make a separate partition for your home folder so you can tell the OS installer to use it, but we can get into the how to’s once you find a solution to the stability issues. It’s not hard, but is best done before installing the OS, either from the working install, or the live media. I will get email notifications to any new posts in this thread, and will keep my eyes peeled.

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Your suggestion regarding copying the “home” directory seems quite promising, as it has the potential to save a substantial amount of time. This concept hadn’t crossed my mind previously, so I appreciate your insight. May I pose a few follow-up questions to gain further clarity?

  • Do all applications store their configuration data exclusively within the “home” directory? I recall certain applications utilizing directories such as “usr,” “etc,” or other locations for this purpose. Could there be a necessity to compile a comprehensive list of applications along with the associated directories they utilize? It seems that assembling such a list might be challenging or even infeasible due to potential documentation gaps.

  • On the subject of a clean installation, I understand that this is the primary motivation behind reinstalling the operating system. After prolonged periods of use, the “home” folder can accumulate various issues and bugs. In this context, it would be prudent not to transfer these potential issues to the fresh installation. Is my understanding accurate in this regard?

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There are quite a few locations they store their information under root, but almost all of them store users configuration files in sub-folders in your /home/USERNAME directory. within it, most have your settings in the .config (a hidden) folder, other files like extras you download from the internet either there, and under .user/share, .local like icon themes, color pallets for graphics apps, but it’s not all that cut and dry, but very most often in your /home/user folder somewhere. If you delete one, which sometimes can fix a problem they “Regenerate” a copy of the one in root back to your user folder sans your customization’s. With them in users home folders, not only can every user have their own settings where they have permission to access them, but because it’s obviously great for not loosing settings every time apps or the OS get updates, they don’t get removed on uninstalling apps either unless you explicitly say to do so… which all of those things were always a horrific nightmare in Windows where you didn’t have an app store (still not where you get everything), and had to get everything from all over the freaking internet and spend days, weeks, even months getting things back to how you preferred them!!! Oh did that make me mad!!! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Well, although it can happen that issues arise just by passage of time, it’s rare, and the fixes are often way easier to apply than a full reinstall, even with the OS itself, and that too is a Windows thing: Self destruction over time. So many people are used to doing full reinstalls for being used to Windows, and having no access nor say over proprietary software you cannot just delete, add, or change a line in a few or just a single text file which .config and many (Most) files are in Linux. So, way too many people suggest to do it, but it’s not necessary, and only easier if you absolutely need a quicker solution than searching the web for answers but it may not even fix any new problems, as you have reinstalled a few times already lately an it hasn’t worked. Reinstalling the whole OS if it’s an app is wasted time, and if it’s related to a bug that is being worked on that cannot easily be fixed or worked around, a fresh install of anything won’t fix it until the bug fix is released and ends up applied with an update.

I have had many bugs that were not so bad I couldn’t get the important stuff done, and put off looking for a solution and forgot all about it, then used the app and it just disappeared which is when I remember it, and it’s for having been fixed already and applied in an update. Arch, as well as KDE, are known for fixing stuff pretty quick, I can’t speak for XFCE though. Now I often don’t even bother unless its important because it can be more work to look for a solution than just wait. Only if it’s bad, and important do I look harder for solutions.

Great places to find help are first at the developers website, forum, bug trackers and Git pages, next a general web search: I set my search engine to find results for only a week if it happened during an update and I know the program was updated, for a month if it happened more recently between uses of the app, and a year only if I can’t find any newer results, or the program hasn’t been changed much for a long time. If that doesn’t work out, this forum right here, the Arch wiki, in the apps page on the AUR if it’s from there, as there are related notes by users posted there, and a tech site I love “Stack Exchange” where some serious tech people hang out that can often help troubleshoot things in great detail, and there’s lots of them with so much knowledge its often quick and painless, and you will always learn something. I’m sure there are others good places.

I don’t like the Ubuntu and most distro’s based on it sites even if always on top of a search: it’s a Debian, not arch based distro, so although many problems will be the same, they can be totally unrelated, and since it’s one of the first distro’s people try, its way more likely they are asking all the wrong questions and use poor descriptions of problems, and it makes it much harder to find the right one, among so many that aren’t even bugs or actual problems, but user error. Add to that there is a lot of “The blind leading the blind” there.

You are here now so in a recommended place, and I’m sure with a more detailed description of what is actually happening, you can narrow it down to something more specific, and ask a more precise question, and in a more appropriate section, of this forum.

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The AUR relies on the Arch Build System, so this requirement pretty much limits your options to only Arch-based distributions. The AUR provides PKGBUILD files, which makepkg will read in order to build the package file, which will then be installed using pacman. So unless you use something like Distrobox, I really don’t see how one can use the AUR on a distribution that is not arch or arch-based.

This requirement also suggests that a rolling-release distro might be the best fit for your use case. The operative word being latest, of course. Many distributions ship their own package managers, but not all of them provide access to bleeding-edge software. The ones that do are well-known rolling-release distros like Arch, Gentoo, opensuse tumbleweed, Fedora Workstation, and maybe something like Debian Sid. To use the lastest software on point-release distros, you can either: A) build from source or B) obtain the .deb, .rpm files or whatever format the developer decides to package his software in. It can be done, but it still lacks the consistency and uniformity you’re looking for in a package manager. After all, visiting some website to obtain a .deb file and then installing the software is different from just typing sudo pacman -Syu <whatever> on the command line.

I have yet to hear of a linux distribution that does not have Intel support tbh. If it’s the microcodes you’re concerned about, I don’t think that’s an issue because most distros tend to keep the latest microcodes in their software repositories. For instance, the intel-ucode in Ubuntu’s repo has the same version as the intel-ucode in arch.

Unfortunately, you might to compromise on this requirement if a rolling-release distro is truly what you intend to use. Arch generally does not package static libraries. It’s simply too impractical (in terms of package size, mirror bandwith, etc.) to ship software that relies on static libraries and still keep it bleeding-edge. You mentioned early in your post that you had 100-300 package updates every 2 to 3 days, which does seem a bit extreme. I can’t think of any reason for this except for the possibilty that you have a lot of packages installed. For instance, on my Arch laptop, I don’t usually get more than 25 updates within 2 to 3 days. Granted, I only have 739 packages installed on the system. Or perhaps you have a lot of haskell packages installed on your system? Haskell packages are all dynamically-linked, so even if only one of them is updated, all the other packages have to be rebuilt to link to the new package. Regardless, the point remains that the number of packages to be updated during each update really depends on the software you install.

Containerization is supported on most modern distros, so I don’t think this is a suitable criteria for distro choice?

If you already rely heavily on proprietary software like DaVinci Resolve, would using Ubuntu really make much a difference? Perhaps you have other more specific reasons against using Ubuntu or openSUSE?

Contrary to popular believe, Arch is remarkably stable. I used to have doubts about this as well, but my experience with using Arch proved me wrong.

From the requirements you have listed, what you’re looking for is not a new distro but ways to make a rolling-release distro less likely to break.

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VanillaOS allows you to install packages from the AUR in a sandbox, but AFAIK they offer GNOME - not XFCE.

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So almost all distributions are based on:

  1. Debian
  2. Ubuntu
  3. Fedora
  4. Arch

Debian is out because it’s too old. Ubuntu and Fedora you specifically ruled out. And you want more stable than Endeavour, while still having the AUR. . . So you want more stable than an Arch based distro.

So, Arch? It’s as stable as you make it. If you want a pre made distro, you’re pretty much out of luck given the requirements to be honest. You’ve ruled out 100% of all distros I’ve ever tried with the inclusion of opensuse, and I feel like I’ve tried them all.

BSD? I don’t know much about it, but maybe that’s something you look into. Although I doubt you’ll get AUR support.

At some point you’ll likely have to narrow your prerequisites, or create your own distro.

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I believe it’s Ubuntu based. I’ve heard of it, tried it. It needed a lot of work at the time.

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Thank you, everyone, for your honest and informative answers. Yes, the question was a bit challenging and unfair. Since I’m familiar with many distros and aware of their shortcomings, there was an attempt to seek a perfect solution in my original post. Nonetheless, this discussion wasn’t pointless, as I am now more convinced than ever that, with my 2-year experience with EndeavourOS and XFCE, it’s more efficient to stick with that combination for an extended period.

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Good to know that you managed to get something out of the discussion.

I do, however, am extremely curious with regards to the number of updates you had to handle. 300 packages to update in just 3 days? That’s quite extreme.

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Why not just update once a week, or even every other week?

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Hello,

Some apps have also files in /etc for “all users” configuration.

For a more stable distro, maybe Ubuntu LTS, but I think, even with third party repositories (PPA), it would be difficult to have as many softwares as the AUR.