Currently on Fedora 41 works fine, but would prefer a distro that dosen’t change so frequently. Debian? I tried it don’t care for all the “bloatware” that gets loaded. LMDE? Maybe? Debian based, not much of any bloatware loaded…I like that. Cinnamon desktop MEH.
Anybody using Faye? How is battery life? Any strange operational issues? I booted the live USB environment & the track pad doesn’t work, but maybe that clears up after install and proper drivers get loaded?
I have a Framework 13 11th Gen Intel and I switched to Void Linux (with XFCE) from Debian almost 1 year ago. I wouldn’t go back for anything!
Void is lean, and once configured, even with the frequent updates (you can also choose not to do them), it didn’t break once.
Everything worked out of the box and you can find most of the common packages in the repos (there is a non-free one, where closed source packages are available). And you can also build packages from source with xbps-src.
Using Fedora 41 with Cosmic DE. Cosmic is still considered alpha by System76 but has been perfectly usable for me over the last month or so on a different machine. So when I picked up a FW13 (Intel Ultra), I pretty much installed that right away. Yesterday was my first full day of usage. Battery lasted all day with intermittent usage. I’d say around 5-6 hours on and off. Had enough charge to use it some this morning, maybe an hours worth of striaght usage. Then finally had to plug in.
Back to the Distro/DE discussion. I’ve been using Fedora Workstation for over a year now. Been pretty happy with the stability. Not like it used to be and nothing like running a rolling release like Arch. For a desktop/workstation, I like have a little bit more of creature comforts and LTS sometimes doesn’t offer the latest comforts. For servers, I run a mix of Fedora and Debian.
Thanks for the info. I’m getting similar results as you vis a via battery results. tuned in Fedora 41 is doing a nice job for me. I was a Pop!_OS user for a long time but jumped ship to Fedora a while back. I like the support channels available for Fedora.
So LMDE, I wound up installing it, the track pad still did not work. But I did find by updating the kernel I could get it to work. Another disapointment with LMDE was battery/power managment, none offered by default. I blew through a battery charge in a few short hours. Loading TLP was a possibility but I didn’t bother to try. I jumped back to Fedora 41. It’s a smooth, modern, refined offering that just works for my needs. I’lI just suck it up and accept the frequent revision cycle.
That said, I’m watching Fedora/Cosmic closely. I liked System 76 take on a refined Gnome-like UI. I have F41/Gnome tuned close to what the Pop!_OS UI is like with a few extentions, but I miss tiling.
I’ve really enjoyed using LMDE, the stability of Debian pairs well with the Cinnamon DE, and works great on the Framework, with the exception of the battery life as you stated. I’m gonna try loading TLP and see if that helps. Right now I’m on kernel 6.10.11 (backport) because the 6.11 (backport) kernel loses the wifi driver for some reason. Out of all the distros I’ve tried (haven’t tried Fedora or any Arch-based yet) LMDE has been the most full featured out of the box and most stable.