this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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Hej lemmings! (Hoping this is relevant enough for the selfhosted commjnity)

Quick question for you all: do you stick with the same distro across your PC, laptop, and server, or do you pick different ones based on the device and what you're doing?

For me, I've been mixing and matching depending on the use case, but I'm starting to think it'd be nice to just have one distro (or at least one family like Fedora or Debian) running everywhere. That way I wouldn't get confused about default settings or constantly have to look up flags for different package managers.

Right now my setup is:

  • Gaming rig: CachyOS
  • Laptop: AuroraOS
  • NAS: Unraid
  • Various project servers: DietPi, Debian, Alpine etc..

I feel like NixOS might be the only distro that could realistically handle all these use cases, but I'm a bit scared of the learning curve and the maintenance work it'd take to migrate everything over.

Am I the only one who feels like having "one distro to rule them all" would be nice? How do you guys handle your setups? All ears! 😊

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[–] osanna@lemmy.vg 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was HEAVILY into the apple ecosystem, so I have a lot of macs. I have a macbook, running MacOS, and i have a desktop computer that i was using for my server, but instead bought a ras pi, and now use my desktop AS a desktop (partly because i want to dump apple because of all the bootlicking that Tim Apple is doing towards drumpf), which runs linux mint. My ras pi runs ubuntu server. Aside from that, that's the extent of my home computing. I have an iphone too. But my mac mini goes unused now, and thinking of selling it, but not sure. /rambling

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[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I've thought about it, but I like having Bazzite for my gaming PC and Debian for my laptop, so I'll probably keep using multiple distros. For me it's:

  • Gaming PC: Bazzite (it's plugged into my TV, like a console, and goes straight to Steam's big picture mode)
  • Laptop: Debian with KDE Plasma
  • Home Server: Debian (a little single board computer, no desktop environment)
[–] justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

Due to bazzite,I checked out fedora silver blue for my work laptop. So far I'm happy.

[–] blxt@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago

For my Gaming PC I ended up with cashyOS. Justs works and still gives me enough flexibility for customization. Server is Proxmox with mostly Debian LXCs but I started to add in some alpine containers. Probably going to throw alpine on my old laptop as well, just for fun. Ah and then there is my MacBook with macOS, which for now I plan to keep…

[–] mikedd@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

I use Fedora on my personal laptop and DietPi on my RaspberryPi 4 where I selfhost a bunch of stuff.

[–] hamsda@feddit.org 2 points 3 weeks ago

Ha, I wish I could.

I'm not 100% satisfied, so I'm still searching for the "perfect distro for me", if it even exists.

I have been using Arch Linux on my personal PC and company laptop for 4 years, but I couldn't get some things to work. Things that, after installing Fedora, worked out of the box.

My current setup is:

  • EndeavourOS (e.g. arch linux with a GUI-installer) for my PC at home
  • Fedora Workstation 43 for my company laptop
  • Servers are all running Debian, I'll probably never change that
  • Hypervisor for VMs is Proxmox VE, which is Debian too
[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago
[–] one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks to hyprland, I've fallen in love with Arch. Sure it works on other distros, but the AUR is great for easy configuration. I'm running it on my container server, my laptop, my gaming rig, and my OneXPlayer(portable gaming rig). That said, I have been eyeing CachyOS because of the kernel optimization plus it seems easier to install.

[–] d3lta19@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If you already have arch installed, don't worry about how hard it is to install. All done! You can also run the cachyos kennel in arch if you want

[–] one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Huh, I didn't realize there was an AUR for it already. It would only take yay -S linux-cachyos.

But I need to fix my btrfs/snapper anyways.

I broke it after reverting by messing up my subvolumes. Swap was not properly setup and somehow reverting also broke my snapshots subvolume.

I also want time to test on my spare laptop first so I can create a script/config for it to deploy to my school laptop and gaming rig. But it's exam week for school and I need to finish transferring a 25TB VM to a hardware server.

I'll mess with it over spring break.

[–] lensflare@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

My home server is on unraid while my other machines are on OpenSuse. Having a webui makes it so much easier for someone other than me to take care of stuff if I'm not around

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Fedora on laptop. Fedora on desktop. Fedora in the server. Fedora in WSL.

[–] Mio@feddit.nu 2 points 3 weeks ago

Workstation: Fedora plasma Server: Ubuntu Rock64 Libreelec

[–] SpacePirate@feddit.nu 2 points 3 weeks ago

I use the following

Debian for Laptop Bazzite for Gaming PC HatvesterHCI for Hypervisor Truenas Scale for NAS (VM with disk pass thru) Rocky Linux for Servers (I have created Hardened Images) I use OS-build to create the Rocky Images

[–] bear@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel like NixOS might be the only distro that could realistically handle all these use cases, but I’m a bit scared of the learning curve and the maintenance work it’d take to migrate everything over.

It's a very steep learning curve, but I personally think it is worth it if what you want is to sync up all your various devices to a single common baseline configuration. I sought a single-distro solution for all of my systems for a long time and always ended up fragmenting them eventually because nothing I tried until NixOS was capable of handling such a diverse set of use cases in a way that would satisfy me.

I am similar to you, in that I regularly use a three server cluster, a gaming desktop, a multi-purpose personal laptop, and a work WSL instance on my work laptop. I still have some purpose-built distros where it makes sense; I use Proxmox for the actual server hosts themselves and then run NixOS VMs on them, along with running VMs for Home Assistant OS and TrueNAS (with the drives passed through, of course). All of these things I could do on raw NixOS (even Home Assistant is packaged in Nix, and there is a project to port Proxmox UI and tooling to NixOS) but I like the stability of the dedicated and battle-tested distros for critical infrastructure, especially for stuff whose configuration is very specific to a given task.

With NixOS, each other device has a consistent shared configuration and package set, they all get updated to the exact same versions thanks to flakes so everything works the same and as expected no matter where I am, and it's all declaratively configured and documented in one spot. Spinning up a new system or rebuilding an existing system is as easy as pulling the config and changing a few relevant lines, and from there it effectively assembles itself from scratch to the exact state I want it to be in. There's never any lingering packages or configuration cruft because the system is assembled from scratch every time it updates. Much of my home configuration is also managed, so aliases, environment variables, even vim configs are consistent across the board and set in one location.

The main downside is resource efficiency. Nix is designed to be reproducible and declarative, not fast or lean. It uses much more storage than a typical package manager, and packages are built with wide compatibility in mind so you often are leaving performance on the table from not using newer instruction sets like CachyOS. You can compile your own packages to fix that part, but that obviously takes a lot of spare processing power. I've been considering setting up my server cluster to do automatic building for me, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks a lot for the insights. I have dabbled a tiny amoubt with nix so far and while it was steep i do feel like it was doable. I am very likely to fall into the rabbithole again soon, and as you say probably very smart to run proxmox underneath for stability and convince 😊

[–] BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yes and no, my main system is EndeavourOS as well as one laptop that stays docked in the bedroom as a media PC. My HTPC is running Mint with KDE, my Steam Deck is stock SteamOS, my MacBook Pro is running Asahi Linux, server running TrueNAS and Raspberry Pi's running stock Raspberry Pi OS. Mainly I just like KDE, and have a preference for Arch based systems.

I prefer EndeavourOS and haven't had issues with it for a couple years now, but Mint on the HTPC was a reason to try Mint and I just left it alone except for swapping Cinnamon for KDE. Asahi is the only option for M1 MacBooks so no choice there. Pi OS I never really use the system as a computer, I just have one running PiHole and another running a digital calander for the wife and I, so I only interact with them through ssh or web portals. My Steam Deck works perfectly fine as is and I mainly just use the Steam launcher anyway so no point changing it. The TrueNAS system I mainly use through a web portal or SMB so it's fine.

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Every now and then I try something else (usually live usb from ventoy) just to see how others evolve. I like endevour, but I always en up with debian minimal install. Only on mylaptop I add xfce4. It's just rock solid. For my wife's laptop it's elementary, only because of the looks just to make her move from windows to linux painlessly

[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

My main server runs Ubuntu Server (I'm thinking about switching it to Debian), and my laptop and desktop both run Arch Linux. Generally, I pick whatever I think is best for the given usecase β€” things like stability, package availability, documentation, security, etc. are considered.

Yes, because nixos and distributed git-based dotfiles, would be so much work to have a second setup for no real gain, I do investigate other distros regularly though

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
DNS Domain Name Service/System
Git Popular version control system, primarily for code
LTS Long Term Support software version
LXC Linux Containers
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
Plex Brand of media server package
SMB Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

[Thread #152 for this comm, first seen 9th Mar 2026, 16:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

No, I've got nobara on my gaming rig, batocera on my wife's retro console that's just turned into a kodi device, and proxmox on my server

[–] halyihev@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Currently my primary laptop is on LMDE and my secondary laptop is on GhostBSD just because I wanted to try out BSD. I'm thinking of taking a third laptop and putting EndeavourOS on it. That was my primary OS until an update blew up the EFI partition and I read "yeah, that happens sometimes" and decided my primary system should be a bit more stable than that. But I did really like EndeavourOS other than that. I have an old notebook PC I've thought about putting Haiku-OS on just for fun, if I can figure out what I did with the power cord for it.

[–] retry1203@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

My gaming PC runs Nobara so I started using Fedora on my general use desktop and my laptop for consistency. I have an older laptop that runs Debian. I have two server machines that run Proxmox and Debian, and all my VMs are Debian except one that is Fedora server (I read somewhere Fedora would provide better GPU support out of the box, but I've never confirmed this, it just works)

[–] dil@piefed.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago

It causes issues, like bazzite has the same profile name, IDK if I missed the option to change it. Cant use the virtual mouse swap across computers because they require different names and it has an error related to that.

[–] gblues@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago

Usually I keep everything on Debian, but I've been thinking in making some changes, like running mint on my kids laptops. My rock64 is running armbian, due some problems with latest Debian on it and DietPi on an rpi3. Oh yeah, an rpi4 is running has, due to my absolutely laziness πŸ˜‚

[–] sveltecider@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

I just use Debian

[–] shark@lemmy.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

My laptop was, as of a couple of minutes ago, running Windows 11 (for AutoCAD before anyone says anything), but I just installed Fedora again so I’m free!

My server is running RHEL, which I don’t have an excuse for β€” I thought it’d be fun, but I’m going to switch over to Proxmox (hopefully) later this year.

So as it stands, currently, kinda.

[–] VOwOxel@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago

I run OpenSuse Tumbleweed on my Daily Driver Desktop, Bazzite on my Laptop, Debian on my Game Server

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