Ramin Honary

I recommend Debain, or else Linux Mint which is a derivative of (and fully compatible with Debian Linux) but has more recent software packages available to it.

Both Tailscale and Jellyfin have instructions on how to install onto Debian which are not too difficult to follow.

If you intend to use this computer as a server, Debian is probably better, it is lighter-weight and slightly more stable. If you intend to also use this computer as a daily driver, you might try Linux Mint instead, since it includes more of Ubuntu’s more recent software builds in their app store (i.e. package repository), and it is helpful to have more recent builds of the most popular apps. I have heard it is also a bit easier to install games onto Linux Mint than Debian.

I have a blog post about how to pick a Linux written for people switching from Windows or Mac, if you are interested in a more detailed explanation.

I use Xfce and Cinnamon, but I always install Gnome Terminal regardless (you don’t need all of Gnome desktop to use it). The main reason I like Gnome Terminal is that it is very simple, and it lets you save your own terminal themes and switch between them from a context menu. Xfce terminal is nice and simple, but doesn’t have this really handy theme switching feature.

That said, the terminal emulator I used most often is the Emacs built-in terminal emulator (term-mode), because it integrates flawlessly with other Emacs tools. But its rendering and theming isn’t as nice as Gnome terminal, so I only recommend it if you are an Emacs user.

So I think Guix (and Nix) is the most technologically advanced package manager in existence, and I hope someday all package managers work like Guix.

One other very interesting feature about Guix (which I don’t think Nix is doing yet) (which Nix also does) is that they have implemented a fully verifiable bootstrap, meaning every step of building the kernel, including the steps taken to build the C compiler toolchain, are produced by code that is simple enough for a group of humans to check for correctness and safety. Also, every step of the build process exists in the package repository, with no reliance on externally built binaries for anything, not even the C compiler toolchain. They accomplish this with a multi-phase bootstrap process, where a smaller, simpler C compiler is used to build GCC.

Do I use Guix? Well, no. Simply put, it is not quite to the point where it just works on a lot of the computer hardware that I own. With a bit more work, with a few more developers, and a bit more money invested, Guix could pretty soon become as reliable and useful as Debian or Fedora. But it is not quite there yet. And frankly, I have other more important things to do than worry about debugging problems with the operating system I am using.