A good reason would be they might care about desktop environment but not what packages/components are installed. That is why I suggested the Sway spin, because it comes with some sane options, and is about as lightweight desktop as you’re going to get.
If you require a minimal installation, I would go for it. It will require a lot more tinkering, installing and configuring to be done on your part after the installation (that is the nature and purpose of minimal installations in the first place). I think that if you want to play games on Linux, you will inevitably end up with practically the default Fedora installation size-wise anyway (as you will install different compatibility tools, etc.), but at least you will not have to uninstall the programs you already know you do not need.
However, if KDE is not a requirement, then I would have a look at some of the Fedora spins which focus on lightweight and minimal OS such as LXDE, LXQT, or maybe even XFCE, if that is still minimal enough for you.
Comments on the other recommendations:
why not just use Arch at that point?
I would not recommend Arch when the requirements specifically say “reliable”. With Arch, you have to be prepared to fix your system from time to time. But sure, that would be the ultimate choice for “minimal” installation.
Sway spin?
It could work great, too, if @Lukas specifically wants tiling window manager. They are not for everyone. Installing a different DE/WM is not a problem, but then it somewhat defeats the purpose.
I decided to go with Arch Linux. Even though it’s not very reliable, it still seems like the best option for me.
Archlinux is quite reliable, but you need to know what you’ll need to install. It will require more “effort” to manage, ie set up zram, mandatory access control etc. You should also keep track of those changes in a git repository, so you don’t get a heap of stale configs that you aren’t sure how they were created.
If you’re purely choosing a distribution for “speed” or “lightweight” then really all you care about is the desktop environment. Micro-managing the other underlying components isn’t going to yield much of a speed/less resource usage.
From experience, though be mindful that more “lightweight” desktops, LXDE, LXQT tend to be less polished. I really dislike those two because they come with PCManFM for the file manager that follows no standard HIG (Human Interface Guidelines), basically everything is everywhere.
If you’re looking for something lighter than KDE, perhaps XFCE would be a better option, it comes with the Thunar file manager, which is pretty good. The Sway spin of Fedora does as well. It tends to be people’s “go to” for file managers when they’re not using Nautilus (GNOME) or Dolphin (KDE).
but you need to know what you’ll need to install.
it has archinstall these days with pretty decent defaults.
yea you may need to do things like pacman -Syu cups && systemctl enable cups but that is well covered on wiki.
Sure no problem if you don’t mind reading the wiki, but some people don’t want to read anything/have time to.
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I wouldn’t recommend archinstall unless someone needs a fast and easy way to install Arch Linux. If you can’t install Arch Linux without archinstall then you shouldn’t be using Arch Linux in the first place.
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Arch? Not comparable, Fedora is semirolling and more stable at least probably.
I would also mention Kinoite, which has a minimal KDE install that is also immutable, which is more stable than Arch too
I didn’t experience Fedora to be more stable, to the contrary. Had less problems on my hardened EndeavourOS/Arch. Some reasons to choose Fedora over Arch:
- you rely on better defaults and don’t want to tweak things
- you prefer Selinux over Apparmor
- you don’t want to check each Pkgbuild update of your AUR packages
- secure boot OOTB
Arch also has good things to offer:
- hardened-kernel,
- most up-to-date packages,
- faster package manager,
- Arch wiki and security wiki
yes the hardened kernel and malloc are still nearly impossible on fedora and maybe unmaintained.
I use Kinoite, which is container based and immutable. So the advantage would be the stability of that, in theory.
Nonetheless I have way too many bugs and some are unfixable. Maybe I should try Arch?
But is it correct for a “install, update, never fix” system? I like the new stuff as in KDE its mostly bugfixes. But I dont have the time for a permanently breaking system
@Torsten
I maintain a working hardened_malloc package for Fedora: GitHub - divestedcg/rpm-hardened_malloc: Unofficial micro-architecture optimized hardened_malloc package
It is the most performant of all the other packaged versions and has built-in workarounds to prevent breakage.
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