cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/35084396
Hej lemmings!
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! 😊


I’m on the transition phase, but I think I have settled on CachyOS for my Desktop/Gaming Rig, and Debian for the NAS/Server. The logic behind the choices can be summed as:
I want my desktop on the as recent as possible because of games and drivers and performance. The less friction there is when it comes to games and playing with other people, the better.
For the NAS, though? Once it is setup, I plan to only touch it for upgrades and the less of a headache I can make those, the better. I am trying to do my best at writing things out so that when, in three years, I have to inevitably solve an issue or three, I remember whatever it is I did and why. More importantly, Debian promises to make upgrades of in-pattern software easy, and I will be throwing docker at everything else, so I am hoping I can just update the packages/distro on a schedule and minimize the maintenance burden.
We will see how it goes, though.