Yea, that is why I recommended Mint in top comment.
With the statement about Arch I wanted to say, that I have no experience with endeavourOS 😂😅
Edit after reading endeavourOS web page: what is even the difference between endeavourOS vs. Installing arch using the archinstall python script and using yay as package manager?
So, the only difference to arch is, that you have a gui for installation? In that case, I like archinstall script more. Mostly because I think it’s faster.
If you need secure boot on current (like intel gen 10+), Fedora Workstation. If you don't need secure boot, Linux Mint.
Fedora has the easiest way to make secure boot just work, it will even dual boot fine on the same disk although you should still backup the m$ partition if you actually need it. Fedora can do secure boot even with Nvidia.
Ubuntu can do some of the secure boot stuff like Fedora does, and there is the advantage of the stable kernel if you have Nvidia.
Note that "stable" as a label has nothing to do with its intuitive meaning like alpha/beta/testing/crashing etc. It is a term for servers and people that want to run very specific setups that will not require human intervention on embedded devices and servers. If you want to game or use the latest sw "stable" might be a pain. However, if what you are running is not kept up to date with the latest packages and libraries, a stable release may be the only way to run your stuff.
Overall these are the biggest factors on current hardware; secure boot yes/no, and up-to-date software needs yes/no.
Mint is easy mode, but has no secure boot shim implemented. It makes gaming accessible.
Pop is made for System76 and does some stuff funny IMO, and is like Mint with no secure boot if you are not running 76's proprietary bootloader on their hardware
Ubuntu is easy but has its quirks (most are fixed by Mint which is based on Debian/Ubuntu)
Debian is hard mode and is an advanced distro. There are a ton of tools that are unique to Debian. It is used mostly for people running their own servers and custom purpose machines from home or work. It is also the primary distro for hacking hardware and reverse engineering stuff that has no other way to create Linux kernel support.
Every distro has some things that they are specialized for. You can do almost anything with any of them, but it will depend on your skill level. Something to keep in mind here is that Linux is not a consumerism branding contest. We are not choosing our frivolous teams. This is the place where everyone can learn. While beginners and users are welcome, you will find many aspects of Linux are the study and thesis projects for many computer science students. All levels are present here. This is why so many options exist.
Debian is hard mode and is an advanced distro. There are a ton of tools that are unique to Debian. It is used mostly for people running their own servers and custom purpose machines from home or work. It is also the primary distro for hacking hardware and reverse engineering stuff that has no other way to create Linux kernel support.
While I get it I don't agree with the first part. If you install Debian out of the box with GNOME it will work out just fine for the majority of people, usually it will work out better than Mint, Arch and whatnot because it is a finished and very reliable OS, not something targeted for experimentation.
It is not really a complete experience. It is ugly, and for the type of person that wants to play in the weeds
Wtf are you even talking about? Setup Debian with all the defaults, it's easier than Windows and you'll get GNOME out of the box. Ugly?
or figuring out flatpaks
Running 2 commands to get all the flatpak software into the GNOME GUI store is very hard :P
Debian provides a solid out of the box experience, a system that won't break and will be compatible with most of the decent hardware out there. It won't complain and bitch, it won't be an half finished product like Arch. If it's too complicated just get Ubuntu and enjoy it's mangled kernel.
Arch / Gentoo are the real "base installs" here, nobody can run those things out of the box without tweaks. Arch doesn't even have an installer, just a bunch of scripts and 3rd party attempts and making something usable and you're recommending over Debian that has a full GUI with sane defaults?
All distros "support" SB because SB is not part of Linux and it requires setting your own SB keys. That is outside of easy scope. The question is if they support the m$ signed shim and what system is used to achieve this. Fed uses Anaconda (unrelated to Python container system). It is something unique to Fedora as far as I know. Linux refuses to support SB because SB is a scheme to steal hardware ownership. The standard implementation is only a suggestion and bootloaders are not required to give you access to the custom keys implementation in the specification. Microsoft controls the shim for SB. It is extremely decisive and controversial.
"Linux" doesn't support secure boot because it's distributed as source rather than binaries. As far as I'm aware Linux actually has special handling for secure boot (there's a kernel mode where it refuses to load unsigned drivers).
Also, I think as part of the secure boot spec, implementations are required to let you enroll your own keys. Whether that's still true or if it even works on many motherboards is another question.
Anyway Unbuntu (and thus Mint) should take care of the signing for you. Although when I tried it didn't work, but that could have because I use a fancy gamer kernel rather than the default.
The mechanism for not loading signed drivers is outside of the kernel. In Fedora, this is handled by Anaconda.
The last time I checked a few months ago, only Fedora and Ubuntu participate in the Microsoft 3rd party key signing arrangement. This shim signed aspect is done at the final stage of distro packaging. There is no upstream so it is not a Debian or downstream thing.
There can only be the one kernel they sign. This is a problem for Nvidia because Nvidia modules are unsigned upstream. They only do their binary BS and supply kernel source code that is different from that binary. We must build that source to make a module but this is unsigned. The only way to have Nvidia drivers under a shim is to build a system that can shim into the gap between boot and kernel init. This must build the Nvidia module from source in a way that is totally secure so that it may never be modified inside Linux or used as an entry point to add a root kit to the UEFI bootloader. Once the Nvidia module is built, then Linux is initialized. This is the only way to have secure boot functioning unless the user manually adds custom keys to the bootloader and signs their own kernel modules. Most distros leave this aspect of the system entirely up to the end user because it is not part of Linux. Most distros tell you to turn off secure boot. The bootloader is the largest attack surface in modern computers.
The secure boot specification is only a set of guidelines and not a required implementation. Indeed, my laptop does not have the functionality implemented to enable this, thus the reason I know all of this so well. There is still another way that I have not explored, but it is generally less known and lesser documented. There is a tool called Keytool that can boot directly into UEFI. Supposedly it can manually alter the keys outside of the bootloader implemented features set. The only documentation I have ever come across for Keytool is in the gentoo handbook, but gentoo documentation assumes a very high level of competence.
I'd go with Mint. They have thought out 99% of the things a user might ask for in a DE, along some basic admin configuration stuff you might need. It's the best out of the box distro.
I think Ubuntu is a solid contender for sure. I had a couple bad experiences with some updates (nothing significant) which didn't really inspire confidence for me to be able to set it up once and never need any real maintenance on my behalf.
Don't get me wrong, if I was using the laptop and it had Ubuntu I'd be ok with it because I'm comfortable with Linux. But for a set and (mostly) forget install, I chose Mint.
Fedora requires adding rpm-fusion to enable proprietary apps like Steam or hardware acceleration for codecs like h264. It's a great distro besides that, and I sincerely hope they'll just accept the legal risk like Ubuntu does.
I think your best bet for this is one of the spinoffs of enterprise Linux: fedora or openSUSE. both are very solid ootb, and have starting configurations that are generally good.
The microos or silverblue variants respectively are really promising as well, but still have some caveats.
Fedora is not an enterprise Linux spinoff, it is an upstream to an enterprise Linux distribution. Neither of those support proprietary video codecs and other potentially patent encumbered pieces out of the box, with some work for proprietary drivers too.
I've used both, and the only third party repo I've enabled was tailscale. I've not had any issue with needing codecs in anything I've Installed through the discover app. I'll admit that I don't have an Nvidia card, so I don't know how good support is ootb there (though iirc, at least openSUSE has a separate installer that include Nvidia drivers)
You likely have and not noticed. Hardware rendering even with the Intel iGPU requires them. Just means things are not as performant or efficient as they could be, and more power usage, as your cpu is doing the rendering instead.
The patents have routinely caused headaches. For years (2017) neither one could play mp3s and only recently have they gotten support for proper subpixel rendering. The mp3 (and dvd) thing was a big reason people used Ubuntu instead for a long time.
I really wanted to like Mint cinnamon but it didn't like my dual screen+built in screen on my pc case.
It would try and smush the display for the pc case screen into the monitor displays pushing everything over and making mouse clicks widely inaccurate (the click was half a screens away from the actual cursor).
I have an Nvidia GPU and have had a few issues with crashes on Mint even after manually installing the latest drivers. Is PopOS noticeably more stable? Have you by chance played Helldivers on it?
Also it seems like it's pretty tightly coupled with Gnome and tweaks, is it still adventageous if you use, say, KDE?
That's the problem I'm looking for something it just works, stable WO errors with updates and simple, just to get things done and not messing entire weeks fixing and searching solutions online for something what didn't work correctly.
That's just the nature of linux though. Most common distros run without issue. But people have such a wide variety of hardware and software needs that someone somewhere will tell you they had issues with that distro.
Much easier to boot them and get a feel for the one you like, you are not likely to have an issue, and if you do it will take minutes to fix on a common distro.
I have 2 screens, I like to have the same panel on each screen, so when I use one in fullscreen, I can use the other one. So far, the only Desktop Environment that can give me that without too much difficulties, is KDE (even if I had to do it manually).
If you have the same use, maybe Kubuntu is a great choice. Tuxedo OS would be the same as Kubuntu, but you don't have to change the priority of the package manager, because the snaps are already disabled. ( they got another load of malicious softwares in the snapstore recently, and some snap might not be as good as .deb or flatpak).
If not, Linux Mint is an out of the box distribution. If your hardware is the most recent one, they have a "edge iso".
In my experience, ubuntu seems to support a few more wifi cards OOTB. And for me that is an essential feature - I don't want to deal with getting the network up without access to the internet. I still experience Fedora to be smoother as a desktop though.
agreed with debian, it's by far the most stable and no bullshit system i've ever used.
however, BIG condition: do NOT install .deb files manually. that's an extremely easy way to break your system. use what's in the repos, and if it's not in the repos, use something like flatpak (not sure how well it works for debian since i haven't used it).
in general though, if you want a stable linux system, just don't try to install stuff that isn't packaged in official repos.
What are you trying to build? A work laptop that you're going to take on trips, a gaming computer, a server? Something else?
For you, what is too much hassle? Are you a new Linux user or an experienced user with no spare time? What are you accustomed to doing when you install an operating system and what do you expect to be preinstalled?
Experienced Linux user, but I was just wondering what people think about this, I believe I'm going for Ubuntu, I'm not exactly the kind of guy who will fall on malware anyway, I need something pretty easy to use, configure and working stable WO errors, as my experience I'm tired and have no time to fix shitty OS things.
Ubuntu isn't my favorite, but I used xubuntu for many years. A lot of noise gets thrown around about Snaps, but from an end-user perspective they tend to work fine unless you have very low system constraints. Better than adding a half-dozen repositories that may or may not be around for long. A lot of developers work to make sure that their software runs well in Ubuntu and the LTS releases tend to be a good long-term option if you don't want any significant changes for a long time.
Even with their regular releases, I daisy-chained upgrades on an old Core2 laptop for something like seven years without any major (computer becomes a paperweight) issues. Sometimes (like with Snaps) Ubuntu insists on going its own way, which can result in errors/shitty OS things that don't pop up in other distributions. I've had to deal with some minor issues with Ubuntu over the years (broken repositories, upgrades causing hiccups, falling back to older kernels temporarily), but I think that you'll get issues like that regardless of what distro you pick.
Maybe in some scenarios, but if you need any out-of-tree kernel modules, these can sometimes fail to stay current & lag enough behind that many setups might wish that they were indeed on an LTS kernel for support.
@pastermil@PoliticallyIncorrect
I second this. It's powerful enough, new enough, stable enough, and simple enough for me to prefer it over all others I have tried.
This is subjective though, but I would recommend trying it even if it's not your final choice
openSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty comfy. Btrfs snapshots enabled by default so it's really hard to break it. I've been using it for about 8 months now and haven't had any big issues.
I tested out Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint before landing on openSUSE. It by far has been the most stable. Especially when dealing with my Nvidia GPU and getting CUDA working.
And for being one it's shockingly stable. It's in a bit of flux right now as things are between X11/Wayland, but it's definitely not as iffy as bleeding-edge Arch or anything. :)
Rolling but feels very stable. Packages go through a testing phase before release to make sure they work properly. I really like getting all the newest updates and features.
Just make sure to install the 3rd party nonfree media codecs at installation for video to work out if the box. Also recently released Nvidia GPUs might have some bugs with Wayland ime
Don't know which one to recommend but I would never recommend Ubuntu. It is full of bugs to me. I used it for years without issues but now it is impossible for me. Installed it on my girlfriend's laptop recently and she has the same bugs I had years ago when I dropped it : network disconnects randomly and she has to reboot, bluetooth won't reconnect sometimes... I can help but it is definitely not working out of the box for users who are not into tech.
I would highly recommend fedora kinoite, it's immutable so the system doesn't break without you trying very hard, well configured out of the box, and uses flatpak for apps so the system can be stable and the apps can be updated regularly!
Kinoite is extremely stable due to it's immutability, if we mean stable to mean "unbreaking" rather than not updated.
Wayland is also the better choice for new people unless they have nvidia, in which case, it will be the better choice once explicit sync is supported in xwayland and nvk is the default.
Not if you include laptops and people without dedicated gpu's at all!
And either way, we're not far from all of the issues being resolved nvidia side, and they're few and far between at this point. That's just the last problem left, and it only affects xwayland apps.
Still I don't think it's a good idea to recommend a rolling release Wayland immutable distro to someone who wants a system that works out of the box with no configuration. If someone is asking for a just works distro recommendation you should give them the simplest most reliable option not whatever flavor of the month project you think is coolest. Simplest and most reliable is mint/Ubuntu
I don't think you're correct, immutability is great for long-term maintenance and makes everything, especially updating, much easier for new people.
Non-immutable distros will often have conflicts, or when a dist upgrade happens, issues occur, immutable distros largely sidestep those issues, and I believe kinoite is the simplest, most reliable option for someone unfamiliar with performing these upgrades.
The moment there's a dependency issue or conflict, they will have problems.
Fedora is not a flavor of the month project, it has just as much history as mint/ubuntu, and there's a reason they're shifting to atomic. Furthermore wayland is better for the vast majority of people right now, imagine you bother to switch to the linux desktop and then in a few months everything completely changes because wayland happened, it'll look like linux is absolutely insane from the perspective of someone who hasn't immersed themselves into the nature of this transition.
A lot of folks would recommend Ubuntu as a start but it’s very bloated af so starting on Linux Mint or Zorin/Elementary OS (if you want a windows/macos experience in your distro) would be a great start imo
If you have to ask it probably means the answer is one of the following:
Mint
Ubuntu
Pop!_os
In that order. Mint will be most likely the answer if your hardware is pretty normal. Ubuntu will be the answer if you're willing to give up some security and privacy for east of use (pro-tip: if this is your mentality I'd recommend a different OS and dual booting while you learn). Pop!_os will be the answer if you don't need super up to date software and want all your hardware to work because you have something odd
Personally I would strongly advise towards Mint. I used to direct people away from it but I've learned this was a bias I had against them for mishandling a security thing a long time ago that they've since become leaders in the security space for general use Linux operating systems.
Interesting you put Ubuntu above pop os. Besides snaps, I always feel like Ubuntu kind of gets goofier all the time, and its descendant OSes have to do a lot of un-goofifying. I love pop os. I've had a lot of little issues on other distros that I don't have in pop os. Ubuntu itself in the other hand, I've tended to have weird problems on that caused me to hop to something else.
I was a noob to Linux when I started using pop os. Still kind of am a noob. I've found it pretty easy to find solutions online most of the time. If a search query doesn't find what I need when including "pop os" then I swap out for "Ubuntu". You get basically all the compatibility of Ubuntu but no snaps and less jank overall
I think one worth adding is ZorinOS, it might feel more familiar and modern than Mint, and it's worked well on the old hardware I've run it on. Still an Ubuntu derivative, so you can't really go wrong with any of these.
It seems that Canonical likes to spend a lot of resources on building projects on their own and put them into Ubuntu, only to discontinue them for another solution after some amount of years.
They're currently pushing hard for their snap packages. It isn't a bad concept per se but their Snap Store server is closed source, with no alternatives repositories so far. There are also other options, like Flatpak, which is more widespread, and fully open.
Bazzite. It's made for gaming, but it just works, 0% hassle. I used to love doing lots of stuff with the terminal in arch, but since I switched I haven't opened the teminal once.
Im not sure but I have a suscpicion linux folks don't like its thing about being windows like as possible. Personally anything to get folks to uptake foss is great in my book. I actually use portable apps and would like to get farther away from it. Im going to look into the q40s thing suggested here as that might be a perfect next step.
It is for sure cool for the retro KDE vibes but thats what it is, old buggy KDE code. Konqueror is not maintained anymore, and either they ported everything to Qt6 or their Qt is also EOL, as well as a ton of other apps.
Apart from being well tested, newer software is mostly just better. Plasma 6 is a huge cleanup and its quicker and better than ever (long time users recognize that, even though its under the hood).
I would say yes to this, but elementaryOS still doesn't have in-place upgrades to the next major versions. I recall there being some progress on changing that, but I would wait till elementaryOS 8 before really recommending it.
This doesn't make sense to me. I have Ubuntu installed on a machine and have never even touched snaps. I did not have to do anything out of the box to not use snaps.
I would recommend Vanilla OS, especially Vanilla OS 2 once it's released. It's a very stable distro with an immutable system. It also allows you to install arch, debian, fedora, etc. packages using the apx package manager
Lol, but why? I use it for my daily usage! I game, surf the web, edit videos in Da Vinci and do a lot (a whole lot) of audio work on Reaper. It has been updated following the Fedora cycle and you easily switch from Gnome to KDE. If you go to the Discord you'll see it is actually well maintained. Having tried a few distros, I settle for Nobara because it's basically Fedora with all AV codecs and drivers pre-installed, exactly what I wanted. You may not like it personally but I don't think it's right to say it doesn't work for daily usage.
Yeah for sure you can do that, but it is not secure.
Updates are extremely delayed and not CI/CD like for example ublue Bazzite.
It has disabled SELinux.
It uses a custom Kernel and tons of other stuff.
Its for sure cool but the performance increase is like 5% (TheLinuxExperiment tested that once) and not worth the issues.
I would use Bazzite instead, you can layer stuff or different things, ublue has a Resolve Podman container afaik. Reaper has no Wayland support, does it? Last time I tested it at least, a few months ago.
Cool that their releases are good, my knowledge was from the 38-39 upgrade which came months too late. But tbh Discord is not a good way to document, ublue does the same though.
linux mint
Seconded. I've been using it for years because it just works, but if I want to try to
break shitdo things myself I can.Thirded. It just works. Even deployed to elderly relatives with wifi printers with no issues.
More specifically, Linux Mint Debian Edition. Canonical has been very weird, I would get the debian based branch
https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
I researched this question for a laptop to sell on eBay. I tried Pop OS and Mint and choose Mint.
It seems that Mint may be the most popular distro for older Linux laptops sold on eBay.
That's exactly what I did with my old Core2Duo laptop because I couldn't in good conscience sell it with factory-loaded Win-Vista LOL.
If somebody with knowhow gets it, they can put whatever they want on it. If someone without? They get a solid OS that gets security updates. Win-win.
The one and only objectively best answer, imo.
Pop_OS or Linux Mint. Both just work. The Atomic idea is nice, but still too soon for complete beginners or the lazy (not a pejorative).
Mint, it just works.
EndeavorOs, just works, like Mint, but Arch Based so much better
Well, I just use arch, btw. 💁🏻♀️
Not exactly the hassle free experience op is looking for
Yea, that is why I recommended Mint in top comment.
With the statement about Arch I wanted to say, that I have no experience with endeavourOS 😂😅
Edit after reading endeavourOS web page: what is even the difference between endeavourOS vs. Installing arch using the archinstall python script and using yay as package manager?
Only the installation is harder for Arch, EndeavorOS is easier to use then Mint, and installation is same thanks to the gui installer.
The difference between Arch with archinstall vs Endeavor is still the ease of installation.
So, the only difference to arch is, that you have a gui for installation? In that case, I like archinstall script more. Mostly because I think it’s faster.
What you think and what is the reality to casual users are two different things
Could you explain a bit about what makes it better?
Until it doesn't lol
If you need secure boot on current (like intel gen 10+), Fedora Workstation. If you don't need secure boot, Linux Mint.
Fedora has the easiest way to make secure boot just work, it will even dual boot fine on the same disk although you should still backup the m$ partition if you actually need it. Fedora can do secure boot even with Nvidia.
Ubuntu can do some of the secure boot stuff like Fedora does, and there is the advantage of the stable kernel if you have Nvidia.
Note that "stable" as a label has nothing to do with its intuitive meaning like alpha/beta/testing/crashing etc. It is a term for servers and people that want to run very specific setups that will not require human intervention on embedded devices and servers. If you want to game or use the latest sw "stable" might be a pain. However, if what you are running is not kept up to date with the latest packages and libraries, a stable release may be the only way to run your stuff.
Overall these are the biggest factors on current hardware; secure boot yes/no, and up-to-date software needs yes/no.
Linux Mint works fine with secure boot
Which of these would you suggest: Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS or Linux Mint?
Mint is easy mode, but has no secure boot shim implemented. It makes gaming accessible.
Pop is made for System76 and does some stuff funny IMO, and is like Mint with no secure boot if you are not running 76's proprietary bootloader on their hardware
Ubuntu is easy but has its quirks (most are fixed by Mint which is based on Debian/Ubuntu)
Debian is hard mode and is an advanced distro. There are a ton of tools that are unique to Debian. It is used mostly for people running their own servers and custom purpose machines from home or work. It is also the primary distro for hacking hardware and reverse engineering stuff that has no other way to create Linux kernel support.
Every distro has some things that they are specialized for. You can do almost anything with any of them, but it will depend on your skill level. Something to keep in mind here is that Linux is not a consumerism branding contest. We are not choosing our frivolous teams. This is the place where everyone can learn. While beginners and users are welcome, you will find many aspects of Linux are the study and thesis projects for many computer science students. All levels are present here. This is why so many options exist.
While I get it I don't agree with the first part. If you install Debian out of the box with GNOME it will work out just fine for the majority of people, usually it will work out better than Mint, Arch and whatnot because it is a finished and very reliable OS, not something targeted for experimentation.
I never experienced this with tons of machines, besides Debian now comes with proprietary blobs for that kind of hardware out of the box as well.
That ISO no longer exists. It's all now on the base image.
Yeah, it is also full or DEB GNOME stuff and has no podman, distrobox or flatpak support.
Debian is nice but "neutral"
Wtf are you even talking about? Setup Debian with all the defaults, it's easier than Windows and you'll get GNOME out of the box. Ugly?
Running 2 commands to get all the flatpak software into the GNOME GUI store is very hard :P
Debian provides a solid out of the box experience, a system that won't break and will be compatible with most of the decent hardware out there. It won't complain and bitch, it won't be an half finished product like Arch. If it's too complicated just get Ubuntu and enjoy it's mangled kernel.
Arch / Gentoo are the real "base installs" here, nobody can run those things out of the box without tweaks. Arch doesn't even have an installer, just a bunch of scripts and 3rd party attempts and making something usable and you're recommending over Debian that has a full GUI with sane defaults?
Afaik, Mint does support secure boot nowadays.
All distros "support" SB because SB is not part of Linux and it requires setting your own SB keys. That is outside of easy scope. The question is if they support the m$ signed shim and what system is used to achieve this. Fed uses Anaconda (unrelated to Python container system). It is something unique to Fedora as far as I know. Linux refuses to support SB because SB is a scheme to steal hardware ownership. The standard implementation is only a suggestion and bootloaders are not required to give you access to the custom keys implementation in the specification. Microsoft controls the shim for SB. It is extremely decisive and controversial.
"Linux" doesn't support secure boot because it's distributed as source rather than binaries. As far as I'm aware Linux actually has special handling for secure boot (there's a kernel mode where it refuses to load unsigned drivers).
Also, I think as part of the secure boot spec, implementations are required to let you enroll your own keys. Whether that's still true or if it even works on many motherboards is another question.
Anyway Unbuntu (and thus Mint) should take care of the signing for you. Although when I tried it didn't work, but that could have because I use a fancy gamer kernel rather than the default.
The mechanism for not loading signed drivers is outside of the kernel. In Fedora, this is handled by Anaconda.
The last time I checked a few months ago, only Fedora and Ubuntu participate in the Microsoft 3rd party key signing arrangement. This shim signed aspect is done at the final stage of distro packaging. There is no upstream so it is not a Debian or downstream thing.
There can only be the one kernel they sign. This is a problem for Nvidia because Nvidia modules are unsigned upstream. They only do their binary BS and supply kernel source code that is different from that binary. We must build that source to make a module but this is unsigned. The only way to have Nvidia drivers under a shim is to build a system that can shim into the gap between boot and kernel init. This must build the Nvidia module from source in a way that is totally secure so that it may never be modified inside Linux or used as an entry point to add a root kit to the UEFI bootloader. Once the Nvidia module is built, then Linux is initialized. This is the only way to have secure boot functioning unless the user manually adds custom keys to the bootloader and signs their own kernel modules. Most distros leave this aspect of the system entirely up to the end user because it is not part of Linux. Most distros tell you to turn off secure boot. The bootloader is the largest attack surface in modern computers.
The secure boot specification is only a set of guidelines and not a required implementation. Indeed, my laptop does not have the functionality implemented to enable this, thus the reason I know all of this so well. There is still another way that I have not explored, but it is generally less known and lesser documented. There is a tool called Keytool that can boot directly into UEFI. Supposedly it can manually alter the keys outside of the bootloader implemented features set. The only documentation I have ever come across for Keytool is in the gentoo handbook, but gentoo documentation assumes a very high level of competence.
Very well put.
I'd go with Mint. They have thought out 99% of the things a user might ask for in a DE, along some basic admin configuration stuff you might need. It's the best out of the box distro.
Linux Mint. It's THE best distro hands down. Those who know, know.
Thx mate 👍👍
Thx cinammon 👍👍
Thx honey 👍👍
My vote is Linux Mint. I had installed it on a family members laptop and have been going strong for years without fault.
What do you think of Ubuntu compared to Mint?
I came here to +1 Mint
I've installed it on 3 laptops for different family groups and had 0 problems with either the laptops or the family using them
To clarify that - with Ubuntu the UI was just a tiny step too different (than Win XP) for them to feel comfortable using... with Mint, no problems.
The laptops vary, but 1 is ~12 yr old, another is new (well, 3 yr old now), but Mint was installed to dual-boot Win 10 when new.
I use Arch btw
I think Ubuntu is a solid contender for sure. I had a couple bad experiences with some updates (nothing significant) which didn't really inspire confidence for me to be able to set it up once and never need any real maintenance on my behalf.
Don't get me wrong, if I was using the laptop and it had Ubuntu I'd be ok with it because I'm comfortable with Linux. But for a set and (mostly) forget install, I chose Mint.
Fedora
Fedora requires adding rpm-fusion to enable proprietary apps like Steam or hardware acceleration for codecs like h264. It's a great distro besides that, and I sincerely hope they'll just accept the legal risk like Ubuntu does.
It's super straightforward to enable, it prompts you to at start up. I think so anyway.
Yeah I agree they should just accept the risk
except with nvidia. gets stuck on black screen and did not understand the instructions i found in the interwebs.
Damn that sucks. Had lots of good luck with fedora, but I've never had Nvidia
I think your best bet for this is one of the spinoffs of enterprise Linux: fedora or openSUSE. both are very solid ootb, and have starting configurations that are generally good.
The microos or silverblue variants respectively are really promising as well, but still have some caveats.
Fedora is not an enterprise Linux spinoff, it is an upstream to an enterprise Linux distribution. Neither of those support proprietary video codecs and other potentially patent encumbered pieces out of the box, with some work for proprietary drivers too.
Is that so? I can remember a option on install to download proprietary stuff. I think that means codecs?
I am not saying that you are wrong just asking if you are sure.
That option is in Ubuntu and works as you expect it to.
Fedora has an option to enable third party repositories. Those are extremely limited.
Enabling all of rpmfusion or packman on opensuse is still work and even more work in the immutable distributions.
I've used both, and the only third party repo I've enabled was tailscale. I've not had any issue with needing codecs in anything I've Installed through the discover app. I'll admit that I don't have an Nvidia card, so I don't know how good support is ootb there (though iirc, at least openSUSE has a separate installer that include Nvidia drivers)
You likely have and not noticed. Hardware rendering even with the Intel iGPU requires them. Just means things are not as performant or efficient as they could be, and more power usage, as your cpu is doing the rendering instead.
For example: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration#Configure_VA-API_Video_decoding_on_AMD (this references Firefox but applies to most video players)
The patents have routinely caused headaches. For years (2017) neither one could play mp3s and only recently have they gotten support for proper subpixel rendering. The mp3 (and dvd) thing was a big reason people used Ubuntu instead for a long time.
Sure, but in both cases it installs the flatpak version that distributes the codecs with the runtime.
Although, now that I say this, I did install the flathub repo on fedora, which does slightly undermine my point
Everytime I want a distro that just works I just roll with Linux Mint.
Being one of the most popular distro if something goes wrong is really easy to find how to fix it .
Linux Mint Cinnamon
Linux mint cinnamon simplex users unite!
I love how simple it is to install and use.
I really wanted to like Mint cinnamon but it didn't like my dual screen+built in screen on my pc case.
It would try and smush the display for the pc case screen into the monitor displays pushing everything over and making mouse clicks widely inaccurate (the click was half a screens away from the actual cursor).
Only ever had that issue on Mint
Mint, it's not the shiniest toy but it really does just work
If you have Nvidia, pop os has all that built in. My go-to is usually popos, or mint
What do you think about Ubuntu over Mint?
Mint is Ubuntu without snaps.
👍👍
I have an Nvidia GPU and have had a few issues with crashes on Mint even after manually installing the latest drivers. Is PopOS noticeably more stable? Have you by chance played Helldivers on it?
Also it seems like it's pretty tightly coupled with Gnome and tweaks, is it still adventageous if you use, say, KDE?
I didn't play helldiver's, but other games were stable on pop os.
For me it is Fedora
Fedora atomic GNOME or KDE.
You don't mess with the system at all. If you look for something specific, you may find something here https://universal-blue.org/images/ .
The setup is a few commands, on ublue its a few less.
Do live images not exist anymore? Pick a distro, burn an iso to a USB drive and boot it. See if you like it.
You're just going to get a bunch of personal preferences with such an open ended question.
And for 100% of distros someone will come and say: "except for this where you gotta do this and that but then it works fine".
That's the problem I'm looking for something it just works, stable WO errors with updates and simple, just to get things done and not messing entire weeks fixing and searching solutions online for something what didn't work correctly.
That's just the nature of linux though. Most common distros run without issue. But people have such a wide variety of hardware and software needs that someone somewhere will tell you they had issues with that distro.
Much easier to boot them and get a feel for the one you like, you are not likely to have an issue, and if you do it will take minutes to fix on a common distro.
It depends of your definition of "hassle".
I have 2 screens, I like to have the same panel on each screen, so when I use one in fullscreen, I can use the other one. So far, the only Desktop Environment that can give me that without too much difficulties, is KDE (even if I had to do it manually).
If you have the same use, maybe Kubuntu is a great choice. Tuxedo OS would be the same as Kubuntu, but you don't have to change the priority of the package manager, because the snaps are already disabled. ( they got another load of malicious softwares in the snapstore recently, and some snap might not be as good as .deb or flatpak).
If not, Linux Mint is an out of the box distribution. If your hardware is the most recent one, they have a "edge iso".
I use fedora for the nice OOTB experience, but if there's issues with parts of the hardware - I try Ubuntu. And if it works, I just install it.
Life's too short to deal with hardware blobs.
If anything shouldn't Ubuntu not work? Fedora runs the regular kernel while Ubuntu runs the Ubuntu kernel
In my experience, ubuntu seems to support a few more wifi cards OOTB. And for me that is an essential feature - I don't want to deal with getting the network up without access to the internet. I still experience Fedora to be smoother as a desktop though.
Linux Mint definitely
Pop os or Mint
Debian.
agreed with debian, it's by far the most stable and no bullshit system i've ever used. however, BIG condition: do NOT install .deb files manually. that's an extremely easy way to break your system. use what's in the repos, and if it's not in the repos, use something like flatpak (not sure how well it works for debian since i haven't used it).
in general though, if you want a stable linux system, just don't try to install stuff that isn't packaged in official repos.
Yes, Debian + Flatpak is a good way to have a very reliable system with all the latest software.
What are you trying to build? A work laptop that you're going to take on trips, a gaming computer, a server? Something else?
For you, what is too much hassle? Are you a new Linux user or an experienced user with no spare time? What are you accustomed to doing when you install an operating system and what do you expect to be preinstalled?
What is your favorite colour?
Experienced Linux user, but I was just wondering what people think about this, I believe I'm going for Ubuntu, I'm not exactly the kind of guy who will fall on malware anyway, I need something pretty easy to use, configure and working stable WO errors, as my experience I'm tired and have no time to fix shitty OS things.
I will use it as desktop in a NucBox.
Ubuntu isn't my favorite, but I used xubuntu for many years. A lot of noise gets thrown around about Snaps, but from an end-user perspective they tend to work fine unless you have very low system constraints. Better than adding a half-dozen repositories that may or may not be around for long. A lot of developers work to make sure that their software runs well in Ubuntu and the LTS releases tend to be a good long-term option if you don't want any significant changes for a long time.
Even with their regular releases, I daisy-chained upgrades on an old Core2 laptop for something like seven years without any major (computer becomes a paperweight) issues. Sometimes (like with Snaps) Ubuntu insists on going its own way, which can result in errors/shitty OS things that don't pop up in other distributions. I've had to deal with some minor issues with Ubuntu over the years (broken repositories, upgrades causing hiccups, falling back to older kernels temporarily), but I think that you'll get issues like that regardless of what distro you pick.
Pop!_OS or Fedora
Fedora oddly doesn’t ship LTS kernels if you are looking for more stability
They test and maintain their own kernel tree instead. I find this advantageous for Workstation use which tends to be on newer hardware than servers.
Despite this Fedora is the furthest distro from unstable that I have experienced, which is why I recommend it as a "no frills" option.
I would not recommend Fedora or Pop for servers.
Maybe in some scenarios, but if you need any out-of-tree kernel modules, these can sometimes fail to stay current & lag enough behind that many setups might wish that they were indeed on an LTS kernel for support.
Ubuntu or Linux Mint
@KingThrillgore @PoliticallyIncorrect Devuan
Linux Mint. Always.
@pastermil @PoliticallyIncorrect
I second this. It's powerful enough, new enough, stable enough, and simple enough for me to prefer it over all others I have tried.
This is subjective though, but I would recommend trying it even if it's not your final choice
I've put kubuntu on a couple of machines now and I'm pretty happy with it.
If you want an elaborated answer you will have to share the hardware you want to install it on.
openSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty comfy. Btrfs snapshots enabled by default so it's really hard to break it. I've been using it for about 8 months now and haven't had any big issues.
I tested out Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint before landing on openSUSE. It by far has been the most stable. Especially when dealing with my Nvidia GPU and getting CUDA working.
Tumbleweed? No way dude. That's a rolling release.
And for being one it's shockingly stable. It's in a bit of flux right now as things are between X11/Wayland, but it's definitely not as iffy as bleeding-edge Arch or anything. :)
Oh yeah I'm on X11 for now, waiting on nvidia to be ready before trying wayland again. AMD users should be fine to use wayland though.
Rolling but feels very stable. Packages go through a testing phase before release to make sure they work properly. I really like getting all the newest updates and features.
Pop os
It's Linux Mint Cinnamon. Unless you are trying to run your OS in a potato, then it's Linux Mint MATE.
Ubuntu if you're used to Mac, Zorin (based on Ubuntu) or Mint if you're more used to Windows.
Never used Pop OS but I hear that's another that works well out of the box.
Just make sure to install the 3rd party nonfree media codecs at installation for video to work out if the box. Also recently released Nvidia GPUs might have some bugs with Wayland ime
Ubuntu and its derivatives are quite solid. My favorite ispopOsS which has grown to have a nice identity for itself.
I've got PopOs on my personal (framework) and work (System76) laptop. It's been super stable. Specially if you don't mess around with different PPAs.
Don't know which one to recommend but I would never recommend Ubuntu. It is full of bugs to me. I used it for years without issues but now it is impossible for me. Installed it on my girlfriend's laptop recently and she has the same bugs I had years ago when I dropped it : network disconnects randomly and she has to reboot, bluetooth won't reconnect sometimes... I can help but it is definitely not working out of the box for users who are not into tech.
I believe I'm going for Ubuntu LTS or Linux Mint(I don't know exactly which version) what did you say about it?
Never tried Mint. If you try it, tell me how good or bad you think it is ! 😊
Sure thing mate 👍👍
LMDE
I would highly recommend fedora kinoite, it's immutable so the system doesn't break without you trying very hard, well configured out of the box, and uses flatpak for apps so the system can be stable and the apps can be updated regularly!
Fedora is way to cutting edge to be stable. Especially when it ships Wayland by default.
Kinoite is extremely stable due to it's immutability, if we mean stable to mean "unbreaking" rather than not updated.
Wayland is also the better choice for new people unless they have nvidia, in which case, it will be the better choice once explicit sync is supported in xwayland and nvk is the default.
90%+ of people have nvidia gpus.
Not if you include laptops and people without dedicated gpu's at all!
And either way, we're not far from all of the issues being resolved nvidia side, and they're few and far between at this point. That's just the last problem left, and it only affects xwayland apps.
Still I don't think it's a good idea to recommend a rolling release Wayland immutable distro to someone who wants a system that works out of the box with no configuration. If someone is asking for a just works distro recommendation you should give them the simplest most reliable option not whatever flavor of the month project you think is coolest. Simplest and most reliable is mint/Ubuntu
I don't think you're correct, immutability is great for long-term maintenance and makes everything, especially updating, much easier for new people.
Non-immutable distros will often have conflicts, or when a dist upgrade happens, issues occur, immutable distros largely sidestep those issues, and I believe kinoite is the simplest, most reliable option for someone unfamiliar with performing these upgrades.
The moment there's a dependency issue or conflict, they will have problems.
Fedora is not a flavor of the month project, it has just as much history as mint/ubuntu, and there's a reason they're shifting to atomic. Furthermore wayland is better for the vast majority of people right now, imagine you bother to switch to the linux desktop and then in a few months everything completely changes because wayland happened, it'll look like linux is absolutely insane from the perspective of someone who hasn't immersed themselves into the nature of this transition.
Wayland is not better for the majority of people. There is no way you can argue its less buggy than x11.
Fedora
A lot of folks would recommend Ubuntu as a start but it’s very bloated af so starting on Linux Mint or Zorin/Elementary OS (if you want a windows/macos experience in your distro) would be a great start imo
What do you want to do with it?
This request is impossible to fulfill
just installed bazzite and after switching to x11 (one button thing) its the first district to have no screen tearing, no stutter
though this is a very gaming focused district, so maybe not for you
its derived from universal blue so maybe check that out
And a non-gaming focused equivalent would be Bluefin.
If you have to ask it probably means the answer is one of the following:
In that order. Mint will be most likely the answer if your hardware is pretty normal. Ubuntu will be the answer if you're willing to give up some security and privacy for east of use (pro-tip: if this is your mentality I'd recommend a different OS and dual booting while you learn). Pop!_os will be the answer if you don't need super up to date software and want all your hardware to work because you have something odd
Personally I would strongly advise towards Mint. I used to direct people away from it but I've learned this was a bias I had against them for mishandling a security thing a long time ago that they've since become leaders in the security space for general use Linux operating systems.
Interesting you put Ubuntu above pop os. Besides snaps, I always feel like Ubuntu kind of gets goofier all the time, and its descendant OSes have to do a lot of un-goofifying. I love pop os. I've had a lot of little issues on other distros that I don't have in pop os. Ubuntu itself in the other hand, I've tended to have weird problems on that caused me to hop to something else.
I loath Ubuntu. But I know if I send a noob off into the woods with it they'll be able to find solutions to their problems
I was a noob to Linux when I started using pop os. Still kind of am a noob. I've found it pretty easy to find solutions online most of the time. If a search query doesn't find what I need when including "pop os" then I swap out for "Ubuntu". You get basically all the compatibility of Ubuntu but no snaps and less jank overall
I think one worth adding is ZorinOS, it might feel more familiar and modern than Mint, and it's worked well on the old hardware I've run it on. Still an Ubuntu derivative, so you can't really go wrong with any of these.
I mind to use a N100 NucBox as desktop system, which one would you pick for it?
My advice is to just look at the screenshots of a few mainstream ones and pick one that looks the most usable.
A few:
What's wrong about Ubuntu according to you?
It seems that Canonical likes to spend a lot of resources on building projects on their own and put them into Ubuntu, only to discontinue them for another solution after some amount of years.
They're currently pushing hard for their snap packages. It isn't a bad concept per se but their Snap Store server is closed source, with no alternatives repositories so far. There are also other options, like Flatpak, which is more widespread, and fully open.
Understood mate, thx for your help I will think about it, beside snap thing, there is something else concerning about Ubuntu?
Not much that I can think of. I used it until a few years ago, and the experience was pretty good.
Thx for you help mate 👍👍
If you use CJK input methods, I would suggest Fedora which it has the simplest way to add a input
Depends on your hardware.
N100 NucBox as desktop.
Shouldn't be much trouble. Wifi could be an issue with Debian oldstable.
Bazzite. It's made for gaming, but it just works, 0% hassle. I used to love doing lots of stuff with the terminal in arch, but since I switched I haven't opened the teminal once.
you just described zorin.
Surprised it's not being suggested more here
Because it's unimaginably slow on updates
Im not sure but I have a suscpicion linux folks don't like its thing about being windows like as possible. Personally anything to get folks to uptake foss is great in my book. I actually use portable apps and would like to get farther away from it. Im going to look into the q40s thing suggested here as that might be a perfect next step.
@PoliticallyIncorrect Fedora Silverblue, for sure.
Or Gentoo
For what it's worth, Q4OS was easy to set up and has been my daily driver since late 2018.
What in the world...
What's the problem?
...
The idea is to make the transition from Windows to Linux easier.
However, you can change things around to make the DE look completely different from Windows.
That's a nice OS! Never heard of it before, but it looks like it delivers exactly what ir promises.
The developers are quite active in the forum, too, and often reply to posts there.
this is why I read through threads like this. looks cool.
Sounds pretty solid but dont use Trinity lol.
I think Plasma is the default desktop environment now, but I still use Trinity because it was the only DE in older versions and I'm so used to it.
It is for sure cool for the retro KDE vibes but thats what it is, old buggy KDE code. Konqueror is not maintained anymore, and either they ported everything to Qt6 or their Qt is also EOL, as well as a ton of other apps.
Apart from being well tested, newer software is mostly just better. Plasma 6 is a huge cleanup and its quicker and better than ever (long time users recognize that, even though its under the hood).
ElementaryOS if yer a Mac fan.
I would say yes to this, but elementaryOS still doesn't have in-place upgrades to the next major versions. I recall there being some progress on changing that, but I would wait till elementaryOS 8 before really recommending it.
@PoliticallyIncorrect
100% for #LinuxMint.
try a ublue os image
Ubuntu
I got annoyed with snaps, I can't recommend it because removing snaps is that opposite of not having to mess with it out of the box
Then don't remove snaps and you don't have to mess with anything out of the box.
Then you are stuck with snaps. I at least want to use apt
A person new to Linux would probably not even care or notice it.
It's a proprietary component run on only Ubuntu servers. Someone switching to Linux surely has REASONS to use Linux, like supporting open source
This doesn't make sense to me. I have Ubuntu installed on a machine and have never even touched snaps. I did not have to do anything out of the box to not use snaps.
I installed Firefox and it installed the snap version. Then I had to do a bunch of pinning and other stupid steps to make it NOT do that
Linux Mint is basically Ubuntu without snaps. Flatpak is available for that sort of thing where necessary.
That's why I upvoted Mint, it's an excellent choice as a first Linux. My mom used it without much Linux knowledge
@PoliticallyIncorrect @linux Void linux with xfce of course
Zorin
They probably want updates
New Zorin just came out. And when people say OOTB and no hassles they imply they don't want to deal with a rapid release distro.
I would recommend Vanilla OS, especially Vanilla OS 2 once it's released. It's a very stable distro with an immutable system. It also allows you to install arch, debian, fedora, etc. packages using the apx package manager
Ok, this depends.
I had some trouble providing support for a friend after I've recommended Vanilla OS. I believe it will be a good OS in the future but not now.
EndeavorOs, imagine arch, but as easy to install as Ubuntu, but everything just works
Kinoite or mx linux
SolusOS
Nobara if you want to game or do AV editing. I'm a semi-noob and I did not like Mint.
Nobara is highly hacked together and not well maintained. It is a cool proof of concept but should not be used for daily usage.
Lol, but why? I use it for my daily usage! I game, surf the web, edit videos in Da Vinci and do a lot (a whole lot) of audio work on Reaper. It has been updated following the Fedora cycle and you easily switch from Gnome to KDE. If you go to the Discord you'll see it is actually well maintained. Having tried a few distros, I settle for Nobara because it's basically Fedora with all AV codecs and drivers pre-installed, exactly what I wanted. You may not like it personally but I don't think it's right to say it doesn't work for daily usage.
Yeah for sure you can do that, but it is not secure.
Updates are extremely delayed and not CI/CD like for example ublue Bazzite.
It has disabled SELinux.
It uses a custom Kernel and tons of other stuff.
Its for sure cool but the performance increase is like 5% (TheLinuxExperiment tested that once) and not worth the issues.
I would use Bazzite instead, you can layer stuff or different things, ublue has a Resolve Podman container afaik. Reaper has no Wayland support, does it? Last time I tested it at least, a few months ago.
Cool that their releases are good, my knowledge was from the 38-39 upgrade which came months too late. But tbh Discord is not a good way to document, ublue does the same though.
Got ya
Tried it, cannot recommend.
I'm a long time Arch user but it is 100% NOT out of the box. Love Arch but it's not the answer to this question.
Windows.
Work supposed to be done on the machine would be interesting.
I'd correct the spelling, remove the lazy initialism, fix the comma splice and the which/that error.
You want to give people a reason to stop and help you. Be better, okay?
You good? You seem like you're having a bad day.
You should take your own advice, okay?