I wanted to interject about how "ecosystem" is a word only used for locked-in stuff like Apple and Google, but y'know what?
THIS is a proper ecosystem. It is actually organic, made of independent moving parts, unlike the clockwork made by big tech, internal to each and to a large extent indivisible.
SteamOS was my tutorial and today I run Arch on my main system. But I like learning and I like the fact that I can build my own system and choose my own components. I understand that Arch is not for everyone but for me it's perfect.
GNOME is horrible. Looks pretty, but it's opinionated approach means that nothing works as expected and you have to relearn how to use a stupid window manager.
I'm not even sure if this is satire or not, but is that even doable? I mean I've tested both FreeDOS and ReactOS before, but do they play well together somehow?
Side note, I've also tried KolibriOS before, amazing project for its tiny size, still have it on physical floppy disk right now even.
Hey, there actually are NTFS drivers out there for MS-DOS/Win3.11, I've used that for data recovery when neither Windows NT nor Linux could access the partition.
Very little surprises me anymore, and I have no idea what all tricks FreeDOS and ReactOS have up their sleeves.
Yeah. "I use OpenSUSE tumbleweed, but have reasons I've been thinking about switching. I consistently hear that mint is a good place to start, or maybe pop!os if you're looking to run games"
I don't actually even say the first sentence unless the question was "what do you use?"
Sometimes, if it's clear they're trying to revive very old hardware I might help them search for something built around being lightweight.
I'm mostly happy with tumbleweed, except that I have the nvidia repo set up and am convinced that it's causing issues. One of these days I'll look into how to try the nouveau drivers and/or how to get from my current setup to dualbooting pop!os without disrupting things I need for work.
Also, an update straight up broke emacs while i was in crunch time once, but I learned to be more careful about my update timing.
People having problems on Tumbleweed almost always seem to be using Nvidia, KDE, and/or Wayland. That's what I've noticed based on official forum threads, anyway.
Yep. I got a thinkpad a couple years ago that was enough of a deal that I forgave its nvidia GPU. I followed the documentation on how to connect a repo controlled by nvidia, and since then: a) the actual GPU appears to be used, but b) maximum brightness on the screen is significantly dimmer, and games run worse than they did when the GPU wasn't actually used.
And also I use KDE. I'm still on X11, though, so I didn't complete the set.
I haven't, but a colleague (small all remote web dev outfit) plays rocket league and had said that pop!os has felt great for games without having to tweak anything. Meanwhile, I tried to play through cult of the lamb while some friends were all playing through it and it wasn't playable
That's good to know, thanks. I don't get asked for Linux advice that often, but I'll just recommend mint unless there are extreme hardware restrictions (which I'm sure mint can work with, but I've looked for whatever modern lightweight-focused distro is when it's a concern)
And a lot of support, especially aimed to the beginner userbase. Most basics questions a first time linux user will encounter are usually answered to by searching the forum
It even goes beyond that because if you just search how to do something in linux, you are almost guaranteed to find instructions that work on whatever random site you find. It’s pretty rare to find instructions for dnf or pacman without also having the APT instructions right there.
Right? I'll talk about my salary all you want. I think it's great to know where you stand against others when negotiating for a new job or a raise. Especially since unions aren't really a thing in my profession.
Don't talk about my penis. If I want you to know, you'll know.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
Okay just kidding I know you wrote BeOS, I just wanna promote metaroom cause I like listening to them and their song was on when you posted this.
:::
TBH I would switch to Nix, from my current long standing arch, but it wouldn’t make any difference to me ultimately. Cool concept though, but I don’t really care much about these immutable distros.
I have to say the immutability isn't what got me. It's that i can propagate changes to all my machines (i have three, with different configurations of work and private users) without fuss. i have one git repo that contains the Config and all i do is git pull && sudo nixos-rebuild switch after i login and it's done. reinstalling is also somewhat trivial and once the installer is done everything is as i want it to be. which is just bonkers to me. i love it to bits. before i had a super brittle system of dotfiles that regularly broke. nevermore
That does make sense for such use cases, however I feel that archinstall script is also mature enough, allowing you to have config files even. Even w/o them it still has very powerful defaults. I will def give nixos a try in a VM first, as I mostly rely on flatpak and landlock anyways.
There is a slight difference there. You don't ask the first two because social norms have pressured those groups to focus on those elements to unhealthy levels, so asking is, on a certain level, disrupting the peace of the other person by touching a sensitive area. The third is not. The third is poking your own peace because whether they have an extreme loyalty to one or a nuanced understanding of why different ones are better suited to different use cases, you are about to be talked at for an hour about it.
Pretty much any distro can do any of the things Windows/Mac users are hoping a computer can do. So just pick one and stick with it. Once you're familiar with Linux, the benefits/drawbacks of each distro will become clearer, and you'll be able to make an informed decision. People will tell you "Arch is more lightweight than Mint" but compared to Windows/MacOS, all Linux distros are going to feel blazingly fast and lightweight. The only decent advice is, if you are just starting out and you have an Nvidia GPU, use a distro that sets that up for you automatically. It's not super complicated to set up, but it's definitely going to feel like a foreign experience the first time.
Pretty much any distro can do any of the things Windows/Mac users are hoping a computer can do.
Without knowledge and at least an hour of your time for configuration, CLI-first distros like Arch can't even play a video - or show a GUI for that matter.
[…] Nvidia GPU […] It’s not super complicated to set up, but it’s definitely going to feel like a foreign experience the first time.
If you're lucky that means. If you happen to pick a distro / device combo that doesn't harmonize and the distro didn't took care of the driver from the start you'll have a really, really bad time. Especially if it's a hybrid GPU system.
You're right about picking a distro that comes with it. Options like Pop!_OS, TuxedoOS or Bazzite come to mind.
this comment was written on June 2025. So as of this day Mint is fabulous. And if I were to save a single distro from a burning building of all the popular distros, i would grab mint twice.
I know I know, there are many good distros, even texhnically better ones. But having used Mint as a secondary dual boot to my primary Windows, I have felt that Mint has been least annoying and actually worth retaining and updating and maintaining.
Mint is great I use it on my desktop and laptop and have been for years (I switched when Ubuntu has that unity desktop period). For Linux it's the most "it just works" distro for me. My second choice would be manjaro, but mint also has the advantage that there is so much help for Ubuntu you can find online, that usually also works for mint.
Agree 100%. The amount of "help" content and documentation, both formal and informal, for other distros doesn't even come close to that of Ubuntu. It's like tenfold more. And so 90% of it becomes immediately, if not applicable, alteast in the right direction, for Mint as well.
I freaking love Linux Mint. I use it for myself because despite being the “easy” distro, it is still Linux. (Or as I like to call it, GNU plus Linux, lol) But you are still allowed to use the terminal, compile your own code, fiddle with your system, run docker, and generally do what you want with your computer without it bogging down to load ads for services that are already running in the background bogging it down more whether you pay for it or not. And since it is based on debian/ubuntu/apt, users benefit from that popularity when they look up how to do something.
I love it just as much for the non-power users. It is how I will allow my parents to keep their perfectly good laptop that collects dust instead of spending a thousand bucks on a new win11 laptop to collect dust.
Long term I assume that I will end up on Arch or a derivative, mostly thanks to Valve, on top of it being a good project to learn on.
so I'm not very knowledgeable about the Linux world, but I'm also not completely green. In my lifetime I have dabbled with trying out 4-5 distros either dualbooting or VMing, Ubuntu being my first experience.
But i feel like, as much as I love our Lord and Savior GabeN, what Valve's doing with Steam OS is not fully how I image a PC Linux Utopia vision looks like? Maybe i am not able to word it properly, my thought salad, but it feels like there is something missing in the Valve's approach to challenging Microsoft's grip on PC market
I’d love to hear your specific thoughts on that one.
My comment was less about anything technical with SteamOS, and more about its popularity and the influence of gaming on the enthusiast PC market. And I’m not assuming that everybody will install SteamOS on their desktop, just thinking that arch-based distros might get a lot more market share.
I haven’t even used it, honestly. Like I said I’m using mint on everything.
I'm actually thinking about switching from Debian to Mint. I'm thinking that if Mint is the recommended distro for people new to Linux, they will need a big community to answer questions in forums.
With the momentum that Mint already has, it has the highest chance of succeeding as the primary distro for Linux newbies in the coming years.
some long winded thoughts...
Like every PC Semi-enthusiast sufferer of Windows, when I was looking for a Linux distro to respite,
I deliberated way too long on which distro to use.
Finally I realized that the way I use Windows, I'll not be able to fully switch over to Linux anytime soon. So instead of burning midnight oil, one day i said fuck it, and installed Mint as a dual boot option. I spent quite a lot of time trying to make the Mint as close to my Windows setup as possible, but couldn't do fully. Plus the VKD3D performance penalty for Nvidia GPU in DX12 games meant I was never going to ditch Windows as my primary gaming OS.
I did the same thing, but with ubuntu. Now, you and I can troubleshoot issues and have patience. But someone who is sort of reluctant to begin with, it's a hard sell if there are hurdles.
Its the only way to learn linux, since if you try to find any help or info all you'll find is shit from 15 years ago thats horrifically out of date and not relevant.
Hey can y'all help me out? I wanna start switching over, but I need a beginner friendly distro that can work well with my 2070 super for gaming. I need something simple to set up or I'll get ADHD paralysis and never do it.
I'd also love if it worked well with my Valve Index, but if that still has a lot of issues across the board I may still have to dual boot :c
i started on mint, with a 2080, played through hl alyx (with one weird issue - when i had my old xbox 360 controller plugged in, alyx and vr home couldn't start, but that was a few years ago, maybe it's not an issue any more).
which is to say, the index is not the issue, most vr games don't have a native linux version, so you have to rely on proton, and especially with nvidia cards they're far from guaranteed to run
Given they have an Nvidia and want stuff like the Valve Index to work (so in the best case to have all those super new drivers, libraries installed and stuff) it should be a distro that comes with a lot preconfigured, like the Nvidia driver.
I've heard a lot of good things about Bazzite in this regard.
I don't have time to mess around with Arch or customizing things. I tried a couple live boots and went with Mint. Spent 2 hours picking a theme, wallpaper, and menu icon. Boom, done.
Are there major differences between Manjaro and EndevourOS? Ive tried both, and Endevour feels more open for you to customize, which is why thats my go-to reccomendation for an Arch based distro.
There is. EndeavourOS fundamentally is Arch Linux. You could replicate the exact thing by installing Arch, adding the EOS repos for their utilities, and setting it up to be the same.
Manjaro diverges from Arch in that package versions and the time of updates are manually controlled. This means the project is generally not using the same software as an up-to-date Arch system.
Manjaro promises to be more stable like this, however their approach can lead to compatibility issues with AUR packages, which generally assume up-to-date Arch. It also kinda goes against the philosophy of Arch to invest time in extensive system tests. These issues are why many Arch users don't particularly like Manjaro
I've been using Manjaro with Cinnamon for about a month now. It works great on an old Lenovo with 12gb ram. Probably going to stick with it when I build my desktop.
Mint is (subjectively, for 90% of people), because something a lot of Linux nerds seem to forget is that the average computer user does not even want to think about their operating system. 90%+ of people who use a computer want it to turn on and just work for the things they want to do, and for like, 99% of the time, Mint has been just that for me for a solid year and a half. I adore it for that reason, and wish more Windows users would just try switching to it. I understand the apprehension not to, having tried other distros over the years (and having fought with Bazzite on my steam deck on multiple occasions), but it really does "just work".
like I get it, some like to fiddle-fuck with their OS, and that's cool, but that does not appeal to the majority of people and pretending it should is asinine. Some of us want to view and use our computer as an appliance/a means to an end, not a project in and of itself. When I used Windows and had issues, you know how much fun I had digging around in Event Viewer, or Group Policy Editor, or Regedit, or Control Panel? Zero. Zero fun was had. Same amount of fun I have dicking around with Linux. I want my computer to turn on, do what I tell it to, nothing I don't (this is the sticking point that got me to leave Windows), and god damnit if it breaks it'd better be as easy as googling an error message (which, Mint also has enough reach/widespread use that it usually is). Anyone who disagrees, I applaud your patience, but that is simply not the way I and most other people operate.
And salty Linux ricer downvotes get me moist, so bring it on, dweebs.
the average computer user does not even want to think about their operating system. 90%+ of people who use a computer want it to turn on and just work for the things they want to do
I’m the more typical Lemmy user that DOES think about their operating system and will happily fiddle-fuck with it on occasion. And I still use and love Mint because even in 90%+ of the cases when I use the computer it is to do something WITH the computer and not do something TO the computer.
you must've not seen Mint in a long time if you think it looks like Windows 95, I'm using it right now and it looks much nicer.
Further, that's really not the cutting dig you think it is. Windows 95, for all its boxy, gray 90s aesthetic, was a very clean UI with minimal bullshit. If you like ricing your desktop/want it to look fancy, great, I'm happy for you. Most normal users, on the other hand, really don't care how their OS looks as long as they can find what they need to. For normal users, the OS should be an invisible plinth that other programs you actually give a fuck about sit on top of. Mint stays the fuck out of my way to that end impeccably well.
I think it makes some sense once you take a look at the big picture. Mint has been around for a very long time and has become one of the most popular distributions on its own. On top of that, it is designed to be an easy turnkey system for inexperienced linux users.
That alone would gain it plenty of recommendations, but ubuntu would probably still be the top recommendation. However, the same thing that made it good — Canonical and its resources — is also the thing that drove away the Linux enthusiasts that recommend distros to new users.
So you take Ubuntu, the user friendly distro built on one of the sorta OG distros (debian), strip out the proprietary stuff that annoys the Linux community (snaps etc), and make it even more user friendly while removing none of the Linux goodness, and there you have Mint as the obvious recommendation.
Hell, I’m a computer person and I happily use Mint on multiple computers daily.
Yeah, I get your reasoning -- but there are other distros that match all of that as well. PopOS and ElementaryOS are two that I have personal experience with. Elementary had a rocky upgrade once so I tried PopOS and haven't looked back. It's great. Ubuntu minus the crap. The average user (getting recommended mint) probably wouldn't care about being on the latest release and would likely not even run updates all that often, so even Elementary would've been a good choice for them. I have since installed it on my girlfriend's slow/old laptop and it works very smoothly there compared with windows.
Probably because they've been building their own DE (which will replace their GNOME fork) for a while now. It's in alpha and hopefully will roll out in the next few months. Having said that, I don't have issues doing the things I want to do. I think it's fine for now because 22.04 is LTS, so most app makers support it.
The one you fucking feel like using. God, stop trying to make tribes mandatory.
Never heard of it. What packaging system does Tribes use?
Well, it's built to use Ooga, but it's also set up to be able to handle Booga as well. It depends on the driver set you need to load Fire and Club.
I prefer Ook! Ook! over Ooga.
The wrong one, obviously!
I feel like there’s a lemmings reference to be made here but I’m tired. Internet, do your thing.
I'm tempted to commit to pretending that "Tribes" is a Linux distro that we're all worried will gain too much popularity and hurt the ecosystem...
I wanted to interject about how "ecosystem" is a word only used for locked-in stuff like Apple and Google, but y'know what?
THIS is a proper ecosystem. It is actually organic, made of independent moving parts, unlike the clockwork made by big tech, internal to each and to a large extent indivisible.
*Except for beginners
Try a beginner distro, and when you're done with the tutorial, go ahead and install your arches or nixes, IDC
SteamOS was my tutorial and today I run Arch on my main system. But I like learning and I like the fact that I can build my own system and choose my own components. I understand that Arch is not for everyone but for me it's perfect.
Also, fuck GNOME. When I tried Ubuntu in 2009 it was GNOME that made me hate Linux until I learned that KDE Plasma was a thing.
GNOME is horrible. Looks pretty, but it's opinionated approach means that nothing works as expected and you have to relearn how to use a stupid window manager.
Steamos is a great introduction... If you touch desktop mode of course.
Personally I recommend Linux mint, or even KUbuntu or Cinnamon Ubuntu (gnome is not meant for windows refugees so better not show it yet)
Ooga Booga, caveman like Arch, caveman spread Arch!
Edit: i never read the other comments and someone already sorta used this joke... shit.
I'm a simple man, but I love Fedora
I’ve bounced around to plenty of distros, Fedora KDE is my current daily driver.
Fedora is the best because it fits my use case the best.
We need a healthy mashup OS between TinyCore, KolibriOS, ReactOS, and TempleOS, then I'll be happy.
I thought you said healthy.
You're right, we also need a CP/M terminal running on top of the Minix kernel..
Why not just ReactOS atop FreeDOS?
I'm not even sure if this is satire or not, but is that even doable? I mean I've tested both FreeDOS and ReactOS before, but do they play well together somehow?
Side note, I've also tried KolibriOS before, amazing project for its tiny size, still have it on physical floppy disk right now even.
Mostly satirical.
Gotcha, no worries 👍
Future goal, emulate Linux (any version that might work) under KolibriOS.
I think that's actually doable, to some extent.. 🤷♂️
That's like asking if MS-DOS and WinNT work well together. I guess they can both rw off FAT32 and run on x86-32..
Hey, there actually are NTFS drivers out there for MS-DOS/Win3.11, I've used that for data recovery when neither Windows NT nor Linux could access the partition.
Very little surprises me anymore, and I have no idea what all tricks FreeDOS and ReactOS have up their sleeves.
It depends on who’s asking. But if it’s someone who is curious about Linux, it’s always Mint.
Yeah. "I use OpenSUSE tumbleweed, but have reasons I've been thinking about switching. I consistently hear that mint is a good place to start, or maybe pop!os if you're looking to run games"
I don't actually even say the first sentence unless the question was "what do you use?"
Sometimes, if it's clear they're trying to revive very old hardware I might help them search for something built around being lightweight.
I'm mostly happy with tumbleweed, except that I have the nvidia repo set up and am convinced that it's causing issues. One of these days I'll look into how to try the nouveau drivers and/or how to get from my current setup to dualbooting pop!os without disrupting things I need for work.
Also, an update straight up broke emacs while i was in crunch time once, but I learned to be more careful about my update timing.
My guy just uninstall the Nvidia driver, it will fall back to the driver in the kernel, which is the Nouveau driver.
I'll try that soon. Tbf, it's absurdly easy to roll back with snapper if I make a change and it's not better, I just haven't gotten around to it.
People having problems on Tumbleweed almost always seem to be using Nvidia, KDE, and/or Wayland. That's what I've noticed based on official forum threads, anyway.
Yep. I got a thinkpad a couple years ago that was enough of a deal that I forgave its nvidia GPU. I followed the documentation on how to connect a repo controlled by nvidia, and since then: a) the actual GPU appears to be used, but b) maximum brightness on the screen is significantly dimmer, and games run worse than they did when the GPU wasn't actually used.
And also I use KDE. I'm still on X11, though, so I didn't complete the set.
Haha. Well, I hope you get it worked out. Have you used PopOS before?
I haven't, but a colleague (small all remote web dev outfit) plays rocket league and had said that pop!os has felt great for games without having to tweak anything. Meanwhile, I tried to play through cult of the lamb while some friends were all playing through it and it wasn't playable
Games run great in Linux Mint.
Mint also has a GUI driver manager that makes it really easy to see and change which nvidia driver you’re using.
That's good to know, thanks. I don't get asked for Linux advice that often, but I'll just recommend mint unless there are extreme hardware restrictions (which I'm sure mint can work with, but I've looked for whatever modern lightweight-focused distro is when it's a concern)
I try to avoid telling people what I use as they will wonder why I don’t use mint if I recommend it.
I like Fedora + plasma, but I don’t want to explain rpm fusion and Fedora flatpak problems.
If someone is new, show them DEs and recommend based on that
I think that can come later. I think decision paralysis would be a problem.
Would Aurora be a better recommendation these days?
https://universal-blue.org/
Not familiar with it, but one thing mint has is a long history. That’s important to me.
And a lot of support, especially aimed to the beginner userbase. Most basics questions a first time linux user will encounter are usually answered to by searching the forum
Great point! I hadn’t even considered that.
It even goes beyond that because if you just search how to do something in linux, you are almost guaranteed to find instructions that work on whatever random site you find. It’s pretty rare to find instructions for dnf or pacman without also having the APT instructions right there.
Am I understanding this right? It's Linux installed to a remote server and then streamed to the desktop?
Right? I'll talk about my salary all you want. I think it's great to know where you stand against others when negotiating for a new job or a raise. Especially since unions aren't really a thing in my profession.
Don't talk about my penis. If I want you to know, you'll know.
I use Nyarch, btw.
Holy shit I lost it after Material UwU. The system requirements and FAQ (including a famous Torvalds quote) were excellent highlights as well.
Fucking Astolfo in there... this is just too good.
Thank you for this, you've made my day.
I didn't really like Gnome, but one day I might spin up a VM for this.
Your a Linux user?
What's the best distribution of Windows?
XP was
Windows 7 Embedded.
Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC.
Windows Vista.
Windows XP Black Edition (xD)
Royale Noir was the shit
React OS
3.1
Windows 2000 was the best (and last good) version.
Why is Tux flipped, is this some sort of subliminal message? Is BigTech behind of this meme?
Oh, oups. That's a remnance from a meme I made a few minutes earlier. However now Tux is looking towards the text, therefore this was all planned.
The best distribution is always the one you currently use. All others are trash.
and it is also the worst.
Until you realize that the current distro isn’t the worst like the others were.
That’s when you know you’ve found home.
My distro is shit
But all other distros are diarrhea
I love my shit distro
Shame on all of you for not knowing Hanna Montana Linux is the best possible OS ever.
I thought that it's a fact everyone using Linux just instinctively knew.
You don't need to ask, because they will tell you their thoughts regardless.
Just switched to NixOS recently, after years on LMDE.
See I just like LMDE. Everything works without fiddling (I want my OS to be boring). And if I feel spicy - backports.
Fuck yeah NixOS! I freaking love declarative config!
Pfft, those are still maintained (Haiku and ArcaOS respectively) and so corporate man.
TempleOS all the way baby. Nothing is more powerful the the almighty HolyC.
Haiku! 🍁 exists :3
I loved BeOS. It was great.
Like this BeeOS?
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Okay just kidding I know you wrote BeOS, I just wanna promote metaroom cause I like listening to them and their song was on when you posted this. :::
Excuse me sir or madam, do you have time to talk about our lord and savior NixOS?
no one likes a smart guy. you can keep your dot files /s
There are no dotfiles! There is only the Config!
TBH I would switch to Nix, from my current long standing arch, but it wouldn’t make any difference to me ultimately. Cool concept though, but I don’t really care much about these immutable distros.
I have to say the immutability isn't what got me. It's that i can propagate changes to all my machines (i have three, with different configurations of work and private users) without fuss. i have one git repo that contains the Config and all i do is git pull && sudo nixos-rebuild switch after i login and it's done. reinstalling is also somewhat trivial and once the installer is done everything is as i want it to be. which is just bonkers to me. i love it to bits. before i had a super brittle system of dotfiles that regularly broke. nevermore
That does make sense for such use cases, however I feel that archinstall script is also mature enough, allowing you to have config files even. Even w/o them it still has very powerful defaults. I will def give nixos a try in a VM first, as I mostly rely on flatpak and landlock anyways.
die heretic
rebooted, restored, invincible!
Hannah Montana Linux, btw
Can confirm.
It’s NixOS
This is my favorite comment on the thread.
oh god I'd be so so happy if someone asked me that! Whenever I say i use Linux people look at me funny 😭
Yeah man. The amount of times I have to shoehorn into the conversation, that I'm using Arch btw. is tiring.
Would be so much easier, if they just asked.
Are you using Arch btw?
Yes, ackshually.
Thanks for asking.
Talking about it, which arch flavour is "btw"? /s
@[email protected]
Which Linux distribution is the best?
@[email protected]
you'll know when you feel butterflies in your tummy.
Cant take EndeavourOS from me.
I made this mistake once and every comment was a different distro, they were all upvoted, and everyone was saying good things about all of them.
I just went with Ubuntu.
It's the canonical choice
Linux is like dogs, they’re all good bois.
That's okay, chances are half the different distros people were talking up were Ubuntu.
Don't forget Biebian
There is a slight difference there. You don't ask the first two because social norms have pressured those groups to focus on those elements to unhealthy levels, so asking is, on a certain level, disrupting the peace of the other person by touching a sensitive area. The third is not. The third is poking your own peace because whether they have an extreme loyalty to one or a nuanced understanding of why different ones are better suited to different use cases, you are about to be talked at for an hour about it.
i only use this linux
My favourite Linux is the kernel
Colonel who?
Colonel Linux and his army of daemons!
Red Star OS!
Can't complain about that one!
Devuan GNU+Linux with sysvinit
sorry, i don't speak spanish
?
Por favor!
Pretty much any distro can do any of the things Windows/Mac users are hoping a computer can do. So just pick one and stick with it. Once you're familiar with Linux, the benefits/drawbacks of each distro will become clearer, and you'll be able to make an informed decision. People will tell you "Arch is more lightweight than Mint" but compared to Windows/MacOS, all Linux distros are going to feel blazingly fast and lightweight. The only decent advice is, if you are just starting out and you have an Nvidia GPU, use a distro that sets that up for you automatically. It's not super complicated to set up, but it's definitely going to feel like a foreign experience the first time.
Without knowledge and at least an hour of your time for configuration, CLI-first distros like Arch can't even play a video - or show a GUI for that matter.
If you're lucky that means. If you happen to pick a distro / device combo that doesn't harmonize and the distro didn't took care of the driver from the start you'll have a really, really bad time. Especially if it's a hybrid GPU system. You're right about picking a distro that comes with it. Options like Pop!_OS, TuxedoOS or Bazzite come to mind.
it is OBJECTIVELY linux mint. Why? Because.
this comment was written on June 2025. So as of this day Mint is fabulous. And if I were to save a single distro from a burning building of all the popular distros, i would grab mint twice.
I know I know, there are many good distros, even texhnically better ones. But having used Mint as a secondary dual boot to my primary Windows, I have felt that Mint has been least annoying and actually worth retaining and updating and maintaining.
Mint is great I use it on my desktop and laptop and have been for years (I switched when Ubuntu has that unity desktop period). For Linux it's the most "it just works" distro for me. My second choice would be manjaro, but mint also has the advantage that there is so much help for Ubuntu you can find online, that usually also works for mint.
Agree 100%. The amount of "help" content and documentation, both formal and informal, for other distros doesn't even come close to that of Ubuntu. It's like tenfold more. And so 90% of it becomes immediately, if not applicable, alteast in the right direction, for Mint as well.
Check out EndeavourOS instead of Manjaro.
I freaking love Linux Mint. I use it for myself because despite being the “easy” distro, it is still Linux. (Or as I like to call it, GNU plus Linux, lol) But you are still allowed to use the terminal, compile your own code, fiddle with your system, run docker, and generally do what you want with your computer without it bogging down to load ads for services that are already running in the background bogging it down more whether you pay for it or not. And since it is based on debian/ubuntu/apt, users benefit from that popularity when they look up how to do something.
I love it just as much for the non-power users. It is how I will allow my parents to keep their perfectly good laptop that collects dust instead of spending a thousand bucks on a new win11 laptop to collect dust.
Long term I assume that I will end up on Arch or a derivative, mostly thanks to Valve, on top of it being a good project to learn on.
so I'm not very knowledgeable about the Linux world, but I'm also not completely green. In my lifetime I have dabbled with trying out 4-5 distros either dualbooting or VMing, Ubuntu being my first experience.
But i feel like, as much as I love our Lord and Savior GabeN, what Valve's doing with Steam OS is not fully how I image a PC Linux Utopia vision looks like? Maybe i am not able to word it properly, my thought salad, but it feels like there is something missing in the Valve's approach to challenging Microsoft's grip on PC market
I’d love to hear your specific thoughts on that one.
My comment was less about anything technical with SteamOS, and more about its popularity and the influence of gaming on the enthusiast PC market. And I’m not assuming that everybody will install SteamOS on their desktop, just thinking that arch-based distros might get a lot more market share.
I haven’t even used it, honestly. Like I said I’m using mint on everything.
If you only saved Mint, then Mint devs would have to do all the Debian work too?
is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Well it takes like a thousand people to make Debian, so they'd need to do a lot of work.
hmmm... tough choice... i guess... I'll burn them all! No biases then
I'm actually thinking about switching from Debian to Mint. I'm thinking that if Mint is the recommended distro for people new to Linux, they will need a big community to answer questions in forums.
Absolutely. They will.
With the momentum that Mint already has, it has the highest chance of succeeding as the primary distro for Linux newbies in the coming years.
some long winded thoughts...
Like every PC Semi-enthusiast sufferer of Windows, when I was looking for a Linux distro to respite, I deliberated way too long on which distro to use. Finally I realized that the way I use Windows, I'll not be able to fully switch over to Linux anytime soon. So instead of burning midnight oil, one day i said fuck it, and installed Mint as a dual boot option. I spent quite a lot of time trying to make the Mint as close to my Windows setup as possible, but couldn't do fully. Plus the VKD3D performance penalty for Nvidia GPU in DX12 games meant I was never going to ditch Windows as my primary gaming OS.
I did the same thing, but with ubuntu. Now, you and I can troubleshoot issues and have patience. But someone who is sort of reluctant to begin with, it's a hard sell if there are hurdles.
That's easy, it's Debian
Yeah why would someone ask a question when the answer is so obvious?
You either use Debian, or Debian With Extra Steps, so I went with Debian
I use coasters, btw.
Toss up between Slackware, Gentoo or Linux From Scratch. Learn the hard way.
LFS is a distro in the sense that a cookbook is a buffet
I did LFS a while ago. I can confidently say I didn't learn shit.
Best way to learn Linux? Make your own distribution and libraries.
Its the only way to learn linux, since if you try to find any help or info all you'll find is shit from 15 years ago thats horrifically out of date and not relevant.
Hey can y'all help me out? I wanna start switching over, but I need a beginner friendly distro that can work well with my 2070 super for gaming. I need something simple to set up or I'll get ADHD paralysis and never do it.
I'd also love if it worked well with my Valve Index, but if that still has a lot of issues across the board I may still have to dual boot :c
If you like the color green pick linux mint. If you like blue pick zorinOS.
If you really want to use arch as noob pick Garuda.
80% of recommendations will be an Ubuntu/debian child so pick whatever looks good and works. See the first two.
If you really don't like Ubuntu/deb check out Fedora. If you want a big screen steam mode pick bazzite.
Thank you!
i started on mint, with a 2080, played through hl alyx (with one weird issue - when i had my old xbox 360 controller plugged in, alyx and vr home couldn't start, but that was a few years ago, maybe it's not an issue any more).
which is to say, the index is not the issue, most vr games don't have a native linux version, so you have to rely on proton, and especially with nvidia cards they're far from guaranteed to run
Thanks so much!
Mint. It started as the beginner friendly distro and it's becoming the "main" distro as of late.
Given they have an Nvidia and want stuff like the Valve Index to work (so in the best case to have all those super new drivers, libraries installed and stuff) it should be a distro that comes with a lot preconfigured, like the Nvidia driver.
I've heard a lot of good things about Bazzite in this regard.
Thanks for adding onto this!
Thanks!
All of them except the wrong one.
I don't use arch btw
Easy! The only I use. The rest are too bloated and/or have too little built in and are too easy/hard. Real Linux wizards agree
It depends on what you're using it for.
Random PSA: set your bios to sleep state linux.
I had no idea this was a thing. Thank you!
Daily driven Mint, OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Fedora. They're all great, with their own pros and cons.
I like Ubuntu but Rocky is also fun.
Secureblue.
I don't have time to mess around with Arch or customizing things. I tried a couple live boots and went with Mint. Spent 2 hours picking a theme, wallpaper, and menu icon. Boom, done.
The One I'm Using :tm:
Once you slack, you never go back.
I don't know maybe the bue one
I use the blue one, btw
GoboLinux
I miss Antergos. I know Arch is still there. I know Manjaro exists. I miss Antergos.
Once you get out of a monoculture, you start to better appreciate that 'best' is a subjective term.
Some distros are better for some users (and purposes) and others for others.
But it's got to be Mint ;p
Hmm, probably going to have to distro hop for a few more weeks and get back to you
FreeBSD of course.
Ubuntu :3
Outdated packages <3
Edit: the testing branches are better
use a big hammer
The one that everyone likes.
That one.
What about Manjaro Linux?
Are there major differences between Manjaro and EndevourOS? Ive tried both, and Endevour feels more open for you to customize, which is why thats my go-to reccomendation for an Arch based distro.
There is. EndeavourOS fundamentally is Arch Linux. You could replicate the exact thing by installing Arch, adding the EOS repos for their utilities, and setting it up to be the same.
Manjaro diverges from Arch in that package versions and the time of updates are manually controlled. This means the project is generally not using the same software as an up-to-date Arch system.
Manjaro promises to be more stable like this, however their approach can lead to compatibility issues with AUR packages, which generally assume up-to-date Arch. It also kinda goes against the philosophy of Arch to invest time in extensive system tests. These issues are why many Arch users don't particularly like Manjaro
I've been using Manjaro with Cinnamon for about a month now. It works great on an old Lenovo with 12gb ram. Probably going to stick with it when I build my desktop.
Simple, GNU Guix System Distribution because it's not an Operating System
it is though too
Mint is (subjectively, for 90% of people), because something a lot of Linux nerds seem to forget is that the average computer user does not even want to think about their operating system. 90%+ of people who use a computer want it to turn on and just work for the things they want to do, and for like, 99% of the time, Mint has been just that for me for a solid year and a half. I adore it for that reason, and wish more Windows users would just try switching to it. I understand the apprehension not to, having tried other distros over the years (and having fought with Bazzite on my steam deck on multiple occasions), but it really does "just work".
like I get it, some like to fiddle-fuck with their OS, and that's cool, but that does not appeal to the majority of people and pretending it should is asinine. Some of us want to view and use our computer as an appliance/a means to an end, not a project in and of itself. When I used Windows and had issues, you know how much fun I had digging around in Event Viewer, or Group Policy Editor, or Regedit, or Control Panel? Zero. Zero fun was had. Same amount of fun I have dicking around with Linux. I want my computer to turn on, do what I tell it to, nothing I don't (this is the sticking point that got me to leave Windows), and god damnit if it breaks it'd better be as easy as googling an error message (which, Mint also has enough reach/widespread use that it usually is). Anyone who disagrees, I applaud your patience, but that is simply not the way I and most other people operate.
And salty Linux ricer downvotes get me moist, so bring it on, dweebs.
I’m the more typical Lemmy user that DOES think about their operating system and will happily fiddle-fuck with it on occasion. And I still use and love Mint because even in 90%+ of the cases when I use the computer it is to do something WITH the computer and not do something TO the computer.
The “it just works” factor is very high with it.
Pop os is easy and doesn't look like windows 95
you must've not seen Mint in a long time if you think it looks like Windows 95, I'm using it right now and it looks much nicer.
Further, that's really not the cutting dig you think it is. Windows 95, for all its boxy, gray 90s aesthetic, was a very clean UI with minimal bullshit. If you like ricing your desktop/want it to look fancy, great, I'm happy for you. Most normal users, on the other hand, really don't care how their OS looks as long as they can find what they need to. For normal users, the OS should be an invisible plinth that other programs you actually give a fuck about sit on top of. Mint stays the fuck out of my way to that end impeccably well.
I was kind of kidding, I just think it's wild that out of all the options, mint is recommended 9/10 times
I think it makes some sense once you take a look at the big picture. Mint has been around for a very long time and has become one of the most popular distributions on its own. On top of that, it is designed to be an easy turnkey system for inexperienced linux users.
That alone would gain it plenty of recommendations, but ubuntu would probably still be the top recommendation. However, the same thing that made it good — Canonical and its resources — is also the thing that drove away the Linux enthusiasts that recommend distros to new users.
So you take Ubuntu, the user friendly distro built on one of the sorta OG distros (debian), strip out the proprietary stuff that annoys the Linux community (snaps etc), and make it even more user friendly while removing none of the Linux goodness, and there you have Mint as the obvious recommendation.
Hell, I’m a computer person and I happily use Mint on multiple computers daily.
Yeah, I get your reasoning -- but there are other distros that match all of that as well. PopOS and ElementaryOS are two that I have personal experience with. Elementary had a rocky upgrade once so I tried PopOS and haven't looked back. It's great. Ubuntu minus the crap. The average user (getting recommended mint) probably wouldn't care about being on the latest release and would likely not even run updates all that often, so even Elementary would've been a good choice for them. I have since installed it on my girlfriend's slow/old laptop and it works very smoothly there compared with windows.
Going directly from modern Windows to the Cinnamon desktop in Mint was a distinct improvement!
Stuck on version 22.04
Pop!_OS is more outdated than Debian
Probably because they've been building their own DE (which will replace their GNOME fork) for a while now. It's in alpha and hopefully will roll out in the next few months. Having said that, I don't have issues doing the things I want to do. I think it's fine for now because 22.04 is LTS, so most app makers support it.