I think i am ready to switch from windows and need advice
My current rig is featuring an I7 10th gen and a nvidia 4070ti. Is there a distro that you recommend me to use as a linux beginner that is also good for gaming and streaming, that will work with my pc parts? Because I heard that intel and nvidia are famous for causing issues on Linux.
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Stay away from the "bandwagon" distros for your first time. Bazzite, Pop_OS, Cachy, etc. There's nothing wrong with them, but a lot more people use and have been using the more established distros such as Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc. So if you run into any weird edge case issues it's much more likely that someone else has already been there and discovered solutions. Once you're comfortable with Linux you can start exploring the more niche distros that are better tailored to you. Have fun!
I'm not sure about this. I'm my experience, 90-99% of the solutions originally for Ubuntu worked for me in Pop.
Yeah, and since System76 supports Nvidia cards in their hardware, the drivers tend to work out of the box.
Yes. When I'm running Debian, Mint, or various other Debian variants, the vast majority of "Ubuntu" recipes just work.
Sometimes on Debian, itself, an Ubuntu recipe doesn't work because some feature hasn't made it into "Debian stable" yet. But usually it's fine if the Ubuntu article is at least a year old.
I'm not sure I agree totally. In particular for CachyOS, since it's Arch based, most solutions for Arch also apply. The Arch wiki is a great resource, and is often the place fixes are found even when not on Arch. Also, CachyOS (and others, like Garuda) are set up to run on modern gaming hardware. They are more likely to work for Nvidia and Intel hardware I believe. Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc are great if you're using it for an old laptop or something, but I think gamers, in particular, are likely better served by these other distros.
While that is true, the amount of those weird edge cases that you'll get varies wildly between distros. In my experience so far on a somewhat comparable rig to OP, Bazzite has been the only one that actually just worked out of the box and had not a single hickup, while any other distro I've tried (Pop, Fedora and Arch) all had several issues that required troubleshooting.
So, I guess, for someone willing to actually understand Linux, learn, and troubleshoot issues themselves, your advice is the way to go, but for the relative who wants their system to just work and would call me anyway at any sign of trouble, I'm recommending Bazzite (or Aurora, I guess) all the way
I had very few issues with a GTX 970 and i7-4790k. The only issues I hear about with either any more is the linux kernel not supporting some of the features of newer GPUs (e.g. I know ray-tracing was a pain-point at one point).
I don't like recommending distros based on such a general use case, mainly because every distro can be tweaked and configured to exactly what you want. Instead, you should research the different mainline distros that have been around for decades—Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Guix, NixOS, OpenSuse, Slackware—and see what they're about, what sets them apart from others, what the maintainers' philosophies are, and what kind of package management system they work with. Once one sounds better than the others, look into it and try it out.
#Dos and Don'ts:
Don't try a niche distro. They are harder to troubleshoot and less likely to be actively maintained.
Don't use Ubuntu. It's just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.
Don't dual-boot with windows. This just solidifies your reliance on windows, especially if you're the type to give up on problem-solving issues that you didn't have in Windows. It also can cause issues with making Linux unbootable.
Do try a live usb with persistence before you commit entirely. It's not exactly the same as a complete install, but it's close enough to let you know how the OS feels and what hardware will or won't work with it. Some people say try a VM first, but that won't have direct hardware access.
Do problem solve the little things. Anything that irks you or bothers you or just slows down your workflow. It doesn't have to be an actual bug or glitch, just anything that could be better. This not only solidifies the feeling of ownership over your OS—you no longer have to settle for anyone else's lousy design choices—it teaches you the resources for troubleshooting larger issues.
Do plan around things not being plug and play at first. Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working. This won't always be the case, but it will irk you a lot less when it is if you expect it. The more you make time for solving these issues now, the less time they'll take up in the future (either they'll be gone, or you'll immediately know how to fix them, or your troubleshooting will be more streamlined).
Do set aside time to learn about Linux "under the hood." You don't have to become a computer scientist, but it will save you a lot of headaches, show you cool things you can do, and make your computer a smoother experience. It especially helps if you take the time to learn as they come up: e.g. installer asks you what "bootloader" you want, but you're not sure what that is, what it does, or why it's necessary? Now's the best time to take a little learning detour.
Do ask questions on forums.
Don't listen to the people who shame you for asking.
Do listen to the people who try to show you a better way of doing things, even if it's not your way.
Alternately, install Linux Mint. Search the software store for Steam. Click Install. Let Steam do it's first run install stuff. Sign into Steam. Click the little Penguin icon to see which games should run fine on Linux. Install some by clicking on them. Enjoy games.
It usually is this simple for any distro anymore. My advice is mostly tailored to worst-case scenarios so that people don't get overly pissy when things don't Just Work™
Yes. Great point. I do try to give each game a test run before I schedule a group of friends to play it together. I guess I did that on Windows, as well.
When I was a big windows gamer the result tended to just be it works or it doesn't, on my current hardware. But maybe that's just gaming today. I think we have better optimization options, in general, now.
I'm not sure when things changed, as my journey was Windows PC Gamer to console gamer to SteamDeck to Linux PC gamer.
I think PC gaming, in general, got much nicer while I was only playing consoles.
As a reasonably new Linux user, who's merrily used Kubuntu for the past year, what makes Ubuntu sucky? Aside from dabbling in Asahi and a little bit of Arch, just to see why everyone loves it (I don't think my use-case is advanced enough to really tell the difference), my only real experience with Linux has been Mint and Kubuntu, both of which have been fine for me.
This isn't a bad-faith query, btw, I'm genuinely interested in what the actual differences are between Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora.
People don't like Ubuntu because they're(Ubuntu) trying to make money with it. For end users, it's can be a non issue because "pro" is free for 5 computers. But seeing the paywall for some is really off putting to some (myself included).
Snap really sucks and is Ubuntu's attempt at a private garden. I hate it so much.
But yet I still use Ubuntu because it works, and if it doesn't work there's a post somewhere with details on how to fix it.
I've been using Linux off and on since Red Hat 5.2 ish era. I can handle the tech geek stuff. I just don't want to.
+1
Hate pro, but more than that - hate Snap! Switched to Mint and couldn't be happier, it was seamless. I already only use none of Ubuntu defaults, so switching to mint and copying my dotfiles was almost as if I didn't even do anything. On my other machine, I just uninstalled Snap, which is close, but I feel like switching to Mint entirely would be even better. I just can't bring myself to backup everything to do a fresh install.
I just deal with snap and don't use it unless I have to. The pro thing is kind of stupid. I have 6 computers and vms on pro. There is no actual check preventing it from working. They have some bug where it appears like your have double the computers checking in sometimes. So when I had 5, it'd show 10 sometimes. So now it just shows 6 or 12.
Everything works fine. I'm ignoring it for now.
Someday I'll switch, but until that day, I'm chillin'.
There's nothing I can say to convince you Ubuntu is sucky if you don't personally experience problems with it/have the occasional "I wish I could do this, but I guess it's not possible" thoughts—spoiler: it's usually possible, just not with that distro; this is true for all distros though, there will always be things they cannot do that others can.
That being said, my biggest gripe with Ubuntu, besides canonical's geologic-paced attempts to make it profit-driven (which was what I was thinking of when I mentioned user-friendliness), is Snaps. I understand the motivation behind them, but the implementation was just sucky for many nitpicky reasons that I don't really care to enumerate rn.
I also just don't see much value in downstream for my needs. I can basically turn Debian into a Ubuntu clone if I want to, and my packages will still largely be supported by upstream maintainers. For bespoke distros it makes sense, but those are usually ill-maintained or hobby projects that update at glacial speeds.
I'm not saying that Debian >>>>> Ubuntu. It's better just enough that I'd recommend Debian before I would recommend Ubuntu.
For what it's worth, I was planning on reinstalling my home server because I put Mint on it a year ago and I kinda feel like I've outgrown it. So it's now running Debian.
It obviously feels a lot more useful than Mint, but feels basically the same as my Kubuntu machine, largely because they're both running Plasma.
Every Linux distro will work with your hardware, aside from edge case components in certain situations. There is no difference in distros for hardware compatibility, unless you're thinking of running a very old versions of something. Anything will work.
There is also no major difference between distros for gaming performance. The only difference in "gaming" distros is that they have certain software preselected and installed. You can just do this yourself anyway.
I currently suggest Fedora for beginners because it's dead simple. The big difference between any distro is going to be the default Desktop Environment, and you can choose whatever you want after you install anyway.
If you like Windows' UI, give KDE a shot. If you want something more like MacOS, go for Gnome. Either work great.
If you want to try multiple, download some LiveUSB images, start em up and poke around a bit. If you change your mind after install, you can just install a different DE and switch over without needing to reinstall the entire OS.
I really like Fedora, but please correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it a bit difficult for a beginner to install nvidia drivers on it? Like, in Linux Mint you can simply open the Driver Manager app and install them
Fedora is a great distro. IMO it and Mint are the “it just works” distros. Mint just works, unless it doesn’t - usually a result of bleeding edge hardware. That’s where fedora comes in - newer stuff but without the downsides of something like arch.
The thing with fedora is that it’s “pure”. You have to install codecs and whatnot. Once you realize that there’s a team (rpmfusion.org) that is dedicated to making these things easy - fedora becomes much more tolerable for a newcomer. While it’s a bad idea to copy commands and jam them into the terminal - in this one particular case, I tell people to just copy and paste the commands and just do what they say. Boom nvidia and codecs installed and everything just works.
Hard agree:
That's why Ultramarine exists. It's just Fedora with RPM-Fusion (the non-free repo) preconfigured and the Nvidia drivers preinstalled.
https://ultramarine-linux.org/
Push button just like anything else. Same issues exist on Fedora that exist elsewhere, which is really an Nvidia problem, and has nothing to do with the distro.
There are a couple distros that install Nvidia drivers as part of their package selection, but they also have the same issues, because, Nvidia.
I'd suggest getting Linux Mint or another distro with a large user base like Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse or Debian. That way if you do run into problems, there'll be a lot of people online that can help you.
The main advantage of gaming-focused distros like Bazzite is that Nvidia's proprietary drivers and Steam come pre-installed. However, if you're a gamer and a streamer, you're probably used to a little tinkering, so you should be able to install both of those by hand. (Both can be done through a GUI.) You might also get marginally better performance from these, but IMO this won't be noticeable enough to be worth the trouble.
If you do choose to go with Mint, I recommend installing the Nvidia drivers through the "Driver Manager" and a newer kernel through the "Update Manager".
Linux Mint is generally the best "it just works" case, focused on stability (to the detriment of speed of updates), ease of use and visually reminding of Windows.
Also Mint comes with a few official visual* changes, but if I might suggest, go with Xfce, not the Cinnamon one. The Cinnamon version of Mint has too many animations that only add micro workflow delays, while Xfce doesn't have all the fancy effects making it faster to use.
*avoiding technical jargons to not confuse the OP
Also regarding Nvidia, I don't have great experience with it, but Mint Cinnamon and Mint Xfce work rather well with the RTX board my laptop has, just having to add a control tool to change from the default Intel one.
And dunno how it is nowadays, but there's a third version of Mint, LMDE, that when I tested, was very problematic to get the Nvidia board to work. Though that was over a year ago so maybe they fixed it since.
LMDE is Debian based whereas the regular Mint is Ubuntu-based, which probably explains issues you've experienced.
Mint is for sure an excellent option but I recommend Fedora Kinoite (or Bazzite) these days for someone used to Windows because their immutability makes them even more solid and harder to break.
Nvidia is the problematic one. But in most cases that just means that you have to install extra drivers after installation. In most distributions that just means installing an extra package and rebooting. Don't go to the nvidia website for that.
If you are already familiar with a Linux distribution use that. If you have a friend who uses Linux use the same thing they do. Or just use Mint.
You can change the way your system looks and works by choosing a different desktop environment. Many distributions just have one default but you can always change that later on. The big ones are Gnome which is a bit more like Mac OSX and KDE which is more Windows like. KDE also offers much more customisability.
I've been using Mint for almost a year now and what few problems I've had have been fixed with a few easy searches and a bit of forum help. Love it! :)
👆🏻 This is what I install everywhere for others that I'd need to maintain as I can leave it for 6 months and then do an update.
For more advanced users that want to play & learn, plain vanilla Arch. You learn what the hell is in your own machine.
But, as someone else said, get a feel for different desktop environments (DE) as Linux has many whereas Windows only had 1.
Mint or Fedora(KDE) are great choices. Kubuntu, PopOS or OpenSuSE might also be suitable for beginners. Stay away from Arch-based distributions until you are at least a bit more experienced.
Intel (anything) works without problems on Linux (in fact, Intel is among the most Linux-supportive companies out there and most or all of their drivers are open source and part of the kernel, as it should be in the Linux world).
Nvidia GPUs used to be problematic in the past, it's better now, still not as great as AMD GPUs are on Linux (they're literally plug and play these days) but I think when going with the distro mentioned above it's going to be just as easy Just make sure to enable support for NVidia drivers or "enable 3rd party drivers/repositories" (you'll be asked during setup) so that those distributions will also install those slightly non-standard Nvidia packages which they might not do otherwise for "purity" reasons.
Just use Fedora.
Fedora Atomic! Kinoite rocks
I went straight to uBlue Aurora and I'm very happy with this distro.
Ubuntu, linux mint, Bazzite... they'll all work great. My advice? Download all ISOs into a USB with Ventoy installed in it, so you can drag and drop .iso files into the usb, and boot each live image so you can play around for a bit and see which one you like more.
Good advice on the Ventoy front. It makes trying out things very comfortable, if you have a large enough thumbdrive (>32GB).
Don't push beginners towards immutable distros such as Bazzite though. Some things there can only be installed within distroboxes, and expecting beginners to fiddle with containers and images of other distros is way more than they should have to contend with.
As a beginner on Bazzite who's been struggling to figure out said distroboxes (via Distroshelf), is there a good guide somewhere to them? On like, a conceptual level. I.e., when do I need to use a distrobox and why? A lot of information I've been finding has just been command line instructions and that's great, but I really want to know the 'why' of things so I understand what I'm doing.
Very basically (ELI5):
You may now begin to understand why I wouldn't recommend Bazzite to beginners: it's a cool, but advanced concept, and you need to understand its limitations and workarounds. Otherwise, you will just be roadblocked at some point, or, like you are, hacking away on the command line without actually understanding what you're doing. On that note, props to you for succeeding so far! But also, at the risk of sounding like a gatekeeper, it shouldn't be that way, for two reasons:
As a beginner switching from Windows, you have enough things to familiarise yourself with: the file system structure is different ("Where's my C:\ drive?"), software installation is different ("Wait? I don't just download random binaries from the Internet like a caveman?") and a lot of software is different ("Where is Paint? Where is Outlook? And where did the ribbon menu in Office go?"). You really shouldn't have to tackle the command line to get basic functionality working.
If and when you start working on the command line, you must understand what you're doing, because the command line assumes you do. It lets you do anything with and to your system, which makes it a very powerful tool. But powerful tools need to be handled with caution, and as you can see from your experience, Bazzite does not teach you that: it expects you to use the terminal right away, and since you can't, you just resort to copy-pasting random commands off the internet. In Bazzite, this cannot hurt you much because of how the distro ist built. But it's an absolutely terrible habit for new Linux users to get into. Once you switch distros and move to something else than Bazzite, just running random commands on the command line can absolutely wreck your system.
It's definitely not something I would throw at my parents or my less tech-inclined friends. I think it's alright for me precisely because I'm already motivated to learn the command line and this gives me more incentive. There's more I want to do with my machine and I'll get there, but I already feel annoyed when I have to use my work laptop (which has Windows 11 on it). I didn't think I'd get to a point where I despise Windows File Explorer, but every time it lags I long for Dolphin, lol
I may throw Mint on my personal laptop just to get some experience with it. While I like bazzite, I absolutely see why I can't recommend it to most people starting out. I think more software will need to run on Wine before I can convert people, though.
My oldish Nvidia 4xxx GPU worked immediately and automatically on Linux Mint.
Your mileage may vary.
Edit: To be clear, I didn't do any command line, or even change a setting. Mint just automatically detected my Nvidia GPU and got it working during the install while I looked at pretty pictures and new user tips.
(Disclaimer: Folks here have warned me this may have been some combination of luck and my Nvidia GPU being a few years old.)
When my Mint install finished, I searched for "Steam" in the Mint software center and clicked "Install".
A few minutes later I was playing a game from my Steam library without any issues, without any config changes, and without any command line use.
Edit 2: On Linux, there's a little Penguin icon in the Steam library filters. Click that, and it'll only show your games that Valve is pretty confident will run without any issue.
It took me a few clicks to realize it did anything, at all. Very few of my games were filtered out. None of my games that were filtered out happened to fit in the first page of search results.
So at first it looked like penguin filter button did nothing.
+1 for LM, no issues so far with my gaming laptop
That's pretty awesome, I bought an old used laptop, not a gaming laptop to practice and I'm new in the Cybersecurity field so I'm a little behind layman stage of using Linux. I installed Ubuntu on that laptop and it's been a pleasure to use. I was gonna partition my gaming PC's main drive and try Linux Mint on it. Even if my Nvidia card might not work out of the box, there's a whole open source community who make compatible drivers independently. I love the open source community. Bunch of people who do what they love without demanding anything for it, just wow.
Nice!
If you can afford it, I lately recommend getting a separate harddrive, and physically taking the Windows drive out, and putting a blank drive in, to run Linux on.
Windows has never liked to share, and has gotten worse (more aggressive preventing other operating systems from booting) with various integrations into BIOS for secure boot.
Also, either way, be sure to back everything up while Windows is still installed. It is much easier to lose data today, due to secure boot and full disk encryption being the default.
(Putting the Windows drive back in and resetting any BIOS settings should be enough, but it is possible that Windows will decide it wants the full disk encryption (FDE) password. I believe I have found my FDE password on the web through Microsoft account, but there's just more that can go wrong, today. So I prefer to just have my files backed up so I can relax.)
(And be aware that it may not be possible to backup files directly from a removed Windows drive, if full disk encryption was enabled. There's probably a utility for it, as long as you have the FDE password. But again, it's much less effort to just make backups before pulling the Windows drive out.)
I've had the best experience booting to a fresh blank harddrive and installing Linux Mint on it, and throwing the Windows drive into a drawer until I find I want the extra drive space more than I want a retreat path to Windows.
I highly appreciate your advice on this. I was reading up on it earlier and what I found was being alarmist about it and I remember from many years ago that it wasn't supposed to be this tedious but you seem to verify that it kinda is tedious these days. Thanks
Check https://bazzite.gg/
Fedora Kinoite or Bazzite (which is based on Fedora Kinoite).
Both are "immutable" which all you need to know means they are essentially impossible to meaningfully break.
Both use the KDE interface which is very similar to Windows and very tweak-able.
They're very similar, but Bazzite is the one to go with if you do a lot of gaming. It's basically the Steam Deck OS plus a little more. I've tested Bazzite with an Nvidia card and had no issues whatsoever and performance was nearly identical to what I was getting with Windows.
I thought Bazzite was now dying?
You must be thinking of something else, they just pushed an update last week and are arguably rapidly becoming the closest thing Linux has ever been to mainstream. I just saw that my Life in Gaming (a channel about console gaming) just made a video about it.
Really? Why though?
A recent post in here linked to this: https://ba.antheas.dev/bazzite-postmortem.html
Yeah please elaborate?
Searching 'bazzite development status' on ddg barfed up This article and scrolling a bit further, saw no official or nonofficial discussion of fedoras changes (being any different for an already atomic distro??). The article is AI, and very SEO'd to be showing in the top from august last year
(Bold not added)
Nobody types this shit, I won't lie you had me worried because I've very much enjoyed my experience with it so far across 3 PCs. And would be verh bummed if it came to that. But ffs this is the shit just searching for development status, and I wish sifting through this garbage wasn't a requirement now
See my other reply just before yours.
It was from another post a few days ago
You can always just get the status updates directly from the project: https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/a-brighter-future-for-bazzite/11575
You've already gotten several good replies, and I'll add a couple more details that might be related to your use case:
Bazzite is a "gaming distro" with built-in Steam integrations. It's great if all you do on the machine is game and do gaming-related things, like streaming. It's what I use on my dedicated gaming PC, under my TV. Things mostly Just Work, and I've only had to mess with configuration files when setting up things like wake-on-USB and my custom Network shares.
Gaming and streaming will work on basically any distro. And if you pick a distro based on Debian or Fedora, it should be stable and fairly easy to get used to.
Don't wipe out Windows yet. Install Linux on a separate partition, or even better a separate drive. That way, you can switch off between them until you're fully used to Linux. Let yourself transition over a few months. That way, if you struggle to do something in Linux, you can switch back over to Windows and get it done.
Some folks try to change all at once, then get frustrated if they hit a stumbling block. It's safer to keep Windows as a backup, so you don't feel trapped if something goes wrong.
Bazzite isn't only good if you're only using it for gaming
Yeah Bazzite is excellent all around. It's usually what I recommend to anyone with Nvidia.
Oh yeah, totally correct. But it bills itself as a "gaming distro."
This is what I've been doing, and I've been on Bazzite for about 4-6 weeks now. I haven't booted my Windows drive since the first week. It's definitely an adjustment, but I'm finding my way around. Gaming on it has been pretty easy, it's figuring out the Linux command line that is taking me more time. Knowledge of MS-DOS is really not transferable; all the commands are different. It's kind of like learning a new language.
But I also don't depend on a bunch of proprietary software that won't run on Linux, as I'd been moving away from that over the past 1-2 years. I think that's made my transition a lot easier. My goal is to get to a point where the only proprietary stuff on my computer is video games.
I have similar specs and use pop!_os with no problems. I've found it to be great for gaming.
The 4070 was released almost 3 years ago, so the driver should be decently stable and not cause that much issues, no matter the distro.
Just know that whatever distro you are choosing, it is a different workflow than Windows and it will take time to get used to it, and there will be some friction. And that's fine. The first month is the hardest and it gets a lot easier fast.
Take a popular distro because it has a bigger user base and the chances that someone else has already fixed your issue and detailed the steps is a lot bigger than a niche distro.
If you want to easily test a few distro, take a usb key and install Ventoy on it. It will allow you to plug the usb key and drop ISO directly on it and boot from it. It will allow you to easily test distros without having to reformat the usb key each time.
First pick a desktop environment, currently KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon are the best.
All of them are very robust and have a massive user base.
Then pick a base to operate on. Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint are all good options.
Nvidia GPUs are not a big issue but you have to install the proprietary driver yourself for best performance and fewest bugs.
My pick for you is something your friend uses if you have a friend on Linux otherwise Fedora KDE or Kubuntu.
any modern distro should work so if you want þe go to beginner distro try mint!
Any and all advice anyone gives you is going to be heavily weighted by their personal experiences, which is not bad, but also may not be your experience. Truly the best thing to do, if you are willing, is to try a bunch.
Download several different distributions. Get as many USB sticks as you reasonably can. Flash a different distro to each drive. Boot to them one at a time, and try them out. See what you like about one versus another. Hopefully you find one that just "clicks" for you, and then you actually install it to the computer. From there, if everything works, great - enjoy your computer. However, if you immediately run into problems, just go install your number 2 favorite and see if those problems exist there. There's a reasonable chance they won't.
Good places to start:
(There is a thing called Ventoy which kinda lets you use several distros from one usb stick, but I've also seen several distro's instructions warn against using it so maybe it isn't the best choice for a new convert). Also, obligatory stay away from Manjaro. It isn't worth it as a new convert...
This should be the answer to all these questions!
1: You're not yet ready for Arch and Arch derivatives (CachyOS, EndeavorOS, etc.)
2: Fedora KDE
3: Fedora KDE
4: Fedora KDE
Linux Mint is good, but it, like Ubuntu and Debian, are "vintage" linuxes that are very behind on software versions. Things are moving very fast right now with a lot of back end linux stuff changing rapidly to support more people and programs coming off Windows. Fedora is the best "middle ground" in that it's not Arch bleeding edge, but it is also not Debian stable "vintage".
You do need to install RPM Fusion for Fedora to go from nvidia open source driver to nvidia proprietary driver, though.
KDE is a fully featured desktop that will give you familiarity with Windows-like layouts. Some other desktops, like GNOME, tend to reinvent the wheel and have very different desktop workflows. You'll have to boot the live discs / sticks and poke around to understand what I mean.
To make a boot disc, use an 8GB+ usb stick and rufus - https://rufus.ie/
Please, indulge me. What exactly is it you're talking about here?
Imo, not having access to the most recent Thunderbird or LibreOffice version doesn't matter at all to beginners, making Debian-based systems perfectly viable.
Fedora KDE, on the other hand, may turn out to be an annoyance once they need to install proprietary drivers (as OP is due to their NVIDIA card).
1: WINE and Proton 2: Wayland switchover 3: Linux kernel features and fixes
This sounds like a good idea.
I started my Linux journey with Mint. Installation was fine and everything worked, but gaming performance was terrible. I think because not properly supporting my 9700 gre.
Then I installed nobara (fedora) and was really happy. Everything work smoothly. Also the gaming performance was at least as good as on windows. But the fact, that this distro is a small project of a single person I started too loog around for an alternative.
This led to me installing CashyOS (Arch). The setup was a little more complicated and I needed to install more additional packages, than on nobara. It has been a few weeks now, everything is working without much problems, but still... I somehow do not feel at home, like when running nobara.
I thought about switching back to nobara, but maybe fedora KDE is also an option...
I've been using fedora for 3 months now and second this. fedora gud.
I started with a Steam Deck. Now I'm running PopOS on my Framework 13 and Bazzite on a home theatre PC. I've had far fewer issues with them than any flavor of Windows.
I can't go back. I won't.
I boarded my friend on arch and he took it like a champ. Beware, it has a very steep learning curve and needs patience. But otherwise, a more pre-configured distro is better. Cachy os, endeavour, or as much as hate to say, fedora.
The more important thing is the DE. I strongly suggest Plasma (kde).
Agreed. I installed kubuntu on my desktop today and I'm super happy with it. Not snaps etc but kde plasma feels like a cross between windows 7 and 10. Like you know it's not windows but it's close enough where you can pick it up. I'm used to openbox so it feels very different.
I forgot to mention the I DO NOT recommend ubuntu :)) but a start is a start.
I would recommend debian or MX linux instead.
I wanted more up to date packages in the "stable" branch of updates and less kernel updates (I already have a debian laptop using testing or unstable packages). It's fine. I'm just gonna yeet snap. I'm using it for ML and Data Science stuff for school work. I can easily explain Ubuntu to people.
Now board another friend on NixOS and break their soul :)
Don't worry, Arch will do that over time.
I'm a Guix guy myself. So I'm boarding them on arch+guix like myself slowly 😁 l think if you have someone to walk you through, guix is pretty easy to get started with.
Oh that's cool! I don't meet people using Guix often. Could you tell me about your experience? Why have you chosen it? Are there enough packages? How can Guix be compared to NixOS (if you've used the latter)?
There's a lot of info in these comments and a ton of it is good.
I will say that the best advice is to boot from a USB and try out a system for a bit. You can easily swap around that way without a commitment.
I will also say that my opinion is to start with Mint. It's similar enough to windows in layout/workflow to feel familiar and is "boring" in a stable, easy to use way.
Use it and learn Linux. I say learn, because it doesn't matter what the OS looks like as much as how it works, and Linux (any flavor) works differently than windows. Learn those idiosyncrasies and then of you decide you want to try something else then you're up to speed to move on and judge a different system with a baseline.
Debian, it's 30+ years old for a reason.
I started on Nobara and it’s pretty stable now, been on it for a year. I think it’s the perfect place as it’s based on Fedora so easy to look stuff up and know how to handle problems, but it auto-installs the Nvidia drivers and gets you going immediately.
They have a pretty good discord for support too!
On the CPU side, the only Intel procs I've used are old enterprise gear for my homelab. No issues there.
On the GPU side, I've exclusively used Nvidia for... Actually I don't remember the last time I used a non-nvidia GPU. The most common problem I've run into is updating my drivers and forgetting to reboot. the only other problem I've had is years back, I bought the latest gen card, and Nvidia hadn't updated their official Linux drivers yet.
With your hardware, I'd expect things to work fine.
The desktop environment you choose is really down to what you prefer:
Like trackpads? Gnome
Like the Windows desktop (and/or like customization)? KDE
Like windows XP flat UI or brutally simple UI? Cinnamon/XFCE
Want to dive into the unknown cutting edge? Cosmic
I just don't know with gaming as I have a steamdeck I do that with. I like zorin for out of box ease of use for beginners or someone who does not want to deal with their machine and just use it. I think gaming may be one use case for multibooting linux distros. I have heard bazzite for gaming and want to try it out. Theorectically you can just install steam onto any linux machine I think. Sorry I can't be more help.
From my experience running a setup with a RTX 3080, I recommend CachyOS. It has all the latest Nvidia drivers out of the box and you can download additional gaming packages in the "Hello" window. You can try other OSs but I found this one to be the most capable and versatile for me. As long as you make backups regularly and customize your experience with caution you'll have a good time.
Nvidia occasionally can be a pain, but that is mostly in laptops in my experience, desktop drivers are generally fine. Try whatever distro you want, might wanna start by burning some distros on flash drives and booting from them to see which one you like the most. Lazy recommendations are Mint, Fedora, Bazzite, and maybe endeavorOS. Also, the most you might have to do with regards to the Nvidia drivers is install them via terminal (which for a lot of people is literally copy/paste the command into a terminal and follow what it says, usually to enter your password and y/n do you want to install), but there are a few distros that have the option to install via GUI.
For us dummies that are just getting started, and most of us are only doing it now because gaming has kept us on Windows, it would be nice if there were a Linux distribution that was singlularly focused on gaming.
bazzite
The answer is always Mint
The answer used to be mint. Now there are quite a few distros that are stable and "just work". I'm using cachy as a daily driver at work and haven't had any issues at all. And it's arch based! So much for arch being unstable
Yeah I agree, Mint used to be my recommendation (and it's a good choice for sure) but now I say Bazzite or Kinoite (for a newbie used to Windows) because KDE Plasma is better than Windows and the immutability adds another layer of stability.
Yeah bazzite is pretty stinking good. I have it on a media/gaming computer in my living room. Great for beginners but slightly annoying for some things since it's immutable. I've ran into a couple things that it wouldn't let me do. But, that's also why I chose it for my living room. My family can't easily break it
The question is: how long have you been using it?
Sooner or later, stuff will break on an Arch-based system, and a beginner will not necessarily be able to fix it. So I wouldn't recommend any Arch-based system to beginners.
4 months or so? 0 issues so far. Was on fedora before that and had more problems. Mint before that and it's not that mint is bad, it's just not the only answer
That's hardly any time. I'd be curious for your experience >12 months.
I'll be sure to let you know 😜
I've been using arch for years. 99.999% of the time it's fine. But the 0.001% of the time it's a real bitch
What's went wrong in your .001% cases?
Try a live boot of nobara to see if it works for you
from my experience distro hoping, the distro that gave me the least trouble was manjaro(kde), even mint I had some issues. I use my computer just to play games, and recently I've been using bazzite. hooked my pc to the TV and it's working fine so far, with minor hiccups.
Friends don't let friends use Manjaro. Their team is so disfunctional that they regularly fail to renew the SSL certificate of their website. I think the last time was yesterday.
If you want a more user friendly Arch experience use CachyOS.
that is news to me. I tried cachyOS and had problems with the installation lol. didn't go too far with that one.
As a Guix user, I recommend Ubuntu. If you stick with it, there are specific distros for gaming, but, Ubuntu has such a large user base it makes it very easy to get answers to questions that are specific to your distro. Ubuntu makes it easy to install nvidia and other '3rd party drivers', it'll just work. I do recommend installing software in the terminal, the Ubuntu app store I feel has some rough edges.
There's plenty of perfectly fine distributions out there. Mint is an easy choice, easy to get started with, big community that probably already has answered the questions you might have and otherwise you can ask them. Many more gaming focused people use Bazzite, not sure what it offers on top of a basic, well working environment.
The Nvidea graphics card could cause issues since drivers tend to not be supported well. Again, you're most likely to find help for the bigger distros such as Mint and Bazzite.
Regardless of which distro you choose, just try it and see how it goes. Dual boot can be a nice starting point (but make sure you get the partitioning right before installing anything!).
Echo people saying go to a common starter distro instead of a more esoteric one. Another starter tip if you want to learn the ecosystem deeply is to find good sources of documentation.
The
mancommand is always useful, but for more general topics you can start looking with your distros help pages -> package documentation -> Alternate distro wiki. Essentially start with the documentation most relevant to your setup, which will often be your distros own guides. If your answer isn't there you can check upstream with the packages themselves. Many have github/sourceforge pages with good info. If you still can't find your answers several distros have documentation pages that are really really useful even when you're on different distros. The Arch wiki is for me the defining feature of the distro, and almost any answer to a Linux question can be found between the Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Wiki if you read closely.Kubuntu is what I use to game/VR/stream, it also asks during install if you want non-free repo which will install your nvidia drivers then you can choose which version you use in the settings menu, I used official for VR as that was the recommendation.
My current rig is all AMD (for compatibility) my previous rig was ryzen and rtx 2070 super upgraded to 4070 ti super, works great for streaming and gaming, the gf had an intel with 4 numbers, my rig before my previous rig, and it worked as well under linux as win 10.
As others have suggested, get the ISO's of several distros: Kubuntu/Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora/Cachy/etc and try them all before you blow your current setup away. My last system was my transition system, kept win 10 and installed a second drive for Kubuntu and used "bios" to chose when to boot it (duel boot on same drive will be problematic after a specific win update, you won't know which until you do lol) then found replacement software that I needed to move over 100%.
Good luck
ZorinOS or PopOS with nvidia drivers
Zorin is great for a grandma, but for someone who knows computers I think it's too simple.
From OP's post it sounded like they want simple / not tweaking their OS so they can focus on gaming.
Don't get me wrong I love what Zorin is doing but I still think Bazzite is going to be much more "set it and forge it" for gaming than Zorin.
I'm also assuming OP doesn't want a gaming-only setup / wants to actually have a general purpose use desktop too for work, etc.
Bazzite isn't well suited as a general purpose work + gaming machine.
Are you kidding? It's excellent as an everyday desktop! It is basically Fedora Kinoite with a bunch of quality of life stuff for gaming.
Ahh I see. Won't the immutability impede work? I guess that depends on the type of work. But given OP is switching from Windows for first time it's unlikely they'll be wanting to mess that.
yeah Bazzite is also a fine gaming + typical work option
Immutability just means the system files can't be edited easily. Basically every time you update you're updating the entire OS all at once. Which is a good way to keep things stable while also modern!
Unless there's an application not available via Appimage or Flatpak ("app store"), most users will never even come up against the immutability aspect.
I've had a great experience as a Linux noob using Garuda. It comes with an Nvidia version and has worked great out of the box.
All you need for games can be grabbed from flathub, like what you need to grab ge proton, that and steam you are mostly set. I also use faugus launcher every once in a while. All distros support flathub, id worry more about what de you want since thats the real commitment. Marginal differences in actual usage if any, like being on bazzite, cachyos, or mint, I use the same exact apps, installed different ways sometimes.
My only 2 issues with bazzite has been that it names the computer bazzite, so my handheld with bazzite can't use an app to share its mouse across monitors since they have the same usernames and it causes issues and my amazon handbrake doesnt work, seems to be a bazzite issue and not all of linux since their are workarounds that work for others not using bazzite.
Ik its bazzite because someone else mentioned on the discord their handbrake wasn't working either after following the same guide
Start with Linux Mint. It's similar in vibe to older Windows, (think Windows 7/10)
You can use the GUI for everything, even major version upgrades, driver installations, and Kernel changes.
It comes with everything you need to get started, and their software portal is easy to use and get stuff from, including gaming staples like Steam, OBS Studio, etc.
Since you specifically mentioned gaming and streaming, a great option for you as a beginner is Nobara.
It is built specifically for gaming and streaming and has many of the tools pre-installed and makes DaVinci Resolve setup really easy (is a challenge otherwise lol). It's based on Fedora, heavily modified kernel for performance and makes Fedora ready for gaming out of the box (which is why I discourage Fedora for gaming as a beginner, that takes a lot of set up for gaming and nvidia).
Nobara is also great for beginners because it comes with some brilliant GUI options - apps that let you click onto the specific drivers, packages you might need and the Welcome app includes options step by step of what to install. You will mostly use such an app for updates, so it takes away a lot of the fear of the terminal (but you can still use no problem). It also includes some great options for streaming apps you'll need.
Also comes with KDE as its main suggestion (Nobara version of it or pure KDE, very little difference, basically the same with a few extra Nobara icons added i think). KDE is a fantastic DE, the workflow is similar to Windows out of the box and you won't be unfamiliar with it, great one to start with. Plus its so customisable so you can get it looking very different from windows if you wish (which i did with mine).
They have a great Discord too if you wanna ask any questions about specific games or issues. It's basically Fedora but gentler learning curve and everything you need ready to go out of the box
My first distro was Mint. It's great for beginner Linux users, and it's pretty stable. It also avoids the Snap problem Ubuntu forces upon their users.
If you're looking for a more bleeding edge solution, I recommend Garuda Linux. It's Arch-based, and it has a bunch of game-related stuff already installed. It might be a tad less stable due to the Arch underbelly, but I personally like the package system (pacman) a lot more than apt. Also, you get the unmatched power of the Arch wiki when you're in trouble.
Update: I went from mint to openSUSE, now I am very happy with CachyOS
My feeling is that might be a lack of choice here. So, just my 0.00002 cents, to supply you with a few more options:
I recommend EndeavourOS to newbies because I'm biased towards Arch. I think it's a relatively low BS distro that gets you up and running. You also have access to the AUR which is awesome.
If that seems like too much I've heard Linux Mint is dead simple and stable.
I love EndeavourOS and I use it myself, but inflicting CLI package management and pacnew files on someone fresh from Windows is like throwing a baby into shark-infested oceans to teach it to swim.
My recommendation for new users is Fedora KDE:
Mint is what I'd recommend for an elderly person who just needs to browse the internet and reply to emails, but for someone who needs to get work done it's Fedora KDE all the way.
EndeavourOS meets all of those criteria except for the GUI package management which, admittedly, is unnatural to the Windows convert. However conquering that small, surmountable hump will unlock the AUR which imo is the real value add. There are many packages that are not included in standard repos that are included in the AUR. Regardless users can choose whatever they want. EndeavourOS is a great distro that is not complicated. It uses the calamares installer and ships with KDE. An afternoon of reading about how pacman works and installing yay/paru provides a great user experience and they will never have to do a system upgrade.
I agree that the learning curve is surmountable, but the fact is that many people are unwilling to use a CLI, which is valid. It's also very easy to bork your install with EOS, which is terrifying for people who don't have the knowledge to even begin to troubleshoot issues and who just want their system to work. IMO new GNU/Linux users, unless they specifically request a more advanced distros that will help them learn how things work, should always be recommended a distro with the lowest possible learning curve in order to keep their data safe, their confidence high, and minimise downtime. They can distro-hop later if they want to learn.
Yes, it does, and yes, it is.