Just wondering as ive been told many os’s online and then told to not use certain one aswell, i feel confused on what linux os to try someday. i come from windows 10 and i always find i need windows on atleast 1 device, and put linux on the “outdated” devices, but i keep hoping around, i cant seem to make up my mind.
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Ubuntu or Mint is quite okay, I have used both of them in the past and set it up for a friend with little money, little time, and very little PC expertise. Worked perfectly for them for over 10 years without a problem.
Today, if you can get a little help with setting up, I’d recommend Debian stable with either GNOME or KDE. It is more stable and has longer and better long term security support, which did become more important.
Also, it is now easy to set up with disk encryption, which matters for keeping private data secure on Laptops which can get lost or stolen.
They apparently support fascists and fascism-supporters (Framework i.e.), and also have a shitty user treatment (remember all the shit with their licensing that made life impossible for AlmaLinux and the like). They also support AI. And they’re the main ones, with GNOME, trying to bury X.org.
- 4 days
If I’m forced to support it, Arch… It’s really not that difficult to use, and I’ll be damned if I have to remember all the Debian stuff 😂
And now with ArchInstall, you can see the basic building blocks needed for an install.
- 6 days
Linux Mint. It was specifically created for this use case. It just works. That’s it.
- 5 days
And it’s still great once you know what you’re doing. If you just want your computer to work, Mint is a fantastic option.
- corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish4 days
You’re gonna get “this is my favourite distro and this is why it should be just fine for any purpose including …what were we talking about again?”
- 5 days
I’d say Mint as many others. But any major distro (except Arch) would do the trick if you’re willing to learn.
6 daysI suggest Linux Mint, it just works. I have moved over 10 people to it in the last 2 years. Basically, giving life to their old laptops. Never heard a complaint! Here’s the latest one, my niece: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/117304062578785444
- 5 days
It’s Mint for beginners. Or openSUSE Leap, but they keep depending on su instead of sudo, so newcomers will get confused with this.
To friends I usually recommend the distro I run myself, as I’m most familiar with it and troubleshoot it the best.
If it’s someone who won’t get constant tech support from me, I’d probably go with Mint.
As a power user Ubuntu sucks, but if you’ve never used Linux before it could also be a good starter distro. The vast amount of tutorials online are made for Ubuntu.
- ShutUpWesley@piefed.zipEnglish6 days
Mint for most users. OpenSUSE for more technically competent users.
- 6 days
I think OpenSUSE is a great choice for anyone who wants to actually learn Linux, which is what the OP asked for.
- 6 days
openSUSE is good as long as you have an AMD GPU. For users of NVIDIA GPUs, openSUSE is a headache because of the constant mismatch between the open kernel modules and the rest of the driver packages. I had to use a script that checked whether the packages were matching each other before updating. Otherwise, the system could break for weeks until the drivers in the repository were updated.
- Cricket@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
Can you tell us more about this? I’ve been running tumbleweed with an nvidia GPU for a few months and the only issue I’ve run into was once recently, when the key for the nvidia repo had expired, preventing me from updating at all. I tried again the next day or two and it had been resolved. I would like to know what else to expect. I’ve heard of occasional issues with tumbleweed and nvidia driver versions before, but didn’t know if it was something that had been resolved.
- 5 days
Sure. I used openSUSE as my daily driver for a couple of years, and after switching to open-source kernel modules, a common problem was when the modules would be updated but their versions wouldn’t match those of nvidia-video or other NVIDIA packages. Or when the kernel would be updated but the kernel modules would lag behind (which happened even more often.) Because of this, some components would get updated while others wouldn’t, leaving you with dGPU drivers that didn’t work.
I had to roll back the system using snapper and lock packages until the problem was resolved.
- Cricket@lemmy.zipEnglish4 days
Thanks! What do you mean by switching to open-source kernel modules? I’ve heard of people having to lock packages with tumbleweed before. I’m glad that I haven’t run into these issues so far.
It seems that nvidia drivers are a common cause of issues in many distros. I had heard of Fedora being a difficult one to work with nvidia drivers, but then if I search the web for <distro name> nvidia issues, a bunch of message threads about exactly that come up for each distro. I would love to switch to AMD GPUs, but apparently they don’t work as well as or aren’t as widely supported as nvidia ones for graphics and video applications. The whole thing is a pain.
- 4 days
What do you mean by switching to open-source kernel modules?
Some time ago, the entire NVIDIA driver stack was proprietary, but recently the kernel modules have been made open-source for new graphics cards. Only older GPUs still use closed-source modules. If I’m not mistaken, GPUs from the 2000 series and newer have switched to open-source modules.
- 6 days
This is how I roll (tumbleweed joke here) but the addition of NixOS on my wife’s computer because she needs it to be exactly how it was if the hardware changes. (She’s not good with tech and Windows was too frustrating for her, so it is Nix and Gnome DE)
- 4 days
@Grumpy404 Go for Linux Mint. You really need stability.
So many Linux OSes are unstable and can take a very long time to repair.
Linux Mint has the best hardware support while the underlying package manager
is the most supported of the bunch and you can explore from there.For beginners stay away from these, from bad to worse:
- Controversial distros, Ubuntu and Manjaro (unfortunately, because I had fun using this)
- Breakaway distros, NixOS
- Niche distros, Red Star Linux, Alpine Linux, PostmarketOS, Artix, Hannah Montana Linux
- Downsized or Abandoned distros, Slackware, Knoppix, OpenMandriva
- Build-up distros, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Linux from Scratch
- Any GNU distros, Trisquel, Devuan, Parabola, Guix
- 6 days
I started my wife on fedora about 10 years ago, and my kids have grown up using fedora
- 6 days
There are 3 answers and only 3 answers:
- New and casual users: Mint.
- Gamers: Bazzite.
- Power users: just try a bunch and see which one(s) you like, you people are exactly why there’s are so many distros.
I use and recommend CachyOS. PikaOS is cool too. So try either of those. I hear good things about Fedora as well. Whatever you do, use something with the KDE desktop environment. It’s the best.
