Hey all, I’ve been thinking about making the jump from Windows to Linux as my daily-driver and I’ve been struggling on what distro to use.
On my laptop I’ve been using Fedora’s KDE Spin for a bit but I can’t say I really like KDE all that much. I took that Distrochooser test and 9/10 of the suggestions were all Ubuntu-based or Arch-based for some reason lol.
I would prefer a distro that “just works” but I’m not scared of having to troubleshoot or fix things. I guess I’m just looking to see what everyone else uses and what you all recommend. Thanks!
Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are the most recommended beginner friendly distros that “just work” in my experience. That being said, before you install, you can try out the look and feel here: https://distrosea.com/
Imo Mint is the gold standard for a Distro that just works and meets the needs of most people.
Compared to other debian based distros, right?
What would you suggest is a better distro for a new Linux user? I’ve found Mint to be great out of the box, and only needs minor tweaks if you want the Microsoft fonts, for example.
I mean, just in general.
Besides Fedora (maybe) I’m not sure other non-deb distros really are recommended for new users.
Besides that, like it or not, nowadays most software is distributed as deb files (until Flatpak fixes it). Using something not debian based requires learning how to port .deb files or use manual dependency resolution for tarballs.
In times of distrobox, package manager and repositories do not matter anymore.
Hanna Montana Linux
Obvious answer, everyone should start here!
Can’t even get the ISO anymore. 😭
What? Nooooooooo!
To be fair, you can probably find it on Archive.org. Would be kinda neat if somebody made MaymayOS that just had theme packs for the other meme distros to keep them alive.
Gonna have to switch to AmogOS or Uwuntu then…
Pop OS is the best, from System 76.
Seconded
Since you want a just works deal, I’d go with a ublue based immutable distro, my favorite is Bazzite. You can pick between KDE and Gnome, and change between them cleanly at any point. User apps auto update in the background, your system also updates while it’s running and you only need to reboot to apply. If anything ever goes wrong, you have painless rollbacks. All that with up-to-date fedora packages and kernel.
I’ve been running it on my deck for a while now and it’s never let me down so far, really pleasant experience. It generally keeps out of your way and takes care of the chores while still allowing you to mess around if you want.
I second bazzite. Been running it on my gaming laptop for a few months now and loving it. My main desktop is running Garuda Linux, which I also absolutely love but I was weary of a rolling release arch based distro on my laptop which isn’t on and running 24/7 - tried manjaro on my laptop previously and it was broken more often than not. (although I am learning that is likely more a manjaro problem than an “arch-based” problem, it gave me a reason to try bazzite)
EndeavourOS is an arch-based distro that “just works”. I put it on a new machine recently, and the installer manages to let you pick a desktop environment, and still manages to be user friendly.
These posts are beyond repetitive at this point.
As someone on the edge of making the change myself, I have been enjoying these posts because I have been getting to learn some of the different distros and there pros and cons. Lemmy isn’t insanely active right now, so you get a different group of perspectives with each iteration of the question.
Maybe once lemmy gets bigger we can break off these sorts of questions into their own catalog but for now I think they are doing more good than harm here.
Just my two cents tho, obviously you have the right to disagree :)
Linux Mint. Works well and it’s friendly.
Stick with your distro and try Gnome. Fedora is pretty high up there on the “just works” category.
How much does it pay to promote IBM products with convoluted software as that is really linux?
Since I am financially strained I might consider, with a very heavy ethical objection counteracting my need for cash.
The lawyers it takes to call this crap Open and Free System must have become millionaires by now.
I knew about Redhat’s recent bad behavior, I somehow missed that IBM owns Redhat. So TIL.
I dropped Fedora in light of recent news but I’m not OP. They can decide for themselves on that. If OP or anyone is interested in learning more, a search for RHEL source paywall will get you there.
It is not personal it is counter propaganda, linux = fedora = ubuntu = systemd = debian = mint …
No real options there, just an alternative MSwin
There is also the propaganda that says Linux is Plasma or Gnome …
There is much much more that doesn’t get corporate promotion and people rarely ever hear about it.
That’s fair. It’s good to educate on these things.
I think the art in Linux is to concentrate in what tools you need to use, terminal or graphic, and build a system from kernel up with what is the least you need to get those tools functional.
Imagine someone only using gparted to do partitioning on new disks, or repairs/recoveries.
Either wayland or X11, without even a window manager would work. No services past init, only eudev/udev… and the least amount of base to get this application running.
Stick with Fedora, but give a shot to the Atomic variants (Silverblue, Kinoite, etc.) You can always switch DEs back and forth with one command. Even if you don’t stay with Fedora, it will help a lot for you to find the desktop environment that fits your workflow best (although I do recommend sticking with Fedora)
If you like Arch-based, there’s Manjaro and EndeavourOS.
EndeavourOS, yes. Manjaro, no.
Distros that just work (although YMMV): Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS with the default desktop environments. I have been using Ubuntu and Fedora both (on different computers) for over 15 years now they each always get the WiFi and BlueTooth drivers right, neither ever has trouble with audio or video, they really just work, and they both are pretty well up-to-date with the latest stable versions of the biggest Linux apps in their repositories.
I have been thinking of switching my Ubuntu computers over to Mint (Xfce edition, though Cinnamon isn’t bad), which uses the same base operating system package set as Ubuntu, but its ownership model is more collective and community-oriented. Fedora is also collectively owned, while Pop!_OS and Ubuntu are owned and operated by for-profit businesses – that doesn’t make them bad, it just might be something to consider.
Also, if you don’t mind a shameless plug, I wrote a blog post on how to choose a Linux distro, so feel free to read if it pleases you.
So I could recommend a distro, as you asked (which would be Ubuntu) but instead I believe what’s better is making the switch… small!
In practice that means safety net and familiarity all around :
- backup your data
- backup your data… and not, that’s not a mistake, truly do it, now. Before you try something new, and scary. In fact… don’t touch your computer, get another one, a cheap one like a RPi4 or a relatively old laptop that a colleague hasn’t used for years.
- copy, don’t move, your data to whatever distribution you picked
- ideally have a dedicated hard drive in there for JUST the data, NOT the OS
- play… have fun, truly. Try to use YOUR data, I mean the copy you have now that you don’t even care if you lose, and try to use them with the stock software that comes with your distribution, e.g OpenOffice or Blender or Kdenlive, or whatever you are into
- delete it all! Don’t be afraid, you can do it, you have copies anyway
- do it, again, again, keep a logbook or wiki or .doc file where you write down what you learn
- rinse and repeat
this way you should find YOUR distribution in no time and you won’t be afraid of messing up!
Honestly it’s a fun adventure. I’ve been learning Linux and CLI tools decades ago and I’m still learning to this day so do not assume there is one solution you can find today and move, it’s a process, a long one, but a really empowering one IMHO.
That’s the spirit 🫶.
That’s really what I’m doing on my debian server where I host my docker containers.
I don’t care if I brick my system while playing arround because every day at 00:00 a crontab job dumps all my database and saves all my docker volumes and docker-compose to an external HD and saves most important dotfiles and wireguard configuration.
Back Up and running in 30 min !
2 years in, still going strong and learning everyday something new, keeping everything I learn in a markdown file.
- Personal CA with self-signed certificate by an intermediate CA chain
- Wireguard tunnel routing all my devices traffic to protonVPN
- Alot of docker stuff
- Alot of networking stuff (DNS, cryptography…)
- LVM, bash…
- …
Wild ride, sometimes alot of frustration, but what an empowering experience !
I swapped last summer and landed on Pop!_OS after trying a few different options. If you game, Nobara is a great choice too. Other ones I considered were Mint, Ubuntu and SUSE Tumbleweed.
I would highly recommend trying them all with the live disk thingy. Mint didn’t even work at all on my computer for some unknown reason, which was rather surprising considering how often it’s recommended. It kept freezing right when the GUI logged in. So yeah, try em out for a little bit just to make sure there aren’t any weird incompatibilities.
MX Linux, Linux Mint, Endeavour OS
And Debian
I second EndeavourOS. My first distro and it’s been a great experience. I’ve felt no desire to switch.
Steam/games have worked great.
Yeah but its a rolling release distro so I wouldn’t recommend it to a user that is not conscious of updating the system regularly
Fair enough… It’s been nearly a month since I commented here so I don’t remember the exact situation, but if having a lot of updates was an issue, then yeah maybe not EndeavourOS. There may be LTS versions, but since it’s based on Arch, I’m not sure. I personally don’t mind it, and have yet to have a single issue with an update “breaking” something (though I have Timeshift set up to take a snapshot before updating just in case), but I guess
I could see someone being annoyed by having the little thing pop-up to tell you how many things you could update, but I kind of like it I think. It kinda feels like I’m very slowly, incrementally, making my laptop better, albeit usually in ways I can’t even perceive at the time.
But hey, everyone has their preferences. That’s why there’s a billion distros to choose from.
Mx linux is cool.
