stolen from linux memes at Deltachat
Arch user here.
My recommendation to noobies is always Linux Mint even though I don’t use it.
I use Arch, btw.
Yeah I think Arch is fine, but I’d never recommend it to a new Linux user.
As a seasoned distrohopper, can confirm. When I try something new, I always ask myself: Would a noob be ok with the fact that in this distro you have to do things this way. In Fedora, Debian, Manjaro and so many other I always end up saying “no” more than a few times. With Mint, you just don’t bump into these situations very often. IMO, Mint is the best starter distro for most users. If you know your friend is very technical, you can recommend something else.
Mint was my first used, was straightforward and easy to get going. Still use mint.
I’ve always read it doesn’t really matter what distro you choose, just to pick one you like. That’s confusing to a noob because they don’t know why they should or shouldn’t like a specific one.
Mint is very simple to setup and works very much like a windows PC by default. Can even set it up to work like a Mac if you want to.
heres the thing: as a decade+ software dev, I never want to even think about my distro.
I just want Linux terminal style commands, and Linux style ssh shit to just work in the most middle of the road way as possible. I’m trying to get a job done, not build a personality.
Ex arch btw user here. I noped out and wiped after thinking I had it all nailed down, then I tried to connect my Bluetooth headphones and I came to a grand awakening. I am too old for this shit.
Installed Tumbleweed and been happy ever since.
Tumbleweed is great, but I prefer EndeavorOS myself.
Its probably just one package. I guess for example
pacman -S plasma-desktop plasma-meta flatpak fish plasma-wayland-session sddm sddm-kcm && systemctl enable --now sddmdoes the trick.Archinstall with the entire plasma desktop is probably also nice, or just EndeavorOS which will be preconfigured
I actually did the whole KDE shebang with archinstall. I never really expected that Arch btw deigned it too opinionated to just provide an audio and Bluetooth interface. Instead I have to choose between pulse audio and pipewire and bluez and a bunch of others. I just didn’t have the patience nor time to look into what and why these options are presented, and this was after I already wasted days figuring how to get my pc to boot with my 12th gen Intel and Nvidia gpu combination.
Turns out there’s a bunch of kernel finagling you absolutely have to do first before it even decides to boot from the gpu and not the igpu. Oh well.
Isn’t archwiki one of the most comprehended wikis for Linux distros out there? If anything, the arch-wiki (to me) has often too many answers for the same problem than the other way around.
Weird shot at the Arch wiki, which is truly great. I turn to it regularly despite not using Arch.
I use Ubuntu. It generally tends to be boring stable, which is kinda what I want out of my OS these days. I can still customize it, and even break it if I really get bored, but it’s nice to have things just work for the most part.
I switched to Debian Stable after using Ubuntu LTS for 6 years, and recommend Ubuntu for beginners. It is stable, best community support, boring and good ol’ reliable, which is perfect to learn Linux and get accustomed to it. Even corporate support and game developers target Ubuntu first. Considering it runs smoothly on a 6 year old midrange Intel laptop chip, nobody is getting that 200% performance boost with other obscure fancy distros.
Yep, games being designed to support Ubuntu first is a big reason why I’m so far into Ubuntu. I could easily switch if I needed to since I’m both a programmer and very comfortable with Linux but for me, it does everything I need an OS to do.
Debian Stable is really, really close for gaming, since Ubuntu LTS itself is based on Debian Unstable branch, if you choose to upgrade with more Linux knowledge in future. Nobara is dedicated to gaming.
Honestly speaking, I keep W10 on SSD for games if any works in a wonky manner on Linux. Takes like 30 seconds to log off Debian, boot into Windows, fire up a game, get back to Linux when not playing.
