Whatnot, 8 months ago

I’m a beginner Linux user, without background in informatics, but after trying many distro, Ubuntu, Ark, Manjaro… the easiest to maintain and work as needed is Debian for me.

tmjaea, 8 months ago

The nice part of debian is the possibility to upgrade as soon as a new major release is available without a reinstall in a safe way. My oldest VM was initially installed with debian 5 Lenny back in 2009 is still active currently running debian 12 bookworm.

As for desktop usage I think when you want to play 3D games another distro is better, as debian often uses older versions/kernels which are more stable but less cutting edge.

Jumuta, 8 months ago

Debian ♥️

GreenMario, 8 months ago

Leaning on SuSE Tumbleweed for a set it and forget it without the Arch weirdness. Kubuntu for “I really just need an OS and don’t wanna play with it”. Or Linux Mint. Idk I lean more .deb based distros. I love apt.

Depends on desktop Environment honestly.

I’ve seen arch install and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. All the “arch,btw” people are just bragging that they went with the hard mode install setup (probably cheated and used Endeavor lol).

Jumuta, 8 months ago

arch install/usage isn’t even that hard, it’s just that it’s not as stable as things like Debian. It’s definitely not a beginner distro and I wouldn’t recommend it here, but except for the times it broke grub and whatnot, it’s not too bad

supervent, 8 months ago

Debian 12 with your favorite DE, I use XFCE

Fishandchips321, 8 months ago

Seconding Debian. It just works out the box and is built like a tank. It’ll only break if you break it yourself

aport, 8 months ago

Debian stable + flatpak for steam and discord

Noctechnical, 8 months ago

Not to mention arch on distrobox and nix

Jumuta, 8 months ago

it’s kinda annoying how sudo doesn’t work by default though

EuroNutellaMan, 8 months ago

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/12c5db56-79db-448f-80f4-b063f3593c29.jpeg

danielfgom, 8 months ago

I would recommend Linux Mint personally. And there are various reasons why:

1. Whether you use the tuning m Ubuntu base or Debian base, getting hold of software will be much easier because if something is not in the repo chances are there is a deb for it.

For example I use Vivaldi browser, 1Password and OnlyOffice. Neither is which are in the repos. But they all offer a deb installer on their website. Same goes for TeamViewer and many other non FOSS apps.

Who wants to waste time on arch or wherever trying to figure out how to get his of binarys?

2. Mint is free of snaps so you don’t have that headache, and can run Fkatpak.
3. Mint has sane defaults and doesn’t include unnecessary apps. I think I only removed 3 apps to replace with the apps of my choice. The rest of the selection is perfect.
4. The Cinnamon desktop looks good, is very fast, works intuitively and gets out of your way. Since The Mint Team make Cinnamon you’ve always got the latest and greatest.
5. Plenty support. Because Mint is based on Ubuntu and Debian there is TONS of information online to help you solve any issue. Plus Mint have a forum.
6. Reliability and low system requirements. Unlike Gnome desktop, Cinnamon uses less RAM so right off the bat you win back RAM on your system. It’s very fast, light yet good looking and functional. Plus Mint is generally very reliable because the team focus on that.

They will take their time to carefully test and consider something and it’s impact on users before releasing it. For example Wayland. They still use X11 because they are assessing Wayland and switching to Wayland only would break some users systems.

It literally has everything you want in a distro. Where new user or Linux Pro, Mint will suit both and everything in-between

Flaky, 8 months ago

If you’re fine with rolling release distros, go for EndeavourOS. It’s based on Arch (uses the Arch repos as well as its own for its specific needs) but has everything configured for a working desktop out of the box. There’s not much I can say that everyone else hasn’t, if you like the Arch ecosystem but don’t like the (potential) tedium of setting it up, EndeavourOS is good. The thing with rolling release distros is that the package release cycle is not stable. This is not to be confused with reliability, Arch can be a reliable distro, but where most distros stay on a particular version for its release cycle, a rolling release distro updates its packages as soon as the new version comes out. If you want that, then go full steam ahead on Endeavour.

I’m gonna throw another distro for you to try, if you’re not a fan of the nature of rolling release: Nobara. You mention you wanted something stable with a good package manager, and IMO Nobara fits the bill. Like how EndeavourOS is based on Arch, Nobara is a gaming-oriented distro based on Fedora, which updates every six months. The guy who runs it works/worked for Red Hat and is responsible for the GE-Proton patches that help extend Steam Play compatibility unofficially, and he wanted to make something that was as easy as switching a game console on. There are a lot of patches and tweaks done to the kernel and apps as needed, to ensure that the user doesn’t need to reach for the terminal as often, if at all. You can still do your productive work on Nobara, you can just think of it as Fedora (an already solid workstation distro) but with a gaming flair to it.

TL;DR: For stable releases, get Nobara. For rolling releases, get EndeavourOS. If one pisses you off in the future, go for the other lol

Potajito, 8 months ago

Came to say the same. Endeavour if you are into bleeding edge, nobara if not.

Guenther_Amanita, 8 months ago

I think saying “I’m a newcomer, recommend me a distro” will pretty much always result in everyone saying “Linux Mint”,
and saying “I have quite a bit of experience, what’s your recommendation?” will result in everyone recommending their own distro of choice.

But, to be honest, distro choice doesn’t matter that much anymore. You can get every software package in form of Flatpaks, Nix and in Distrobox anyway.

For example, you can get the newest Gnome or Hyprland with the Arch Distrobox on your stale Debian base, or access the AUR on Tumbleweed. Doesn’t matter.

---

So, what’s my recommendation?

Fedora Silverblue (or the “normal” variant). Why?

The normal variants (Workstation and Spins)

• Very sanely configured, works out of the box
• Extremely wide spread, huge community
• Pretty much one of the default choices
• Reliable
• Good balance between stable and new

Silverblue

• The new cool kid on the block
• Immutable distro
• "Your" stuff is decoupled from the "OS stuff"
• Extremely reliable, you can’t break it
• And if you break it, you can roll back with one single reboot in a few seconds
• Very flexible, especially with the uBlue project
• Auto updates without intervention (no prompt to reboot), changes get applied when you reboot into the newly created image
• Less buggy, since every OS install is the same
• Ideal for “just using” your PC and not worrying about anything

But yeah, as I said, there are many other good recommendations here in the comment section. I personally wouldn’t use something arch based if you want something simple and low-maintainence, but even that is your choice.

There are pretty much no bad choices.

dragnet, 8 months ago

I agree with you overall, but not your final conclusion. There are some distros with a history of security problems, like Manjaro. And some smaller distros may have a development team with a higher probability of shipping bugs, stability issues, or again security problems. So doing a little research on any distro of interest would be a good idea before installing.

I’d reccomend searching for “(distro) security problems”, “(distro) bugs”, and " (distro) controversies" before settling on an option.

recarsion, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

You didn’t mention your hardware, but gaming in general benefits from a rolling distro for things like latest drivers, latest wine version etc. (Be aware though that if you have an Nvidia card you’ll have to run the proprietary driver, the open source one performs poorly.)

I understand being wary of Arch-derivatives, but it sounds like you’re the kind of user who would benefit from it and has plenty of experience with Linux, so I can sincerely recommend it. And since this is for a personal computer, nothing bad is really going to happen if it ends up not working out other than the mild annoyance of having to install something else.

But honestly, things don’t break all that often, at least for me. For reference, I’ve been using Endeavour with KDE for a year, and the only real problem I can remember off the top of my head is that Steam was broken for like a week when the new UI rolled out that was somehow incompatible with the current Nvidia driver, but this got fixed with the next update and there was a workaround to make it run with the old UI so it remained usable.

queue, 8 months ago

Hi OP, I would like to state that my personal distro of choice is Arch, but I have used a wide selection of the more popular and some niche distros.

First of: Just remember that as long as your distro works for your workflow and requirements, you’re doing fine. Don’t fall for some guilt of “This one is way better because of [subjective opinion for their needs].”

If you want to experiment with distros, just remember to backup your files. One is none, two is one.

Do you have newer hardware such as a brand new NVIDIA or AMD graphics card, or perhaps a new CPU chipset from Intel that came out this year? Then a rolling distro is probably best for you. There’s many tempting options, but my personal “sane default” is of course Arch. There is an installer once you load the ISO on a flash drive. Just ensure you have an internet connection. There will be a learning curve.

If you want to have something to guide you along, then Endevour OS is good. While 99% of your questions can be found on /r/archlinux and Arch’s forums, they (rightfully) expect you to use Arch for Arch-based questions. It’s kind of like asking a question for Ford Mustangs when you drive an F-150. While there’s a lot of overlap, it’s not 1:1.

But if you have something like a laptop from the last few years or more, or just need to focus on your tasks such as your programing and web browsing, and don’t need the latest and greatest, then something more stable is probably best. My top two “I just need it to stay there and remain the same without any worry” distros are:

• Fedora Linux
• Debian Linux

Fedora is going to offer a nice mix of stable yet forward thinking, with major updates rolling out about every 13 months, and it’s a pretty smooth experience upgrading.

Debian is the grand daddy of modern distros, and it is considered the gold standard. They recently made it so 99% of firmware support needed is now included for easier installation. The only thing that you’ll really get update wise is security fixes and any backports you enable.

Keep in mind, Arch/Endeavor itself will not implode if you don’t update daily/weekly, it’s just intended to be refreshed often so when anything big is planned, it’s done in smaller chunks. If you install Arch and then go to a remote island for a few months, you’ll most likely be fine once you get back, but there might be some hiccups.

So if you want more triple A gaming, I think something along Arch/Endevor is “better”, but if you don’t care about the latest and greatest, then I’d say Fedora is a solid foundation.

Sorry for the small novel, but I wanted to state that there is no explicitly wrong option, all that matters is what you consider important. The defaults, the packages, and your workflow. Anything else is secondary.

flashgnash, 8 months ago

Hi OP, I would like to state that my personal distro of choice is Arch (btw)

Ftfy

Lodra, 8 months ago

Hardware has come up a few times in this post now. Seems I should share a bit about what I’m running 🙂

I bought an ASUS ROG Strix GA15DK just over 2 years ago. The hardware was shiny but not top-tier at the time. It’s not new at this point but also not old by Linux standards.

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Processor
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
• 16GB DDR4 3200 MHz RAM

vox, 8 months ago

Fedora or Mint.
Fedora includes non-customized versions of stuff like desktop environments, which usually leads to better stability and more consistency. Also it “just works” out of the box. (as an arch user) I could start using it right away out of the box, the default config is perfect.

Neikon, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Manjaro, a stable descendant of Arch Linux. It has stable updates every week (more or less). You can select your favorite DE, kernel version, it is updated for optimal gaming performance, easy to install like Ubuntu. If you miss any app in the Manjaro repos you can always download it from **AUR **(Arch Community Repo), **Flatpak **or **Snap **by activating it easily from their app store.

Yes, it is similar to Endeavor OS, but I think Endeavor is more like an easier version of Arch, but just as edgy with updates and the instability that comes with it.

backhdlp, 8 months ago

manjarno.pages.dev

backhdlp, 8 months ago

lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/3779715

Please do not suggest people to use Manjaro.

github.com/arindas/manjarno

www.hadet.dev/Manjaro-Bad

rentry.co/manjaro-controversies

~~manjarno.snorlax.sh/~~ manjarno.pages.dev

averagelinuxuser.com/manjaro-review

Manjaro’s maintainers have repeatedly:

• Let SSL certs expire, asking end users to turn back their system clock until they fixed it.
• Told users to make partial updates which often causes packages to break, including mandatory rollbacks on critical packages such as systemd
• Held back packages for ~1-2 weeks to improve stablity, but does not do this for all packages, including the AUR, which causes dependency hell and breakage.
• Rolled out an edit to a AUR package that repeatedly sent requests to aur.archlinux.org which made the servers experience a DDOS attack, impacting all users.

I am not saying this to hate on Manjaro, but to inform OP and others. If they want a stable yet fresher distro, they should choose something more like Fedora or Ubuntu. If they want something rolling, Arch includes an installer in its iso that is really simple to understand.

Pantherina, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Fedora Kinoite from ublue. Has docker and all the codecs preinstalled. If you need VSCode, add the repo and layer it (rpm-ostre install abc). You can create distro containers with distrobox, or use podman or docker directly.

The system is configurable but image based, very good defaults, its always upstream with transparent changes (rpm-ostree status).

I broke every distro before, and Kinoite is great. The ublue modifications include complete ffmpeg and more, so everything works

Edit: I know everyone recommends something else. I find it really annoying that distros cant join a little more in their work.

Fedora Atomic (the bigger name for all “immutable” distros) is different through the image based model (using OSTree) and also having tested but very recent updates.

vaselined, 8 months ago

Arch is best for you. As you have experience with Linux, you won’t have issues configuring it according to your needs. Arch wiki is a gold mine.

Holzkohlen, 8 months ago

Once again I am gonna shill Garuda Linux. Use the KDE light version without all of their theming. Personal preference of course, but I absolutely cannot stand their theme.

Barbarian, 8 months ago

From the sounds of it, you’d be happy and comfortable with almost any KDE based distro (Kubuntu, Debian w/ KDE, Fedora, Arch w/ KDE, etc). I think KDE fits the bill for your usecase because it’s easy to use, has good defaults, and is incredibly customizable.