Help me choose a distro, please!

I’m ditching Windows in favor of Linux on my personal desktop. And so I’m looking for advice on which distro I should start with.

About Me

I use Linux professionally all the time but mostly to build ci/cd pipelines and for software development/operations. I’ve never been a Linux admin nor have I ever chosen the distro I use. I’m generally comfortable using Linux and digging into configs/issues as needed.

Planned Usage

I use this machine for typical home usage: Firefox, a notes app (currently Notesnook), maybe office style tools like word and excel. I also use this for gaming: Steam, Discord, etc. Lastly and least important, I use this for a small amount of dev work: VSCode, various languages, possibly running containers.

What I’m Looking For

I’d like an OS that’s highly configurable but ships with good default settings and requires very little effort to start using. I don’t want it to ship with loads of applications; I want to choose and install all of the higher level tools. Shipping with a configured desktop is perfectly fine but not required. Ideally, I can have all of this while still keeping the maintenance low. I think that means a stable OS, a good package manager, stable/automatic updates, etc.

Last bit. Open source is rather important to me. I prefer free and free.

Anyone have good suggestions??

Edit

I’m aware of tools like Distro Chooser. They’ve recommended Arch Linux and Endeavor OS to me so far. But I’m not ready to trust them yet. I’m looking for human input.

Edit 2: Hardware Info

I’m running on an ASUS ROG Strix GA15DK. It’s just over 2 years old. 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

Edit 3

It’s official. I installed EndeavourOS! I got it to work without any issues. Yup, first try. It definitely didn’t take me ~10 tries :D

Thanks for all the input all! Wonderful crowd here!!!

DSX,

I recommend Linux Mint (21.2), which a based on Ubuntu (22.04) and Debian. The cinnamon desktop environment it comes with is pretty similar to windows 7, which makes it easier to use. I think 21.2 will remain supported until 2027 as LTS.

theklausert,

It just works, I love it and I recommend it too

supervent,

Debian 12 with your favorite DE, I use XFCE

Fishandchips321,

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

aport,

Debian stable + flatpak for steam and discord

Noctechnical,

Not to mention arch on distrobox and nix

Jumuta,

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

muhyb,

You described EndeavourOS if you ask me. It’s Arch but preconfigured, so ready to use after install while being as configurable as Arch if you want to go further. Has AUR so you won’t have problems finding a program.

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

Thanks! Especially for the “You described EndeavourOS” comment. This helps me a lot. I’ll give it a close look!

muhyb,

No problem! Have fun with what you decide to use. :)

iHUNTcriminals,

Fedora and gnome were my set up for a long time. I recently tried endeavor (arch), and MX Linux (debian).

Both seem great. Basically I chose mx Linux with KDE due to it being based on debian which was simple to get back into for me. PLUS mx comes with some back up apps that are super simple. Like you can make a live USB, and a redistributable iso of your current installation with a few clicks. (You can probably do this in the terminal somehow if you’re savvy in there.)

o_k,
@o_k@lemmygrad.ml avatar

You might want to look at distrochooser.de. That said, Linux Mint and OpenSUSE are good, stable distros.

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

Thanks! I’m aware of it and updated my post with a comment on it. I’ll add these to my short list!

Petter1,

With openSuse, there is a fast rolling version called tumbleweed and a slow rolling (major updates every 3month or so) in the future. The LTS style called leap will go EOL eventually (if I understood that correctly) I’m running tumbleweed with GNOME GUI, btw. and it feels very stable to me.

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Help me choose a distro, please!

This is asking for trouble.

“Gentlemen, I am new to the country, and I was hoping that you could help me choose a political party.”

“I’m looking for a good text editor. What’s the best text editor to use?”

“I’ve heard that various religions have a lot of things going for them. Which religion do you suggest I join?”

Aside from very specialized distros (like, you probably don’t want Alpine Linux) most distros will work fine for what you want.

I use this machine for typical home usage: Firefox, a notes app (currently Notesnook), maybe office style tools like word and excel.

Firefox will run on everything. You can definitely take notes on anything, and there are tons of options. LibreOffice will be available for everything.

Steam,

Steam ships with its own set of libraries based on Ubuntu, and stuff targeting Steam will normally use them. It should be pretty distro-agnostic.

Discord

They apparently have a Linux app, which I’ve never used. The website should work fine anywhere. They have a “deb” or “tar.gz” and don’t specify any target distro for either. The deb probably is for Ubuntu, just because it’s the most-widely-used desktop distro that uses Debian packages, but I imagine that you’ve got good odds of it working on whatever. If you want to check, you could just throw a distro on a VM.

I don’t want it to ship with loads of applications; I want to choose and install all of the higher level tools. Shipping with a configured desktop is perfectly fine but not required. Ideally, I can have all of this while still keeping the maintenance low. I think that means a stable OS, a good package manager, stable/automatic updates, etc.

Everything outside of really specialized, oddball distros has package management.

All the major distros that I’ve used have options to do various forms of a stripped-down install. If you want to install a distro without anything graphical at all, you probably can.

You do have a differing release cycle; I’d probably tend towards a shorter one for desktop use. If you were setting up a ci server that you want minimal interaction with, you probably don’t care much about having newer software. But, again, distros tend to have at least options for a LTS release that just gets security updates, even if they have a pretty-frequent set of updates, like Ubuntu.

There aren’t going to be particularly “unstable” distros in the sense of crashing. Debian stable is aimed at being software that’s passed through multiple phases of experimental testing use and is considered well-tested; it’s just their normal distro. There’s no pixie dust that makes some distros less-crash-prone. If you’re really determined to have more testing, you can use an LTS release, which many distros do but I would not advise for a desktop, especially if you’re planning on playing commercial games, which you say you are.

Last bit. Open source is rather important to me. I prefer free and free.

You can get open-source software on any distro. Debian is a bit more aggressive than some, turns off non-free repositories by default, but I think that most people turn them on anyway. They also have a separate non-free firmware repository, and I think that most people aren’t determined enough to refuse to use non-libre firmware for hardware that they have (though they might choose that hardware with libre firmware in mind). I don’t think that there’s any distro that is going to ram non-open-source stuff down your throat. Honestly, your largest source of non-open-source software is probably going to be Steam, which you said that you want to use.

I use Debian myself these days. I’m hesitant to argue in favor of distros, because my own take is that the differences (a) tend to change over time, (b) most work pretty well regardless, and (c) I think that few people have actually spent enough time on many other distros to be able to have expert knowledge in their failings (which is something that I’ve seen in vi-vs-emacs discussions, where I’ve seen enthusiasts often talk about amazing features while unaware that the other editor can also do the same thing; it takes decades to master either).

If I were picking a “first distro” for someone for desktop use, and disregarding your specific situation, my default is probably Ubuntu. I don’t use it myself these days, but it’s particularly-widely-used. It has a short release cycle on the non-LTS version (I know that you said you wanted low maintenance, but I’ve pretty consistently found that one winds up wanting to pull in newer software for desktop systems). It’s Debian-based. If one distro gets targeted by a proprietary software package (which I know you also said that you don’t care about) it’s probably going to be Ubuntu. Aside from past use of Upstart as an init system, it isn’t especially unusual. It doesn’t require some of the poking around (like enabling non-free repos) that Debian does. It may or may not be where someone wants to be long term, but it’s not going to bring a lot of complications. But it’s really not going to be drastically better than the other mainstream distros.

Whether that is what one chooses or not, I’d stick to one of the more mainstream distros for a first-time user. There are legitimate reasons to use oddball, young, and specialized distros (tiny, security-hardened, real-time oriented, scientific-computing oriented, music-production oriented) but many of them die out after a couple years or impose constraints that aren’t immediately apparent to a new user.

I’d suggest something that’s been around for at least ten, preferably fifteen years. A distro that’s accomplished that has enough of a track record that they aren’t just going to be a flash in the pan; they’ve been able to attract and maintain enough effort to keep up an ongoing release cycle, which is not easy and I think is often more effort than would-be distro maintainers realize. Most distros that have come out since I started using Linux in the 1990s have died off. If yours gets discontinued, then you gotta migrate off it, which is a pain. But again, if you choose something new and it never sees another release, migrating off it isn’t that bad. You’re gonna maybe have to learn a new package manager and some new ways of configuring things and new conventions, but most distros don’t vary that incredibly much.

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

If it wasn’t already known, I currently have no real opinions on various distros. But within a day or so, there will be one correct answer and all other distros will be simply evil! :)

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

Well this is much more commentary than my post deserved :)

Thanks for all the input! If only I could give more than one upvote. Much appreciated!

ultra,

Alpine feels surprisingly normal, actually

fr_mg,

With that background and do you really need suggestions?

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

Ha yes! It’s within my ability to research and choose… but that would cost more time than I want to pay. I’m definitely appreciating the input from the crowd.

fr_mg,

Debian, Debian, Debian, Debian… And please tell us what you picked up and why.

carcus,

What distro do you use at work? Using that at home would benefit you professionally as well. I’d start there unless it’s redhat.

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

Redhat :)

At least, that’s where most of my experience is. But now I’m working for a contracting company so I use whatever distros are made available by clients.

NinePeedles,

I love Fedora. It’s a great mix of rolling release, cutting edge and stability. It should be pretty familiar to you given your experience.

lypticdna,
@lypticdna@feddit.uk avatar

I did the classic, jump in at the deep end approach, and ended up with some distro hoping for a while. I then settled on Fedora.

Why? It did everything I wanted to do and did it well. I found some distro so easy to setup but harder to maintain, some really slick but problematic with updates and apps. Fedora, for me, just worked.

All that said, there are various factors to consider, including your hardware configuration. Some distro just happen to work better on some hardware specs, especially when considering your graphics.

I have a similar usage to you, covering a little bit of everything including gaming and dev and, so far, everything continues to work. So much so, I am thinking of switching my gaming rig over to Fedora in the coming weeks.

Whatnot,

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,

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,

Debian ♥️

starman,
@starman@programming.dev avatar

I’d suggest you EndeavourOR or Arch.

There is also NixOS, but you will loose the ability to use GNU/Linux for CI/CD and programming, like you did before learning nix.

FREEZX,

I'd like to add Archcraft to the arch-based distro suggestion. It's arch, but with a selection of sleek DE configs.

hiddengoat,

Fucking any of them. Seriously. It doesn't really matter. Eventually you'll come to the realization that until you're talking about oddball shit designed for one douchebag's personal proclivities it's all the same shit under the hood. They just have fourteen incompatible package managers because, again, douchebag personal proclivities.

Noctechnical,

True, honestly, I have used a lot of Linux distros in the past 3 years and landed in Debian after realizing that many things done on others, can be done on anyone of them.

Jumuta,

but just don’t choose Manjaro

Discover5164,

already chose it a couple years ago… i will replace it with endeavour soner or later, maybe later because i’m lazy

JoeyJoeJoeJr,

When you install, whatever you install, partition your drive so that /home is it’s own partition. Then if/when you reinstall, distrohop, whatever, you don’t have to worry about copying over your data. Just use the same /home partition, and format the others. You can actually use this to try multiple distros at the same time - you can install them in different partitions, but have every install use the same /home partition. This is a nice way to test new distros without blowing away your stable install.

Now, for my distro recommendation - Ubuntu gets a lot of hate, but honestly, after 15+ years of Linux, and having tried Mint, Fedora, Arch, Manjaro, and many others, I always end up back on Ubuntu. It’s easy, it’s stable, and it stays out of my way.

The defaults are good, but you can customize as much as you want, and they offer a minimal install (as of 23.10, it is the default) which comes with very few applications, so you can start clean and choose all the applications you want.

Unless you are excited to tinker, I’d really recommend starting simple. Personality, I just want the OS to facilitate my other activities, and I otherwise want to forget about it. Ubuntu is pretty good for that.

Lodra,
@Lodra@programming.dev avatar

Ooohhhh I like that idea for testing! Thanks for the tip and the recommendation!

chris,
@chris@programming.dev avatar

I used to do this when on Windows too: C was for the OS and apps, D was for user data. The same principle here - separating OS from data is a game changer - and even easier on Linux I think. Makes it so easy to wipe a partition and try something new.

MonkCanatella,

When you share your /home, won’t you have to be pretty mindful/retest stuff just to make sure there’s no compatibility issues?

JoeyJoeJoeJr,

You mean with config files stored in your home directory? Or something else?

MonkCanatella,

Right, I’d have to check to make sure there’s no incompatibility among versions or installed programs wouldn’t I? idk maybe it’s not that complex

JoeyJoeJoeJr,

It’s possible to hit issues, especially if different distros are using different major versions of desktop environments or applications, but in practice, I don’t think it’s something that really needs to be worried about.

If you were to upgrade/fresh install, and copy your home folder over, you’d have the same experience - it’s not much safer than sharing the home partition, except that you’re (hopefully) doing that less. You could still easily go from distro A using version 2 of something, to distro B using version 3, and then decide you don’t like it and try to roll back to distro A. If in the process your config was upgraded in place (as opposed to a new, versioned config being made*), you could have problems rolling back.

With configs, you can usually just delete them (or, less destructively, rename them, in case you decide you want them back), and let the application make a new default one for you. With other files (e.g. databases), you might be in more trouble. But a good application will tell you before doing an upgrade like that, and give you a chance to backup the original before upgrading in place. When asked, it’s probably a good idea to take a backup (and not just for this distro hoping case).

*For any developers reading this, this is the correct way to upgrade a config. Don’t be destructive. Don’t upgrade in place. Make a copy, upgrade the copy, and include a version in the file name. You can always tell the user, so they can remove the file if they want, but let them make the choice. If you can’t (e.g. the database scenario, which could be large), tell the user before doing anything, so they can choose whether or not to backup.

Steamymoomilk,

So its not really a distro, but what i do on my laptop is installed rocky 9 linux and use distrobox for installing applications. Rocky is Based on Rhel, its lts is good till 2039 and is super stable

cocolopez,
@cocolopez@lemmy.world avatar

You want Xerolinux. Ships with little, already configured and with beautiful looks, arch based.

LinuxSBC,

I’d recommend Fedora, but the suggestion of EndeavorOS is also good.

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