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!
Anything except Ubuntu and it’s direct downstreams
Fedora for my pick.
For something that “just works” and feels quite like home, without being KDE, I’d recommend Zorin.
It’s stable, beautiful to look at and works as expected. I’d not recommend Arch-based distros to begin (but if you want to go the troubleshooting and fixing things way, that would be choice #1).
Unpopular : I’d not recommend mint.
I’m curious, why would you not recommend Mint?
Maybe it is me but Cinnamon, while being very user friendly, feels limited. I feel that when you want to start tweaking, the options are not there yet.
Oh I see, so it’s more about the DE, thanks for clarifying.
I highly recommend Fedora (just the regular Gnome version). I used to be all Ubuntu, but they’ve shoved snaps down everyone’s throats to the point that I simply cannot recommend it to anyone, especially newcomers.
Fedora has been working really well for me. You’ll probably want to play around with Gnome Tweaks to get the maximize and minimize buttons back, and install the Gnome extension “AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support” from the Gnome Extensions website. Those I would consider the essential post install steps.
After that you’ll have a rock-solid and enjoyable setup.
Pretty much anything Fedora is easy as pie.
I had to bail from Fedora when they pulled the video codecs from RPM. It may be fixed, but the threat of pulling a tool from the repository still lingers in my mind.
The video codecs are in rpmfusion, which is available as a checkbox called “Third Party Repositories” in the setup wizard.
Ah, they were being pulled from RPM fusion at one point if I recall. It didn’t go through, but the fact that it was even being discussed told me all I needed to know.
There was an issue in the past where the regular mesa-* packages and the mesa-*-freeworld were out of sync which resulted in no longer working DEs for many people if they updated at the wrong time.
Is this still an issue?
(I went back to the regular drivers since I mostly use VP8/9 anyway)
I have never had that issue. I’ve been on Fedora for a year, so it’s not been an issue since at least then.
@Canadian_Cabinet www.tromjaro.com/ - you can try our distro. Based on Manjaro it has all you need to just use it. Enabled the Chaotic AUR repos, flatpaks, and our repo, thus you can find any linux app via one single place. Click and install. Plus we have a list of some 700 curated apps on our website www.tromjaro.com/apps/ - apps that are trade-free. Meaning no BS, no freemiums, no limitations, purely free apps.
We made TROMjaro back in 2018 and kept it up to date since, plus developed our own tools like a Layout and Theme Switcher. See the homepage to get a more detailed idea about it.
That’s all! :)
None of those people have a slightest clue. Your options really are: ubuntu vanilla and maybe pop os.
Everything else will very quickly require you to read through some obscure docs and bash your head against the terminal.
Vanilla Ubuntu, not kubuntu/xubuntu/whateverbuntu is the only polished and documented distro. After a year or two of that you’ll be ready to consider this “what distro” question.
Ubuntu vanilla LTS
Without the first sentence, this could have been one of the top comments
Nothing wrong with Fedora Gnome. I’ve been using it for several months (well ok technically Nobara but I decided to try vanilla Fedora recently and it’s about the same). Prior to that I had been using Mint / Cinnamon for a decade and it’s a good choice too.
But truth be told the Gnome simplicity / minimalism has been growing on me. I wished it were more customizable but whatever.
Fedora is a very very mainstream distro, too, so help is easy to find if anything goes haywire.
PS: nobara is great for gaming but the big gotcha for me was that updating from the shell prompt requires a somewhat involved set of commands. If you use a simple dnf update you’ll break something like I did. Which is why I decided to give Fedora another go. If you choose Nobara, just use the (slow) GUI updater.
The other commenter who mentioned installing and using Gnome tweaks, etc. nailed it. Do that. :)
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.
openSUSE Tumbleweed. Or EndeavorOS if you want to join the Arch side.
I like fedora but I’m really loving opensuse tumbleweed on both my desktop and laptop. I have Nvidia rtx cards and support is just a few mouse clicks post-image. I get better FPS now than I did in Windows 11.
Adding that zorin was great as well but it’s Debian-based so driver support was behind enough that some games wouldn’t launch for me.
Endeavor OS. Its an excellent arch based system and people REALLY over emphasize how tricky arch is. Its not difficult, its not just for power users, and the rolling release means you have access to updates faster than other distros…this is particularly nice for gaming as you’ll also get updates to graphics drivers sooner.
Linux Mint is my daily driver. I enjoy tinkering, but I also want a distro that doesn’t need it when I get home from work and just want a vodka tonic and some memes.
I’m also a big fan of Mint for this, but also Fedora Kinoite. I can’t say I used Kinoite extensively, but I can say the bit I used it was far more stable than any other distro I used (and the backups-for-free approach really helped my anxiety lol)
Slackware. It just works. Even current is pretty stable
I hope your joking
Why would i be?
Because Slackware is not user friendly at all. It doesn’t even come with a GUI for all critical functionality
@Canadian_Cabinet @possiblylinux127 @slacktoid Keep in mind that not all users are the same. For example, maybe some people find firewall configuration expressed as text in a file clearer than a GUI. My grandmother loves her iPad. I love my OpenBSD laptop. I find the iPad relatively user unfriendly - “I can barely see or control what my own machine is doing!” - but my grandmother would find my OpenBSD laptop very user unfriendly too - ”How do I see my family photos?”
OP said they were not looking for Ubuntu or Arch derivatives, and that they were not afraid to get their hands dirty to figure things out. Slackware + Flatpaks can give a stable base while giving you up-to-date applications when SBo doesnt have the build files. This would give OP a system that just works OOTB. Tho it is KDE OOTB, one can put gnome or cinnamon on it.
Im pretty happy with KDE Fedora (though constant updates make me anxious something breaks every reboot, lol) but if I had to change I would probably check out LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Ed). I’m not really a fan of Cinnamon/Mate but I’d give it another go …
Options:
- Linux Mint (Awesome first distro, but more out of date)
- Pop!_OS (Great for gaming, based on Ubuntu)
- Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (Maybe later if your interested in immutability)
- EndeavorOS (Maybe later once you understand the value of the AUR, more bleeding edge)
Don’t use:
- Ubuntu (bloat, snaps)
- Manjaro (Don’t get me started…)
My explanation won’t do it justice, but Jorge Castro had a great video on it. I highly recommend watching it if you’re interested in immutability
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