Finally making the transition from Windows to a Linux. I’m pretty sure it’s been asked several times but which Linux OS would you recommend a beginner to use? I’ve seen Ubuntu and Mint as a good start. Not looking to do much. Game here and there (not too worried about Linux compatibility), streaming, editing videos. If I break any rules. I’m sorry.
I will be the black sheep that strongly recommend against Mint. I have had more hardware compatibility problems trying to run Mint than any other distro. This is anecdotal, but consistent enough that I would make bets on it. Secondly, I hate Cinnamon, the default desktop environment. There are better choices.
Instead, I’ll suggest Fedora KDE. It’s rock solid, reliable, and the KDE Plasma desktop is the best currently available whether you leave it stock or customize it.
If you want to try things out, set up a spare thumb drive with Ventoy, which will let you boot to any ISO you copy to it. Most distros have “live” versions that you can boot to from the thumb drive and try out before installing. That said, most linux distros install in 5 minutes, so don’t be afraid to try anything and everything you’re curious about.
Also, avoid Cachy or other Arch based distros for now. They are great, but a far more hands-on. Something for the future, when you are more comfortable with linux in general.
I have Mint on the 2014 Mac mini I use as a media and Home Assistant server. It was my first dabble with Linux, and I now wish it used Plasma instead of Cinnamon. My other Linux machines are running Kubuntu with Plasma, and they’re great, so logging into Cinnamon always feels like a step backwards somehow.
I could try changing the DE on it, but I’m not massively proficient, and don’t want to have to set everything back up again if I fuck it up.
Mint doesn’t officially support KDE and there are known issues if you do it yourself. You’d be better off switching distros if you like that desktop. Pure Debian + KDE might be a more comfortable move in that situation.
Yeah, which is part of what’s stopping me. I can’t really be bothered to spend the time putting everything back as it should be if I bugger it up. Which I will.
So for now it works and it works very well. And I guess I’ll leave it that way.
Its not that bad to start with arch it’s not as hard as it used to be. I started with endeavourOS approximately a year ago and most things just work out of the box and you don’t need to do much and honestly i find it easier than having to navigate layers of abstractions.
Most of my time went into configuring stuff like hyprland, nvim and other stuff and arch just worked.
I came with 0 linux knowledge, the only terminal commands i knew were cd and ls and if not for arch I don’t think I would have been hooked on linux. That being said, I get it and sometimes it is frustrating but just putting it out there that it’s doable.
I started with EndeavourOS also (earlier this year) and it has been amazing. Also only little bit of Linux knowledge beforehand. Honestly think using a terminal centric distro is helpful for learning.
Fedora is a good option. I’m surprised to hear about hardware incompatibilities with Mint, though. Do you have obscure or bleeding-edge hardware?
I’ll +1 the Ventoy suggestion. Lets you try lots of things easily. Try at least Fedora KDE, Ubuntu, and Mint. Go with whichever feels good to you when you try them out.
You don’t really need to be bleeding edge to have some hardware issues or Cinnamon Mint. Their wayland transition is still ongoing so HDR, variable refresh rate, fractional scaling and maybe some bugs for specific hardware might be present. X11 has also seen a lot less love recently after the major distros stopped actively supporting it.
KDE has nailed the Wayland transition so moving to Fedora KDE would have fixed Wayland/X11 bugs.
I guess I would classify features like variable refresh rates and fractional scaling as “advanced”, but that’s fair. I moved from Cinnamon to Gnome because wayland was working better for me, so fair point. I imagine it won’t be too long before Cinnamon catches up, though.
For now, I’m just using a handful of extensions to make Gnome feel more like Cinnamon. Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of KDE, but that’s just me.
Finally someone else said it.
Just adding that since they game Bazzite is maybe the better option but still fedora based.
But I’ve too seen compatibility issues recently with Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros, but not really with Debian based ones (yes, even though Ubuntu is based on Debian). I don’t know why, but even MX has given me less troubles recently than Mint (not that I’d recommend base MX though - I just heavily customized it so that it’s elderly friendly, so people who basically barely can use a browser and have poor eyesight).
I moved an older relative to Mint and I regret it. Weird lagging and display server crashes sometimes, probably because of X11. Plus it’s release cycle is very slow, so old packages. Ubuntu is far from my favorite distro, but at least it uses a DE with first class Wayland support.
@BlameTheAntifa @TheMilk same here, no mint, it is too messy