Hey all! I’ve lurked here for a while and not really posted anything, but here goes.
Title says most of it. I’m a hardware nut with a little programming background knowledge, who built my own beefy desktop about 3 years ago. I started on Windows 10, but I made the switch a few months ago and haven’t looked back. I was worried about how much trouble I might have with Linux given my limited software background, and picked more beginner-friendly distros to start out. I toyed with Ubuntu for the first couple weeks before switching to Mint, and I’ve now been a happy Mint user for several months with no big hiccups. I’m a little bolder and wiser now, though, and I feel like I can still get more out of Linux by jumping to a more unstable and tweakable distro. I was hoping you’d have some suggestions - and knowing the nature of the Linux community, lots of options to consider. :)
Here’s what I’d like in a distro:
- Tweakable. I like having lots of settings, and one of the things I liked most about Mint was how much more customization I could get than Windows. I like config and setting things up to my unique tastes, and knowing that many people say this is a weaker aspect of Mint, I’m interested in what other distros have to offer.
- GUI-friendly. I’d like to learn the Terminal, but I’m not confident enough in it just yet to use it for everything. Making my GUI look good and setting it up to fit my tastes are also important to me, and I liked Cinnamon’s slick UI/UX features like Hot Corners and panel applets. I don’t necessarily want something that imitates Cinnamon OR Windows, or even need anything outstanding in a UI, but having something more than Spartan would be much appreciated.
- Well-documented. I’m still new to Linux; I’ll need a lot of help getting used to its quirks. I’ve been interested in Arch because of what people say about its documentation. A good wiki to follow and readily available answers for my nooby questions may be the deciding factor on whether I stick with a distro and spin/flavor/etc or move on.
- Reasonable gaming compatibility. My library is small, I don’t play a lot, and all the games I’m serious about run with only a couple hiccups on Mint with Proton, Lutris, and Mesa. Most of what I do is browse the Internet, write in LibreOffice or equivalent, check my email in Thunderbird or equivalent, and maybe open GIMP or a game I’m not so serious about how my games run, I just wouldn’t want to daily drive a distro that’s handily much worse than Mint for gaming, and would prefer a rolling distro or one with frequent updates, so I have the latest drivers. Anything significantly better for gaming is a plus, not expected. I’ve been interested in Nobara and Arch for different reasons, but I’d like to look at all my options before I pick one, including other distros I haven’t heard of or looked into. Thoughts?
Sounds like you should just use Mint, especially if you tried and like it. It’s customizable, GUI friendly, it’s based on Ubuntu so most guides for either will work, and you can download Steam to it and play native games (or Windows games through Proton).
I don’t know what you’re looking for, that Mint doesn’t provide. You can download different DEs or window managers, you can write your own bash scripts, and the core functionality for regular use is already there.
The only two draws that are really pulling me away from Mint are my taste for a rolling release model and my preference to learn the terminal if it’s there. I’m no power user just yet, but I’m determined to learn to use the tools available to me in the Terminal for if/when my GUI tool inevitably breaks. Having a fallback is always nice… but dual booting into EndeavourOS or Manjaro is a good motivator to get acquainted with the terminal, and quick, which is a level of effort I’m not at all opposed to and for knowledge I see as very helpful; knowledge I feel I’d take much longer to get in a distro that’s well-cloaked in GUI like Mint. Taking this advice in stride, though; I’ll certainly be hanging onto the foothold I have in Mint until I get confident with Arch-based and can personally assess my options with my own experience in both, whenever that (hopefully!) happens. :-)
eh, i am a firm believe in if it aint broke, dont fix it.
im still on mint for app curation/compatibility. i have yet to have a process/task/server product not function as i need it to on mint. im up to 6 machines and a few ‘servers’.
Something with KDE would be ideal for you. I personally use fedora, as it has a very modern yet fairly stable software cycle with one major release every semester
I can’t speak to Nobara, but Arch with KDE would be my vote if tweaking, documentation, and freshness (with potential instability) are the priorities.
Arch wins with respect to documentation; hands down, it’s the best documented Linux distro in existence. KDE provides a ton of customization via GUI, and gaming is easily obtainable and quite good on any distro, largely due to Flatpak.
Where you might run afoul is the command line. I couldn’t imagine running Arch without regular terminal use, but I’m sure you could get by for most tasks once KDE is up and running.
If you’re looking for commercial games on Linux, Steam has pretty much solved this with the “Steam Play” compatibility feature, which uses a customized version of WINE to run Windows games. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 runs perfectly. It should work anywhere Steam does.
Baldur’s Gate 3 runs perfectly
Yeah, but jesus fucking christ I’m in pain right now trying to run some mods because of dotnet8.
You sound like a future Arch user, BTW
From what you describe you’re still a Linux beginner so it’s going to be a big hike in difficulty if you switch to Arch. Stick to Mint and keep customizing your desktop and using Linux for now. The desktop environments are the same on every distro, there’s nothing that you can do on Arch that you can’t do on Mint.
You can of course try Arch or any distro side by side with Mint, in a VM or a container or on another partition, just don’t nuke your Mint install yet.
Popos is coming our a new desktop environment this year. Many Linux enjoyer’s are looking to see how that goes.
But yeah as others have said. Mint is a great distro. If it works, why fuck with it?
Update 2: After trying out EOS, Arch, Manjaro, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Universal Blue, among many other options, I’ve come to the decision that I’m okay with sticking to Mint for now on my main desktop and setting up UBlue Aurora on my work laptop, but might consider switching to Kubuntu or Fedora if I want something similar at work and at home (one of my main draws away from Mint was that it didn’t offer a KDE option), or to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if I must have a rolling distro for some reason. Thank you all for your guidance, and happy distro hopping!
Thank you for the update!
Could you elaborate upon your decision-making?
Tweakability isn’t a weaker aspect of Mint. Cinnamon has fewer options than KDE, but more than many. The Xfce and Mate variants also offer a lot of options, with sane and usable defaults.
Anything with KDE will have customization options up the wazoo. The rest isn’t so different between distributions, especially if you aren’t trying to use the terminal much.
I toyed with Ubuntu for the first couple weeks before switching to Mint, and I’ve now been a happy Mint user for several months with no big hiccups. I’m a little bolder and wiser now, though, and I feel like I can still get more out of Linux by jumping to a more unstable and tweakable distro.
Stick with mint.
This is exactly why I hate it when people describe some distros as “beginner friendly”. Because they’re also “expert friendly”. There isn’t anything you can’t do with Mint that you could do with another distro.
Okay, there will be people disagreeing with me, but I can’t let a new user be misled by us nerds talking distros all day.
So, you want to choose a distro because you expect it to do things differently than your current one? Thing is: Ultimately, they (mostly) don’t differ that much, really. There are extremely few things one distro can do that you cannot do in any other distro. Yes, some files will be in different places, they might use special versions for some packages (which often can be overridden) or use older and more stable versions of stuff (Debian). Yet, in the end, they are all the same OS. They all use the same window managers, the same kernels, the same drivers (mostly), the same logic behind many things. Another distro only feels really different, when you know a lot about the ins and outs of Linux systems. If you don’t, the difference will often be that you have to type either “pacman” or “apt”, or either change /etc/program.conf or /etc/program.d/foo.conf.
Play with the distro you already have and like. You ain’t missing anything. Just don’t get the wrong idea that Distros are like windows: monolithic monsters that can’t be really changed. Like mint but want Gnome as window manager? Go for it. Dislike the way the standard terminal software does colors? Get another one. Don’t like how Program X does some GUI thing? There will almost always an alternative that just plugs into your system exactly as the preinstalled one did.
A distribution is basically just a pre-selection of packages that can be changed at will. Hell, you could in theory get pacman on Debian or Apt on Arch. I don’t know why you’d want to, but in theory you could.
Don’t waste your time reinstalling your machine. Play with the things you already have!
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and you’ve just answered my question so clearly! Thank you.
Glad I could help :)
Well said. Also, “tweakability” is ultimately going to be the same for any distro. Like you said the more beginner-friendly ones like Mint just start with some common tweaks already in place.
OP, do you know about GNOME extensions? It’s not something the Jedi will usually tell you about. But it’s a great start to the rabbit hole for newbies.
Great points, all in this thread! Yes, I’m aware of GNOME extensions, and I’m considering sticking with Mint more seriously now, given the response. I think the broader point here is very sage advice, and most users at this point in their Linux journeys, including me, need to hear that. I do intend to try out other distros in a VirtualBox VM for at least a week or so before nuking my current Mint install - however long it takes for me to be sure it’s a better fit than Mint, which I imagine that many candidates won’t be. For instance, I’ve decided from a quick try at Arch in a VM that it’s still a good ways over my head - and may never be right for me, which is fine. I can say I’ve tried it now, and trying different things is good. Such is the nature of the beast! :-)
I’m not expecting a huge difference between my Mint Cinnamon and something like Manjaro KDE Plasma (the most interesting option to me right now.) I’m a tinkerer at heart, though, and while I’m not experienced enough with Linux yet to appreciate the differences for what they are, I do fancy myself the kind of person to care about those things… as soon as I figure them out, that is. :-)
While I understand now that I’m unlikely to see much of a UX change by hopping distro - thanks all! - I’m now mostly interested in an Arch-derived distro like Manjaro because I feel like its rolling release model is better suited to my personal tastes than Mint and the Ubuntu umbrella’s stable releases, good as Mint has been to me. It’s largely a preference thing for me, though, and I’ll be investigating further before deciding whether it’s what I want.
I wonder what I keep doing wrong with Linux mint. It just doesn’t work for me lol. But I hope it works better for you!
It definitely helps that I’m on very compatible hardware (all AMD) :-) But I was also lucky not to have any of the installation hiccups many seem to, just make bootable drive with Rufus/Balena, launch from in BIOS, profit - maybe some people have a green thumb for their distros of choice, who’s to say?
happy Mint user for several months
In this case I recommend Mint.
Bazzite. Low friction, all the goodness.
