Ah, OpenSuse. The distro with the package management that spams your drive full of unnecessary optional dependencies.
Would always recommend EndeavourOS.
Sadly true. When I installed texlive-base it tried to install like 300 recommended packages, I almost accepted D:
I’d still recommend it, I don’t know if you can change the default for recommended packages because aside from that, I actually love it.
Yesss! My first five minutes with OpenSuse.
I mean, you can change that behaviour somehow. But there are so many other small things like the constant vendor changes. Zypper is just so quirky. It’s a cool distro and to have a rolling release option like tumbleweed is always a big plus in my opinion, but I just wouldn’t recommend it to people who are not really eager to play around with their distro.
What I find weird about Tumbleweed is, that updating is not integrated into YaST or another UI. You have to use the commandline to keep your system up to date. That makes it exactly as inconvenient as Arch for newcomers, but Arch has a whole philosophy behind this while SuSE is typically very GUI oriented. It’s weird.
Tried it once and literally could not get nvidia drivers to install. Went straight back to endeavouros and continued to enjoy
Maybe you should have clicked on ‘nvidia repository’ in Yast. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Except that didn’t work
I installed Mint (no idea mint was old tbh) looked into Gentoo and tried the live boot USB option. 'This looks nice, no how do I install" The install option opened a web page (gentoo wiki) with several options for guides based on various permutations. All options send you in a ting without actually telling me how to install.
I went back to Mint as it does the few things I need a PC to do these days: -Some kind of office suite with spreadsheet and word processor -Steam -Netflix and Prime -Firefox
Added bonus is that it runs MegaMek natively AND indoor need to read pages of documentation, just click install.
Added bonus is that it runs MegaMek natively
This is always a fun thing to read in the wild. Keep on stompin’, MechWarrior! O7 (salute)
Gentoo might have been quite a leap! :p I wanna try it some day as a challenge but it’s def intimidating.
I run Tumbleweed on my main rig and love how crazy stable it is for being cutting edge. Endeavour OS is also cool for this. Both great communities too.
But agree with you on Mint. It’s just a really nice smooth experience. So far it’s on my “little media laptop I won’t update much, need to be reliable, and will probably hand to family on occasion”, and I can trust it’s just gonna work.
All options send you in a ring without actually telling me how to install.
Don’t know. I was installing Gentoo in 6th grade of school with poorly-translated gentoo handbook.
EDIT: had wrong quote
If it doesn’t provide a benefit for them, why should they bother? I understand why a teenager would, I would have as a teenager. But as an adult? Who got time for this?
Well you went from one of the easiest to one of the more complicated distros so thats not surprising. There’s a lot of distros thst are just as simple to install as mint, you don’t need to mess around with arch and gentoo unless you’re planning on becoming a real Linux enthusiast.
Why the fuck would you try Gentoo as a Linux noob? I am guessing no one told you it was for advanced Linux users only. Fedora and OpenSUSE are nowhere near as difficult to install as Gentoo, as they are made for normal users.
Gentoo was my second linux Distro ever some time in 2003 or 2004.
Installed it by printing out the full install doc, which was like 30 or 40 pages, and starting up a stage one install. I got through the entire install by following the instructions because the documentation was that good.
I remember having a problem and hopping on an irc chat to ask for help and people there being baffled about the basic level questions I was asking while having a working Gentoo install.
Yeah, even the “difficult” distributions tend to just be a matter of following instructions to get a working installation. Gentoo was a massive PITA to maintain though. Chances are I was missing some knowledge that would’ve simplified things, but I spent way too much time on maintenance for the system to actually be useful. Arch has been much kinder.
and starting up a stage one install.
Dear Faust.
Difficulty:
- Easy
- Medium
- Hard
- Nightmare
- > Novichok
I thought you went with minimalcd, opened handbook in links(browser) and installed stage3.
I remember having a problem and hopping on an irc chat to ask for help and people there being baffled about the basic level questions I was asking while having a working Gentoo install.
Self-perpetuating circle of “Gentoo is not for noobs”
Oh, you need media codecs out of the box to watch pretty much anything in your browser?
That takes Fedora out.
OpenSUSE has probably the most confusing install interface for a noob you’ll ever find. Which DE do I choose? What other software do I put in? How do I partition? Oh, I click a button here to make a user, or can I ignore it completely?
So much for OpenSUSE.
And don’t get me started on Arch. You’d be way better off pushing a new user to Manjaro but everyone’s got their panties in a twist about its devs.
Whatcha got now, big guy?
Are media codecs hard to install on Fedora? I haven’t daily driven Fedora in a while, but last I remember it was one of the top-level categories in GNOME Software. Click it then install all the things. Although I suppose if the user didn’t know what a media codec is that wouldn’t help them very much
Not anymore. They completely divested that off to having to get RPM Fusion repos set up and then manually install the codecs.
As another user said, Nobara does all this, and I use Nobara myself. But Fedora itself has made all that harder.
Honestly, Ubuntu and its variants are probably the best distros. It’s not great, it has its drawbacks, but to get people started, perfectly fine.
This is where Universal Blue and Nobara come in. They are made to be plug and play versions of fedora inc. media codecs, Nvidia, steam, and so on.
FWIW, +1 for Nobara. I think it’s an excellent turnkey Fedora for most purposes. But it’s a little chancy on being dependent on a single maintainer.
But Fedora itself isn’t noob friendly when you have to figure out how to add the non-free repos and install all the rest of the shit. Nobara takes care of that well.
How do I partition?
This can be said about any OS installer. Even Windows.
Not really
Endeavouros ofcourse! All the goodness of arch, but with the ease of installation of any other desktop based distro!
Agreed, this is the distro that worked best for my needs (modern security, without wanting to die from maintenance of that security)
Ubuntu is fine. Pop!_OS if you’re set on Flatpaks instead of Snaps.
The moemorphic character shown in the picture is Archchan, created by ravimo. I wonder why show her in a discussion about Mint?
I have no idea wtf you’re talking about
This was news to me as well, but I assume that the Arch Linux logo in question suggests that it might be strange to use an Arch Linux specific illustration, for something that isn’t mentioning Arch Linux.
Did that clear it up, or were you just being rude?
I don’t understand why people don’t go for something like ZorinOS or Nobara. Both work great out of the box with support for like everything.
To be fair the nobara website is very “pet project” both in the design and also in the frequent warnings about using it for anything real. Is a good distro tho, having said that.
None of them good for non techy people. I wouldn’t recommend mint. Gnome is the most friendly DE with pleasing defaults. There are many immutable flatpak distros coming with gnome. e.g.: Endless os which is pre installed on some asus laptops instead of Ubuntu for reason.
I feel like people have an interesting view of techy/advanced/etc
My view is that you need to pick something in line with your goals: some people may be techy but just need something to host files and a web browser and don’t care about new packages or whatever, or modern security or anything. I wouldn’t recommend mint or fedora for a gaming PC regardless of techiness, you know?
Our views can be compatible. Endless os is quite limited right now, but if flathub would have xampp, for example, that would be easily the simplest way to run a webserver. However, every techy person prefers docker, me too. It’s just not something that my mother can deal with. In general, linux is lacking these mother compatible apps where we have more advanced solution. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend endless and others in the category if the goal is to run a webserver.
Problems? ‘old’? I seem to need a little clarification.
By default Mint ships 3 years old kernel and a lot of hardware don’t work with it. Mint allows installing newer kernel easily but one must know that is the case.
Mint only works on X11. This is fine to some, but to others it’s a showcase of X shortcomings right away
I think the onboarding and new user experience for Mint could be better, but I think there’s one important thing that I think makes Mint a good intro distro: Its Ubuntu base.
If you look up guides for “linux” it usually gives instructions for Ubuntu, which usually also apply to Mint. Likewise, if you look for software downloads you tend to find Ubuntu debs.
I know flatpak fixes these issues to an extent, but I think we’re not there yet.
some of those ubuntu instructions that come up jn search results are from as far back as the mail order ubuntu cd era and installing debs directly is a slippery slope
I wish it shipped a newer kernel
They have a fairly new version called Edge that ships with a newer kernel (currently 6.5).
6.5 is not a new kernel though. I am on 6.9. Maybe they should move the normal release to 6.5 and make edge use the latest stable kernel or something.
Because people suggest distros based on their preference, not what is best suited in a given situation.
On one hand Mint is limited to X11 for now and surprise surprise “dealing with multiple monitors is horrible on Linux”. On other hand they’re on NVIDIA. This is close to not be the case, but X11 was a hard requirement for decades
I daily drive Optimus plus Wayland. Doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore.
Because choosing a distro to begin with isn’t easy. Ask ten people and you’ll get eleven suggestions.
I always suggest Mint Edge edition, that has a newer kernel, not the default Mint. But I still suggest Mint, because simply, it’s more user friendly than any of the other ones. It has gui panels for almost everything.
Because it is stable and works really well. It has GUI apps that are not only not broken but well designed and snappy.
Stable is not equivalent to “works well”. It is randomly frozen at some point, mostly not in contact with upstream devs, so you just have outdated packages.
OpenSUSE slowroll sounds like a way better model. Or maybe CentOS stream.
But it’s not randomly frozen, it’s tied to Ubuntu’s LTS builds. And they didn’t say “stable” is the same as “works well”, they said Mint is both (which is true from my experience at least)
If you need newer packages with Mint, Flatpak is a good way to go (yes it has its own issues, but they do work well for a lot of people)
It is randomly frozen as not all developers follow Ubuntus release schedule. They just release when it is ready.
Stability means backporting tons of bugfixes to tons of small packages and libraries. I dont think Ubuntu does that for enough packages, best example Plasma 5.27 on Kubuntu. I have reported over 200 bugs I guess and most of the newer ones are just fixed in Plasma 6.
Flatpak for sure is a good way, and if a distro is stable, they should only install Flatpaks.
It is not randomly frozen as Mint does follow Ubuntu’s LTS releases, every new version they put out is based on whatever the current Ubuntu LTS is. Their release cadence isn’t linked that closely as a new LTS usually takes a few months to spawn a new Mint release based on it, but they aren’t just freezing some arbitrary point in time of development.
If you mean Ubuntu is randomly frozen, it isn’t either. It follows a release schedule, determines a roadmap, and at a certain predetermined point in developing a new release, they do freeze for new versions so they can complete testing and ensure everything works together in time to release on schedule. It’s certainly not “random”.
And that’s also not what stability means. Stability means functionality doesn’t change, so an up to date Mint 21.3 installed on release is going to be the same as one installed and updated now, functionally speaking. This is accomplished by only backporting important security patches and bug fixes to the version of the software that’s used by the system rather than getting it with new versions where there are new features and changes to existing functionality that can break things based on the previous version. This does not mean it gets all fixes, just the ones they deem worth the effort of backporting.
Yes I think you mentioned the relevant points here. Ubuntu tests their preinstalled software, while there is tons more in the repos that is not as tested. Same with Mint.
And they backport only stuff they think is necessary. For example Plasma 5 is based on the EOL Qt5 and backporting things to Plasma 5 is nearly impossible as you need real Plasma devs and nobody really wants to do that.
Plasma 6 is really stable, 6.1 not so much, but the timing was not perfect. Simply because they do their release schedule as fixed as that.
It is a total pain if you simply want working software, as they may backport some stuff, but all the stuff not preinstalled, or that is very complex, will not get fixes.
This is the same with all stable distros, if the maintainers dont literally maintain all the software there is.
I mean, that’s definitely a downside to long term stable distros. So, basically, the choice is between that and a rolling release which has the downside of the possibility of things breaking on update and never really having an easily reproducible build
No, Fedora is semi-rolling with less random freezes. Regular Ubuntu is similar but just not Ubuntu please.
Fedora also had 13 months of support so staying on the older version gives an extra stability.
And then there is OpenSUSE slowroll, which is CI/CD with more testing
Ubuntu has a lot of “snappy” GUI apps as well…
You said the bad word that hipster Linux boi’s don’t like. I rarely have trouble our of Ubuntu. I’ve slowly eliminated most of the snaps. But its not cool for it to work. It has to be hyped. This is what they can’t stand.
Ubuntu is a lot of things but it isn’t snappy
Snappy and bloaty
Not slow and bloaty. I’m not sure why you think snaps are snappy. They aren’t.
I’m not sure why you think snaps are snappy. They aren’t.
It is pun. Snaps are bloaty and not snappy.
@Magnolia_
Cause Mint is an easy to use community distro.Linux users can’t even agree on what distro is actually beginner friendly, so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?
- Find a distro, run into problems
- Ask for help
- Get asked why the fuck you chose that distro when it’s obviously for super brains
- Repeat
Linux is a niche. Picking any distro that isn’t the most popular is going one step deeper into a niche. A niche, within a niche.
Just use the most popular distro… Ubuntu
Problem solved.
I fucking hate Ubuntu. Mostly because you’re right.
Linux is a niche
idk it seems pretty popular to me
Just use the most popular distro… Ubuntu
well linux is a extremely general component, and there are many linux based OS’s for different applications. Ubuntu might be user friendly on server(not sure) but on desktop is pretty trash for example (no flatpak, bad support for newer hardware).
you need to pick an OS that is user friendly for your usecase, there is no way to have one single OS to fit all possible needs. doesn’t matter what kernel it is based on.
Ubuntu isn’t the most popular and hasn’t been for a while. It actually has a lot of issues new users are likely to run into, including lots of spurious error messages. Apparently the top 5 according to distro watch is: MX Linux, Mint, EndeavorOS, Debian, and Manjaro.
So essentially debian, arch and ubuntu derivatives.
I’m sorry, I can’t believe that MX Linux and EndeavorOS are popular or recommended. I’ve never heard of those or seen any recommendations for that.
I’ve seen Mint recommended.
People pushing arch on newbies? Wtf?
If you haven’t heard of EndeavorOS that’s because you are out of the loop. Entirely your issue. It’s a much better alternative to Manjaro essentially.
Also that’s general popularity according to page hits, nothing to do with newbies. Newbies aren’t the majority of Linux users.
Not that there is anything wrong with recommending EndeavorOS to Newbies. The whole point of arch derivatives like that is to make installing arch simpler and easier for the user. Arch is actually a better base distro imo than say Ubuntu for this. It has packages for pretty much anything in the AUR, no digging up PPAs for everything. Likewise it’s all up-to-date too.
I don’t remember MX Linux ever being that popular before, but maybe I am out of the loop.
I know its one of the strengths of Linux, but I can’t help but laugh that the response to “you can’t agree on one, how can I?” is for several people to suggest several distros.
The solution is to not be cconfident and remain open minded. You can switch any time
The thing is, I don’t care to distrohop and experiment with this or that. I just want to use my computer. Until I see a distro that can convince me that switching will be actually painless (not ‘long time linux user painless’, but ‘casual new user that does more than just web browse’ painless) I’ll just use windows.
What would you need for convincing?
Specifically? I don’t know. It would likely help if the conversation around new user distros was a bit less of an argument or if the number of suggested distros was a bit less. It would help with the decision paralysis aspect of it at least. I see enough threads of experienced users troubleshooting more than I really want to deal with, I stopped maintaining my modded skyrim installation because I was fixing when I could be playing and I don’t like the idea of my whole computer being like that because I chose the wrong hardware (I have nvidia)
The simple way is to dual boot or even simpler, set up a Linux distro in a Windows VM.
Let’s you play/see if the distro works for you.
TBH, I’ve got 1 machine where Windows is more problematic than the Ubuntu that is setup to dual boot… Can’t bring myself to do a fresh install of Windows lol…
That’s really depending on your use cases, for example if I want to install distro for my grandma use Mint, for a graphic guy (as in this example) use Arch or Fedora (or even OpenSUSE), etc.
@Default_Defect @Magnolia_ The best Distro for beginners is the one, a friend or family member can give support.
I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my circle who even knows what Linux is.
You are on the path to be that family member or friend for someone else. Welcome.
You are on the path to be that family member or friend for someone else.
Linux users can’t even agree […] so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?
Easy. You make a post like the OP, count the positive mentions of distros in the comments, and bam, you have your distro of choice. It’s called the Linux newbie roulette and works kind of like the magic hat in Harry Potter that sorts you into your house.
It’s easy to install, it’s Ubuntu based which means stable and a wide variety of software and support. Cinnamon looks beautiful in Mint and works perfectly. Installing a deb is a breeze and using the App Store is way easier than using YAST. The cli commands are now easy to understand or remember compared to apt.
Fedora usb creation is a nightmare and can potentially f up your bios if something goes wrong. DNF is also but easy to understand or remember compared to apt.
Gnome is too barebones for a first time user whereas Cinnamon is feature rich and is themed very well. Plus great wallpapers are included. The lock screen wallpapers are easily changed and look great too.
As long as there is no shit Nvidia card the driver installation tends to work perfectly. Don’t use Nvidia people. They are a shit, unethical, don’t give a crap about Linux company. Use AMD.
And for Linux users who’ve been around longer, there’s Linux Mint Debian Edition which for us is even better because it’s not Ubuntu based but Debian based and stable.
I get the latest Firefox directly from Mozilla and any app I can’t find in Synaptics I can normally get in Flatpak. Works perfectly well for me. I highly recommend it.
Don’t use Nvidia people. They are a shit, unethical, don’t give a crap about Linux company. Use AMD.
Yeah if only VR would work hassle free without Nvidia… At this point it became a Stockholm situation for me
Fedora usb creation is a nightmare and can potentially f up your bios if something goes wrong.
I have to ask obvious question first. How?
It does some weird formatting to the usb stick. You literally have to use their tool to unformat it again otherwise it’s screwed. That’s been my experience.
I had an issue on my MacBook bios safety installing Fedora. Wouldn’t boot and even if I tried installing Ubuntu over it, still would not boot.
Had to reinstall Mac OS and have it repair the bios. Only after that could I get Linux installed and booting again.
I don’t know how they screwed it up but they did.
I’m not sure what you mean by broken bios. If you has broken bios, you wouldn’t be able to reinstall Mac OS.
Also any formatting tool in any OS should be able to turn bootable USB stick back to storage only USB stick. Windows, Linux, Mac, Haiku, *BSD, original Unix. Anything.
Mac OS doesn’t install like a traditional OS. It downloads an iso from the cloud, stores it locally and then installs itself. It lets you open a terminal and I put in some commands to clear and restore the bios before installing the OS.
Normally any formatting tool should work on the USB but Fedora does something to the USB that prevents that. It definitely ruined a usb 3 drive I had and no amount of formatting would get it to work properly until I used their Fedora usb tool.
They are doing something weird.
