Yeah I installed that one you’re thinking of.

  • slothrop@lemmy.caEnglish
    126·
    4 days ago

    I dual boot Arch and Arch, and I run an Arch hypervisor as well as an Arch vm in each Arch instance.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    Shout out to the CachyOS crew. Their Discord is helpful. (Booooo, Discord, I know, I know.) They’re friendly and helpful.

    • nonius@lemmy.zip
      4·
      3 days ago

      Can’t agree more. I posted about some strange performance issues last summer and Peter talked with me about it privately for a few hours until it was resolved. Ended up needing some kernel patches for my setup that went on to help with the next release

  • rodneylives@lemmy.world
    11·
    3 days ago

    If you’re new to Linux: Mint. Use Mint, with Cinnamon. Or MATE, if you’re hardware is older. It works just how you’d expect.

    There’s many other distros for other purposes. Bazzite has a lot of people who like it for games. If you really want to control EVERYTHING about your machine there’s Arch. If you want bleeding edge software and don’t mind/can fix the occasional problem caused by rolling releases then I suggest Manjaro.

    But most Windows refugees will be looking for something familiar that works and stays out of their face, and for that the simple answer is Mint.

      • reddit_sux@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        The hardest thing to installing linux is booting from usb. Windows makes you jump through hoops just to boot from usb. Rest is just clicking few buttons and waiting for few minutes.

      • aloofPenguin@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        From experience (this was a few years ago, but still holds up even today), yes. The GUI installer is very easy to use (there’s lots of visual stuff to). The one thing that the installer does better that the Debian installer, in my opinion, is partitioning (there’s more visual aids (a slider you can move around, I believe) (a disclaimer: this is basedoff of materials that i read online, not any personal experience)).

        If you want images and stuff, you can always look up ‘Calamares installer’ (which I believe is the installer Mint uses)

        Wish you the best of luck on your linux journey!

        E: disclaimer

  • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    4 days ago

    The one that makes you happy.

    ^Or at least overrides the desire to grab a sledgehammer when troubleshooting^

    • Ooops@feddit.org
      0·
      3 days ago

      rolling release (for gaming)

      Seriously… after all these years without some pesky version upgrade screwing things up I couldn’t bring myself to install a non-rolling distro on any device I actively use.

  • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    TL;DR: Ubuntu + KDE Plasma (=Kubuntu) + X11 (Wayland fucks with my Firefox)

    First thing to acknowledge about Linux is that you have 2 choices in front of you about how you want to configure your operating system:

    Distro, and desktop environment.

    A distro or distribution for short is the part of the operating system that runs programs, updates them, etc. A distro like Ubuntu will incorporate different code syntactically than another distro like Fedora, but will largely perform the same actions. For instance, to update all of your apps/programs in Ubuntu, you would run sudo apt-get update. To do the same thing in Fedora, you would run sudo dnf update. Other than that, different distros might be optimized for some things over others. Bazzite and SteamOS are distros that optimize for gaming, while Debian is optimized for long-term stability for things like servers.

    Desktop environment (DE) on the other hand is all about what you see on your screen. It’s the visual portion of your operating system. In my opinion, the choice of DE for you comes down to what’s comfortable to use and/or what you grew up with previously. So if you grew up using Windows computers, then DEs like KDE Plasma or Cinnamon would work for you. If you grew up on Mac computers instead, Gnome would be your best choice.

    For me, I got exposed to Linux with my Steam Deck, so I wanted to mirror the Deck’s Desktop Mode on my laptop. The Steam Deck uses Fedora as the distro and KDE Plasma as the DE. I changed the distro for my new Framework laptop to Ubuntu because I’m more familiar with that, having used Ubuntu computers in middle and high school and dabbling with Ubuntu virtual machines on Windows in the past. KDE Plasma is chill because it reminds me of Windows the most.

    And of course, distro and DE aren’t the only choices you have on Linux… You have your display server engine like X11 or Wayland, and the seemingly limitless assortment of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) alternatives to your favorite apps/programs on Windows/Mac/Android/iOS.

    • coaxil@lemmy.zip
      6·
      3 days ago

      Solid write up!! One correction though, steam deck uses their own version of arch for the distro, Bazzite is running Fedora under the hood though.

            • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
              3·
              3 days ago

              Funny, because I had the opposite problem with my laptop… Bazzite couldn’t seem to keep the nvidia gpu happy and working so I switched to Garuda and it hasn’t had a problem gaming since.

              I love Linux, but hate the user-to-user inconsistency - it really makes answering the #1 question “which distro should I use” basically impossible to answer. Go download all of them that sound interesting and put them on flash drives and try them out in live environment - narrow down to the ones you like the look of the most, and then install them and try it out and see if you can do what you need or not. It’s not a difficult process but it is a process and there is no simple answer.

  • Klnsfw 🏳️‍🌈@lemmynsfw.com
    3·
    2 days ago

    Any popular non-specialized version will be perfect.

    For a new user, the internal differences will be imperceptible, the same applications will be available, and community support will be there.

    If you can, install Virtual Box on your current operating system and test the distributions you are considering to see if there is one whose default interface you like best.

    I use Mint/Cinnamon.

  • DFX4509B@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    26·
    4 days ago

    Mint is pretty much the de facto recommendation for absolute beginners freshly moving away from Windows right now, but LMDE especially will be subject to dealing with older software.

    Otoh, any of the Puppy distros are a great option for genuinely old hardware; think AM2+/775 or older, that a lot of heavier distros may or may not struggle on.

    • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      6·
      4 days ago

      Having Socket 775, Puppy Linux and genuinely old hardware in the sentence shook me.

      I still remember being in high school playing Minecraft on those Optiplexes, and even before that playing Poptropica and CoolMathGames…

        • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          3 days ago

          Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with you, more so making a comment on how it never occurred to me they were that old today.

          That being said, by the time I was playing with 775 computers they were pretty out of date (2013) and by 2015 all of those machines were replaced at my school. So in a rational sense that explains the time disparity I feel for Socket 775.

    • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      3 days ago

      The only thing I would like to add to mint is more folder colors.

      It’s soo solid, good and stable (as it’s Linux eh), I’m still a recovering windozer.

    • Bobo The Great@startrek.website
      1·
      3 days ago

      but LMDE especially will be subject to dealing with older software

      Are you sure about this? As far as I know, debian modernized their repos quite a bit even compared to ubuntu, that also sparked some controversy from debian long time fans especially because they wanted more dated, stable software. Never used LMDE though, so I’m not sure if it applies