Hello there!
After some lurking on r/Unixporn and its Discord, I’m more and more tempted to try Linux as a daily driver. While I’m by no means a pro, I’ve been using WSL at work the past year and generally I can fiddle around finding solutions when something doesn’t work.
These being said, the main requirements I would have from a distro is to be able to run League of Legends (saw that it’s pretty straight forward using Lutris) and not be insanely complex from the get-go (wouldn’t want to jump straight into something like Arch), I intend to use something like Hyprland.
So far I am split between OpenSuse Tumbleweed, NixOS, Fedora and EndeavourOS, but would gladly hear alternatives.
LE: Read (and tried to reply to) most messages. I will come back with an update once I decide my pick and see how it goes. Thanks everyone!
Use Ubuntu until you have a first-hand reason why you should use something else.
It’s not perfect, but it’s still the 800 lb gorilla, and it’s what things have the least chance of not working with. It has the most eyes on it and the most immediate solutions when you google a problem.
If you don’t like Gnome, then use Kubuntu.
To add to this: Try to avoid adding software via the software center, instead prefer flatpak, appimage or plain .deb if there is no alternatives. (Application) software in the official repos is often outdated.
I also wanna stress the point that you should not only research different distros, but also whether you would prefer KDE or Gnome. There are other desktops, but for your first time, I’d go as mainstream as possible.
Have distro hopped over the years - most recently Manjaro to Fedora to Endeavour, but haven’t found the one that’s quite perfect for me.
That said, I’d make a few recommendations based on the person I’d be “marketing” to:-
New to Linux, looking for polish: Mint
Mint is built off the well-known Ubuntu, polished a step further. It’s in my experience the simplest to use and most generally polished of the Linux offerings. The community generally isn’t as catered to power users, but if you care more about your time than about customization, I’d recommend Mint. -
Looking for Stable/Modern, willing to jump thru a few hoops: Fedora
Fedora has come a long way over the years. It’s far more stable, polished, and accessible than ever before. I’d hazard to call it my top recommendation, BUT, third-party software management and installation can be something of a nightmare. COPR is approximately equivalent to the AUR of Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch below, but at this time very obtuse and difficult to learn or work with. Some day you’ll want a package that exists in COPR, and that day won’t be fun for you. -
Need apps you can’t find anywhere else: Endeavour/Manjaro
Forget bleeding-edge packages and rolling release - the Arch User Repository (AUR) is hands-down the greatest feature on offer from Arch-based distros. The AUR is a repository of packages created by users that aren’t supported by the main repos. If ever there’s a time you need a piece of software and you can’t find it anywhere else, the AUR’s your best bet.
That said, I found/find both Manjaro and now Endeavour to be a little rough around the edges, and the consequence of rolling-release and bleeding-edge software is a system that isn’t always working just right. -
Looking to learn, straight into the frying pan: Arch
Same benefits and drawbacks of Endeavour/Manjaro above, but if you want to set up your system service-by-service, as lean as you want, Arch is there for you. A great experience if you just need an excuse to “try” putting an OS together piece by piece, even if you don’t ultimately keep it in the long run.
Desktop Environments
The great DE debate. Nobody can tell you what’s right and wrong here, but I have a few general breakdowns of the “big three”.
GNOME: If simplicity and elegance is your style. You sacrifice customization potential for cohesion and polish.
KDE: Modern. Powerful. Usually polished out the gate. Can be a bit much if you’re trying to tweak it tho. My personal choice.
XFCE: Less modern, more friendly to lower-end systems.Whelp that’s it from me, hope it helps!
I would also throw PopOS next to Mint. Great for beginners, especially gamers.
Very useful reply, many thanks!
Great write-up. Arch was my first experience with Linux on the desktop, and I learned so much. Would highly recommend it, even if you don’t want to stick with it.
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As others have mentioned, Linux Mint is my preferred distro.
knubuntu is awesome if you like/need KDE, but Gnome works well enough for my needs these days.
I installed Linux Mint on a computer for my (computer illiterate) big brother a decade ago and I’m pretty sure he’s still running that computer. Just helped a veteran friend who had a 5 year old lenovo laptop dual boot a fresh copy of Linux Mint and he’s tickled - it’s restored function to his old laptop and it recognized all the hardware to my surprise - even when he tapped the screen and the touch screen responded (I was not expecting that, coming from Linux 10-15 years ago lol).
I’m seriously considering dual-booting to Linux mint myself as my high end Windows10 HP Envy 32-inch AIO PC has always been glitchy from day-one (computer will randomly freeze up once or twice a month with the GPU fan spinning up to high speed for no reason).
I hadn’t made the switch because Windows was easier from a productivity standpoint, but that has quickly changed. Windows is trying to inject more advertising while getting more buggy with every update. I’d rather play with a stable version of Linux Mint these days
Mint is excellent, its one of the most stable distros I have found as well as being fleshed out and easy to use. Would I prefer it was based on straight debian instead of ubuntu, yup. But it isnt so I just live with that.
Mint does have their Debian Edition https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
I have been using Mint as a daily driver for years now and loving it. Started off dual-booting with Win10, then pretty soon barely ever booted to Windows. I think it’s a nice place to start.
Kubuntu has never been stable for me, and it nuked my father’s installation a few months ago 3 days after installation.
Wow! Thanks for that feedback. I’ve heard about Kubuntu for years but never took the leap
I don’t think NixOS is a good option because you’ll have to learn a lot more than any other distro. Tumbleweed and EndeavourOS are good , for more graphical tools you could also consider Manjaro and maybe switch to unstable if you want more up-to-date packages, but I am a little biased as you can see.
Also heard about Manjaro, but from what I’ve seen several people say it’s not ideal.
The maintainers have slipped up a couple of times, mostly their website’s SSL certificate expiring, but it has never affected me really.
people will usually send you to this lovely website but it’s been a while since the maintainer’s last felony.
If you’re concerned about the stability of the AUR then you could simply switch Manjaro to Unstable, so that the repos are synched with Arch.
Manjaro considers Arch unstable, but itself stable?
Manjaro holds back packages for testing before releasing them, where Arch is just a firehose.
But then they release it and ask in the forums “We released a new update. Did we break anything for you?” instead of actually performing integration testing.
No matter how much you test, you’ll never hit every edge case.
Just let users tell you what problems they faced, put their feedback under the update page on the forum, users open the forum page for the update they’re about to install and they see all the problems people faced, it’s a very good idea.
No:
Unmodifed packages synced from Arch repo are considered stable as they have already been vetted by Archlinux Community.
It considers the AUR, and Manjaro’s new tools unstable when they enter the unstable branch. Please read the notes.
Thanks I have been using Manjaro for a few years now and like it, but didn’t know about those issues. Like how aur scripts are not checked. Maybe it’s time to switch around again.
The only reason I switched from Mint to Manjaro was that my new laptops video card wasn’t supported (like mint wouldn’t boot). But that was a few years ago, so it’s probably not an issue anymore.
I used to like Ubuntu but hated Unity and hate snap.
Linux Mint turned snap off back in 2020 and replaced the snap packages with debs again.
I couldn’t boot Linux Mint unless I switched from UEFI to Legacy so after 2months of using it I switched to Fedora and then Manjaro.
To this day Kali Linux and Linux Mint cannot boot on my device if it’s using UEFI. I tried searching around, asked on forums and nothing came out of that, it’s really weird.
Those all sound like good distributions to me. Although I would probably scratch NixOS off that list if you don’t want to start out with something complex. It is an extremely unique distro which does things very differently than most distros. Which isn’t a bad thing, but unless that’s specifically what you’re looking for, I’d probably choose something more traditional as first distro.
Thanks man ╰(´꒳`)╯
Of the remaining ones I’d say Fedora is probably the safest bet. Not as cutting edge as the other two, but well engineered and stable.
Rolling releases like Tumbleweed and Endeavour can be more interesting and partifularly good for gaming because they always have the newest stuff and patches and performance improvements. Which can also bite you a bit in the back though if you have an Nvidia graphics card. Nvidia doesn’t play too well with open source and they don’t put a lot of effort into it, so the newest versions of their drivers occasionally break or do stupid stuff. Which isn’t a big deal if you have a system that can rollback (tumbleweed can, dunno about endeavour) but might be a bit annoying sometimes
I’m going to suggest one I’m not seeing here; OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I cut my teeth on Tumbleweed for years, and it has the pros of a rolling release while YaST provides the tools needed to have a stable base that rivals that of Ubuntu. Gaming is extremely easy to get set up, and you can choose pretty much any major desktop, although I recommend XFCE.
I tried tumbleweed, but zypper was just agonizingly slow. Is there any way to speed up the updates?
Yes, set the right mirror for your repo. The closest one is usually the right one.
Yeah I love OpenSUSE
Of those I think I’d recommend Tumbleweed, it’s a great polished distribution with some extra helpful administrative tools (yast for instance). It’s rolling but feels as stable as a normal dist to me.
The others are far from bad though! I just have a soft spot for suse and opensuse :)
Ubuntu or pop_os could be nice starting choices as well since they’re so big and well supported.
Also recommend Tumbleweed. I’ve distro hopped for many years, and currently am using Tumbleweed and have no plans of leaving soon. It really is the best I’ve ever used.
I wouldn’t recommend doing a Hyperland setup right away on first time ever using linux. Just run with KDE or Gnome for a while until you’re comfy then you can try Hyperland. The reason I say this is check this page:
https://wiki.hyprland.org/Useful-Utilities/Must-have/
“Must Have
This page documents software that is critical / very important to have running for a smooth Wayland / Hyprland experience.
DEs like KDE / Gnome will do this automatically, Hyprland will not (because you might want to use something else)
A notification daemon
Starting method: most likely manual (exec-once)
Many apps (e.g. Discord) may freeze without one running.”So you have to do a LOT more setup and configs to get Hyperland up and running. Just use KDE lol. Tumbleweed rocks with Plasma.
Not really fancying about Ubuntu to be honest.
Do you have any Tumbleweed tips/hints? (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧
Not the other person, but openSUSE is amazing. You just have to add the Packman repos as explained on their wiki. Haven’t used it for gaming and such yet so can’t really give more specific tips regarding that.
I recommend Fedora. It’s rock solid while also having really up-to-date packages coming often. Not bleeding edge but deffo leading edge. Also has a decent amount of info online when you hit an issue.
I used to use Ubuntu but the older packages, and Canonical with their obsession with SNAP and becoming a baby Microsoft kept me away.
Arch is a good option and TONS of information online for help (some of the best) but it is a bit more DIY and is a rolling release so very up-to-date package but keep clear of Manjaro, just do base Arch. The folk managing it keep dropping the ball so not worth the headache
Mint or popos for pro nomie gamers…
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Mint is the best ubuntu derivative that I have seen and I use it for a lot of installs. Its easy to upgrade and maintain, easy to use, rock solid. Great overall distro for desktop or server
I switched from win11 to pop_os this week. I’ve had a good deal of linux exposure but most of that was in the '00s. As such I don’t have familiarity with any other distro in recent times, but I would not recommend people start out with pop. It feels not quite ready for prime-time yet. It would probably be perfect to try after you’ve had a bit of experience.
Thank you for heads up. What are your concerns?
I also recently switched and Pop was my first choice; however, I could not get it install, it would get stuck with some weird error where it could not load core files from my flash drive.
So I went Mint, no problems really besides having some BT disconnects from my xbox controller. Still working on fixing it.
Otherwise, I am doing what I need to do and gaming like a Chad. Kept Win10 for CoD and BF. However, I am not playing them much anymore, might just go full Linux over next few months.
It’s a pretty young distro so there’s some stuff missing or not working. My main issue (beyond struggling to install it due to a wrongly setup usb that would fail at the end of the install for no discernable reason) is window snapping not working properly on monitors in portrait orientation.
But I’ve had a few times where stuff should work but didn’t with no feedback from the OS. It feels like a beta version that’s almost ready for release.
NixOS is a bad choice for a new user. EndeavourOS is okay, but arch-based distros (even ones with nice graphical installers) can get overwhelming for a beginner if an update breaks something and you have to figure out why and fix it, which isn’t an irregular occurence for me. Wouldn’t recommend tumbleweed for similar reasons.
I think the best mix of easy customizability, beginner-friendliness, and stability are probably offered by fedora and mint, personally.
NixOS can become quite complex, so maybe stay away from it until you know more about how to manage your system ;)
The other options you’ve mentioned here are good, but EndeavourOS is based on Arch, so that may be contradictory to what you’ve said earlier.
From what I understood, while Endeavour is Arch-based, it has a more forgiving installation/learning curve(?)
I vote Fedora
I’ve tried lots of different ones. Arch is cool if you really wanna set up your system how you like it. But Fedora works well right out of the box and updates don’t break the system. Keep in mind… I’m a Gnome-ist. I think it’s the best WM for Linux.
Seconding Fedora, as it’s very polished while not adding extra cruft to the UI that isn’t needed. I honestly prefer apt as a package manager, but stick with Fedora because the user experience is just so darn good.
I’ll give a third to Fedora, it’s definitely a good option (though I’ll admit I prefer KDE to Gnome, so I tend to go with the Fedora KDE spin). I’d also agree with several of the other commenters suggesting Linux Mint. It’s a pretty good distro to get started on, and the Cinnamon desktop environment is reasonably familiar to those coming from a Windows background.
Ubuntu is the common bistro that everyone gets started on. Lots of advanced users continue to use it, because it works well.
Use Ubuntu or Mint or Pop_OS (both of which are modified varieties of Ubuntu). Watch some Youtube videos to compare them. Pop_OS is supposed to be particularly good for gaming, but I’m not sure why
Kubuntu or KDE Neon (also a 'buntu). I absolutely love KDE, and the Linux desktop experience in general has come a long, loooonnng ways in recent years.
Is Kubuntu with KDE backports or KDE Neon better?
Depends on if you want the new shiny on things other than KDE.
KDE Neon is Ubuntu 22.04.1 but the newest KDE stuff all the time. The base system won’t upgrade until 24.04.1 in November 2024. There’s still updates like a regular LTS though.
As you can see there’s lots of excellent choices. Check out distrosea.com if you want to get a feel for different ones without installing. FWIW I prefer Fedora and RPM based distros as I’ve found their hardware support to be a bit better than Debian based. This is just personal experience though so your’s may differ. Please report back on what you ultimately choose.
Definitely will come with an update after I choose something and see how it goes.
