As all the cool kids keep saying, now is a great time to try out Linux.
No, I’m not recommending a distro for you, that is what DuckDuckGo is for.
DuckDuckBuntu?
Ubuntu is actually falling down the ad hole lately. It’s not great, even if you leave out the technical issues that the distribution leans into these day (snaps, amongst other things)
Literally why I chose Debian as my first distro for daily use.
Oh god, what did they do? Do they show ads on the gui?
In the system update dialog, you’ll see something like:
You’re not getting 53 critical security updates! Join Ubuntu Pro to keep yourself safe!
Ubuntu Pro is a subscription service.
This is seriously at the level of Norton “AntiVirus”, and it’s truly absurd and nakedly predatory.
I see they have the lobes for business.
Wait, they’re withholding security updates unless you pay? Hope they go bankrupt.
does kubuntu have the same issues? kinda want to go for a debian or ubuntu based kde distro and kubuntu is always highly recommended.
Kubuntu is just an Ubuntu spin, so I’m gonna say yeah, probably. If you really like Deb flavored distros these days, just go with the OG.
way too difficult to set up, i don't have a lot of free time so i need an "out of the box" distro
LMDE? The comfort of Mint with the stability of Debian. I picked it for my wife, who doesn't want to mess with configs and tinkering around. I play tech support for her system when something goes wrong though.
Seconding LMDE, been on it for a year on my study laptop. Literally never ever had a problem so far, and being an "out of box" distro there's minimal work needed to daily drive.
i currently use mint and only want to switch because cinnamon has this weird thing when you have a game running, window resizing is laggy. i often have btd6 running when I'm working so it bugs me. kde doesn't suffer from that.
Q4OS is debian with KDE and it's made for ex-Windows users
never heard of this one. definitely going to try it!
Debian is honestly pretty trivial to set up these days.
If you’re open to trying Fedora, I’ve been running F40KDE and Kinoite on two of my main personal laptops and I love them
i have tried fedora and nobara a few times but they randomly make my hdd unmountable and it's difficult to get it back. even after installing a different distro.
Can you run windows games on linux without it being resource intensive like using a vm or something?
Gaming in Linux on a windows VM isn’t viable for most systems. Most games run really well through proton with little to no effort. Some even run better on Linux than on windows. You just can’t play a lot of the most popular competitive online games because it flags their anti cheat.
Most of the time, yeah. Check ProtonDB for the particulars regarding any particular game. Games with intrusive DRM or anticheat probably won't work though.
Yes, some on steam, others on wine/bottles/lutrix/etc
Running software designed and compiled only for XYZ system is always going to incur overhead when translating or emulating to ABC system.
Game authors and publishers who only build for Windows are giving users a big middle finger and essentially saying "You must suffer through Windows in order to enjoy our product hassle-free lol".
What worked for me (which may or may not work for others) was to wean myself away, at first with only playing games that were built natively for linux.
Then moving the line in the sand to only DRM-free native linux builds.
Then advancing to only open source games.
These days, I just don't even play games and I find that it really frees up what kinds of things I want to do on my computers, such as daily driving exotic CPU architectures (and also I have so much more free time for actual meaningful pursuits like learning new skills).
Many distros nowadays have decent support forngaming accessories and a mix of Lutris and Steam/Proton have given me a near seemless experience on Linux. Smooth enough for my partner to hop ship to Bazzite for their ROG Ally.
Sometimes there are small quirks, like controllers on Bazzite just work™ but on Vanilla OS 2 my xbox controller wouldn't be recognized by Steam or games wirelessly (wired worked) but my DS5 controller worked flawlessly (including the trackpad that I never got to work on Windows).
Most of the Steam library will work well and ProtonDB is a great resource for compatibility. Furthermore there are Decky plugins for setups like Bazzite and Chimera that embed the ProtonDB rating into the Steam game page.
I love how they make people choose their distro rather then "ubuntu or bust" they still used ubuntu for their guide but yk it doesn't matter that much
Eh, just look up a reputable YouTube channel and guide. Chatbots can randomly make dumb mistakes that a total newbie won't recognize, potentially causing them a lot of headache.
And no, I'm not one of those diehard anti-AI people. My work has its own custom GPT model and I utilize it almost daily for menial tasks. But even having it generate script boilerplate and whatnot, I sometimes notice it writing stuff that won't work and/or does it in a really verbose/weird way.
You cant ask a youtube channel what distro best suit your specific usecase.
Also realistically no one wants to sit trough a video to check out a strangers recommendation for linux.
I do get that people are worried about the incompetence of AI but this topic and procedure is so bog standard i have more faith in chatgpt doing it then a human.
If you dont believe me, try it.
Ask chatgpt/claude/gemini “How to make a bootable linux media from windows” you will have to spend a long time trying before you find it fails on something this boilerplate.
You don't need to ask, as there are tons of well made videos giving great breakdowns of the most popular distros and the pros/cons of each while also showing demonstrations of a user session within them. To me, that's far more informative than a broad, generalized typed paragraph. However, I will concede that I'm more a visual, hands-on learner, so this is subjective.
And I agree, creating a boot disk is very simple and straightforward. The likelihood of GPT/Gemini getting it wrong is low. Especially Gemini/Copilot, as they basically just regurgitate the top tech site articles in this context and will cite the links it used (e.g. stack exchange, Tom's hardware, etc). But like I said above, it can still happen, so why not just look up the source material for something so simple? I doubt any time is really saved by using AI in this instance. Not to mention, if you're more of a visual person, it's nice to see someone else give a demonstration.
To each their own, though. Neither method is necessarily the wrong/better one.
It's crazy how different people are. The idea of sitting through a video to do something like this is so painful to me. Like I find it useful for physical things where seeing the motion can be helpful, but I still generally find doing things that way awful. Please, please, please just give me written instructions for things. Especially if I'm going to need to refer back to it a few times (e.g. there are multiple steps that take a bit of time).
It depends on the context for me. Repairing/replacing something on like my lawnmower or car? Video all the way. A simple CLI command/process? A quick write-up is often preferred for me.
You quickly can skim text for relevance to your needs/situation, hard to do that with a video.
Do chatbots provide accurate and safe instructions for all steps? Or will it mix different instructions for different scenarios?
Ai is not that good unless it's like hugginchat where it scraps sites for info and stuff
I dislike AI but I think you’re unfairly downvoted. I find it helpful for ensuring I’m taking care of necessary steps in a common, low-stakes procedure. It’s useful to generate sequences of terminal commands as well, though it’s important to check and understand what you’re doing.
People are right to be worried and skeptical about AI
I honestly have gotten to hate how incompetent it often is because i do regularly try to squeeze something actual intelligent from it.
But other then that its like you said. Its very good for
Low stake, common, boilerplate procedures and providing clear personalized instructions for non-techies. (and forgetful nerds).
Credit where credit is due & can’t argue with results.
As all the cool kids keep saying, now is a great time to try out Linux.
No, I’m not recommending a distro for you, that is what DuckDuckGo is for.
DuckDuckBuntu?
Ubuntu is actually falling down the ad hole lately. It’s not great, even if you leave out the technical issues that the distribution leans into these day (snaps, amongst other things)
Literally why I chose Debian as my first distro for daily use.
Oh god, what did they do? Do they show ads on the gui?
In the system update dialog, you’ll see something like:
Ubuntu Pro is a subscription service.
This is seriously at the level of Norton “AntiVirus”, and it’s truly absurd and nakedly predatory.
I see they have the lobes for business.
Wait, they’re withholding security updates unless you pay? Hope they go bankrupt.
does kubuntu have the same issues? kinda want to go for a debian or ubuntu based kde distro and kubuntu is always highly recommended.
Kubuntu is just an Ubuntu spin, so I’m gonna say yeah, probably. If you really like Deb flavored distros these days, just go with the OG.
way too difficult to set up, i don't have a lot of free time so i need an "out of the box" distro
LMDE? The comfort of Mint with the stability of Debian. I picked it for my wife, who doesn't want to mess with configs and tinkering around. I play tech support for her system when something goes wrong though.
Seconding LMDE, been on it for a year on my study laptop. Literally never ever had a problem so far, and being an "out of box" distro there's minimal work needed to daily drive.
i currently use mint and only want to switch because cinnamon has this weird thing when you have a game running, window resizing is laggy. i often have btd6 running when I'm working so it bugs me. kde doesn't suffer from that.
Q4OS is debian with KDE and it's made for ex-Windows users
never heard of this one. definitely going to try it!
Debian is honestly pretty trivial to set up these days.
If you’re open to trying Fedora, I’ve been running F40KDE and Kinoite on two of my main personal laptops and I love them
i have tried fedora and nobara a few times but they randomly make my hdd unmountable and it's difficult to get it back. even after installing a different distro.
Not sure I'd want to see that, tbh. It would only introduce more avenues for DDG to make questionable choices when they're already on thin ice.
DuckDuckMint
Mint or Fedora. KISS.
Don't worry, everyone else does
Can you run windows games on linux without it being resource intensive like using a vm or something?
Gaming in Linux on a windows VM isn’t viable for most systems. Most games run really well through proton with little to no effort. Some even run better on Linux than on windows. You just can’t play a lot of the most popular competitive online games because it flags their anti cheat.
Most of the time, yeah. Check ProtonDB for the particulars regarding any particular game. Games with intrusive DRM or anticheat probably won't work though.
Yes, some on steam, others on wine/bottles/lutrix/etc
Running software designed and compiled only for XYZ system is always going to incur overhead when translating or emulating to ABC system.
Game authors and publishers who only build for Windows are giving users a big middle finger and essentially saying "You must suffer through Windows in order to enjoy our product hassle-free lol".
What worked for me (which may or may not work for others) was to wean myself away, at first with only playing games that were built natively for linux.
Then moving the line in the sand to only DRM-free native linux builds.
Then advancing to only open source games.
These days, I just don't even play games and I find that it really frees up what kinds of things I want to do on my computers, such as daily driving exotic CPU architectures (and also I have so much more free time for actual meaningful pursuits like learning new skills).
Many distros nowadays have decent support forngaming accessories and a mix of Lutris and Steam/Proton have given me a near seemless experience on Linux. Smooth enough for my partner to hop ship to Bazzite for their ROG Ally.
Sometimes there are small quirks, like controllers on Bazzite just work™ but on Vanilla OS 2 my xbox controller wouldn't be recognized by Steam or games wirelessly (wired worked) but my DS5 controller worked flawlessly (including the trackpad that I never got to work on Windows).
Most of the Steam library will work well and ProtonDB is a great resource for compatibility. Furthermore there are Decky plugins for setups like Bazzite and Chimera that embed the ProtonDB rating into the Steam game page.
DuckDuck OS
Actually to find a good distro and instructions on how to install them i recommend using an ai chatbot.
Majority of people have never created a bootable media but its easy enough ai can guide them step by step.
Or just use one of the hundreds of guides the AI was trained on.
https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Linux
I love how they make people choose their distro rather then "ubuntu or bust" they still used ubuntu for their guide but yk it doesn't matter that much
Eh, just look up a reputable YouTube channel and guide. Chatbots can randomly make dumb mistakes that a total newbie won't recognize, potentially causing them a lot of headache.
And no, I'm not one of those diehard anti-AI people. My work has its own custom GPT model and I utilize it almost daily for menial tasks. But even having it generate script boilerplate and whatnot, I sometimes notice it writing stuff that won't work and/or does it in a really verbose/weird way.
You cant ask a youtube channel what distro best suit your specific usecase.
Also realistically no one wants to sit trough a video to check out a strangers recommendation for linux.
I do get that people are worried about the incompetence of AI but this topic and procedure is so bog standard i have more faith in chatgpt doing it then a human.
If you dont believe me, try it.
Ask chatgpt/claude/gemini “How to make a bootable linux media from windows” you will have to spend a long time trying before you find it fails on something this boilerplate.
You don't need to ask, as there are tons of well made videos giving great breakdowns of the most popular distros and the pros/cons of each while also showing demonstrations of a user session within them. To me, that's far more informative than a broad, generalized typed paragraph. However, I will concede that I'm more a visual, hands-on learner, so this is subjective.
And I agree, creating a boot disk is very simple and straightforward. The likelihood of GPT/Gemini getting it wrong is low. Especially Gemini/Copilot, as they basically just regurgitate the top tech site articles in this context and will cite the links it used (e.g. stack exchange, Tom's hardware, etc). But like I said above, it can still happen, so why not just look up the source material for something so simple? I doubt any time is really saved by using AI in this instance. Not to mention, if you're more of a visual person, it's nice to see someone else give a demonstration.
To each their own, though. Neither method is necessarily the wrong/better one.
It's crazy how different people are. The idea of sitting through a video to do something like this is so painful to me. Like I find it useful for physical things where seeing the motion can be helpful, but I still generally find doing things that way awful. Please, please, please just give me written instructions for things. Especially if I'm going to need to refer back to it a few times (e.g. there are multiple steps that take a bit of time).
It depends on the context for me. Repairing/replacing something on like my lawnmower or car? Video all the way. A simple CLI command/process? A quick write-up is often preferred for me.
You quickly can skim text for relevance to your needs/situation, hard to do that with a video.
Do chatbots provide accurate and safe instructions for all steps? Or will it mix different instructions for different scenarios?
Ai is not that good unless it's like hugginchat where it scraps sites for info and stuff
I dislike AI but I think you’re unfairly downvoted. I find it helpful for ensuring I’m taking care of necessary steps in a common, low-stakes procedure. It’s useful to generate sequences of terminal commands as well, though it’s important to check and understand what you’re doing.
People are right to be worried and skeptical about AI
I honestly have gotten to hate how incompetent it often is because i do regularly try to squeeze something actual intelligent from it.
But other then that its like you said. Its very good for Low stake, common, boilerplate procedures and providing clear personalized instructions for non-techies. (and forgetful nerds).
Credit where credit is due & can’t argue with results.