People doing the 30 days linux Challenge are having several problems because of Mint's old packages and technology. Why people still recommend it when there is Fedora and Opensuse with KDE and Gnome?

Does that include support for variable refresh rate with multiple monitor (Freesync in my case).

Yes

Cinnamons compositor doesn't turn off for games (it's supposed to but has been bugged for years) which costs you fps.

Playing Alan Wake 2 at launch was only possible with the latest Mesa drivers compiled from the AUR due to some graphics features that it required.

It doesn't just cost FPS. It straight up breaks some games that run fine on other distros.

Does it still have that feature that kills and restarts cinnamon when memory leaks start getting to be too much? I honestly had to laugh at that when that was introduced.

No clue. Haven't used it in years. I was done when I went looking for a fix for the compositor thing and found a years-old open bug report.

wait is THAT why my mint edge iso randomly fucking sends me back to login screen??

I assume compiling Mesa is rather difficult to set up? For reference I've not bothered to try and compile Lutris or Wine.

With AUR it's as easy as installing any other package, actually.

You just install the git version from AUR.

Installing Arch appears to be more complex than Mint's Click Yes x4 GUI. Should I expect almost everything to just work after install?

Not even close, if you actually install barebones arch, then barebones arch is exactly that, barebones. You wont even have a DE.

Endeavour is what you want. It's just straight up arch, but with all the stuff you'd want to set up anyway done for you.

And if you want an "app-store" style app to browse packages with, and not fiddle with the command line to manage packages, install pamac. It can be expanded with AUR and flatpak support.

If I knew what parts I most wanted then maybe I could do bare arch but I guess Endeaver is the way to ho.

Well, Endeavour is just arch. If you want, you can achieve the same install that has only the things you need, by removing things instead of just adding.

IMO it starts off closer to the config most people want, so it's less work to take it the rest of the way.

What should I use to install a program on Endeavour? Yay? Aur?

Pacman is the actual system package manager.

Yay is an AUR helper, a program that automates all the steps of installing something from the AUR.

The AUR or Arch User Repository is a way for individuals in the community to easily distribute software, or create software installers, without going though the work of getting something into the official repos.

Here's the first thing I do on a new system, yay -S pamac. This will install pamac, a GUI for browsing, installing and uninstalling packages. (Both normal repos and AUR)

Generally, packages from the AUR get compiled by your system and then installed. This can be really slow, hence there is often a "-bin" version of packages that installs a pre-compiled binary.

You can also find "-git" versions of packages, these install the very latest version directly from the development repo.

Looks like mid-to-high-level difficulty if you really want to build from source, due to multiple complex interdependent configuration flags that have to match your hardware, and the need to check a kernel option or two. (Based on the Gentoo ebuild for mesa 24.1.2).

Older packages, but not too old, generally provide better stability. Problems can also come from packages being too new and not having all the standout issues worked out of them.

around 1 year and a half, thats way too long, considering the Pipewire, OBS, Kernel, Gaming and other drivers updates. Not even mentioning all the updates KDE and Gnome just got in the last 3 months.

stay away from debían stable or slackware then....

I generally would for desktop use, and absolutely wouldn't rexommend them for a new user.

Older packages, but not too old, generally provide better stability.

And worse compatibility. Old packages are a no go for upstream supported hardware like Intel's and AMD's.

If you have cutting edge hardware, this might be an issue. But most people don't and for them Mint will work just fine. If you want cutting edge, don't use Mint. But that's not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.

If you want cutting edge, don't use Mint. But that's not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.

These don't seem like competing needs. When I think "just work with minimal hassle", I don't think "I need to restrict myself to outdated hardware".

I'm perfectly happy running old packages in general. I'm still on Plasma 5, and it works just as well as it did last year. But that's a matter of features, not compatibility. Old is fine; broken is not.

I think Mint is mostly for the "I have a PC that’s a few years old and want something easy and reliable to replace Windows with" crowd. Because it works great for that. It’s the perfect beginner distro.

Yeah absolutely zero newbies are going to buy a new computer in order to test out Linux.

The machine I have running mint is a fifteen year old Core 2 Duo T6600 laptop. Works great!

I do want to add that new games can also require new packages, the way Alan Wake II did at launch. Even on Arch you had to compile the development version of Mesa for it to run.

people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.

Elementary OS. Hassle-free, elegant and polished, distraction-free.

I'd give it a shot if i was on the lookout for something new, but I see absolutely no reason to switch from Mint.

Yeah there’s no need to change if you’re content with what you’re using.

If you have cutting edge hardware, this might be an issue.

No, thanks to Valve's efforts for Steam Deck all RDNA2 hardware directly benefits for upstreamed improvements.

If you have cutting edge hardware

If you have cutting edge hardware, you would probably need linux-next kernel. Otherwise you don't have cutting edge hardware.

10 more...

As someone who daily drives Mint, wut.

Why did you post a drawing of a child? Kinda weird

What do you mean? She's 32000 years old. /s

Linux users can't even agree on what distro is actually beginner friendly, so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?

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.

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

@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.

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...

Thank you for the reply!

It would likely help if the conversation around new user distros was a bit less of an argument

Fair. Though, I suppose we shouldn't ignore that the promoted distros are mostly the distros people use for themselves. And, while some have been on a distrohopping spree to arrive at their home. Others, instead, just got a recommendation, tried it and have been using it ever since. Yet others knew what they sought and/or needed. Hence, in their case, it was more a search to find a distro that satisfied their specific needs. Finally, it's perhaps worth mentioning that the popular distros mentioned in these discussions are overall good picks.

if the number of suggested distros was a bit less.

Absolutely fair. Unfortunately, we've got over 300 distros that are currently maintained and 50 would argue they're newbie friendly 😅. It's a hard one for sure. But, I believe you can definitely narrow down the list if you know what you want. For example, in my case, there's literally only one distro that answers my needs. So, I just use that one 😅.

It would help with the decision paralysis aspect of it at least.

Brings back memories. This process took me about two weeks.

I see enough threads of experienced users troubleshooting more than I really want to deal with

On the other hand, people that don't ever experience any issues, don't feel the need to post about that 😅. But, I can understand why it could make you anxious. Thankfully, distro choice does play an important factor in this. So, it makes sense for you to use a distro that's designed to (somehow) avoid this and thus limits the amounts of troubleshooting you'd have to resort to.

I don’t like the idea of my whole computer being like that because I chose the wrong hardware (I have nvidia)

Absolutely fair. Nvidia on Linux can definitely be a mess. The more popular and modern models should work on most distros. However, if your specific model is more obscure, then this can definitely cause more trouble than it's worth.

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.

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.

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 fucking hate Ubuntu. Mostly because you're right.

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.

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.

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

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.

Because choosing a distro to begin with isn't easy. Ask ten people and you'll get eleven suggestions.

Laughs in Debian Stable

Excitedly get new machine. Install Debian.
Not so excitedly search error messages.
Dejectedly find need kernel/drivers that's 18 months later than the Debian versions
boot sysrescuecd to find next distro to write to USB drive ....
kick self for buying shiny, latest hardware without checking for linux support. Again....😡

Mint has managed to become a meme and that's no bad thing, per se, but it can look a bit odd to the cognoscenti. Anyone doing research by search engine looking to escape MS towards Linux will find Mint as the outstanding suggestion.

That's just the way it is at the moment: Mint is the gateway to Linux. Embrace that fact and you are on the way to enlightenment.

I am the MD of a small IT company in the UK. I've run Gentoo and then Arch on my daily drivers for around 25 years. The rest of my company insist on Windows or Apples. Obviously, I was never going to entice anyone over with Gentoo or even Arch, although my wife rocks Arch on her laptop but I manage that and she doesn't care what I call Facebook and email.

We are now at an inflection point - MS are shuffling everyone over to Azure with increasing desperation: Outlook/Exchange and MS Office will be severely off prem. by around 2026. So if you are going to move towards the light, now is a good time to get your arse in gear.

I now have Kubuntu on my work desktop and laptop. You get secure boot out of the box, along with full disc encryption and you can also run a full endpoint suite (ESET for us). That scores a series of ticks on the Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation and that is required in my world.

AD etc: CID - https://cid-doc.github.io/ pretty nifty. I've defined the equivalent of Windows drive letters as mounts under home, eg: ~/H: - that works really well.

Email - Gnome Evolution with EWS. Just works. Used it for years.

Office - Libre Office. I used to teach people how to use spreadsheets, word processors, databases and so on. LO is fine. Anyone attempting to tell me that LO can't deal with ... something ... often gets ... educated. All software has bugs - fine, we can deal with that. I recently showed someone how decimal alignment works. I also had to explain that it is standard and not a feature of LO.

For my company the year of Linux on the desktop has to be 2025 (with options on 2026). I have two employees who insist on it now and I have to cobble together something that will do the trick. I get one attempt at it and I've been doing application integration and systems and all that stuff for quite a while.

Linux has so much to give as an ecosystem but we do need to tick some boxes to go properly mainstream on the desktop and that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

I've been a lifelong ms admin, and always stuck to their desktop environments because they "just worked". Often use Linux on containers, devices (handhelds, rpi etc) and webapp servers.

That win11 recall stuff though is a step too far. So I looked at which distro was likely to be easiest to use and just as you say - mint is the overwhelming consensus. And now it's my daily driver. I needed to learn a few new tricks, but the mint forums are filled with windows refugees so finding forum posts is easy (e.g. I thought had a problem with my "task bar" not my "panel" but since others called it the same thing I found what I was looking for).

My biggest reason for staying on windows was that I could search for something and almost always find an answer - that's become worse over the years IMO (often get these useless forums posts when they're basically advising the user to reinstall with five paragraphs of pasted/generated text). The mint forums are genuinely friendly and helpful, and searching them is as useful as searching for win stuff used to be.

I don't know if "this is the year" but I can't imagine I'm the only one who has had enough of the MS ecosystem. My experience has been great so far, and I hope there are others who give it a go.

Good for you.

I learned a really strange (yet rather obvious in hindsight) lesson a week or so ago. I recently deployed Apache Guacamole at work for webby access to an RDP box with MFA. We are dumping MS's RDG because it is not very flexible and is really complicated. One of my younger members of staff uses it whilst in the office and are almost pathetically grateful for me setting up the Guacamole thing 8) (WTF).

She's an Apple aficionado. She can now use her Apple thingie as St Jobs intended and also connect to work stuff, which is largely Windows and Linux based but the Linux stuff is abstracted away to the browser.

The key point is that she considers herself as an Apple person for want of a better word and can be an Apple whilst using our corp MS and Linux gear and it appears to her that it is all integrated.

I'm 53 years old and have been doing IT for around 30 years. We really have to get to grips with how people think and work.

I recommend fedora to every one. It's the correct kind of stable distro. The kernel updates are slow to roll out after being tested and all... But guess what version of plasma I have? 6.1. That's just a few weeks later than arch got it.

Plus not to mention how easy setting up my Optimus gpu was because of rpmfusion. I have never had such ease with any other distro.

So I recommend fedora all the way.

Fedora (including Silverblue/Kionite) is hard to recommend as a first distro though. It's an excellent platform when you know your end goal and how to get there, while providing "leading-edge" packages that's great for gaming.

But a project like Bazzite? Phenomenal new user experience for gaming and a very easy recommend.

If you want a non-gaming alternative to Bazzite to recommend, there's it's two universal blue siblings, Aurora (general purpose desktop) and Bluefin (silverblue/workstation distro). They both have the same setup as Bazzite but without the explicitly gaming elements. https://universal-blue.org/

I'm literally switching from Bazzite to Aurora right now.

Bluefin and Aurora are the same except they use Gnome and KDE respectively.

Each offers a general purpose version and a developer experience version.

Yeah, I think they're based off the fedora atomic desktops of Silverblue and Kinoite respectively which are gnome and kde based. They do angle Bluefin as more workstation oriented, for what it's worth.

I love Bazzite. It's now my daily driver on my laptop and Stream Deck! It just works.

Bazzite is broken AF on Nvidia right now, with no X11 and no explicit sync driver. I can't wait to see if driver 555 fixes it.

Edit - 555 is out, and yes it is considerably better.

I just switched it to x11 and it was fine.

I recently picked up an AMD GPU so I re-based to the regular one which was amazingly easy.

Ouch, didn't realize the Nvidia build was struggling. Hopefully it gets patched up soon.

If there's a previous commit before the issue is introduced you can pin it and wait to unpin until the issue gets resolved.

I have an Nvidia image and haven't had these issues. I can run Wayland just fine. I believe they include X11 as well.

Because for most use cases, Mint works flawlessly. It changes little from time to time. It has all the drivers to get started with a wide range of common hardware. It has all the codecs to play common media formats.

Of course if the package update is too slow, it's not for you, but then unlike you, most people don't need the latest and greatest. They just need something that works from the get-go with predictable behavior.

The software I use doesn't get significant updates often. Kennel, vi, grep, find? They've been around for decades.

I'm genuinely curious what kind of things people can't do because of lag on package updates.

It usually has something to do with programming. Again, most cases, the versions in the packages included in your garden variety stable distros should cover most use cases.

However, once in a while one would encounter the need of using the cutting edge features on certain compiler or interpreter. Rust comes to mind. I know Python introduced some features that could drastically alter workflow (e.g. switch statement). NodeJS is another one known to be lagging behind from time to time.

In other cases, hardware support might be taken to consideration, especially for newer machines. However, with Mint including the optional newer kernel, it shouldn't be a problem.

Modem hardware.

The default kernel Mint has installed isn't new enough to support cards like the 7900 XT. Though this can be fixed by updating the kernel using Mint's kernel version utility

The only major issue I ever had with mint running relatively old packages was when I got my current laptop. Nvidia 4060 required a really new nvidia driver, which in turn required a really new kernel. I sorted it out by adding a few unofficial repos, and it worked like a charm afterwards.

Whenever old versions are giving you grief, they can usually be sorted out in a similar manner.

Mint works. Most alternatives don't. I can install Mint on a total newbie's system, and not have to worry about something breaking two weeks later. Hell, most newbies can install Mint if you give them the USB.

On a deeper level, I think Mint devs are one of the few teams that understand the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' philosophy.

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.

With KDE Plasma it lets me update from its store, even though it's kind of annoying because I like to do it from the CLI and it blocks Zypper when checking for available updates.

Tried it once and literally could not get nvidia drivers to install. Went straight back to endeavouros and continued to enjoy

Because Fedora is open source only to the point of it being pathological. If there isn't am open source driver most time you're just boned. Someone new is going to have a tough time with it, and the community is on average a very "lol rtfm" bunch. Not as bad as Arch, but that's not saying much.

Meanwhile, despite the problems around Ubuntu, Debian communities are much more understanding and helpful. Mint even with old packages is going to be an easier time for a newbie. Certainly a newbie unfamiliar with the way entirely too much of the FOSS community is.

To be fair arch has amazing docs, and even a rube like me can follow it decently well. I found endeavor to be the easiest distro to use. But agreed the attitude isn't great.

The moemorphic character shown in the picture is Archchan, created by ravimo. I wonder why show her in a discussion about Mint?

Anybody that already has had a computer for 2 years and is coming from Windows will have almost no problems with Mint. Stability is top priority for first time Linux users and you need some visual guide with screenshots. Mint also has a great default look and setup for people coming from Windows. Mint is probably the best distro to put on your mom's old laptop that is "getting slow" because of viruses.

I'd recommend KDE Neon or Ubuntu also depending on the situation but if I don't know anything about the person and computer I'd say Mint.

This is a bold statement considering how many daily Windows users don't understand how to use Windows.

It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch tech enthusiasts are. How much does your average person know about their car? That’s how little they know about their computer.

They might not know what an OS even is, or how to identify where “Windows” ends and applications begin. They do what they bought it for, and if that doesn’t work, they take it to someone who knows how to get it working again. They know how to charge it, and to plug in a headset or USB key or something. If that functionality doesn’t work automatically or they encounter any issue, it might as well have exploded in their hands.

There are people who have been using Windows for 30 years that know literally nothing about it. Putting a “years of experience” metric on it is hilarious. It’s like assuming that if someone has been driving for 50 years that they know anything about cars besides how to drive it and where to put the gas.

Exactly. I know plenty of people who have driven a car for over 3 decades, and do not know what a timing belt or a spark plug does. I don't look down on those people, but it certainly makes sense as to why they don't know. They don't really need to!

You should at least know how to change your oil and clean your car.

Most people get their oil changed at a shop, and drive through a car wash. I wouldn’t really consider those additional skills.

Windows users have a variety of different skills and experience. I guess the most likely ones to try Linux first are not going to be the PC-fearing ultra-causal users, who probably follow what their friends do. But the more adventurous and curious ones, or IT workers.

Yeah, exactly. If a person asks for a recommendation they don't trust their own skills enough to make their own decision or distrohop.

I feel like a website is needed to recommend a distro to people based on a very varied set of criteria that doesn't just ask "Do you like stability over all? Debian"

Definitely a help website that focuses on user level questions and not IT pro solutions is desperately needed. Today new users are immediately given misinformation by hard core Linux techies with no clue about usability or user level solutions.

OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or KDE Neon.

@Magnolia_ been running Mint for years and never had issues with the package versions being too old for anything 🤷🏻‍♂️

I'm generally in the same boat. I don't think of Mint's packages as "old", but "stable". I've had a few cases where I want the latest features, and there are easy ways to get new versions. Dialing down instability isn't so easy.

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 ring 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 i don't need to read pages of documentation, just click install.

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.

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

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.

Gentoo is good at explaining how system works.

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

Why shouldn't VR work without Novidia?

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.

Because you're dealing with lifelong windows users who want a reassuringly familiar looking OS not fucking linux techs

Jesus christ learn to tailor to the user

Fedora does have a Cinnamon spin. The advantage of Mint is that all the Ubuntu tutorials work on it

Edit: plus Fedora's philosophy about non-free software makes it less than ideal for people who don't care

Mint has user-friendly tools that are much better than Fedora's lack of tools and openSUSE's YAST for beginners.

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.

30 days? I'm on month 3 with no issues.

Meanwhile, I had to dump Nobara on another PC because I couldn't get RDC working, no matter what instructions I followed.

And no, VNC wasn't an option for this.

Because Mint is popular among the crowd, and such challenges are also driven by the crowd. Better to see it as some social or meme dynamics, than to explain it with logical reasons. I also see more new users who use arch, because of the "I use arch BTW" meme.

As a Fedora Silverblue user I find it hard to recommend it to new users. It's not an issue with Fedora, but with the state of Linux desktop in general. At least with Mint/Ubuntu people can rely on social media and the community if they have problems. And Fedora is a more niche thing, and doesn't have a big crowd.

Moreover, I chose Fedora because of my experience, which allows me to have opinion what is better. But I don't think it's a good idea to explain the years of the Linux desktop drama to new users, when they are just doing the first steps or trying to feed their curiosity.

Isn't red hat enough reason to not use fedora?

The short answer is no, most people are not bothered at all by RHEL's source situation or IBM as a company.

Not really. Fedora is community run.

No, for one Red hat has every incentive to support Fedora. Also Fedora does its own thing separate from Red hat. Red hat does have some control but the community elects leadership and the elected leaders are what control the project direction. Also Fedora has a lot of volunteer package maintainers that would stop working if there was a hostile take over.

Notice that the community has left Ubuntu which used to be the community go to. They no longer have a large community working on projects and maintaining software.

thanks for the clarification. I just recently got into linux and don't know much, but as i was researching Fedora, that's what i came across. Which is a pretty big turn off for a newcomer migrating from windows and wanting to get away from big corporations.

Red hat I can live with. The problem is IBM.

wait Mint was (and still is) out of date?

The kernel is too old for newer AMD gpu drivers to work, but switching to a newer kernel isn't too hard. I had to when I built a new computer last winter, but I have also used various *nixes for a good long time.

Knowing how to discover you need a newer kernel is a bit tough for recent convert, though.

I wouldn't call switching kernels that hard. It takes a few clicks and a reboot to do. However, they kicker is that you need to know to do that. You don't know what you don't know.

Exactly. As far as Linux has come in terms of ease of desktop use and hardware compatibility, there is still a barrier in knowing how to know which flavor is right for you and, almost more importantly, why that flavor is right.

I like the mint project, but I dislike how it's done

I don't suggest mint to anyone anymore. I rather suggest Fedora or PopOs

PopOS! and Endeavor are my two recommendations for newbies. The former for fresh to Linux folks and the latter for those with some experience.

I don't recommend PopOS! because I think the Gnome UI is confusing to people who have only used Windows before.

I mean, Gnome suck imho. But, it’s easier to learn than dealing with issues that Mint causes due to drivers and game compatibility.

COSMIC looks awesome in screenshots though.

I tried PopOS and the pop store is not the best, and gnome is too foreign for someone coming from windows.

And also, too fiddly to make it work with a number of third party extensions vs the customization being built in.

KDE is heavier but also seems more streamlined and Cinnamon is fairly decent too.

I think Gnome VS KDE it's just a POV

Your argument makes sense that KDE and Cinnamon can be welcoming to Windows users. However I can argue that it can also make these newcomers to keep a "windows-like" mindset and that can be frustrating.

If a newcomer comes to Gnome, due to it's totally different paradigm, it may induce this newcomer to have an open mind and, therefore, be more welcoming to linux experience.

I don't think one argument or the other is right or wrong. I think both arguments are valid and that's just a different perspective. I, personally, think that a totally new paradigm is good to newcomers, but be free to disagree, since you understand that there is no right or wrong regarding this topic

I totally see your point and I tried GNOME first to have a uniquely Linux experience. I do agree with you. But the inflexibility of GNOME by default made it a much harder flip. I tried it with PopOS too, after using Debian for a while.

Plus tbh, I don't think with still how much you need to use the terminal for linux, anyone would be mistaken in the transition. Windows has kludge from the 90s for their settings and linux still needs terminal.

I'm sure talking about the 30days challenge from Raid Owl and I have an idea of his conclusion. First he's a power user (not in the fact of tweaking and scratch in the file system), he needs a lot of stuff to work. And for someone outside of the traditional office work or maybe developing, Linux is hard to use for graphics works, so sure Linux Mint is not for this kind of people but you should always recommended it to "normal" people and beginner in Linux. Sure in this case his conclusion is wrong, he should have used Fedora, Arch or OpenSUSE, but that's it.

Which is why I ask people one simple question: do they plan to game. If they plan to game, I don't recommend them Mint. If they aren't, I recommend them Mint.

What do you recommend to them if they do want to game?

Nobara is a good choice, it's based on Fedora, and is maintained by Glorious Eggroll himself, it has out of the box features like proprietary driver installation, game mode, gamescope, etc. That's what I run on my gaming PC and my HTPC, where my work laptop runs Kubuntu.

it hasn't been a problem lately, but for basically an entire year I was helping first timers through getting a more recent lutris for games because the one mint shipped was ancient and broken and on top of that the 32 bit wine dependencies were practically impossible to resolve for some games

It's the Lutris version shipped with 22.04, which by today's standards is definitely ancient. Because I'm not generally a Flatpak fan for stuff that requires larger packages or dependencies, I went directly to the Lutris PPA. And because I'm running KDE Neon, I had to work around the annoying libpoppler dependency issue that's always plagued Wine on Neon.

yep, and then they got rid of the ppa and people had to fall back to the deb

I've played this game every year since 1998, and each year I try a wider range of distros. Long story short, EndeavourOS is the first distro that worked reliably and has by far the best support resources.

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.

came here to spread the good word of endeavor os

It’s my favourite distro because of three reasons.

Arch worth lightweight with minimal QOL improvement
best user community 3 ) who doesn’t like space theme distro?? lol

I just setup on my T480 with BTRFS and BTRFS-Assistant and snapper last night. It’s working well

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?

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.

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.

Oh that’s a shame. Yeah, then I’m right with you, that’s not beginner friendly

How do I partition?

This can be said about any OS installer. Even Windows.

Not really

I am sure Win7 installer has it and if, I didn't get early dementia, Win10 installer has too.

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.

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.

I'm not sure but, I always recommended Mint for it's ease of use, I tried fedora, didn't like it, will likely never use it again. First impressions are a pain cause if you fail the first impression you lose before you begin. It could be an amazing system but, it was a bigger pain to setup and get going plus had less resources for me to get started while using more lesser known tools that wern't easily transferrable from the previous systems I has tried.

Why not UBlue or Nobara?

Trying different distributions is a must on using Linux, I still remember my first one, Mandrake, and is not a happy memory. Now Arch is my master, to get here It was not an easy or direct ride, I tried several ones through the years until I find the light ;)

@Magnolia_ I drive Fedora on laptop without any issues, and I reaally like Wayland and Fedora. X11 still better for normal people. Also UI and UX similar on Mint to Windows

Idk I never really liked mint it seemed too ui polished without much back end polish.

For some reason its the goto for noobs maybe since it comes with a desktop already bundled with no extra config needed usually. But theres so many distros that have that now as well as up to date packages.

I have no idea what this challenge is (I automatically assume it's some cringe when I read "challenge" also that pic is... what?), but you don't run Mint/Debian/Ubuntu if you have super-fresh hardware, like AMD 7000-series or Intel 14th gen and so on. in that case you have to go with Fedora or one of its derivatives (Nobara, Bazzite, etc.), because they have the newest kernels that allow this hardware to run OOB.

if you have a bit older hardware (like 2-3 years old), Mint or Debian is your best bet; Ubuntu if you have to, and only as a stepping stone. it's a solid base and if you use flatpak for everything (Firefox, Chrome, Lutris, Steam, etc.) you won't have issues with old packages and you'll get the best of both worlds - stability and supported hardware.

I think it started with Linus and Luke of Linus Tech Tips doing a 30 day linux challenge to see what it's like daily driving linix. Jeff of Craft Computing did one recently as well.

Linus uninstalled his desktop after ignoring the warning that said °hey, this will uninstall your desktop.°

Which is his fault, but also this would never happen on Windows. The power and lack of hand-holding of Linux is a great advantage for power users, but with great power comes great responsibility, and many people don't need the responsibility.

For sure, which is why I only use Mint anyway. I need my hand held. But Linus was doing power-user things without power-user reading. You can't really claim the car is no good when you opened the hood and started swapping hoses without checking to see what goes where.

Yeah, I feel like Linux needs the equivalent of Administrator accounts on Windows. Root is the equivalent of the System account on Windows, something even power users might never encounter, because it's a level of power you shouldn't ever need.

We need users to have permission to install software and do other administrative tasks, without having permission to do very destructive actions like uninstalling core system packages. Aunt Flo should be able to install Mahjong from her distros package manager GUI, without needing dangerous root access.

Well, no, not exactly. Most accounts on desktop linux distros are admin accounts. The way I would define that is whether or not the user has sudo permissions, either by being in the sudo group or sudoers file. Some distros do ask if you want the user to be admin. And that's pretty analagous to being admin on windows and getting a UAC prompt for an elevated process.

Yeah, but there is no separation between being able to do day to day administrative actions like installing software, and being able to do destructive actions no one should need to do unless in exceptional circumstances.

Right, that was the other point I meant to make. There absolutely is a way to seperate the powers that sudo grants. The sudoers file allows you to limit a user or groups permissions to only certain commands. Distros could and should absolutely take advantage of this.

Beat me to it lol

Sudo actually has very granular permissions, just almost no one and no distros use them. You might as well replace it with doas for most people.

You think LM being "too old" is a problem for newbies? I've been running some distro or other since RedHat 5. I it took me 6 weeks of waiting for Fedora to sort out most of the issues, (and I STILL have some minor ghosting issues and I ain't no gamer), and 4 tries to get Fedora 40 to successfully take the nVidia drivers for the GTX1650 chipset in my laptop.

You think a new wannbe convert is going to put up with that?

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 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.

For me, the systems I've installed Mint on for people, haven't had any problems at this current time. While I have never had an issue using Fedora myself(never been interested enough in OpenSUSE to keep with it when I've tried it), I'll never recommend Fedora in similar cases where I've installed Mint. The machines were older and the users aren't Linux enthusiasts. They just want a working machine to do basic tasks without breaking their bank to get a new machine when their Windows OS reached EOL.

However I can't confirm or explain why the people you say that are doing this challenge are having problems. I don't know their hardware specs and I don't know them so I don't know what they know about Linux.

(Please note, to all Mint users, I'm not saying Mint is only for non-Linux enthusiasts. I love how Mint is good for the non-enthusiasts and enthusiasts alike).

Fedora isn’t all that easy for a complete noob to install NVIDIA proprietary drivers

It isn't bad these days. You just go into the software center and make a few clicks. It is something that you can find guides on how to do.

I agree with @trolololol@lemmy.world here. Could you describe what issues are people having? What is their user profile (programmers, writers, ...)?

@Magnolia_
Cause Mint is an easy to use community distro.

You are right, I wanted to do some nodejs and realized that the package in the repo was Node version 12.something while latest node is version 20.something.

Also they still ship Python 3.10 which is ancient technology by today's standard, luckily nothing major is added between 3.10 and 3.12

Their mirrors are worst, ALL OF SELECTABLE OPTIONS FROM MIRROR SELECTOR which shows up at 47 KB/sec which just hurts your area spanning from asshole to large intestines.

I use bridgetide linux mint mirror btw

So why am I not switching?

Here is why: Linux mint is based on Ubuntu meaning that you can add Ubuntu repos or ppas or whatever they need directly into Linux Mint and dont have to worry about it breaking.

Say that you need to have some software for a reason and you cannot find one in Flatpak or an appimage, etc. You will be happy to realize that many of these software are built for Ubuntu and provide their deb package with own repo with updates.

I run Linux Mint 21.3 and that means I can just use a program built for Ubuntu Jammy as Linux Mint Virginia is based on Ubuntu Jammy. If I need to install something out of repo, I can just go and install Ubuntu jammy deb package and it will work normally.

I recommend OpenSUSE Thumbleweed for everyone, but I haven't used it for long time and I use only Gentoo and OpenWRT on all my devices. And Android on phone, hopefully 10 years later I will replace it with linuxphone.

How does Gentoo compare to OpenSuse Tumbleweed?

Disclamer: last time I used OpenSUSE was very long time ago. Probably somewhere in 2018.

When I switched back to Gentoo, Gentoo had more packages in base repo, was more configurable and easier to fix and felt more convenient to me(especially for development). Also easier on resources in casual use. It was important to me since at the time my system had very small amount of RAM, while I wanted to host minecraft server with many mods and play on it with friends. Installing cross-compilers is very easy with crossdev. And I think there were problems with having multiple versions of gcc installed. The only downside I can think of is slower update process(especially compiling firefox/chromium/libreoffice/rust), but in return you get the system, which if breaks, you know how to fix it.

Would I recommend Gentoo to everyone who wants to install Linux on their own regular x86 computers and be what people call a regular user and doesn't want to understand how system works? Rather no.

Would I recommend Gentoo for someone who wants to install Linux for their granny and already knows Linux or even has Gentoo? Rather yes, stereotypical granny doesn't care about distro, she only needs browser and working sound.

Would I recommend Gentoo for any kind of developers(except webdevs, they are separate species)? Absolutely.

For gamers? It is one of reasons I choose Gentoo.

For tinkerers? You know the answer.

For wierd ARM/MIPS/RISC-V/ELBRUS computer? Very yes.

As a heavy gamer, never say those words 😂 and as IT student, this is really interesting. How well do containers, virtual machines, and flatpaks work? I was thinking about learning self hosting, emacs, and xmonad on a pi4.

As a heavy gamer, never say those words 😂

Well, recommendation isn't based only on being gamer. But I noticed heavy gamers tend to more proactive in learning how their system works and tweak their system to their needs. I got one converted into Arch user. It's like heavy gamers have attention and initiative.

and as IT student, this is really interesting.

It was interesting even to some school students. I think I first Installed Gentoo somewhere in 6th grade.

How well do containers

Should be fine. Long time ago I tried to use lxc. It worked.

virtual machines

KVM works really well, I didn't try Xen.

and flatpaks work?

Didn't need, didn't try. There is nothing preventing them from working.

I was thinking about learning self hosting, emacs, and xmonad on a pi4.

I am running Gentoo 24/7 on noname chinese TV box on Allwinner A10 with 1GB of RAM. I wrote device tree myself and compiled mainline u-boot. Most of packages I precompile on my desktop with crossdev, that has exactly same make.conf. Same for Rock64 SBC, but it's sitting powered off. Also I did small modifications to devicetree for it as well. I can answer some qutsions.

TV box runs tor node 24/7 and private search of fimfarchive.

Thank you for your insight.

I never recommend Mint! It’s like it became this de facto distro to steer newbies toward just because it sort of kind of looks like Windows? Elementary OS is simple, polished, elegant and in a good way less customizable so the user can just get to work.

Alternatively if they want something more familiar like the start menu there’s KDE on Ubuntu or OpenSUSE, among others.

Mint was impressive like fifteen years ago; it’s still fine, but nothing in particular makes it more appealing than some of the ones I mentioned which have significant advantages.

Linux Mint has a very good track record thanks to their "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" mentality and user friendliness. That's why people still recommend it. With the rapid developments around gaming related software, their mentality works against them.

Do you really need fresh system packages? Outside of the kernel the desktop shouldn't impact the experience much.

Yes it does. Your whole display server is your desktop/WM when using Wayland. Using the newer versions you get things like VRR, HDR, fractional display scaling and so on.

In the last year I was intentionally using beta packages of KDE Plasma to get stuff like touchpad gestures early. Even now, Plasma makes important developments like HDR and explicit sync so yes, it still matters.

Elementary and OpenSUSE are problematic for so many reasons. Linux Mint is stable and reliable.

IDK, I use Debian sid

Using Linux for 30 years, I'm with MX and Xfce for years.

#NobaraGang. I gave Mint a go a few years ago and just never really got anywhere close to replacing my Windows install.

I've gotten 90% of all use cases handled by Nobara at this point. The main outlier being my sim racing setup just because according to forums the drivers for all the peripherals are just really not ready for adoption yet. My sim rig will stay on Windows for now as the whole reason I invested in a proper cockpit and peripherals was to reduce the friction involved with enjoying the sims. Also, anti-cheat seems to be a no-go on Linux for now so as an iRacing enjoyer, Linux is out of the question for the time being.

That said, my entire home studio for recording (incl. Hardware peripherals), my daily driver use case and all my other gaming needs are currently met by Nobara. I'm so happy to be able to end my reliance on Microsoft.