Fedora or Mint for noob?
A friend might let me install Linux on his secondary laptop he uses for university. He's not a tinkerer and wants something that just works.
Linux Mint is known for being very user-friendly and stable. Also easy to get help online.
However, in my opinion Mint seems rather outdated, both with its Windows-like workflow, default icons and look and also Xorg. When I tried it I had some screen stuttering I couldn't resolve, probably due to Xorg.
Instead, Fedora with GNOME is very elegant and always uses the newest technologies. It feels and looks actually nice and not outdated. But I'd have to install media codecs via terminal first which suggests that Fedora is for experienced users. Also university wifi eduroam doesn't work on Fedora for me because legacy TLS connection is not supported in Fedora (at least I couldn't get it to work). I'm at a different uni than him tho, so it might work there. In general, less help on the web for Fedora than Mint.
What do you think? (Btw, KDE is too convoluted in my opinion. Manjaro too, it breaks too often. I will not consider it.)
EDIT: From what I've gathered so far, I should probably install Mint. He can try Fedora with a live usb or on my laptop. If he prefers that then I can warn him that this may be less stable and ask what he wants.
I've only tried Ubuntu-based Mint, but LMDE is more future-proof so it will probably be that.
Mint.
You're working to his requirements, not yours.
Fedora is not for beginners.
Mint is.
I could go into more detail, but I'll leave it there.
Mint has very nice tooling but its a weird Ubuntu derivate. One day a specific software doesnt install, or you have an XOrg problem that will never be fixed, or standard updates simply break something, and then...
Mint is nice and easy to get going, but its outdated a lot, and uses a Distro model that I dont like to install on random laptops that are never updated.
So you're a power user? Case in point, you'd be better for Fedora.
Also my second distro was mint, after 3+ years of the old hdd's non-use, I pulled it out last year when my install of some OS broke, updated it to zero issues (I was curious), used the software for a bit, all was good.
3 years without an update to zero issues.
Haven't seen any issue with Mint updates yet like I've fought in Fedora
Power users do not care about the distro, linux is linux, they will compile everything how they like it.
From your post:
Mint:
Fedora:
Unless you're sure that screen stuttering is going to be a major annoyance, you know what I am going to suggest.
Fair enough.
As a fedora eduroam user I'm pretty sure it does.
I was just quoting OP. I am making no claims of my own.
Yeah, I missed that. Sorry, guess I should pay more attention.
Mint is like 99% plug and play on most laptops, so I'd recommend they go that route.
I recommend Mint.
Chances are your friend's secondary laptop doesn't have extra resources for Gnome to run smoothly. Sad thing is nowadays Gnome is very heavy and bloated.
Also, he may try both distros live-usb. Maybe he don't care about Mint looking outdated. But if he does, you may try Fedora live-usb and check if university wifi works properly.
It's his laptop after all, so I believe your appreciations on the beauty of desktop environments are secondary.
Good ideas, I will consider that.
You are right. I was thinking that the Fedora workflow might give him some Linux-exclusive benefits over Windows so he might consider switching his main laptop too. Mint is rather a drop-in replacement for Windows so the advantages of Linux are not very visible/important for a newcomer. At least compared to a DE like GNOME.
Mint doesn’t have to look outdated if you put a little work into it. Check out this fellow’s rice in unixporn: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/17dwneg/cinnamon_available_as_installable_iso/
In general I would recommend any Debian derivate for beginners that just don't care about how their computer is operating. So if this is really just a question regarding eight Fedora or Linux Mint then I would say Linux Mint because it's a Debian derivative.
That's simply because chances are high stat you will at least find a Deb package for any proprietary software you might want to use. Making it "easier" for the user.
If you install the system for your friend you're free to change the Desctop environment to everything you want.
Fedora ships unfiltered Flathub outof the box since quite some time. If easy access to proprietary software is a deciding factor, Fedora is among the easiest options.
Okay, but Mint has Flathub and the deb ecosystem.
It's just straight-up better supported
Random debs don't magically work on all Debian derivatives. Simply getting debs from somewhere is just asking for problems.
Anything that runs on Debian Bookworm works on LMDE 6, anything that works on the latest Ubuntu LTS works on the latest regular Mint
Addon repositories can cause incompatibilities. Random individually downloaded deb package here, some random PPA there, spice it up with the Mint add-on repo to Ubuntu, and you can end up with a broken system (let's say I learned the hard way a good amount of years ago only to combine a few handpicked repos).
Ok so I guess it really just comes down to personal preferences at this point.
No questions it's mint, it runs and looks very good.
As a fedoraman myself, I think Pop!_OS is a great option.
But are you doing this because your friend wants linux or because you want it? It's okay to recommend it but don't push it if they don't need it.
You would get less hassle with Mint. One thing that came to mind is the codec.
I’d say Mint.
Mint is planning to add experimental support for Wayland this winter, so he’s probably only 1-2 years away from full Wayland support in the DE.
They said they're targeting 2026 in the post where they announced Wayland.
Keep in mind "it just works" also includes the windows like workflow.
Begin small, end big. That works for everything when learning something new. So, with that said, go for Linux Mint Cinnamon.
I begun my Linux journey with elementary OS which is more for macOS users. I was a Windows user so I switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon. After a few years of exploring and learning, I am now using EndeavourOS.
Mint
I can’t really give a super useful opinion given that I haven’t really touched fedora, but I’ve been using mint for school for almost a year, highly recommend
I love Fedora but definitely Mint for a normie. Even then I question if you should install Linux at all since reliably being able to do what you need to do is priority one, especially for a student, and if he may be blocked in his work as a result I don't think it's a great idea.
I installed Mint on someone's old laptop at my Uni's lab (it's mostly for the field of environment and agriculture so nobody is an IT expert here), he didn't have any complaints and is actually falling down the Linux rabbit-hole, while others are considering switching to Linux too after seeing how it resurrected 2 old basically-defunct laptops.
I'd go with that, it is a trusty and reliable distro for newbies. I even know some greybeards that use it.
Then again as others pointed out he can try both from live USB. The important part is that you explain a distro can have everything another distro has with the right know-how and some patience, as well as how things work on Linux (for example: imstall programs using the package manager whenever possible). But again he isn't a tinkerer so stock Mint will work just fine with him.
Thanks for your input.
Maybe stock Ubuntu?
It's pretty new. Has wayland and pipewire. You can just enable a checkmark in the installer to install codecs. Uses Gnome, so a non-Windows like workflow. Pretty sure Eduroam would work there, as many schools use Ubuntu by default.
I haven't tried Ubuntu yet myself, but generally I'm turned off by some decisions Canonical makes, especially the whole Snap thing adding complexity, slow app startup and proprietary store. Not very trustworthy.
But you are right, Ubuntu is the most popular and things like eduroam will likely work.
Those decision will trickle down to Ubuntu remixes like Mint eventually. Canonical's plan is to replace as much as technically possible with Snaps. They just barely delayed shipping CUPS itself as Snap but it will come, so even a basic task like printing will rely on Snap. I don't see Mint having manpower to package everything on their own, even if it's "just" about porting Debian packages. Might just as well use LMDE right now.
that's the whole reasoning behind having LMDE. seems a little redundant today; but within a release or two mint may very well be only based on debian itself, with the way canonical is steering ubuntu.
I expect Canonical going hard in the Snap direction leading up to 26.04. They are desperate given the fact that Flathub got a huge popularity boost thanks to SteamOS. I don't think Ubuntu remixes will come out unscathed.
LMDE is the future of Mint, hopefully with a Flatpak-first approach.
Go with Debian, install software using the GNOME Software GUI, it can be configured to use flatpak so you'll get the latest software without the snap overhead on a very stable base system.
If your want something that just works, Ubuntu is pretty hard to beat. Snaps are really not a big deal anymore, performance wise; a lot of the bad rap on slow startups etc. are from years (and many versions) ago.
If you don't want Ubuntu and you don't like Mint, there are also other options in the Ubuntu/Debian family. Pop_OS and Zorin are both popular.
Maybe Debian.
Do mint, if you really wanna do fedora try Nobara
As a few have already mentioned, a Debian based distro is a good choice, and you Mentioned vanilla Ubuntu isn't ideal do to prioritizing snaps, I would then suggest Pop!_OS or Mint. I like what System76 (Pop) is doing with their scheduler and the upcoming Cosmic DE (written in Rust and should see an alpha early next year).
At least at UVA, eduroam on fedora is possible, you might be able to adapt these instructions to your university if you end up on fedora http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/compfac/faq/linux-eduroam.html
Thanks!
Have them check with their University if they do any Linux support. If they do - use one of the distros they support so they might possibly have KB articles about accessing University recourses from Linux.
Source: am Linux admin at a University that writes such documentation. I have seen exactly the Eduroam issue you mention and came up with an Ubuntu workaround for example.
6 in one, half a dozen the other. Both are good.
I personally recommend Debian with xfce or lxqt
But OP does not what X11 desktops.
Then I recommend Enlightenment
"The project is currently primarily supporting X11" -- Quote from http://www.enlightenment.org/
What Wayland compositor do you prefer for newcomers? Kwin?
While I'm a KDE person myself and I think that Steam Deck makes Plasma Desktop more widely known than other desktops, Gnome is fine for newcomers, possibly using either the Dash to Dock or Dash to Panel extension if they want a more traditional experience. (KWin's/Plasma's Wayland support will only be finalized by Plasma 6.x.)
Fair enough
ZorinOS? I saw no talk of it here and I haven't personally used it in a couple of years. It uses gnome and can be set to mimic the look of windows, mac, or just stock gnome. It looks super clean, modern and pro. It's easy to use and based on ubuntu. It was a just works distro for me.
https://zorin.com/os/
That's because Cinnamon is actually a fork of an ancient Gnome release that has since gotten much fewer enhancements compared to Gnome (and Plasma).
That is factually wrong: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/38/ChangeSet#Unfiltered_Flathub
When the WiFi relies on insecure encryption, the problem will only be delayed on Mint because Mint's underlying Ubuntu core is just older. Once a newer security policy comes to Mint, it will have exactly the same problem. The actual solution is for you university to update the WiFi encryption. In the meantime, according to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/StrongCryptoSettings2#Upgrade/compatibility_impact the security defaults of Fedora can be rolled back to an earlier level quite easily.
mate is what originally spawned from gnome 2. while cinnamon was built from gnome 3, it has been completely separated from it for a decade.
both are under active development, run current applications, and offer what would be described as a more 'traditional' desktop environment (compared to gnome shell or ubuntu's unity). they're both lighter-weight then gnome, with mate being a bit leaner than cinnamon.
mint would be my suggestion for op, and any of the default mint desktops, including their other option--xfce, would be suitable for op's use case.
I followed Cinnamon's git closely for years. The commit "Renamed files to Cinnamon" was the last commit to the majority of files over years, despite the fact that Cinnamon had several formal releases in that time. It took literal years for its development to actually get off the ground and not just get some light touches in JavaScript files. The slow start reverberates until this day as you can see with its slow Wayland adoption and OP's "Mint seems rather outdated" comment. IMO Cinnamon isn't even the best choice for people who want a Windows7-like workflow. Gnome with Dash to Panel achieves the same with less technological legacy.
Okay, after removing all the preinstalled media players plus firefox and reinstalling them through Flathub it might be possible to skip the official tutorial.
Fedora should just preinstall everything as flathub flatpaks.
That is a valid point. Although I can imagine that Mint devs would rather leave legacy TLS enabled to be more user-friendly.
Thanks for the link, I will try this.
If you are the one installing the distro, it probably doesn't matter that you have to copy-paste some commands to install proprietary codes because it's a one time thing. In my experience, the bigger problem usually is not the first time setup but the maintenance. In case of Fedora they would have to upgrade it every 6 months. That's why I usually suggest LTS or something rolling but stabe distro like OpenSUSE Thumbleweed.
The upgrading experience for Fedora Workstation is super smooth, on par with macOS, Android, and so on. Gnome Software just tells the user that a new version is available, the user clicks on the upgrade button and then it's just waiting a bit and a reboot.
Technically it's not required to uninstall the default applications but obviously you'd still wanna do that to avoid clutter.
Even though not Fedora-based but that's pretty much what I have on SteamOS: Firefox, VLC, etc. all from Flathub. Because of the 32bit dependencies, Flathub is my preferred way to install Steam on regular Linux distributions anyway (for obvious reasons not on SteamOS).
I love Fedora. I like it a lot more than Linux mint. More than either, I’ve really enjoyed PopOS. It went from a distro I wasn’t sure about to my favorite really quickly. Highly recommend it.
Go with an LTS version. Fedora is upgrades twice a year. Mint is just Ubuntu. I'd choose 22 04 Mint over Fedora for this reason. But Debian Stable is old yet tried and true. Plain Debian works.