494
Linux mint = best beginner distro
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
494 points (89.8% liked)
linuxmemes
21280 readers
1080 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
- These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Best distro imo right now for desktop. Fedora a close second.
Others like Arch are great too but more for enthusiasts.
What makes Fedora good?
I've been using Debian on servers for maybe 20 years now, so I'm very experienced with Debian on servers, but I've never really used the Fedora/RedHat/CentOS side of things.
The last time I used a Linux desktop was Ubuntu back in 2006 or so, back when it was still a new up-and-coming distro and they'd send you a free CD (very useful since I was using dialup at the time).
I'm thinking about which distros I should try since I want to switch from Windows. I've heard Mint and Pop OS are good? I might try Debian too. I used to love tweaking the OS back in my teenage years, but now I'm in my 30s and don't have time to fix random breakages.... I just want something stable that works well. (that's why I was considering Debian)
Debian remains the king of "something stable that works well". And with release of Debian 12 that brought a lot of quality-of-life improvements, easier non-free package managing etc, many users go for it on their desktops. So I suggest you do too.
Fedora runs at a twice annual release model and includes kernel and firmware updates within those releases whereas Ubuntu matches a kernel with a release.
Their packages, to me, feel much higher quality in terms of reliability and reaction time to reported bugs. They also test and guarantee updates for packages in their repos. I ran my college laptop through 15 system upgrades without any issues, nothing has been that reliable for me.
I enjoyed using Ubuntu for several years and hadn't considered Fedora until they were the first to default to Wayland (f21) and never switched again.
You can do anything on any distro, so you end up just shopping for your fav package manager and default repo and staying there. I encourage you to play with all of them with a separated /home partition or so it's easy to shop.
Thanks for the details!
I've got a VPS running Debian Bookworm (12.0, latest version at the moment) that I haven't reformatted since Etch (4.0, 2007). I've just done an in-place upgrade every time a new version is out.
That's not a GUI setup though, so probably more stable when updating...
I use Fedora Plasma. It's a spin on KDE. I really like it. Fedora is what i learned Linux on originally and it's nice to go back.
edit: rm useless comment part.
Fedora tends to include a lot of the latest tech in a stable working configuration, stuff like Wayland and GNOME in the past and more. I like that I can get that while still enjoying a nice curated set of package repositories and without relying on something like the AUR for most packages. I'm happy to let others do the testing on the absolute bleeding edge and take the risks while I get to enjoy the fruits of that with a lot less pain with Fedora.
Thanks for the info!
Fedora is moving a bit faster than Debian(but it’s pretty unstable), the main selling point is in my opinion dnf/rpm, but on a server a rhel clone would be a better choice. Pop OS and especially Mint are great distros, Debian is great but very outdated, I would try them live and then decide
Manjaro KDE (default) makes Arch a wonderful starting point. Beautiful (gold standard of KDE implementation), truly blazing fast (thanks, Arch), incredibly Windows-like, and unlike Arch itself, completely plug-and-play.
Their update withholding schedule, while causing anger among some Arch enthusiasts, is what makes the system super stable and completely effortless to maintain, while remaining close to the bleeding edge.
The only thing newbies should be taught is that AUR should be used with caution due to potential (rare) dependency version conflicts; luckily, Manjaro repos have just about everything you can think of and AUR is almost entirely unnecessary.
Newbies should be taught to review what they install beforehand on the AUR which almost anyone can contribute to with minimal barriers. Most users treat it like any other package repository but its not the same thing and it's definitely more risky then a curated repository.
Sure! I just don't expect people who just came from Windows/MacOS to get into that. I'm talking "just works" here. Later on, they'll be able to develop that understanding too, but to each its time.