Real question if I can sneak one in. If I want to buy a machine suitable to run Darktable for photo editing, which Linux distribution would be ideal for that? Other than photo editing, I might watch movies in browser while browsing other sites on a different screen. That’s all I really use PC to do these days. Advice? I don’t want to accidently use a butt plug.
Edit for additional context if it wasn’t immediately apparent: I am a casual who just doesn’t like Microsoft. But I don’t use anything else that concerns me for a switch to Linux. I just want easy setup and use for my purposes.
I always recommend mint. There are a lot of small convenience features that remove friction points for new users and because it’s based on the very popular Ubuntu there are a lot of documentation out there.
I’ve switched from Windows 11 to Pop!_OS and don’t have any complaints. It looks different to Windows (no start menu like windows) but that wasn’t a turn off for me. If you want something that looks closer to a windows machine, Mint is a great option
I recommend EndeavourOS primarily because of it’s ease of use and rolling distro means you’ll have access to the latest bug fixes and patches (and a very active and supportive community), whereas it does come with the drawback of requiring to fix things every now and then if you’ve installed packages from places other than endeavour/Aur or require packages/apps that are older.
Yay (package manager) is very easy to get using as a beginner, however, if you don’t want rolling updates and just large update packages similar in scope to windows service pack updates I’d recommend popos or the sister/base os ubuntu. (fedora apparently may be good in this instance as well but I’ve very little contact with the OS and have been avoiding RHEL-related products recently because of their anti-consumer and anti-open source actions recently).
Ultimately it’s definitely recommended that you try a few distro’s to get a feel for what you like and then customize to your hearts content.
distrowatch.com if you’d like a more in depth review of various distros and what their performance bonuses or problems are.
EndeavourOS with xfce4 is very clean and quick to pick up with their little introductory/learning module that they include (once installed or on live, it will provide a popup that includes the following):
I have no experience with Darktable. But, really any and every distro should do it. Every distro comes with a learning curve. My personal advice would be not to go with distro derivatives. In the early days, Ubuntu was quite good, for making Debian “more accessible” to a larger audience and people unfamiliar with linux. I still like it for being an African success story. But, I can’t recommend it anymore for a slew of reasons. So, I’d say, go with debian, fedora, or even Arch. If you want to go with debian, you should know about non-free. If you go with fedora, you should know about rpmfusion. If you want to go with Arch, you should be comfortable with a more bare-bones and hands-on experience and reading the Arch-wiki (which is one of the most extensive and best wikis out there, and even useful if you use another distro). If you want something stable that just works and don’t need the newest of the new software, use debian. If you want the bleeding edge, that mostly just works, go with fedora. If you want the bleeding edge, want maximum control, and are not afraid to stay on top of it, go with Arch. Of course, many other distros could be a good pick for you. They all have pros and cons.
Some futuristic scifi-ish thing that is also a factory with a pocket dimension allowing you to easily morph/replicate it and pull previous versions from that pocket dimension if something went wrong… But the orders are given in some alien dialect, and from time to time you have to check how others have managed to convince it to do parts of the job you want and stitch together a solution while listening to it cursing at you cryptically
I see way more posts that are pro-systemd than anti these days, so I think you might be tilting at windmills a bit.
I would love to think about systemd less, but I’ve worked with it professionally since a year or so before Debian switched while I was an intern working in embedded. I got to see the flame wars and shaped my opinion of systemd by wrestling with its growing pains. Writing your own service files and working with DBus was ass back then, and while it has gotten better, my patience with it has diminished. In the end the frustration was enough that after I ditched windows, systemd was the next to go.
That would be the end of it, but other programs keep growing annoying systemd dependencies or their projects get swallowed up by the systemd ecosystem entirely. I was so excited at the start to work with the parallel execution and dependency management, but the number of times systemd broke something, swallowed up the output, and then corrupted its own journal and lost the logs really turned me against it.
I don’t know, I’m not a power-user so systemd is just a thing in the background, I don’t have much opinions over it.
I think you might be tilting at windmills a bit.
No systemd love or hate for me, as for the meme, I respect both opinions (I’m still learning btw) but don’t particularly like proselitjzers. Sharing an opinion and experiences (like you did) is fine and often informative, what I don’t like are people (expecially on lower-quality places like 4chan) spamming stuff like “systemd is the devil and killed my child” or “systemd weights more than the Linux kernel” I guess I need to make up my mind, haven’t interacted with the OS at a low enough level yet.
I understand what you mean. If you are on the fence and not super interested in init systems, you can pretty easily get by with systemd without thinking about it. Most desktop environments have tools to manage user services in easy GUI’s, and you can find guides for anything more advanced you want to accomplish with them usually.
If you want to dive in though, systemd is a great init system to learn. Nowadays learning systemd is a lot less of a moving target, and it’s in use virtually everywhere so the knowledge is valuable. It’s also fairly well documented at this point, which is great for learning how it works.
My personal advice if you want to go that path is to just open up some service files. There are lots of interesting examples in /lib/systemd/system Systemd service files are just plain text, and pretty straightforward to read. Its divided into nice sections, and naming is pretty straightforward (Or the systemd brainworms are really in deep). Look for names you recognize or programs you use. Especially ones you are familiar with on the command line. I don’t recommend changing them to start, especially in the system directory, just open a couple and you should quickly start seeing the connections between what they are trying to accomplish and whats in each file. Then if you see anything you don’t understand or peaks your curiousity check the documentation. Once you’re ready try writing one of your own for something in the usr service directory. No pressure though, its not necessarily essential knowledge
Fedora Silverblue enters the chat :) Haven’t had a single hiccup so far. Only ublue spins are a pain in the butt imo. That’s why I configure everything by myself.
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