Disagree on picking RPM distros for an absolute beginner (this is what the image is about at least). SUSE maybe but you don’t want a newbie having to deal with US patent bullshit and especially SELinux. Similarly, no newbie will ever pic a barebones WM as a first time user.
I have used Fedora for nearly all the time I’ve daily driven Linux, and haven’t encountered any problem that a newbie would encounter and couldn’t overcome, excluding distro-agnostic stuff. Yeah, the h264 shit sucks, but if you use flatpaks you shouldn’t have to worry about it. And if you ever have to face SELinux, then you’re probably doing something that’s beyond beginner level.
It’s a very rough guide I threw together. There’s all sorts of wedge cases you could use to argue against it. E.g. you could use RPMs on slack Linux. Not exactly user friendly.
Bit on the whole fedora or Suse do the job.
Also desktops are better for newbies. I thought I’d mentioned that but yeah I agree deffo better for newbies while WM managers more for tinkerers/power users.
I started on CentOS and don’t remember any issues but that was a long time ago. I flirted with Suse, Ubuntu, and Arch when RH started being a super dick. I finally settled on Rocky, rpm is the devil I know.
Same. I remember getting interested in Linux in like 1997 or so, and it seemed like RedHat was preferred for newbies.
Of course, what were the alternatives then? It was basically Slackware (or Suse), Debian, and RedHat (or Caldera). There was no RHEL or Canonical or SElinux back then. It was a different time.
Hell one of the language packs for installing RedHat was “Redneck”. It was a gimmick to demonstrate localization options.
So for gaming… Pacman? I thought mint and kubuntu use aptitude, and was under the impression those are two of the better gaming distros.
I hate windows, but am sick of trying Linux every 5-6 years and finding out that I cannot get half the games I play to work. Admittedly, with you guys I might not be going it alone this time…
I’d say, just use Ubuntu if gaming is your main concern.
Imo the main problem for games are 1. hardware drivers (afaik only if you have brand new hardware), 2. game launchers (fuck those fucking game launchers, fuck; except steam) and 3. anti- cheat software.
Otherwise gaming is really good under Linux nowadays.
The package manager is usually tied to the distro, but the point above is to let the package manager inform your distro choice.
You’ll notice a running theme in my lecture here is “choice.” You can switch Desktop Environment and other stuff on just about any distro and make it feel like yours. Switching package managers isn’t recommended though! 😅
So for instance, Arch (btw lol), or Manjaro, or Endeavour use Pacman.
I’ve switched to Endeavour recently which is essentially “User-friendly Arch-based” with an installer and stuff, and it’s absolutely lovely for games. My old 960M laptop runs plenty of stuff great. :D
On my main rig I’ve used OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for years, which is also a rolling release (constantly updated) distro that technically uses RPMs, but uses its own package manager called Zypper, which I find mostly user friendly. Packages are also a bit more thoroughly tested.
Both use KDE Plasma desktop environment and it’s gorgeous.
Alternatively, especially for laptops with hybrid Nvidia graphics, POP!_OS is alright if you’re okay with GNOME desktop environment. (You can always change, but it’s geared toward GNOME). It used Aptitude, and the updates trail behind a bit, but generally that’s supposed to make a more stable system.
(Note that when I say “lags behind”, latest security fixes tend to be backported, but you won’t see fancy new shiny features as fast.)
For gaming specifically though:
Win10 is gonna be my last Windows. 11 is invasive and opinionated, and 12 is gonna have a forced Ai fetish. Gross.
Good news: Steam games work wonderfully. Thanks to advances with Proton and all their support for the SteamDeck (which runs Linux btw!)
For other platforms, look into Heroic Launcher, which takes a lot of the headache out of managing stuff like GOG games. :)
With rolling releases you usually want to update cautiously and check news updates and stuff, because newer versions aren’t as thoroughly tested and some stuff might break…but you get new features faster so that’s fun.
That being said: If you’re willing to learn a little as you go, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is a big win in my book for getting the latest fun stuff while still being stable! It’s also thoroughly security-minded.
And by default, it includes “Snapper” set up for you, so you can just roll the system back to a working version in the rare case something goes wrong. You can install snapper on any distro, but it comes pre-configured and ready to go, as long as you use the default “BTRFS” file system.
I won’t get into filesystems because hoo boi…but TL;DR: BTRFS allows “snapshots” and rollbacks that don’t require literally doubling your disk space for rolling back, so it’s a great safety net.
That being said: ALWAYS have more than one backup, in multiple locations, of anything you find important!
Good luck and have fun. I will say, Endeavour, OpenSUSE, and Pop_OS all have great communities that are eager to help if you’re eager to learn! :)
Debian-based systems (including Ubuntu and its forks such as Mint) uses dpkg and APT (APT does all the communicating with repositories, dependency managment etc, dpkg actually installs and removes packages.) Aptitude is a TUI front-end for APT that gives you a menu-based system in the terminal. Synaptic (not to be confused with the trackpad driver) is a GUI front-end for APT.
I game on Linux Mint. Now it might be my tendency to play single player and/or cooperative multiplayer (think Stardew Valley or Unrailed!) games often made by smaller studios and indie developers as most of the AAA space has otherwise offended me, but…I don’t really have a problem. The vast majority of things just install and run from Steam.
Started using Debian because I only used it for servers to begin with. Learned APT and never dared to learn anything else. So now I just stick with any distro using APT and a DE I like.
Most new Linux users if not all, are unable to make an educated decision on package management. The UI that they think they will like better would be more important.
My update told me as much. OP’s likely did too. But it is usually a lot harder to manufacture outrage when you have a full picture and manufacturing outrage is the best way to get exposure on social media.
When the marketing department is more important to a company than the customer support. Rather than actually help the customers, they just make sure customer support never says anything bad about their products. Including the problems they have/had in the patch notes.
“These are too many fixes, listing them all will make us look bad.”
When the marketing department is more important to a company than the customer support.
The marketing department is easier to integrate with AI. Those stupid customer support folks have to actually think about the problem and determine a working solution, rather than regurgitating a random assembly of buzzwords and spicy graphics.
I bought an old computer to install plex. At one time I wanted to try some tool that does speech to text and decided to install Nvidia drivers to speed the process. I messed up my system and tried for hours to fix it but I gave up. Now I don’t have gui.
Flatpak doesn’t conform to the XDG home directory, and that upsets me. Also we have an ongoing dispute between SI and IEC units on their GitHub. But I like it otherwise.
Meeh, I’ve had so many things in life taken away from me at some point that I just stopped caring to be honest 🤷. I just keep an open mind now (or at least try to) and am more like “oh, no more of that huh… ok, let’s see what was next on my to do list”.
My mom always told me “people can take away everything from you, money, status, freedom… one thing they can never take away - your mind”.
I can’t find it now, but there is an Existential Comic that addresses this attitude perfectly. The philosopher is talking about how he always has some form of freedom, so he gets chained to a wall in a dungeon, and then he says “at least I still have the freedom to interpret my situation!”
Ah, yes, I saw that commic somewhere, I think someone posted it on Lemmy, but there was a twist to it at the end… can’t remember what it was, but it was funny 😂.
Ummm… not exactly, they sell shit and then take that shit away from you when they see fit. If that’s not illegal, then me circumventing their DRM for my own personal use most definitely isn’t.
Plus, it really is legal to do RCE for your own personal use. It’s illegal to share that info.
I think you are mixing up illegal with unethical. I strongly disagree that any level of DRM warrants piracy. If you don’t like a company having power over you its time to seek alternatives.
This where you and I differ. I can cross that threshold if I’m motivated enough (have done it before). I’d do it just for the f u’s if nothing else. And share it as an ultimate f u.
I have old history with Linux and am just coming back. I did my first test build for my office to get away from the dying Windows 10/avoiding 11. I went with a basic Linux Mint cinnamon build, got our network printer and core software working. Will you let me live?
My toaster is electromechanical. No µC / mutable memory available. Not even a manual switch (turn on/off using the wall switch). So no arch there unless I swap some components. I use EndeavourOS with DWM on one of my VMs, though.
Nah, as an arch user most people don’t likely need it. Mints a great option. No matter what you do with arch (even endeavor) there’ll always be alot of setup, by design, and with how fast things move they’ll break commonly. Like the grub issue a bit back, or the kernal that could have caused screens to die, or more recently the nvidia drivers forcing many screens to be stuck at one brightness.
I love arch, it’s a testing bed for the linux ecosystem. The first place where things exit beta and interact with each other in the wild. It’s definitly not what most people want for a computer though especially not for work. That’s why I duel boot with OpenSuse tumbleweed for my contract work (also, separating work and regular life makes things easier but that’s not relevent)
Not to sound condescending, but I’d like to caution against this language. Mint is a perfectly fine OS to run permanently and never look back, and you absolutely can take a bigger bite while never having to install another OS. Distros are for the most part just a jumping off point and a set of defaults.
You know how sometimes old documents would reuse paper by turning it sideways and writing perpendicularly on top of the old writing? Let’s make a window manager that does that, overlap the contents of all your windows at different angles
Most of the time, your grub is still there, even the link on your efi partiton. Only the evivars in uefi need to be reminded of their existance far too often.
Windows did an update once that messed up so bad that at least until I booted into a live USB, my bios couldn’t find grub or windows lol, then from the live USB I just chrooted in and reinstalled grub.
And yeah quite lost cuz it turns out the only reason I saw this post was because I was browsing by “everything,” I thought I was browsing in my subscriptions. Am so lost.
lol 🤣… yeah, has happened to me while, for some reason, I’ve started browing some community and just forgot that I was in it, instead of my feed, like “boy, they sure overdid the meme posts today” 🤣🤣🤣.
That is what we like to call a “gateway drug”, first they try out an Android, then “just a taste” of Steam Deck, and next thing you know they’re installing arch btw on their grandparents’ computers
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