Thinking about making the big switch – recommend me a distro!

Hey all, I’ve been thinking about making the jump from Windows to Linux as my daily-driver and I’ve been struggling on what distro to use.

On my laptop I’ve been using Fedora’s KDE Spin for a bit but I can’t say I really like KDE all that much. I took that Distrochooser test and 9/10 of the suggestions were all Ubuntu-based or Arch-based for some reason lol.

I would prefer a distro that “just works” but I’m not scared of having to troubleshoot or fix things. I guess I’m just looking to see what everyone else uses and what you all recommend. Thanks!

Ashiette,

For something that “just works” and feels quite like home, without being KDE, I’d recommend Zorin.

It’s stable, beautiful to look at and works as expected. I’d not recommend Arch-based distros to begin (but if you want to go the troubleshooting and fixing things way, that would be choice #1).

Unpopular : I’d not recommend mint.

Kory,
@Kory@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m curious, why would you not recommend Mint?

Ashiette,

Maybe it is me but Cinnamon, while being very user friendly, feels limited. I feel that when you want to start tweaking, the options are not there yet.

Kory,
@Kory@lemmy.ml avatar

Oh I see, so it’s more about the DE, thanks for clarifying.

Sanguine,

Endeavor OS. Its an excellent arch based system and people REALLY over emphasize how tricky arch is. Its not difficult, its not just for power users, and the rolling release means you have access to updates faster than other distros…this is particularly nice for gaming as you’ll also get updates to graphics drivers sooner.

Paragone,

IF you want Steam, THEN please consider every variant in the official Ubuntu family.

Steam-support told me in their system, iirc in early 2023, that they ONLY support the Ubuntu family ( directly ).

As Linus Torvalds noted, it isn’t possible to release software that is going to work on all distros.

Even glibc has been broken by one, in that talk of his, and it wasn’t a niche distro, either, iirc.

Pick which subset you CAN afford to support, and do not add to that subset until you’re rolling in money, from your linux-customerbase.

( slight sarcasm on the last line, but business is business: destroying-resources costs, and if there is no benefit, it isn’t sane to continue doing it. )

Decide which capabilities/functions/apps you NEED, and then don’t even consider distros that break your required-set on you.

_ /\ _

Sanguine,

This post is making it seem like they will have problems with steam on other distros which simply isn’t true.

Wasn’t there just a post about the snap version of steam having major issues recently?

Valve chose an arch based distro for the steam deck. Read into that what you will.

utopiah,

So I could recommend a distro, as you asked (which would be Ubuntu) but instead I believe what’s better is making the switch… small!

In practice that means safety net and familiarity all around :

  • backup your data
  • backup your data… and not, that’s not a mistake, truly do it, now. Before you try something new, and scary. In fact… don’t touch your computer, get another one, a cheap one like a RPi4 or a relatively old laptop that a colleague hasn’t used for years.
  • copy, don’t move, your data to whatever distribution you picked
  • ideally have a dedicated hard drive in there for JUST the data, NOT the OS
  • play… have fun, truly. Try to use YOUR data, I mean the copy you have now that you don’t even care if you lose, and try to use them with the stock software that comes with your distribution, e.g OpenOffice or Blender or Kdenlive, or whatever you are into
  • delete it all! Don’t be afraid, you can do it, you have copies anyway
  • do it, again, again, keep a logbook or wiki or .doc file where you write down what you learn
  • rinse and repeat

this way you should find YOUR distribution in no time and you won’t be afraid of messing up!

Honestly it’s a fun adventure. I’ve been learning Linux and CLI tools decades ago and I’m still learning to this day so do not assume there is one solution you can find today and move, it’s a process, a long one, but a really empowering one IMHO.

N0x0n, (edited )

That’s the spirit 🫶.

That’s really what I’m doing on my debian server where I host my docker containers.

I don’t care if I brick my system while playing arround because every day at 00:00 a crontab job dumps all my database and saves all my docker volumes and docker-compose to an external HD and saves most important dotfiles and wireguard configuration.

Back Up and running in 30 min !

2 years in, still going strong and learning everyday something new, keeping everything I learn in a markdown file.

  • Personal CA with self-signed certificate by an intermediate CA chain
  • Wireguard tunnel routing all my devices traffic to protonVPN
  • Alot of docker stuff
  • Alot of networking stuff (DNS, cryptography…)
  • LVM, bash…
  • …

Wild ride, sometimes alot of frustration, but what an empowering experience !

geoma,

MX Linux, Linux Mint, Endeavour OS

geoma,

And Debian

prole, (edited )

I second EndeavourOS. My first distro and it’s been a great experience. I’ve felt no desire to switch.

Steam/games have worked great.

lemmyreader,

If you like Arch-based, there’s Manjaro and EndeavourOS.

tkk13909,

EndeavourOS, yes. Manjaro, no.

Glitchington,
@Glitchington@lemmy.world avatar

EndeavourOS is a pretty decent setup, it has been working well for me so far, and I prefer Arch-based distros because of how quickly Linux has been moving.

Manjaro have let their SSL cert problem happen twice since I’ve been in the loop, and they were unintentionally DDOSing the AUR for a while.

lemmyreader,

Yes. I know Manjaro got bad press several times, about their SSL cert and about firing their treasurer but as a Linux distribution Manjaro is pretty decent for the average user, in my opinion.

Glitchington,
@Glitchington@lemmy.world avatar

SSL cert expiring stopped access to updates. That’s not just bad press, that’s poor form overall, especially for an Arch-based distro. Even worse, this happened while certbot exists, so there’s no excuse. It tells me they are less reliable as a distro, especially to have let it happen twice.

where_am_i,

None of those people have a slightest clue. Your options really are: ubuntu vanilla and maybe pop os.

Everything else will very quickly require you to read through some obscure docs and bash your head against the terminal.

Vanilla Ubuntu, not kubuntu/xubuntu/whateverbuntu is the only polished and documented distro. After a year or two of that you’ll be ready to consider this “what distro” question.

nao,

Without the first sentence, this could have been one of the top comments

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Ubuntu vanilla LTS

whaley,

I like Garuda. I use the dragonized theme and it makes it look similar to mac OS. IMO it’s as easy to use as any other justworks distro but is far prettier

yum13241,

openSUSE Tumbleweed. Or EndeavorOS if you want to join the Arch side.

discusseded,

I like fedora but I’m really loving opensuse tumbleweed on both my desktop and laptop. I have Nvidia rtx cards and support is just a few mouse clicks post-image. I get better FPS now than I did in Windows 11.

discusseded,

Adding that zorin was great as well but it’s Debian-based so driver support was behind enough that some games wouldn’t launch for me.

mlg,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Anything except Ubuntu and it’s direct downstreams

Fedora for my pick.

LibreFish, (edited )

If it’s KDE that’s causing issues you should just be able to install a second desktop environment and try that out.

Otherwise, Debian stable is good. Can also testing or unstable if you want newer packages. Debian “just works” if you’re not on day 1 hardware, don’t have Nvidia graphics, and can troubleshoot the occasional issue that any Linux distro will bring.

Para_lyzed,

My personal recommendation is Fedora, but the community recommendation will likely be Linux Mint, which is also a perfectly good recommendation. Either of them are “just works” distros. I prefer the update cycle of Fedora, and would certainly want to distance myself from Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives (even Mint), and Debian’s update cycle is painfully slow. Fedora manages what is seemingly a perfect balance of quick and stable updates.

Fedora comes with Gnome by default, but it has spins for other DEs like KDE Plasma if that’s more of your thing (I’ll be switching to Plasma when Fedora 40 releases with Plasma 6).

BlanK0,

You could try fedora sway or gnome spins

Stillhart,

I swapped last summer and landed on Pop!_OS after trying a few different options. If you game, Nobara is a great choice too. Other ones I considered were Mint, Ubuntu and SUSE Tumbleweed.

I would highly recommend trying them all with the live disk thingy. Mint didn’t even work at all on my computer for some unknown reason, which was rather surprising considering how often it’s recommended. It kept freezing right when the GUI logged in. So yeah, try em out for a little bit just to make sure there aren’t any weird incompatibilities.

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