I’m over tinkering with my OS. So I’m looking for a distro that “just works” out of the box for my laptop. Also I want to test an “easy” distro I can install for my grandpa.
I don’t care for immutability, declarative config, being fully FOSS or having the newest stuff. I don’t want snaps, or a software center that relies on them. So no Ubuntu.
What I do want (ideally out of the box):
Important:
- as few annoying visible bugs and crashes as possible (looking at you, Ubuntu)
- Wayland support
- good package selection, so no independent fringe distro
- fluid YouTube videos, streaming, pre-installed codecs
Less important:
- ideally with Gnome
- encrypting the hard drive from within the GUI installer
- nice font rendering (used to be a problem, but I guess not anymore)
- installing Steam with a button press
- pre-installed sane-airprint and sane-airscan (automatic setup of my networked printer-scanner-combo)
You get the idea. The usual stuff (low-end gaming, browsing, streaming, printing, scanning) should just work. I don’t have any hardware that poses a problem.
From what I’ve read, Mint doesn’t yet support Wayland and doesn’t ship with video codecs anymore. (Or am I wrong?)
What are the other options? Is Zorin king of the block now? Is Manjaro good now?
Thanks for any and all input.
Manjaro is great.
I really like Manjaro. I’ve been running it on my personal computer for many years now, however, I would not recommend it for grandma’s computer. Their “delayed and curated” release strategy mostly just works but when it doesn’t it doesn’t. As someone mentioned elsewhere in the comments I would lean towards Red Hat or Debian for more mindless distros. I’ve administered thousands of Debian package updates and distro upgrades and it’s so stable. We don’t deserve Debian.
Does it have automatic updates, or do you have to manually update often like with Arch?
It uses pamac/pacman for packages like Arch. I believe pamac has automatic updates, if turned on.
I’ve run Manjaro for various relatives with zero issues for about 5 years now. Most of them just hit the Update button in the notification tray when it shows up, or if I’m visiting I’ll update it, but it might go months without updates and just keeps working. But if you ingrain in your dad to just hit the button when he sees it, it’ll be fine.
I quite like Manjaro overall. Lots of usability tweaks and low maintenance because it’s curated and not completely cutting edge on the latest packages. It works.