I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are “mainstream” “beginner friendly” distros, right? I don’t want anything too advanced, right?

Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had “no signal”). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.

Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I’m used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything “just work” flawlessly, but it’s so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!

Credit where it’s due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I’d never strayed from Gnome because I’m not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it’s “simple” and “customizable” but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only “simple” in that it doesn’t allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).

The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the “beginner” distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!

edit: i am DYING at the number of “you’re using it wrong” comments here. never change people.

  • @PlasticExistenceEnglish
    3•6 months ago

    I always recommend Pop_OS! for beginners. It’s IMHO a lot closer to what Ubuntu used to be, uses apt and/or flatpaks (and no snaps), has sane defaults, a good installer, a decent company behind it, nvidia drivers included and their upcoming Cosmic desktop environment looks sick.

    Also, I feel like this is a better Fedora-based distro for beginners since it’s harder to break:

    https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/

    • boredsquirrel
      2•6 months ago

      Yes probably agree on PopOS, even though never used it. Also their DE will need a lot of time, I hipenthey dont ship it too early. I dual boot it, actually the Fedora Atomic image.

      Yes, Silverblue is the GNOME Atomic desktop but as I said it is not finished. There are many things not done.

      https://gitlab.com/fedora/ostree/sig/-/issues

      • @[email protected]
        1•6 months ago

        Being in active development does not mean it’s not ready. To recognize faults or things that can be improved upon and keeping track of those does not mean it’s not ready.

        By your definition, not a single distro is ready. Which, to be frank, is a perfectly fine stance to hold if the extent of this is explored and explained. However, you pose it as if Fedora Atomic is the one with that problem (implying others don’t have that issue), which is just plain false.

        • boredsquirrel
          2•6 months ago

          It is not false.

          There is a workaround for updating the bootloader, but I often use “how well does it scale” as a measurement.

          Atomic should replace traditional distros, and apart from the need for improved tooling everywhere (like easily converting random files to RPMs) it has the big issue that currently GRUB is not updated.

          This means the system is not possible to keep installed over many versions, without tweaks. This will hopefully be fixed with bootupd integration in F41.

          This means users with secureboot get issues on newer Kernels, if they installed Atomic a few versions back.

          Here is the Atomic issue tracker and I would call a few dealbreakers, while not all.