Obviously this is somewhat subjective, but I’ve had a lot of problems in my previous attempts to switch to Linux, so I’d like to create a list of distros to try out, and see what works for me. I’m mostly expecting to be doing basic office work and light gaming via Steam.
I installed ZorinOS recently. For a basic user its a great distro. It is preinstalled with Brave and LibreOffice. Easy to use DE. There would be no need to touch the terminal.
I am running Adguard Home and I was able to set that up via the App Manager. Not bad.
I needed a terminal for Docker, but most everyday users won’t require that.
Headless: debian
Gui: mint
I’ve had no issues running ZorinOS.
Yeah, zero tweaks needed. It just works out of the box. Don’t even need to use the terminal.
Only reasons I moved off of Mint was that it had minor issues with NVidia gaming performance, and I ended up liking KDE Plasma better than Cinnamon. Was plenty stable, otherwise.
Can’t really recommend bazzite, that I moved to, since there’s several issues that have proven unsolvable for me, due to the filesystem veing immutable.
since there’s several issues that have proven unsolvable for me
Could you be explicit? I think it’s more beneficial that way. Thanks in advance!
I’ve posted and commented about it a few times, so I can just link you those:
Thank you!
- I can understand why the random long load-times for apps is very frustrating. I don’t recall other Bazzite users complaining about it. So I don’t know how widespread the problem is.
- I’ve effectively been on GNOME ever since I made the jump to Linux. So I can’t comment on Dolphin.
- I can 100℅ relate to windows not restoring their prior states. I’ve used a tiling window manager extension on GNOME just because it handled that more gracefully; I like them maximized anyways.
- The audio sink thingy should have been available as a toggle by now. It’s unfortunate that it seemingly hasn’t. Though, I do wonder if pavucontrol would have been sufficient. There seems to be a flatpak for it if you’re interested.
- The developer experience on Flatpak leaves a lot to be desired 😅. FWIW, I prefer that within a distrobox.
- For GameMaker, installing it within a Ubuntu distrobox would probably have been sufficient.
FWIW, I don’t think any of these are directly related to “immutability”; i.e. in the case of Bazzite, some subfolders of
/being read-only at runtime.
Been on Bazzite for a while now. Have never been happier in Linux. I’m a software engineer and occasional gamer for context
TempleOS
Fedora worked for me out of the box. The only software I had to install npmfusion (Nvidia driver) for a higher refresh rate and that was easy. But even without that, I had full resolution
Depends, how new is your hardware? Bleeding edge hardware is probably going to do better on a bleeding edge distro. Or at least a rolling release.
Old and crusty? Anything Debian or Ubuntu based should be more than stable.
Nobara for gaming. I’ve had issues with multiple other distros but Nobara just works. It’s based on Fedora but is preconfigured with everything needed to game right away. Every other distro I’ve had to fix some random issue from Steam not running (latest Fedora) to game controllers needing to be remapped. Nobara sorts this all for you. Fedora for a laptop. It seems to have the best support for a variety of weird hardware. Bazzite for TV gaming. That’s basically what it’s built for.
I can imagine a good NixOS config working pretty well. Just need to find someone’s repo that has all you need already set up.
Anything “immutable”
- ublue family: Bazzite, Aurora, Bluefin
- Fedora Atomic family: Silverblue, Kinoite, …
- KDE Linux (experimental)
- OpenSuse MicroOS (for servers, but possible to add a desktop)
- SteamOS (limited hardware compat)
Any other answer is outdated and wrong.
Edit: holy shit the amount of mint recommendations is crazy. Stay away from mint, it sucks. It’s just a less reliable version of Ubuntu. If all you like its desktop environment, that’s called “Cinnamon”, and it can be installed in other distros.
LMDE isn’t Ubuntu redux. It’s what i’m using because it was what i used from the get go 3 years ago and can’t be ass’d changing because it works and has never crashed.
90% of what I do is use FF, Joplin, Darktable, Inkscape, Caliber and QBTorrent. A little gaming on Steam and Heroic and messaging on Singal Desktop is the other 10% of my use, so clicking an icon on a dock is about as easy as it gets.
My only minor annoyance is the PrtScr button on my Logitech KB doesn’t work (have sollar Installed) but I just use Flameshot anyway.
Besides Debian?
Debian is also my answer.
Mint works perfectly for me, for that same use case
Of the 10~20 distros I tested in these past ~4 years, Mint is the only one I needed to go way out of my way to break anything. Also most of what you’d need is orderly laid out in the “Start menu” (don’t remember if it has a specific name on Linux), including there being a GUI-based “app store”, so it’s also pretty straight forward to install most day-to-day stuff.
I thought you were going to say you had to go way out of your way to fix it at first 😂 I was like wait what?
The only downside of Mint is outdated packages.
Definitely mint for “just works”, personally used it on loads of computers and haven’t encountered any issues
Mint Debian Edition
What’s different between LMDE and choosing cinnamon when installing debian? Do they change anything under the hood on the debian base?
It’s the same Debian base under the hood, but has:
- A more user-friendly installer (I know Debian’s has improved with Trixie, but Mint’s is still easier IMO).
- A newbie friendly welcome screen that walks them through setting up a snap shot back-up tool, theming, updates, firewall, as well as easily providing a link to help documents, and shows the user the software center exists.
- The excellent Mint Software Centre Appstore (I don’t think that comes with Cinnamon on a standard Debian install, I think it’s just the terminal).
The difference is LMDE uses debian and its packages as a base while the “cinnamon” edition uses Ubuntu as a base. I believe they both actually use cinnamon as the DE.
It’s more of a just in case because a lot of the linux community isn’t like Conical lately.
