A few beginner questions about the differences between distros.
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I'm gonna push back against your Ubuntu disparagement. In terms of "pushing" things, Ubuntu's abuses are really very marginal. Compared to Windows, the difference between Ubuntu and any other distro is vanishingly minimal in this regard. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is undeniably a solid and dependable distro with a 20-year track record behind it. For a beginner that should count for something.
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There is no right answer. There are many distros to choose from and each has its pros and cons. My suggestion would be to try a few things in VMs before fully making the jump. Personally I use Mint. It just works and takes a minimal amount of hassle to install and run. If that's a priority to you, I'd suggest checking it out.
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It matters a little bit, but not a ton. A big difference will come down to what package manager comes with a distro, and whether it is a "rolling" distro that gets updates as soon as they come out, or one which withholds updates until after they have some time for bug testing, etc. Given that gaming is one of your primary use cases, I would recommend a rolling distro. If your distro does not come prepackaged with something you can usually install it. Minimalist distros like Arch come with almost nothing pre-installed, not even a desktop environment, so you can be very granular about what gets installed and keep you system lean.
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Most distros will not have as much in the way of corporate control/privacy concerns. A few like Ubuntu or Fedora are more closely linked with a single company, but most are more community driven and this is not a concern.
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The advice I always give to people first trying Linux is to go into it with the mindset that you are learning a new skill as many things are simply done differently to Windows. Most things work fine, but every once in a while, especially when setting something up for the first time, may require additional configuration steps. Very popular distros like Mint will usually have the most community resources, and you can often find posts or guides of people who have already solved some issue you run into. I would also throw one of the Arch-based distros onto your list: Endeavor OS, which is essentially a pre-configured Arch installation. The Arch wiki is one of the most highly regarded resources in the entire linux community, and even if you are not using an Arch distro, many of the guides on it can be helpful.
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Generally speaking, my multi-monitor usage with KDE has been seamless. No issues that I can think of. HDR support has only very recently been added, so I am not sure how well it works, but it is improving rapidly.
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I think Plasma would be a good fit for what you are trying to do. Honestly, it is very customizable, but perfectly usable right out of the box even if you do not want to do anything to it. The layout is very familiar for a Windows user.
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Yeah sure but they do force snap for some packages (while making it look like apt running) and it isn't ideal. I don't see any reason to use ubuntu over debian unless I'm some corporation that needs to run the same version for 10 years with their subscription.
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Shameless self promotion: https://lemm.ee/post/37682729
It won't answer all of your answers, but it should at least give you a good primer on what distros are and what are the main key takeaways.
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I don’t have anything to say that everyone else hasn’t so I’ll just wish you good luck and hope you have an enjoyable experience
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the distro matters, but as a general rule, start with mint cinnamon because it's easy and super stable. different distros use different components and they are configured differently, so if you face issues and incompatibility on mint, fedora may work better for example. for me it's the other way around. also on debian or ubuntu based distros you have the biggest selection of programs available. not sure what packages you are referring to..just applications in general? it's as easy as just installing or uninstalling them from your package manager / software center or whatever.
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ubuntu is owned by canonical, I'd say avoid that. mint is derived from ubuntu, but it has a debian edition so it's not threatened if ubuntu gets further enshittified.
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I recently used kububtu for a week, something to note: it's running very far behind, using plasma 5.27. in my experience, kde in general seems to have lots of customization but a lot of it is just broken. all the themes you can find, most won't install, animations are laggy (I suspect nvidia issue). downvotes incoming, but that's just my experience. it may work for you though idk. fedora official and pop use gnome, which I have very limited experience with, but I remember it not giving too much control to the user with customization if that's what you're after, also what's with the full screen app launcher? in cinnamon you will find a lot of customization and it all works. it's also very familiar to use if you're coming from windows.
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do your monitors have different refresh rates? that was an issue, I think that got fixed in wayland. x11 will not be your friend. someone correct me on this one if I'm wrong.
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I stand by what I said in 3, but go ahead and try them in usb live environment and see if you find it okay to use. btw you can install KDE plasma in mint too, you're not married to the DE that your distro ships with.
you are probably going to need to set up a virtualbox and use photoshop in windows, I hear it doesn't work well in wine.
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Others have already answered your questions, so I'll just drop in my anecdotal experience to moving over my desktop to Linux last year. I tried a few different distros but settled with Fedora KDE edition. It works with everything exotic in my laptop out of the box, except for the gyro that doesn't work with anybody else either. The desktop feels familiar and is easy to customize. I tried to like Gnome and variants but it is really settled on The Gnome Way of doing everything. Fedora is a fresh experience from previous attempts of going full Linux desktop with Ubuntu and even Mint. The GUI for software and package management is neat and includes native packages, flatpak both the fedora builds and mainline. Some minor things are not quite there but I believe that will be the Linux experience forever and I'm okay with it. I recommend to try it.
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I don’t see any reason to use ubuntu over debian
I do. The last time I tried it, Debian's installer crashed and left me with a white screen. Imagine telling a newbie to wipe their disk before that happens. Linux has lost a user for life. Debian's site is still completely archaic, so the pre-installation funnel is going to be a challenge in itself for most people. No way.
To be clear, I used Debian for years, I love their mission and I want it to be the reference FOSS distro. But beginners need hand-holding and Debian is not ready for that yet.
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By and large, distros package the same software so which one you pick is more or less a matter of taste. As a beginner you won't have the knowledge to take advantage of documentation/instructions that are not written for your specific distro, so pick one of the more popular ones.
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No, distro owners won't be a problem in the same way that microsoft or apple are. Don't worry about that: the moment they do something unsavory (even remotely) their projects will be forked, and switching to a different distro is not a big deal anyway.
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If you like to tinker you will break your system, not because linux is fragile (it is not) but because knowledge of low-level stuff is widespread and the temptation to thinker with it is too great. Here I'd recommend to look into system snapshots and how they integrate with boot options (eg. opensuse tumbleweed automatically snapshosts your system when you update it and during boot you can choose to boot into a previous snapshot - surely other distros do the same and if they don't you can set it up yourself).
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The short answer is "use KDE"
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KDE is great. The DE you choose matters (IMHO) more that the distro, because once you are familiar with a DE and its shortcuts it's a pain to switch, and also because once you are used to some feature it's enormously frustrating to switch to a DE that doesn't have it
From what I hear (I switched to Amd years ago), it's not hard to make the Nvidia cards work properly, but it's a recurring hassle and there are lots of things that are more fun to thinker with... unless specific reasons you need an nvidia card, I'd suggest selling it off and replacing it with a second-hand AMD/Intel one.
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Just use LMDE.
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Does the distro I pick matter?
Packages
When you install a distro it will have repositories of apps that you can easily install and easily keep updated using either the GUI (GNOME Software for GNOME, Discover for KDE) or the package manager in terminal (dnf in Fedora, apt in kubuntu and mint). It's similar to how you install apps on a smartphone.
The good thing about the apps from the default repository is that they're (in theory) tested to work well with the distro.
You can also install applications from other sources when necessary.
Update Frequency and new tech
Another difference is how new kernel and software you get from the repos.
The latest Debian Stable runs kernel 6.1 while Fedora just updated to 6.12 and arch has been running 6.12 since december.
If you're running the newest hardware then the chance of having drivers available automatically increases with a newer kernel. -
Company-run distros and alternatives:
In my opinion Ubuntu is the ones doing the most forcing as of now, and even they are angels compared to Microsoft.
Fedora had discussions about including opt-out Telemetry to aid them getting data to improve the distro. They listened to community feedback and backpedaled that into opt-in metrics:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Telemetry
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Metrics
Debian and Arch are both examples of distros without enterprise involvement and that have no upstream distro that can affect their releases.
Map of distros here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg -
Stability of the distro:
Of your frontrunners I've only run Fedora but that has been stable and been working well for me for my primary PC. So has Debian which I run on my servers (I have a Debian VM running Portainer for dockers, one for running Jellyfin and a third for Forgejo). -
Monitor support
Multi monitor support
I don't have the desktop space for double monitors personally, but I've heard that KDE 6 (Plasma) handles multi monitor support well.
HDR
Should be working since November
- Both KDE and GNOME are customizable. KDE is more similar to Windows and I realized that most of my GNOME customizations was to make it more similar to Windows and KDE. I've since switched to KDE and must say I really enjoy having a proper file browser as default. Nautilus (default GNOME file browser) has been simplified to death and caused me to create a script to replace it with nemo.
Nvidia is a whole lot simpler to use than people make it sound like, though I'll stay team red:
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Current_GeForce.2FQuadro.2FTesla
Fedora guide for Nvidia drivers unless you're running a really old card:sudo dnf update -y # Update your machine and reboot sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia # Installs the driver sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda #optional for cuda/nvdec/nvenc support (required for Davinci Resolve)- Gaming including emulation
First person shooters with kernel intrusive AV won't work in Linux as they expect to spy on a Windows OS.
Other than that gaming on Linux is really getting there as I'm sure you've realized when using a Steamdeck.
Outside of Steam you have Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris and Bottles for running windows games on Linux.
I'm mostly using Lutris but I think Heroic Games launcher is the more popular one. - Firefox
Default browser in most distros
. VLC
Available in most default distro repositories. - Spotify
Available as a Flatpak on Flathub, haven't used it myself. - Discord
I know people has had some trouble with screen sharing but that the DiscordCanary (think Beta version) solves it.
https://github.com/flathub/com.discordapp.Discord/issues/380 - Godot
Can be downloaded as a simple bin file from their own site: https://godotengine.org/download/linux/
Also available as a Flatpak on Flathub - Visual Studio
The closest you get is VSCode. - Git
Not a problem. - Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
Photoshop will be trouble, Audacity and Davinci Resolve should work. - Misc “Tinkering” (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Handbrake is available as a Flatpak on Flathub, there's dvd burner applications available too.
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You already have great answers, so I'll just drop my recommendations. LMDE if you want something more stable, and Endeavour OS if you want to go a bit more in the weeds with a rolling release.
In the end, don't be afraid to try some for a few weeks and find one you like. One of the strength of Linux is that if you mess up, you can always reinstall,and it's not scary since you did it once already.
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Distros packaging software means that it is available to install with the package manager from their repositories. No distro provides every piece of software out there. This can be mitigated with Flatpak, Snap, GUIX, AppImage or, in a pinch, by compiling the required program yourself.
Sounds like you've already done most of the work. From what you've said, Fedora with Plasma sounds great for your use case. Good luck on your journey and glad to have you aboard!
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So I don't really have experience with the gaming aspect as I pretty much get what I want from a steamdeck. I think its likely you would want to go with one of those (a gaming setup someone else suggests) or dual boot to have your gaming system and your doing other things setup. Just in case I will mention the one I use called zorin. It is based on ubuntu with gnome and its main claim to fame is its an out of the box distro that tries to emulate windows (other systems to but the paid for version unlocks that. its default is a general windows type experience). Out of the box means it has foss office, video file viewing, audio file listening, image file viewer, browser of course, rdp client, mail client, calendar, contacts, also image,video,audio file creation and editing, optical disk copier/image creator, wine with play on linux so that you can right click a windows executable and run it and such. It does non free software things like nvidia drivers right off the bat. Its great for an install and get going right away type of thing. Its always a bit out of date because its emphasis is stable, just works, get going type of thing. I have a few complaints. Mainly it does not have the windows key, right arrow thing to half screen by default. It could be a stability thing that they don't want to mess with the compiz or whatnot. Then the other thing is I find the software gui interface it have an aweful search for getting more software so either just use apt at the command line or download the .deb installation file which things like various browsers have as a linux option for download and then its really just like adding one to windows or mac. download and run the installation.
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When you mention Visual Studio, do you mean VSCode or Visual Studio. Cus VSCode is supported on Linux but Visual Studio is not. Confusing right?
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For a distro, I recommend Fedora KDE Spin. Fedora is beginner friendly, is widely supported, frequent updates (so less outdated packages), rock solid stable, works with gaming or anything else.
People recommend Linux Mint often, but I am just not a fan of how outdated the system is and its reliance on X11 (deprecated and insecure display server). I've daily driven mint before for like a year and it was good but I'm not a fan of cinnamon DE.
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Fedora Silverblue was VERY easy to install. I opted to go the GNOME route but its been great so far as a former windows user. I rebased from Fedora to Bazzite and it was dead simple. Been on Bazzite for a couple months now and have had no major issues. Figuring out my printer drivers was a bit tedious but it worked the first time once I got the process figured out.
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Bazzite is great Fedora-Atomic-based distro, especially for nvidia users. I had a friend move to Linux and that was the distro that worked. But in general, if someone is a programmer/Dev, they want to learn how to use Linux, or just install a lot of packages, I'd avoid Atomic.
Don't get me wrong, I use Atomic. But it isn't as straight forward as a traditional distro.
The equivalent of Bazzite but traditional Fedora is Nobara
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So you like tinkering? Just install Arch and go wild /s
