A few beginner questions about the differences between distros.
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re: Distros. Tuxedo is a strange one. I'm not saying it's bad or anything, it just doesn't normally feature in these discussions. I don't know much about it, so I couldn't say if it's a good option or not, but I'm curious what drew you to it?
Couldn't say anything in particular. I think I was looking for Plasma KDE default and it claims to have the stability, support and ease of use of Ubuntu while ripping out the stuff people didn't like that canonical put in.
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None of that matters.
You need experience, not recommendations.
Install anything and play with it to learn.
If you will not go forward without a recommendation, Debian is fine and anything you learn will generally transfer to other distributions.
Copy that. Sounds like I'm off to set up a Boot USB.
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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!
Cheers. Sounds like package management is going to be a bit of a learning experience but what isn't? Should end up being fine
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If you do not want your distro to force changes down your throat like Microsoft, maybe avoid Ubuntu.
“Stability” on Linux means two things. “Stable” distros like Debian or RHEL change their software infrequently. This is indeed stable. However, you will likely be unhappy with the old software and want to install newer stuff. Many of the ways this is done will cause actual instability (bugs and crashes). Also, old software may be missing features or hardware support. If you are a gamer for example, this could be a big deal—especially if you use NVIDIA.
Things are a bit better than they used to be with tech like Distrobox and Flatpak.
The frequently updated distros can actually be “more stable” for the same reasons as above. However, every once in a while some package is going to have a bug that may hit you before it is found. Arch or EOS are examples of such distros.
Distros that fall in the middle, like Mint or Fedora, are what I would recommend for a new user. Compared to Windows, you will find them very tinker friendly and tweakable.
HDR is very, very new and is part of a change in core graphics tech from something called X11 to something called Wayland. From this point forward, Wayland is the better bet but, today, the quality of your experience is going to be very dependent of the “age of your software” issue above. For Wayland, you want very up-to-date versions.
KDE Plasma is the most mature Wayland environments today, in my assessment. Others are coming along quickly.
Photoshop is going to be a problem for you. The most often recommended replacement for PS is GIMP. Unfortunately, GIMP has been on the verge of a major update for years. GIMP 3 has not shipped yet and most distros ship a far older version (2.10). Version 3 is a massive upgrade. However, you still find it an unsatisfactory PS replacement. Some people use Photopea online.
Gaming on Linux works really well now. However, multi-player anti-cheat systems are Windows kernel only and so these games are going to be a problem. So, your experience will depend on what you play.
The other stuff on your list will work well. Linux of course has a lot more to offer, especially if you are a dev.
Good luck!
Thank you kindly. Sounds like wayland will be just dandy for me. Not married to Photoshop. It's just what I use. I'm sure I can figure my way around something else.
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Copy that. Sounds like I'm off to set up a Boot USB.
If you can figure out how to make a Debian usb installer without help then you’ll be fine.
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When you like to tinker with the DE, e.g. customising to your liking, then there would be no way around KDE as it is imho the most customizable DE. Gnome is rock solid and its UI is very concise and coherent but also not that customizable (out of the box).
When it comes to the Amazon and Snap Scandals, you might want to steer clear from everything that is Ubuntu based since it was Canonical who did those two things. Ubuntu based is for example Mint (unless you go Linux Mint Debian Edition which skips the ubuntu middle man) and Kubuntu.
HDR is afaik still maturing in Wayland: https://arewewaylandyet.com/
But Multi Screen support is not a big issue anymore.
nVidia used to be a problem since their opensource and also proprietary drivers were quite lacking. But this was afaik remedied last year.
Regarding the packages: yes in essence you could just install it afterwards, but there are three/four/five package formats that are only compatible with each other after some repackging has been done, one of those package formats only exists on one branch of Linux (snap), twos are universal (AppImage which is similiar to portable Apps in Windows, Flatpak) and three that are fundamental (DEB for debian based systems, RPM for IBM red hat (fedora), ZST for Arch based systems)
With your software list, you may run into issues regarding Photoshop CS6 as it is not supported in Linux and you would need alternatives (which includes relearning workflows) e.g. Krita and GIMP (both you can already run in windows to check them out and learn a bit)
Gaming is simple: check protondb.com to see if a given game runs in linux; steam exists, lutris exists for non-steam games.
Thanks for your comment. Sounds like KDE's the way foward. Package management sounds like it'll be part of the learning curve but nothing I can't handle.
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If you had asked me Q1 a month ago, I would have said yes (and in general, it is a yes, with enough effort). But i run endeavour (arch) and my partner runs mint (which ships with the Cinnamon WM), and a few weeks ago I recommended that she try out KDE Plasma for its wayland support. Turns out, this is not something the mint community supports, you can't just install it through their software manager, and the mint forums will all tell you to switch to another distro that supports KDE. Meanwhile, on arch, I expect to be able to install it through pacman, choose it from SDDM, and I'm done. Maybe tweak something in my
.config, but it's all downhill from there.Just a datapoint. Some distros (and their communities) seem to be more receptive to experimentation than others, which can make trying new things easier/harder.
I would recommend fedora, debian, or endeavour + KDE/gnome. Good luck!
Copy that, will be sure to confirm compatibility and experiment
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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.
Sounds like experimentation's the aim of the game. Just got a USB so will use that to try.
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I'll answer point by point, but the short answer is pick one and use it, if you have issues with it or want to try something different, switch, otherwise stick with it.
- Your understanding is mostly correct. There's the difference that each distro has a family tree which determines which package manager they use, Red hat based distros like Fedora use rpm, Debian based distros like Mint, Pop or Kubuntu use apt, etc. So it would be easier to switch from Mint to Kubuntu than from Fedora to Pop although not by much. The main difference between distros is philosophy, which honestly you shouldn't care too much currently as long as you aim at something beginner friendly.
- Probably not something to worry about, and if it comes to that you can just jump to another distro, trust me once you're familiar with Linux the distro matters less and less.
- Any of them (except for tuxedo which might be a good option but I don't know it) would be a good option. Personally I would recommend Mint, or at least a Debian based one since 3 of the ones you suggested are Debian based it would give you more options to switch easily if needed.
- It should, but your mileage might vary
- Any of them should be good for that, KDE/Plasma is a bit similar to Windows while also being very eye candy, so it's a good choice. Also it's the one used on the Steam Deck so you might be somewhat familiar with it already.
Extra: Nvidia should be fine as long as you use the official proprietary drivers (named
nvidia, NOTnouveau). Photoshop doesn't work on Linux, so you might need to jump through hoops there, if it's not a hard requirement I suggest looking at Gimp for photo manipulation or Krista for drawing, good luck either way since it's uphill battle either way, one against Adobe anti-piracy measures and the other against an unfamiliar software.PS is just what I use, I'm not married to it. Also not really a power user so don't mind reskilling.
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If you need a replacement for full fledged Visual Studio, JetBrains has you covered. Clion for C/C++ and Rider for C#.
Visual Studio Code works great on Linux.
C# is my bread and butter for personal projects. I use IntelliJ at work so might give rider a try.
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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.
Yeah, I've been thinking of Upgrading my PC once I have the capital. I might end up fully switching off Intel. I chose Intel when I did my build because AMD had a bit of a reputation of poor reliability. I understand though that they've since far outgrown it.
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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.
Yeah, I did just mean applications in general. Also, not married to PS. It's just what I use. I don't mind switching.
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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.
I love a bit of shameless self promotion. Especially if it's that comprehensive.
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Not really unless you're hyper-focused on a very specific type of performance. Even then, you can always enable/disable whatever bits and pieces because it's all software, and it's all open. There are guides or threads for absolutely everything out there. A distro only organizes it simpler on base install to make it easier ootb.
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Linux itself does not do any data collection. Never heard of any distro enabling anything by default, and you can tip it right out anyway if you want, though it's more work. If you're concerned about this though, stay away from Ubuntu, as that is the one corporate backed distro that is more likely to lean into this.
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Fedora is probably what you want. It's taken over the helm Ubuntu used to have as the default to try. Clean, simple, no bullshit, huge community.
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Linux, no, but you're conflating a few things. Linux is the kernel, the desktop you choose to run is what does the graphical session management. Both KDE and Gnome are fine with this, though there is an argument that KDE is a tad ahead in this realm with their VRR implementation.
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Gnome is more akin to MacOS. KDE is more Windows-like (but still not at all). Try both on a liveUSB for a bit and see which you like.
At the end of the day you can run practically anything on a liveUSB for as long as you want before installing, even games (within reason). Be comfortable in the knowledge that if there is something you don't like a particular thing, you can change it to act however you want. Like I said above, it's all just software. It's going to be a little tough coming from a Windows-centric to realize this at first, but I assure you, installing and running one distro absolutely does not lock you into anything at all because you can just install and remove absolutely everything.
Now, hardware compatibility is a different story. The Linux kernel itself is what does all the hardware management, so if your hardware is too new, there may not be full support for a particular thing. It sounds like you're on an older machine though, so unless it's got some really obscure hardware in it, everything should be detected and load straight out of the box. Again, try a few liveUSB runs and make sure, it's that simple.
Copy that. Got myself a USB so I'll do some playing. Thanks for the clarification. As for hardware, only weird thing might be my sound card but we'll see how that plays out.
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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.
Wow, that was really comprehensive and clear, thank you. I'll digest and factor into the deliberations. Reckon I'll also switch to AMD with my next build. Main reason I went Intel/Nvidea is cuz AMD's old reputation was still ringing in my ears when I build it.
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Distros matter. Maybe less than you think.
For the most part, they all run the same software, including the desktop environment (user experience).
So, in many ways, choosing your distro is mostly choosing how it comes out of the box and how much work it will be to configure it how you want after the fact. Some distros will be closer to what you want out of the box. But you can basically turn any distro into any other distro with a little effort.
That said, some choices do run a bit deeper and are a lot harder to change. Package manager, init system, C library, and others are pretty baked in.
Copy that. I'll look a bit more into the baked in differences then. I understand that different packages can be converted with some effort. Will need to research the others.
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So you like tinkering? Just install Arch and go wild /s
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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.
Thank you for the advice. I'm definitely approaching this as a learning experience, something I've never really shied away from.
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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.
Your laptop has a gyro?
I'll give Fedora a go.
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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
Thank you kindly. All is a learning experience in life so this should be fun.
