A few beginner questions about the differences between distros.
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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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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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I love a bit of shameless self promotion. Especially if it's that comprehensive.
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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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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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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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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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Your laptop has a gyro?
I'll give Fedora a go.
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Thank you kindly. All is a learning experience in life so this should be fun.
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Will take under consideration. Know a few mates who reccomend mint
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Just went out and got a USB to use. Will start playing around when I get a free day.
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Got some mates who are fans of Mint. but yeah. I'll set up a boot USB and start playing around.
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this might be ringing in late, but consider a large USB disk with Ventoy on it. you can just drop multiple ISOs on it, and then select which one you want you boot from right at boot time.
this will give you the ability to easily try multiple distros without too much commitment.
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Hadn't heard of zorin. Will add it to deliberations. Thank you kindly
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Good recommendation. Seems like it'd be a good way to rapidly try a few. I'll look into it. Thank you kindly.
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It's a convertible that you can use as a tablet.
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I think your response has so far been the most comprehensive. Thank you so much.
This is a thing of the past. With the excellent Distrobox, you can install any package from any distro on whatever distro you’re running.
I'd not heard of Distrobox sounds to me to be a perfect foil to the disparate package solutions out there. It gives me some peace of mind about not being locked into a package manager (Although as you point out, even without distrobox that wouldn't be an issue).
Lastly, some distros and/or (so-called) desktop environments might collect telemetry to improve themselves. But this is done in a way that suits free and open source software. Thankfully, if you’ve got problems with this, you can always turn it off.
I've really not got any problems with telemetry so long as it's just limited to the technicals and for OS improvement purposes. Sounds like I should be fine.
So, all distros allow you to tinker. My question is: What is it you’re tinkering with?
"Tinkering" in my case is pretty broad. You're correct when you suppose that I like to mess with UI aesthetics and workflows. The other misc tinkering I more mentioned in case there's some distros that are unsuited to working with strange or niche programs (such as the media encoding and physical media management stuff I mentioned). It sounds like that's not really much of a problem though. Anyway what counts as "niche" is very subjective so probably wasn't that helpful to mention.
Have you considered Bazzite?
I have not heard of Bazzite. It kinda looks to be perfect if I end up going with Fedora (It's the most recommended so far). My only concern is longevity, It seems to be quite new and I don't want to jump on just for it to be a flash in the pan. As I understand it though, even if it is, it's easy enough to change distros. Others have said to not be worried about locking oneself in and to just jump in and try. Also not a fan of "Gaming Mode" style UI but I guess I can just not use it.
Out of everything, this could be a slight concern. You could make it work through Wine, and it seems to have decent results. If you’re not opposed to using Photoshop CC 2021, there’s this GitHub repo worth looking at as well.
Honestly, not married to Photoshop at all. That's just what I use and I'm not any sort of power user by any measure.
Again, thank you very much for your detailed response.
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Too many distros to compare. If you want to tinker as a beginner and not have to reinstall for minor mistakes, go for something like OpenSUSE, it has Snapshotting with Rollback built in. You make a mistake, reboot to the previous snapshot and make it the default if everything is normal.
NVidia also hosts a specific repo for OoenSUSE so I have never had graphics issues. -
I LOVE this comments section with so many correct, yet opposite views.
For reference I am on Mint where I installed KDE.
- My impression is that the distro does matter (a bit) but that lots of distros are very similar. The front runners you have listed all seem quite appropriate for your use case, but Fedora unlike the others updates more frequently and therefore is slanted towards more features.
The other ones are all based on Ubuntu and will offer a similar experience IF you took the time to switch out all the desktop environment, apps, settings tweaks, etc. However, the fact is that you probably won't do that, and unless there is a good reason to, why would you when you could install a kde/gnome distro anyway?
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I wouldn't worry about the ones you have listed at least, not comparable to Microsoft and at the end of the day it is still linux so it will be way way way easier to switch again if the companies try anything shifty. Ubuntu has made some controversial decisions around snaps but it seriously is on a different level to M$.
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All mature afaik. Mint and Fedora are both extremely popular.
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Multiple monitors has been fine for me. Not sure about HDR but look up and understand wayland vs X11.
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Plasma KDE is good! I would recommend Plasma or Gnome over Cinnamon if you know you want to tinker.
