A few beginner questions about the differences between distros.
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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.
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I did install Plasma + apps on mint btw! Have been running issue free for about 6 months but I didnt uninstall the gnome apps so theres a duplicate for everything
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also on debian or ubuntu based distros you have the biggest selection of programs available.
AUR and nixpkgs have a massive amount of packages, and basically anything not on there can be installed with Flatpak
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I'm not going to recommend arch to a new user. flatstore is a blessing, but on mint not every flatpak app works. sometimes they won't launch and you need to use the system package.
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i think they should try Bazzite, sounds ideal
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I think your response has so far been the most comprehensive. Thank you so much.
It has been my pleasure
! Thank you for reading through all of that 
."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.
Thanks for the clarification!
I have not heard of Bazzite.
Interesting. Its fan base can be rather vocal. Furthermore, it has been enjoying a very healthy amount of media coverage. Digital Foundry dedicated a video on it. And even LTT briefly mentioned it recently.
It kinda looks to be perfect if I end up going with Fedora (It's the most recommended so far).
I didn't quite capture the intent of this sentence. My bad. Would you mind elaborating/clarifying/explaining? Apologies if I'm coming across as obtuse
.It seems to be quite new
Correct.
and I don't want to jump on just for it to be a flash in the pan.
I understand. I absolutely agree with you that e.g. Fedora's future is more certain than Bazzite. Even if the latter recently reiterated their continued support.
As I understand it though, even if it is, it's easy enough to change distros.
FWIW, the complete Fedora Atomic ecosystem -that Bazzite is part of- allows changing distros with a single command. The only limitation being that the designated distro has to be part of the ecosystem as well. So, even if Bazzite would implode one day after you've switched to it, you could just 'rebase' to (say) Fedora Kinoite.
Others have said to not be worried about locking oneself in
Agreed.
and to just jump in and try.
Kinda. It's more nuanced I think
.Also not a fan of "Gaming Mode" style UI but I guess I can just not use it.
Exactly. Bazzite on desktops/laptops defaults to the DE after logging in. So, as you've noted already, you don't have to use it
.Again, thank you very much for your detailed response.
You doubled down on the kind words. I appreciate it. Thank you for being you!
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It kinda looks to be perfect if I end up going with Fedora (It’s the most recommended so far).I didn’t quite capture the intent of this sentence. My bad. Would you mind elaborating/clarifying/explaining? Apologies if I’m coming across as obtuse
.Ah, sorry. Just wanted to express that Bazzite seems to fit my needs quite well and that fedora has been recommended to me more than any other repo so far. So if after my investigations I do end up choosing fedora, Bazzite seems to be a good flavor to try.
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I would recommend you visit distrowatch.org as they have reviews of a great many distros over a long period. That would prepare you to form an opinion on what kind of experience you want to have.
Example - UI, ie. Desktop Environment: chose Gnome if you like Apples way of making things very polished and giving the user few (visible) options to tinker. Choose KDE if you like a "busy" UI with *all* the options exposed and a ton of desktop widgets. Choose MATE or LXDE if you like a snappy and minimalist approach.
Possibly the biggest differentiator between distros is their native package manager. You can take any distro and swap out eg. KDE for Gnome, but the package manager is fundamental and probably(?) impossible to replace fully.
Example: All the Debian based distros use DEB packages. You'll find a ton, though dine distros lag behind the most recent versions. Others use Redhat's RPM system, while still others build everything from source (which is slow as fuck but gets you to the cutting edge with all the knobs and dials). There's also the Snap and Flatpak systems which strive to supply platform agnostic packages, but do so with very different approaches.
Good luck!
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Even if you only tinker with OS installation occasionally, Ventoy is a damn godsend!
Forget about "burning" ISO files to a usb stick, just put a bunch of raw ISO files on the stick and Ventoy will give you a nice boot menu to select from them - and a separate USB partition for user data as well. It's glorious.
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Huh, this may vary game to game or WM to WM. I lose like 40% performance (mostly in 1% lows), get insane stuttering, shaders start glitching, and some games won't even start. I've tried this on KDE Wayland and SwayWM, mostly with the games Counter Strike 2, Vampire Survivors, the DOOM games, and a few others. The only game that's worked for me in Wayland was Transport Fever 2 ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Mint has a bunch of tweaks to make it more approachable. Apt assumes Sudo, typing passwords shows stars, little things that usually trip new users.
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As a 20+ year SuSE user, I agree it's a great distro. So much of this is just picking a distro that's decent on the desktop and going with it. I would say there are some wrong choices but there isn't one right choice.
Whatever distro OP picks, they should join the Lemmy/subreddit/forums for that distro and keep an eye on them.
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Always welcome. Sharing the good things is a part of the fun.
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Is it using wayland? I think we were able to install KDE through the software manager, but only the X version.
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No worries fam. And thanks for clarifying! With that clarification, I think I've found what has caused the confusion for me.
Bazzite, even if it's ultimately derived from Fedora, is actually not closely related to ('traditional') Fedora, but instead to Fedora Atomic.
Most of the people that have been recommending Fedora, actually meant the non-Atomic variants. And while this might seem minor, which arguably it is, it is important to be conscious of this distinction.
('Traditional') Fedora behaves a lot like most other distros. Fedora Atomic, instead, introduces a new paradigm. Bazzite goes all-in on this new model and we might even refer to it as next-gen (if you will). Though, it's important to mention that the next-gen part is only true within the context of Fedora. This is because Fedora has been the only distro to have clearly pronounced their ambitions in this direction. They even reiterated this in their Fedora Strategy 2028 and I quote: "Objective: Immutable variants are the majority of Fedora Linux in use". (Note that atomic is a rebranding of immutable)
So, within the context of Fedora, even if I don't see the traditional model being sunset anytime soon, the atomic variants do seem more promising in terms of longevity.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of Fedora Atomic; in particular the uBlue projects, so that includes Bazzite. Therefore, I absolutely welcome you on board for Bazzite. But, it's important to be aware that Bazzite is not representative of what ('traditional') Fedora is (or vice versa); it's not a "flavor".
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It matters as some distros have one maintainer or will offer you something ideological at great sacrifice, but you seem to already know that.
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No, the biggest difference is package manager, community forum in case you meed troubleshooting, default DE (eases troubleshooting), and release type.
There are three big families of distros: Debian / Fedora / Arch.
Any distro that is a derative of either of these three use their package manager.- Drop tuxedo and take a look at endeavourOS. It's arch-based and arch has the best package manager of all. Also KDE is their main DE.
I use Manjaro because I prefer Xfce.
In case you do use EndeavourOS, one warning, DO NOT USE THE ARCH FORUM FOR TROUBLESHOOTING!!
(If you've heard of 'Sheldon Cooper' from the tv-series 'Big Bang theory' or 'Young Sheldon'. This forum is run by a real life version of him and you will get banned there immediately or very quickly, unlike other forums. Rule #1 of many is that any user troubleshooting where the machine uses anything other than Arch, including the closest deratives, gets banned.)
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No. Don't know what HDR is.
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Tinkering with the DE is definitely fun and you should play with it. Be careful though, because the freedom you're allowed also allows you to break things.
But tinkering with the DE isn't the worst thing you could break.
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use fedora, arch, or ubuntu. dont use any of the pointless ones (mint, endeavour, manjaro,...). they are not worth your time. only use wayland (plasma, river, qtile). xorg is not worth your time or sanity.
simplest pick is fedora kde spin. just use that. hdr should work too.
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I second the fedora kde spin. Been using it for years on my work laptops. Hasnt failed me yet.
