A few beginner questions about the differences between distros.
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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!
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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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.
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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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
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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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.
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.
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.
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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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!
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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Good day nice people.
I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
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Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
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One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
-
I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
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Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
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In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case:
I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
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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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.
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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Wayland [...] will really mess up NVidea gaming
What? I use the proprietary drivers and Wayland just fine? What am I missing here?
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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i've never used linux mint and i'm curious, how does it differentiate from debian? Might not matter much, but i recall hearing they have their own package with the xedit name so one can't install the original xedit and that's not really great packaging.
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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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.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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Good recommendation. Seems like it'd be a good way to rapidly try a few. I'll look into it. Thank you kindly.
Always welcome. Sharing the good things is a part of the fun.
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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
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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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.
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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Good day nice people.
I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
-
Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
-
One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
-
I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
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Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
-
In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case:
I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
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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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Good day nice people.
I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
-
Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
-
One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
-
I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
-
Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
-
In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case:
I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
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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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.
I second the fedora kde spin. Been using it for years on my work laptops. Hasnt failed me yet.
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Good day nice people.
I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
-
Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
-
One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
-
I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
-
Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
-
In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case:
I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
Im using cachy, I had to manually partition with gparted once in the install screen after using the usb since auto didnt work but the most recent cachyos dualboot yt video can walk you through that, I can find that for you if you need it, I used ventoy since I wanted to keep using my usb for data.
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Good day nice people.
I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
-
Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
-
One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
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I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
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Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
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In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case:
I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
I like plasma kde but I dont think most vnc clients support it so remote desktop with a viewer seems out, rustdesk works but you have to manually accept the connection at the computer. Which works for me since I only remote desktop when moving to another room or going to the bathroom and I need to monitor something.
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Good day nice people.
I, like many I'm sure, am taking Microsoft's discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
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Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I've seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn't come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
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One of the more salient differences I've seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I'm switching is due to Microsoft's forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
-
I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I'd like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is "mature" (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn't fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
-
Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
-
In terms of UI and workflow I really don't mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case:
I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc "Tinkering" (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
- The main fundamental differences are the package manager, the way the system is setup (partitons, immutable distros), and possibly software you don't want installed. Aside from that, you can install basically anything on any distro. Some do make it easier than others to install new things though.
- Canonical (Ubuntu and direct spinoffs) and Manjaro are the ones I recommend avoiding, because their marketing and "general sentiment" goes against my opinions of the distros/maintainers. However, switching Linux distros (especially to another one with a similar base) is not nearly as daunting of a task as switching from Windows to Linux. Some corporate distro owners might pull something like advertising, but there's often an easy way out (except with snaps).
- As for the distros you mentioned, Fedora, Mint, and Pop!_OS are all good options. Mint and Pop!_OS are both based on Ubuntu, which could cause issues in the future, but Mint is working on a Linux Mint Debian Edition. Aside from that, my general recommendation is to stay close to upstream. Distros further downstream tend to break more often (think spinoffs of Ubuntu, Arch derivatives, forks of Fedora, etc). There are exceptions to this rule, like when a distro stays close to upstream.
- In recent times, it should all be working okay! We're "in the middle of a long time switch" from X11 to Wayland. Those are protocols for the way applications display to the screen. X11 is lacking features, like HDR, and can have issues with "weird" multimonitor setups. Wayland is being actively developed, multimonitor works fine, and HDR is available for some desktop environments (like KDE or GNOME). Not all distros default (or support) Wayland yet, so if you need HDR, pick a distro with KDE or GNOME as its desktop environment.
- This situation has gotten more complex with Wayland (one of the pain points still being worked on). The features you get partially depend on which DE (or wayland compositor) you choose. Previously on X11, this wasn't the case. For Wayland DEs, KDE is moving relatively fast, with new features nearly every release. GNOME is moving slower, but should cover most people's needs. As for tinkering around with your choice of UI/DE, there's many options available, but KDE offers by far the easiest customization possible (it's all in the settings menu). There's more complex, more customizable options available, but I wouldn't recommend them as a starting point.
- As for nvidia, it has been progressively getting better, but there are still nvidia specific issues that come up from time to time. There's not really much you can do about it, aside from following changelogs and updating when the thing you're running into is fixed.
Now for your list of applications:
- Gaming (through steam) works great! There's definitely still issues, but I'd argue there's not really more issues than on Windows, just different issues. There is one category of games that's still problematic, games with kernel level anticheat. They do not and likely will never play on Linux. Other launchers (EA Play, Ubisoft Connect, Epic) can have their own issues, although there's often fixes/workarounds available rather quickly.
- Firefox works just fine on Linux.
- VLC works great too, although there are other options available that are more modern or better in some ways. It's up to you to decide what to use.
- Spotify works just fine, there's always the website in case nothing else works, but the "app" as a flatpak or even through repos works too.
- Discord has some issues accepting that Linux exists, but have recently started making some changes with that. Most people either use Disocrd in the webbrowser (to prevent too much system access), or run a custom client like Vesktop.
- Godot works great on Linux, I don't have much else to say about it tbh.
- Visual Studio too, it's basically just a webapp. Some integrations might be slightly different (like the terminal), but otherwise stuff "just works".
- Git was quite literally made for Linux first (as a project, but also as a platform to run on).
- Photoshop is going to be difficult to get running, if it works at all. You can certainly try, but it might be a good option to find an alternative for this one.
- Audacity works great
- Davinci Resolve does have a Linux version, but the free version can be picky about codecs. There's always tools to reencode your inputs, but it's not always convenient drag and drop.
- Misc. tinkering is going to be much more fun, as things in Linux ecosystems are often open source. Not only can you mess around with tools that already exist, you can edit them, or even make your own. Some "niche" hardware might give you issues (like iirc the goxlr, or some capture cards).
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