People doing the 30 days linux Challenge are having several problems because of Mint's old packages and technology. Why people still recommend it when there is Fedora and Opensuse with KDE and Gnome?
Older packages, but not too old, generally provide better stability. Problems can also come from packages being too new and not having all the standout issues worked out of them.
around 1 year and a half, thats way too long, considering the Pipewire, OBS, Kernel, Gaming and other drivers updates. Not even mentioning all the updates KDE and Gnome just got in the last 3 months.
Older packages, but not too old, generally provide better stability.
And worse compatibility. Old packages are a no go for upstream supported hardware like Intel's and AMD's.
If you have cutting edge hardware, this might be an issue. But most people don't and for them Mint will work just fine. If you want cutting edge, don't use Mint. But that's not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
If you want cutting edge, don't use Mint. But that's not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
These don't seem like competing needs. When I think "just work with minimal hassle", I don't think "I need to restrict myself to outdated hardware".
I'm perfectly happy running old packages in general. I'm still on Plasma 5, and it works just as well as it did last year. But that's a matter of features, not compatibility. Old is fine; broken is not.
The machine I have running mint is a fifteen year old Core 2 Duo T6600 laptop. Works great!
I do want to add that new games can also require new packages, the way Alan Wake II did at launch. Even on Arch you had to compile the development version of Mesa for it to run.
If you have cutting edge hardware, this might be an issue.
No, thanks to Valve's efforts for Steam Deck all RDNA2 hardware directly benefits for upstreamed improvements.
If you have cutting edge hardware
If you have cutting edge hardware, you would probably need linux-next kernel. Otherwise you don't have cutting edge hardware.
The thing is that Linux has gone mainstream, with young adults and teens trying it out for Gaming and Streaming. The target people has changed so recommending Mint is not suitable anymore.
I wouldn't quite go so far as to say it's gone "mainstream" since you still have to be moderately nerdy to know about it. I get your point though. This is one of the reasons I am so happy the Steam Deck exists. Before Valve released the Steam Deck nobody wanted to make games for Linux, so Valve said "fuck it, we'll do it ourselves" and proved it was not only possible, but a better experience overall. While not all games work, having 78-80% of your game library work on Linux, with no Windows OS performance tax, is a great experience. Even with the Proton compatibility layer games generally run faster than on Windows.
Not even close to approaching mainstream!
Why did you post a drawing of a child? Kinda weird
What do you mean? She's 32000 years old. /s
Linux user moment
As someone who daily drives Mint, wut.
Linux users can't even agree on what distro is actually beginner friendly, so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?
Linux users can’t even agree [...] so how am I supposed to pick one with any confidence?
Easy. You make a post like the OP, count the positive mentions of distros in the comments, and bam, you have your distro of choice. It's called the Linux newbie roulette and works kind of like the magic hat in Harry Potter that sorts you into your house.
@DefaultDefect @Magnolia The best Distro for beginners is the one, a friend or family member can give support.
I know its one of the strengths of Linux, but I can't help but laugh that the response to "you can't agree on one, how can I?" is for several people to suggest several distros.
what do you think about:. "you don't need to choose one" and "you don't need other people to choose for you" and "distro isn't that important in many cases"
I can agree 100% on what distros I use for what types of computer. And I can agree 100% on what I'd have used now, if i were a beginner again.
But all i can recommend to a stranger is, backup all your stuff properly,
try a few out (v.m. or liveCD/Ventoy) and be prepared to change.
make sure to check application versions in the base software repository - for any programs where that matters to you.
and ease of updating - if that matters to you.
and check out some flatpak if you think that might be a useful way to get extra applications or in some cases up to date.
if in doubt, choose gentoo /s
The solution is to not be cconfident and remain open minded. You can switch any time
The thing is, I don't care to distrohop and experiment with this or that. I just want to use my computer. Until I see a distro that can convince me that switching will be actually painless (not 'long time linux user painless', but 'casual new user that does more than just web browse' painless) I'll just use windows.
That's really depending on your use cases, for example if I want to install distro for my grandma use Mint, for a graphic guy (as in this example) use Arch or Fedora (or even OpenSUSE), etc.
Linux is a niche. Picking any distro that isn't the most popular is going one step deeper into a niche. A niche, within a niche.
Just use the most popular distro... Ubuntu
Problem solved.
Ubuntu isn't the most popular and hasn't been for a while. It actually has a lot of issues new users are likely to run into, including lots of spurious error messages. Apparently the top 5 according to distro watch is: MX Linux, Mint, EndeavorOS, Debian, and Manjaro.
So essentially debian, arch and ubuntu derivatives.
I fucking hate Ubuntu. Mostly because you're right.
I think the onboarding and new user experience for Mint could be better, but I think there's one important thing that I think makes Mint a good intro distro: Its Ubuntu base.
If you look up guides for "linux" it usually gives instructions for Ubuntu, which usually also apply to Mint. Likewise, if you look for software downloads you tend to find Ubuntu debs.
I know flatpak fixes these issues to an extent, but I think we're not there yet.
I wish it shipped a newer kernel
They have a fairly new version called Edge that ships with a newer kernel (currently 6.5).
some of those ubuntu instructions that come up jn search results are from as far back as the mail order ubuntu cd era and installing debs directly is a slippery slope
Because it is stable and works really well. It has GUI apps that are not only not broken but well designed and snappy.
Stable is not equivalent to "works well". It is randomly frozen at some point, mostly not in contact with upstream devs, so you just have outdated packages.
OpenSUSE slowroll sounds like a way better model. Or maybe CentOS stream.
But it's not randomly frozen, it's tied to Ubuntu's LTS builds. And they didn't say "stable" is the same as "works well", they said Mint is both (which is true from my experience at least)
If you need newer packages with Mint, Flatpak is a good way to go (yes it has its own issues, but they do work well for a lot of people)
Ubuntu has a lot of "snappy" GUI apps as well...
Because choosing a distro to begin with isn't easy. Ask ten people and you'll get eleven suggestions.
Because for most use cases, Mint works flawlessly. It changes little from time to time. It has all the drivers to get started with a wide range of common hardware. It has all the codecs to play common media formats.
Of course if the package update is too slow, it's not for you, but then unlike you, most people don't need the latest and greatest. They just need something that works from the get-go with predictable behavior.
The software I use doesn't get significant updates often. Kennel, vi, grep, find? They've been around for decades.
I'm genuinely curious what kind of things people can't do because of lag on package updates.
It usually has something to do with programming. Again, most cases, the versions in the packages included in your garden variety stable distros should cover most use cases.
However, once in a while one would encounter the need of using the cutting edge features on certain compiler or interpreter. Rust comes to mind. I know Python introduced some features that could drastically alter workflow (e.g. switch statement). NodeJS is another one known to be lagging behind from time to time.
In other cases, hardware support might be taken to consideration, especially for newer machines. However, with Mint including the optional newer kernel, it shouldn't be a problem.
Modem hardware.
The default kernel Mint has installed isn't new enough to support cards like the 7900 XT. Though this can be fixed by updating the kernel using Mint's kernel version utility
The only major issue I ever had with mint running relatively old packages was when I got my current laptop. Nvidia 4060 required a really new nvidia driver, which in turn required a really new kernel. I sorted it out by adding a few unofficial repos, and it worked like a charm afterwards.
Whenever old versions are giving you grief, they can usually be sorted out in a similar manner.
Hmm vim is the reason I dropped all debian based distros. Cause I wanted v8 when it was released but sorry you have to wait 2-4 years. Wasn't in the mood for compiling it myself so just went with arch based distro and haven't looked back since.
Mint has managed to become a meme and that's no bad thing, per se, but it can look a bit odd to the cognoscenti. Anyone doing research by search engine looking to escape MS towards Linux will find Mint as the outstanding suggestion.
That's just the way it is at the moment: Mint is the gateway to Linux. Embrace that fact and you are on the way to enlightenment.
I am the MD of a small IT company in the UK. I've run Gentoo and then Arch on my daily drivers for around 25 years. The rest of my company insist on Windows or Apples. Obviously, I was never going to entice anyone over with Gentoo or even Arch, although my wife rocks Arch on her laptop but I manage that and she doesn't care what I call Facebook and email.
We are now at an inflection point - MS are shuffling everyone over to Azure with increasing desperation: Outlook/Exchange and MS Office will be severely off prem. by around 2026. So if you are going to move towards the light, now is a good time to get your arse in gear.
I now have Kubuntu on my work desktop and laptop. You get secure boot out of the box, along with full disc encryption and you can also run a full endpoint suite (ESET for us). That scores a series of ticks on the Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation and that is required in my world.
AD etc: CID - https://cid-doc.github.io/ pretty nifty. I've defined the equivalent of Windows drive letters as mounts under home, eg: ~/H: - that works really well.
Email - Gnome Evolution with EWS. Just works. Used it for years.
Office - Libre Office. I used to teach people how to use spreadsheets, word processors, databases and so on. LO is fine. Anyone attempting to tell me that LO can't deal with ... something ... often gets ... educated. All software has bugs - fine, we can deal with that. I recently showed someone how decimal alignment works. I also had to explain that it is standard and not a feature of LO.
For my company the year of Linux on the desktop has to be 2025 (with options on 2026). I have two employees who insist on it now and I have to cobble together something that will do the trick. I get one attempt at it and I've been doing application integration and systems and all that stuff for quite a while.
Linux has so much to give as an ecosystem but we do need to tick some boxes to go properly mainstream on the desktop and that needs to happen sooner rather than later.
I've been a lifelong ms admin, and always stuck to their desktop environments because they "just worked". Often use Linux on containers, devices (handhelds, rpi etc) and webapp servers.
That win11 recall stuff though is a step too far. So I looked at which distro was likely to be easiest to use and just as you say - mint is the overwhelming consensus. And now it's my daily driver. I needed to learn a few new tricks, but the mint forums are filled with windows refugees so finding forum posts is easy (e.g. I thought had a problem with my "task bar" not my "panel" but since others called it the same thing I found what I was looking for).
My biggest reason for staying on windows was that I could search for something and almost always find an answer - that's become worse over the years IMO (often get these useless forums posts when they're basically advising the user to reinstall with five paragraphs of pasted/generated text). The mint forums are genuinely friendly and helpful, and searching them is as useful as searching for win stuff used to be.
I don't know if "this is the year" but I can't imagine I'm the only one who has had enough of the MS ecosystem. My experience has been great so far, and I hope there are others who give it a go.
Good for you.
I learned a really strange (yet rather obvious in hindsight) lesson a week or so ago. I recently deployed Apache Guacamole at work for webby access to an RDP box with MFA. We are dumping MS's RDG because it is not very flexible and is really complicated. One of my younger members of staff uses it whilst in the office and are almost pathetically grateful for me setting up the Guacamole thing 8) (WTF).
She's an Apple aficionado. She can now use her Apple thingie as St Jobs intended and also connect to work stuff, which is largely Windows and Linux based but the Linux stuff is abstracted away to the browser.
The key point is that she considers herself as an Apple person for want of a better word and can be an Apple whilst using our corp MS and Linux gear and it appears to her that it is all integrated.
I'm 53 years old and have been doing IT for around 30 years. We really have to get to grips with how people think and work.
Laughs in Debian Stable
Mint works. Most alternatives don't. I can install Mint on a total newbie's system, and not have to worry about something breaking two weeks later. Hell, most newbies can install Mint if you give them the USB.
On a deeper level, I think Mint devs are one of the few teams that understand the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' philosophy.
I recommend fedora to every one. It's the correct kind of stable distro. The kernel updates are slow to roll out after being tested and all... But guess what version of plasma I have? 6.1. That's just a few weeks later than arch got it.
Plus not to mention how easy setting up my Optimus gpu was because of rpmfusion. I have never had such ease with any other distro.
So I recommend fedora all the way.
Fedora (including Silverblue/Kionite) is hard to recommend as a first distro though. It's an excellent platform when you know your end goal and how to get there, while providing "leading-edge" packages that's great for gaming.
But a project like Bazzite? Phenomenal new user experience for gaming and a very easy recommend.
If you want a non-gaming alternative to Bazzite to recommend, there's it's two universal blue siblings, Aurora (general purpose desktop) and Bluefin (silverblue/workstation distro). They both have the same setup as Bazzite but without the explicitly gaming elements. https://universal-blue.org/
I love Bazzite. It's now my daily driver on my laptop and Stream Deck! It just works.
Bazzite is broken AF on Nvidia right now, with no X11 and no explicit sync driver. I can't wait to see if driver 555 fixes it.
Edit - 555 is out, and yes it is considerably better.
Ah, OpenSuse. The distro with the package management that spams your drive full of unnecessary optional dependencies.
Would always recommend EndeavourOS.
Sadly true. When I installed texlive-base it tried to install like 300 recommended packages, I almost accepted D:
I'd still recommend it, I don't know if you can change the default for recommended packages because aside from that, I actually love it.
Yesss! My first five minutes with OpenSuse.
I mean, you can change that behaviour somehow. But there are so many other small things like the constant vendor changes. Zypper is just so quirky. It's a cool distro and to have a rolling release option like tumbleweed is always a big plus in my opinion, but I just wouldn't recommend it to people who are not really eager to play around with their distro.
The moemorphic character shown in the picture is Archchan, created by ravimo. I wonder why show her in a discussion about Mint?
Anybody that already has had a computer for 2 years and is coming from Windows will have almost no problems with Mint. Stability is top priority for first time Linux users and you need some visual guide with screenshots. Mint also has a great default look and setup for people coming from Windows. Mint is probably the best distro to put on your mom's old laptop that is "getting slow" because of viruses.
I'd recommend KDE Neon or Ubuntu also depending on the situation but if I don't know anything about the person and computer I'd say Mint.
This is a bold statement considering how many daily Windows users don't understand how to use Windows.
It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch tech enthusiasts are. How much does your average person know about their car? That’s how little they know about their computer.
They might not know what an OS even is, or how to identify where “Windows” ends and applications begin. They do what they bought it for, and if that doesn’t work, they take it to someone who knows how to get it working again. They know how to charge it, and to plug in a headset or USB key or something. If that functionality doesn’t work automatically or they encounter any issue, it might as well have exploded in their hands.
There are people who have been using Windows for 30 years that know literally nothing about it. Putting a “years of experience” metric on it is hilarious. It’s like assuming that if someone has been driving for 50 years that they know anything about cars besides how to drive it and where to put the gas.
Windows users have a variety of different skills and experience. I guess the most likely ones to try Linux first are not going to be the PC-fearing ultra-causal users, who probably follow what their friends do. But the more adventurous and curious ones, or IT workers.
OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or KDE Neon.
Because you're dealing with lifelong windows users who want a reassuringly familiar looking OS not fucking linux techs
Jesus christ learn to tailor to the user
Fedora does have a Cinnamon spin. The advantage of Mint is that all the Ubuntu tutorials work on it
Edit: plus Fedora's philosophy about non-free software makes it less than ideal for people who don't care
Even if Fedora has a spin with the same DE, from my experience, Mint/Ubuntu still has a higher chance just work on a given system.
I love Fedora and use it pretty much exclusively, but the out of the box experience of Mint and Ubuntu is still a bit better for the average user imho.
Because Fedora is open source only to the point of it being pathological. If there isn't am open source driver most time you're just boned. Someone new is going to have a tough time with it, and the community is on average a very "lol rtfm" bunch. Not as bad as Arch, but that's not saying much.
Meanwhile, despite the problems around Ubuntu, Debian communities are much more understanding and helpful. Mint even with old packages is going to be an easier time for a newbie. Certainly a newbie unfamiliar with the way entirely too much of the FOSS community is.
To be fair arch has amazing docs, and even a rube like me can follow it decently well. I found endeavor to be the easiest distro to use. But agreed the attitude isn't great.
@Magnolia been running Mint for years and never had issues with the package versions being too old for anything 🤷🏻♂️
I'm generally in the same boat. I don't think of Mint's packages as "old", but "stable". I've had a few cases where I want the latest features, and there are easy ways to get new versions. Dialing down instability isn't so easy.
I installed Mint (no idea mint was old tbh) looked into Gentoo and tried the live boot USB option. 'This looks nice, no how do I install" The install option opened a web page (gentoo wiki) with several options for guides based on various permutations. All options send you in a ring without actually telling me how to install.
I went back to Mint as it does the few things I need a PC to do these days:
Some kind of office suite with spreadsheet and word processor, Steam, Netflix and Prime, Firefox
Added bonus is that it runs MegaMek natively AND i don't need to read pages of documentation, just click install.
Well you went from one of the easiest to one of the more complicated distros so thats not surprising. There's a lot of distros thst are just as simple to install as mint, you don't need to mess around with arch and gentoo unless you're planning on becoming a real Linux enthusiast.
Added bonus is that it runs MegaMek natively
This is always a fun thing to read in the wild. Keep on stompin', MechWarrior! O7 (salute)
Gentoo might have been quite a leap! :p I wanna try it some day as a challenge but it's def intimidating.
I run Tumbleweed on my main rig and love how crazy stable it is for being cutting edge. Endeavour OS is also cool for this. Both great communities too.
But agree with you on Mint. It's just a really nice smooth experience. So far it's on my "little media laptop I won't update much, need to be reliable, and will probably hand to family on occasion", and I can trust it's just gonna work.
Why the fuck would you try Gentoo as a Linux noob? I am guessing no one told you it was for advanced Linux users only. Fedora and OpenSUSE are nowhere near as difficult to install as Gentoo, as they are made for normal users.
Gentoo was my second linux Distro ever some time in 2003 or 2004.
Installed it by printing out the full install doc, which was like 30 or 40 pages, and starting up a stage one install. I got through the entire install by following the instructions because the documentation was that good.
I remember having a problem and hopping on an irc chat to ask for help and people there being baffled about the basic level questions I was asking while having a working Gentoo install.
Gentoo is good at explaining how system works.
All options send you in a ring without actually telling me how to install.
Don't know. I was installing Gentoo in 6th grade of school with poorly-translated gentoo handbook.
EDIT: had wrong quote
Because people suggest distros based on their preference, not what is best suited in a given situation.
On one hand Mint is limited to X11 for now and surprise surprise “dealing with multiple monitors is horrible on Linux”. On other hand they’re on NVIDIA. This is close to not be the case, but X11 was a hard requirement for decades
I daily drive Optimus plus Wayland. Doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.
30 days? I'm on month 3 with no issues.
Meanwhile, I had to dump Nobara on another PC because I couldn't get RDC working, no matter what instructions I followed.
And no, VNC wasn't an option for this.
It's easy to install, it's Ubuntu based which means stable and a wide variety of software and support. Cinnamon looks beautiful in Mint and works perfectly. Installing a deb is a breeze and using the App Store is way easier than using YAST. The cli commands are now easy to understand or remember compared to apt.
Fedora usb creation is a nightmare and can potentially f up your bios if something goes wrong. DNF is also but easy to understand or remember compared to apt.
Gnome is too barebones for a first time user whereas Cinnamon is feature rich and is themed very well. Plus great wallpapers are included. The lock screen wallpapers are easily changed and look great too.
As long as there is no shit Nvidia card the driver installation tends to work perfectly. Don't use Nvidia people. They are a shit, unethical, don't give a crap about Linux company. Use AMD.
And for Linux users who've been around longer, there's Linux Mint Debian Edition which for us is even better because it's not Ubuntu based but Debian based and stable.
I get the latest Firefox directly from Mozilla and any app I can't find in Synaptics I can normally get in Flatpak. Works perfectly well for me. I highly recommend it.
Don't use Nvidia people. They are a shit, unethical, don't give a crap about Linux company. Use AMD.
Yeah if only VR would work hassle free without Nvidia... At this point it became a Stockholm situation for me
Why shouldn't VR work without Novidia?
Fedora usb creation is a nightmare and can potentially f up your bios if something goes wrong.
I have to ask obvious question first. How?
It does some weird formatting to the usb stick. You literally have to use their tool to unformat it again otherwise it's screwed. That's been my experience.
I had an issue on my MacBook bios safety installing Fedora. Wouldn't boot and even if I tried installing Ubuntu over it, still would not boot.
Had to reinstall Mac OS and have it repair the bios. Only after that could I get Linux installed and booting again.
I don't know how they screwed it up but they did.
Mint has user-friendly tools that are much better than Fedora's lack of tools and openSUSE's YAST for beginners.
Because Mint is popular among the crowd, and such challenges are also driven by the crowd. Better to see it as some social or meme dynamics, than to explain it with logical reasons. I also see more new users who use arch, because of the "I use arch BTW" meme.
As a Fedora Silverblue user I find it hard to recommend it to new users. It's not an issue with Fedora, but with the state of Linux desktop in general. At least with Mint/Ubuntu people can rely on social media and the community if they have problems. And Fedora is a more niche thing, and doesn't have a big crowd.
Moreover, I chose Fedora because of my experience, which allows me to have opinion what is better. But I don't think it's a good idea to explain the years of the Linux desktop drama to new users, when they are just doing the first steps or trying to feed their curiosity.
Fedora a niche distro?
It is comparatively to Debian/Ubuntu derivatives. Even Arch and NixOS probably have more users now. Lately I see some popularity of uBlue derivatives among new users, but I don't know how many people use it, and where the popularity comes from.
I like the mint project, but I dislike how it's done
I don't suggest mint to anyone anymore. I rather suggest Fedora or PopOs
I tried PopOS and the pop store is not the best, and gnome is too foreign for someone coming from windows.
And also, too fiddly to make it work with a number of third party extensions vs the customization being built in.
KDE is heavier but also seems more streamlined and Cinnamon is fairly decent too.
I think Gnome VS KDE it's just a POV
Your argument makes sense that KDE and Cinnamon can be welcoming to Windows users. However I can argue that it can also make these newcomers to keep a "windows-like" mindset and that can be frustrating.
If a newcomer comes to Gnome, due to it's totally different paradigm, it may induce this newcomer to have an open mind and, therefore, be more welcoming to linux experience.
I don't think one argument or the other is right or wrong. I think both arguments are valid and that's just a different perspective. I, personally, think that a totally new paradigm is good to newcomers, but be free to disagree, since you understand that there is no right or wrong regarding this topic
I've tried a few distro's recently. Pop os, mint, and nobara. Mint was pretty bad (i really wanted it not to be), nobara was good but had issues with sleep and after a month my sound quit working. Pop OS has been flawless and I love that I can set the workspaces hot key to the windows key.
I don't know the difference between Wayland and X11, all I know is that they're options, and I'm 30 days into the Arch-derived(is that the right term?) Garuda Linux that defaults Wayland with a 3080 and I haven't had any problems? Aren't the Mint problems that it's a stable distro with outdated stuff?
Stable has nothing to do with outdated packages.
That's a personal decision by a distro.
Fedora is a stable distro because generally the packages stay on the same major version throughout the version, however they have a list of exceptions for certain applications that should be updated for security or perhaps they don't follow a major/minor/bugfix release and it's bad practice to hack together your own versions.
Fedora rebases it's packages every 6 months, so it's never left far behind.
Arch is actually reasonable as the foundation of an easy to use Linux OS, provided you don't care about stability. It's up to date with all the latest stuff, has support for many apps and packages without having to add extra repos, and it has fantastic documentation. All that's really missing is the GUI installer and stuff to help newbies. Projects like EndeavorOS and Garuda provide that.
If you actually need stability though, which lots of new users would appreciate, use Fedora or a derivative like Nobara or Universal Blue.
I daily drive Nvidia plus Optimus with wayland, but it's easy enough to switch back to X11 just using a menu on the login screen.
Isn't red hat enough reason to not use fedora?
The short answer is no, most people are not bothered at all by RHEL's source situation or IBM as a company.
Not really. Fedora is community run.
No, for one Red hat has every incentive to support Fedora. Also Fedora does its own thing separate from Red hat. Red hat does have some control but the community elects leadership and the elected leaders are what control the project direction. Also Fedora has a lot of volunteer package maintainers that would stop working if there was a hostile take over.
Notice that the community has left Ubuntu which used to be the community go to. They no longer have a large community working on projects and maintaining software.
thanks for the clarification. I just recently got into linux and don't know much, but as i was researching Fedora, that's what i came across. Which is a pretty big turn off for a newcomer migrating from windows and wanting to get away from big corporations.
Red hat I can live with. The problem is IBM.
wait Mint was (and still is) out of date?
The kernel is too old for newer AMD gpu drivers to work, but switching to a newer kernel isn't too hard. I had to when I built a new computer last winter, but I have also used various *nixes for a good long time.
Knowing how to discover you need a newer kernel is a bit tough for recent convert, though.
Which is why I ask people one simple question: do they plan to game. If they plan to game, I don't recommend them Mint. If they aren't, I recommend them Mint.
What do you recommend to them if they do want to game?
Nobara is a good choice, it's based on Fedora, and is maintained by Glorious Eggroll himself, it has out of the box features like proprietary driver installation, game mode, gamescope, etc. That's what I run on my gaming PC and my HTPC, where my work laptop runs Kubuntu.
I'm sure talking about the 30days challenge from Raid Owl and I have an idea of his conclusion. First he's a power user (not in the fact of tweaking and scratch in the file system), he needs a lot of stuff to work. And for someone outside of the traditional office work or maybe developing, Linux is hard to use for graphics works, so sure Linux Mint is not for this kind of people but you should always recommended it to "normal" people and beginner in Linux. Sure in this case his conclusion is wrong, he should have used Fedora, Arch or OpenSUSE, but that's it.
it hasn't been a problem lately, but for basically an entire year I was helping first timers through getting a more recent lutris for games because the one mint shipped was ancient and broken and on top of that the 32 bit wine dependencies were practically impossible to resolve for some games
It's the Lutris version shipped with 22.04, which by today's standards is definitely ancient. Because I'm not generally a Flatpak fan for stuff that requires larger packages or dependencies, I went directly to the Lutris PPA. And because I'm running KDE Neon, I had to work around the annoying libpoppler dependency issue that's always plagued Wine on Neon.
yep, and then they got rid of the ppa and people had to fall back to the deb
I've played this game every year since 1998, and each year I try a wider range of distros. Long story short, EndeavourOS is the first distro that worked reliably and has by far the best support resources.
came here to spread the good word of endeavor os
It’s my favourite distro because of three reasons.
I just setup on my T480 with BTRFS and BTRFS-Assistant and snapper last night. It’s working well
I refuse to use anything that isnt arch based unless its a niche linux distribution for something specific because the arch user repository basically solves the biggest issue for newbies which is getting a grasp of packages for software. it has any of the common software and if you do need to build something from a github repo, that is ofc easy enough on any distro. I'm not the most technically inclined with linux and I use a chatgpt got thingy called code copilot in their search thing and I can use it to solve even really niche problems I have like a USB DAC not being recognized because it doesn't have the correct read/write permissions. most of the time I just ask basic things like how to get whatever github repo working and it helps me troubleshoot if I run into weird issues. I even got it to help me set up neo-matrix to run in alacrity terminal on bootup, it was a nice introduction to scripting and autostart and stuff when it helped me, so now I have a little bit better grasp on how that all works out.
Oh, you need media codecs out of the box to watch pretty much anything in your browser?
That takes Fedora out.
OpenSUSE has probably the most confusing install interface for a noob you'll ever find. Which DE do I choose? What other software do I put in? How do I partition? Oh, I click a button here to make a user, or can I ignore it completely?
So much for OpenSUSE.
And don't get me started on Arch. You'd be way better off pushing a new user to Manjaro but everyone's got their panties in a twist about its devs.
Whatcha got now, big guy?
This is where Universal Blue and Nobara come in. They are made to be plug and play versions of fedora inc. media codecs, Nvidia, steam, and so on.
FWIW, +1 for Nobara. I think it's an excellent turnkey Fedora for most purposes. But it's a little chancy on being dependent on a single maintainer.
But Fedora itself isn't noob friendly when you have to figure out how to add the non-free repos and install all the rest of the shit. Nobara takes care of that well.
Are media codecs hard to install on Fedora? I haven’t daily driven Fedora in a while, but last I remember it was one of the top-level categories in GNOME Software. Click it then install all the things. Although I suppose if the user didn’t know what a media codec is that wouldn’t help them very much
Endeavouros ofcourse! All the goodness of arch, but with the ease of installation of any other desktop based distro!
Agreed, this is the distro that worked best for my needs (modern security, without wanting to die from maintenance of that security)
Ubuntu is fine. Pop!_OS if you're set on Flatpaks instead of Snaps.
Honestly, Ubuntu and its variants are probably the best distros. It's not great, it has its drawbacks, but to get people started, perfectly fine.
Oh no! What's a desktop environment!? NEXT!
I always suggest Mint Edge edition, that has a newer kernel, not the default Mint. But I still suggest Mint, because simply, it's more user friendly than any of the other ones. It has gui panels for almost everything.
For me, the systems I've installed Mint on for people, haven't had any problems at this current time. While I have never had an issue using Fedora myself(never been interested enough in OpenSUSE to keep with it when I've tried it), I'll never recommend Fedora in similar cases where I've installed Mint. The machines were older and the users aren't Linux enthusiasts. They just want a working machine to do basic tasks without breaking their bank to get a new machine when their Windows OS reached EOL.
However I can't confirm or explain why the people you say that are doing this challenge are having problems. I don't know their hardware specs and I don't know them so I don't know what they know about Linux.
(Please note, to all Mint users, I'm not saying Mint is only for non-Linux enthusiasts. I love how Mint is good for the non-enthusiasts and enthusiasts alike).
Idk I never really liked mint it seemed too ui polished without much back end polish.
For some reason its the goto for noobs maybe since it comes with a desktop already bundled with no extra config needed usually. But theres so many distros that have that now as well as up to date packages.
I'm not sure but, I always recommended Mint for it's ease of use, I tried fedora, didn't like it, will likely never use it again. First impressions are a pain cause if you fail the first impression you lose before you begin. It could be an amazing system but, it was a bigger pain to setup and get going plus had less resources for me to get started while using more lesser known tools that wern't easily transferrable from the previous systems I has tried.
Why not UBlue or Nobara?
Trying different distributions is a must on using Linux, I still remember my first one, Mandrake, and is not a happy memory. Now Arch is my master, to get here It was not an easy or direct ride, I tried several ones through the years until I find the light ;)
@Magnolia I drive Fedora on laptop without any issues, and I reaally like Wayland and Fedora. X11 still better for normal people. Also UI and UX similar on Mint to Windows
I agree with @trolololol@lemmy.world here. Could you describe what issues are people having? What is their user profile (programmers, writers, ...)?
Problems? 'old'? I seem to need a little clarification.
By default Mint ships 3 years old kernel and a lot of hardware don’t work with it. Mint allows installing newer kernel easily but one must know that is the case.
Mint only works on X11. This is fine to some, but to others it’s a showcase of X shortcomings right away
I don't understand why people don't go for something like ZorinOS or Nobara. Both work great out of the box with support for like everything.
To be fair the nobara website is very "pet project" both in the design and also in the frequent warnings about using it for anything real. Is a good distro tho, having said that.
You think LM being "too old" is a problem for newbies? I've been running some distro or other since RedHat 5. I it took me 6 weeks of waiting for Fedora to sort out most of the issues, (and I STILL have some minor ghosting issues and I ain't no gamer), and 4 tries to get Fedora 40 to successfully take the nVidia drivers for the GTX1650 chipset in my laptop.
You think a new wannbe convert is going to put up with that?
Fedora isn’t all that easy for a complete noob to install NVIDIA proprietary drivers
It isn't bad these days. You just go into the software center and make a few clicks. It is something that you can find guides on how to do.
@Magnolia
Cause Mint is an easy to use community distro.
You are right, I wanted to do some nodejs and realized that the package in the repo was Node version 12.something while latest node is version 20.something.
Also they still ship Python 3.10 which is ancient technology by today's standard, luckily nothing major is added between 3.10 and 3.12
Their mirrors are worst, ALL OF SELECTABLE OPTIONS FROM MIRROR SELECTOR which shows up at 47 KB/sec which just hurts your area spanning from asshole to large intestines.
I use bridgetide linux mint mirror btw
So why am I not switching?
Here is why: Linux mint is based on Ubuntu meaning that you can add Ubuntu repos or ppas or whatever they need directly into Linux Mint and dont have to worry about it breaking.
Say that you need to have some software for a reason and you cannot find one in Flatpak or an appimage, etc. You will be happy to realize that many of these software are built for Ubuntu and provide their deb package with own repo with updates.
I run Linux Mint 21.3 and that means I can just use a program built for Ubuntu Jammy as Linux Mint Virginia is based on Ubuntu Jammy. If I need to install something out of repo, I can just go and install Ubuntu jammy deb package and it will work normally.
IDK, I use Debian sid
I never recommend Mint! It’s like it became this de facto distro to steer newbies toward just because it sort of kind of looks like Windows? Elementary OS is simple, polished, elegant and in a good way less customizable so the user can just get to work.
Alternatively if they want something more familiar like the start menu there’s KDE on Ubuntu or OpenSUSE, among others.
Mint was impressive like fifteen years ago; it’s still fine, but nothing in particular makes it more appealing than some of the ones I mentioned which have significant advantages.
Linux Mint has a very good track record thanks to their "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" mentality and user friendliness. That's why people still recommend it. With the rapid developments around gaming related software, their mentality works against them.
Elementary and OpenSUSE are problematic for so many reasons. Linux Mint is stable and reliable.
I recommend OpenSUSE Thumbleweed for everyone, but I haven't used it for long time and I use only Gentoo and OpenWRT on all my devices. And Android on phone, hopefully 10 years later I will replace it with linuxphone.
How does Gentoo compare to OpenSuse Tumbleweed?
Disclamer: last time I used OpenSUSE was very long time ago. Probably somewhere in 2018.
When I switched back to Gentoo, Gentoo had more packages in base repo, was more configurable and easier to fix and felt more convenient to me(especially for development). Also easier on resources in casual use. It was important to me since at the time my system had very small amount of RAM, while I wanted to host minecraft server with many mods and play on it with friends. Installing cross-compilers is very easy with crossdev. And I think there were problems with having multiple versions of gcc installed. The only downside I can think of is slower update process(especially compiling firefox/chromium/libreoffice/rust), but in return you get the system, which if breaks, you know how to fix it.
Would I recommend Gentoo to everyone who wants to install Linux on their own regular x86 computers and be what people call a regular user and doesn't want to understand how system works? Rather no.
Would I recommend Gentoo for someone who wants to install Linux for their granny and already knows Linux or even has Gentoo? Rather yes, stereotypical granny doesn't care about distro, she only needs browser and working sound.
Would I recommend Gentoo for any kind of developers(except webdevs, they are separate species)? Absolutely.
For gamers? It is one of reasons I choose Gentoo.
For tinkerers? You know the answer.
For wierd ARM/MIPS/RISC-V/ELBRUS computer? Very yes.
#NobaraGang. I gave Mint a go a few years ago and just never really got anywhere close to replacing my Windows install.
I've gotten 90% of all use cases handled by Nobara at this point. The main outlier being my sim racing setup just because according to forums the drivers for all the peripherals are just really not ready for adoption yet. My sim rig will stay on Windows for now as the whole reason I invested in a proper cockpit and peripherals was to reduce the friction involved with enjoying the sims. Also, anti-cheat seems to be a no-go on Linux for now so as an iRacing enjoyer, Linux is out of the question for the time being.
That said, my entire home studio for recording (incl. Hardware peripherals), my daily driver use case and all my other gaming needs are currently met by Nobara. I'm so happy to be able to end my reliance on Microsoft.
I’m so happy to be able to end my reliance on Microsoft.
Microsoft is a frequent contributor to core Linux technologies these days. Lennart Poettering to Microsoft has probably been the most prominent move but there are others that work on Azure Linux and WSL who also upstream their work.
What I was trying to say was that I'm happy to be free of Microsoft's ability to just sunset an operating system version that I liked and replace it with an even more privacy-disrespecting, ad and AI-bloated nightmare.
Nobara is at least under my control in a significant way. Windows, like so many other software solutions these days wants to treat me like cattle and I want no part in that.
Using Linux for 30 years, I'm with MX and Xfce for years.
because redhat smelly.
Also fedora is hella configured out of the box, which is nice for new users, and a good reason to just use it. But at that point i think you should just use something like debian while figuring out how to properly do the whole linux thing because it's going to positively benefit you quite a bit.
None of them good for non techy people. I wouldn't recommend mint. Gnome is the most friendly DE with pleasing defaults. There are many immutable flatpak distros coming with gnome. e.g.: Endless os which is pre installed on some asus laptops instead of Ubuntu for reason.
I feel like people have an interesting view of techy/advanced/etc
My view is that you need to pick something in line with your goals: some people may be techy but just need something to host files and a web browser and don't care about new packages or whatever, or modern security or anything. I wouldn't recommend mint or fedora for a gaming PC regardless of techiness, you know?
Our views can be compatible. Endless os is quite limited right now, but if flathub would have xampp, for example, that would be easily the simplest way to run a webserver. However, every techy person prefers docker, me too. It's just not something that my mother can deal with. In general, linux is lacking these mother compatible apps where we have more advanced solution. Of course, I wouldn't recommend endless and others in the category if the goal is to run a webserver.
MX
This.
i have a question, where is her second hand?
Below the frame looks like to me.
Compiling
People who expect an effortless transition from Windows to Linux, are better off sticking to Windows. You are expected to be able to read stuff, and make some effort to understand it. It shouldn't be any less than what you'd expect if going from Linux to Windows.
Many things will be different. You'll get a long way with learning some fundamentals. If you make the effort, it'll be well rewarded. If it's not worth the effort, stick to windows.
Calling people stupid and lazy in nicer words is still calling people stupid and lazy.
Calling people stupid and lazy in nicer words is still calling people stupid and lazy.
I think that's a bit unfair here. What I'm saying is that expectations often seems to be that "Linux should be effortless, but it isn't, so Linux sucks", and then we quickly talk past each other on which aspects we are referring to. Let me make up three categories:
For users transitioning to Linux from Windows, and ...
So, I assume people who just thought I was calling people lazy and dumb thought I meant categories 1. and 2. I just mean category 3. If you expect everything to be the same as Windows, and the effort required to understand the differences is too much, then only Windows will fit your needs. The impression I get is a general unwillingness to "figure stuff out". Not knowing shit is fine, complaining and not wanting to put in the effort to know stuff... how is that not being lazy?
It was intended as kind advice without any the implied judgement of calling people dumb or lazy. If you don't want to have to figure stuff out related to the third category, Linux will likely not be a good experience, or even a productive or good change. If you move to another country, you should make the effort to learn the culture. It's not a good look to complain that things are different.
If I were to try to suggest "a point" with all of this: Don't suggest to people that Linux is effortless for Windows users. Linux is immensely better, in almost every way (though mind examples in first category). But, it requires learning the basics of how shit works. It's not hard.... the information is well put together and available.
i see no problem with that. You can't go learn to weld without putting in lots of effort and time learning.
It's really just that simple.
It's because Mint used to be Ubuntu without the fuss. Now Ubuntu is Ubuntu without the fuss and mint is Ubuntu with broken packages.
The funny part is that Mint was always just Ubuntu with broken packages.
Edit: I think I hurt some feelings
Now Ubuntu is Ubuntu without the fuss
Ubuntu is a trojan horse for Snap.
What packages are broken? I haven't run into any.
P.S. I think Snaps are now the fuss, so I still think Mint is Ubuntu with the fuss.
Mint is what Ubuntu should of been. Ubuntu is kind of a dumpster fire that everyone abandoned.
I agree that Linux Mint is closer to what the vocal Linux desktop community would like to see, but Ubuntu is anything but abandoned. Where I work, both my coworkers (excluding myself) and customers are either using RHEL or Ubuntu. That’s it. Sure, everyone on Lemmy and Reddit swears against Ubuntu and has no need for plain-RHEL, but a lot more of the non-vocal Linux community is using Ubuntu. I prefer Pop!_OS, but that’s besides the point.
Source: Ubuntu is anywhere between 4th and 6th place on these charts:
https://distrowatch.com/dwres-mobile.php?resource=popularity
These thumbnails are also the reason why people stay away from Linux. How is the little girl relevant to your question?
Couldn't possibly agree more. One of the biggest barriers to sharing my enthusiasm for Linux with my friends is filtering out all of the cringey anime weeb shit that somehow gets posted along with it. Why does open source software need to be associated with creepy drawings of little girls? Absolutely the worst vibes.
It's understandable when it comes from niche programs with solo devs. You are likely to be a degen when you spend your whole day in front of your computer. So you likely also have degen habits like the one here. But if it's from group of devs then yeah that's straight up irritating.
Also you in the sense not you. English not my main language.
She uses arch btw
Yes I do
Idk, I feel like gatekeeping is a bigger problem than anime thumbnails.
I would have to disagree. What you are saying is toxic communities that reply RTFM to every question like arch or gentoo. Those aren't beginner friendly distros. Mint, ubuntu, pop, fedora all have wonderful communities and quick support.
Windows is more documented. Not better but more. So when someone migrates to linux they panic because they can't find resources like they used to do. How to fix this? Just give it time. More windows enshittification, more migration, more questions in support, more answers. No more gstekeeping like feeling.
from the thumbnail and title text i thought i was browsing 4chan
The average person finds these creepy, and so you'll keep the average person away.
I personally don't get it either, it does look like a 6 year old girl to me and it seems completely off-topic, but I don't question it so long as it's not sexual in nature.
maybe it's a good thing these blind haters of anime stuff aren't nearby
Anime fans, despite counterintuitiveness, have greater average IQ that not anime fans.
Lol source pls