Update 1: Thanks for all the responses! I’ve gotten a lot of very good comments saying I should stick with Mint, and that’s sitting comfortably in my top two picks right now. Between new distros, I’m most interested in Arch’s rolling release model, as it provides some benefits for me for reasons I didn’t really get into here. I’ll be considering Manjaro Plasma as my leading “new” pick, and am considering EndeavourOS and rolling releases of other distros as other alternatives. I’ll mostly be weighing my options between sticking with Mint Cinnamon, switching to Manjaro Plasma, and setting up my Mint install with Plasma for now. Many thanks to those that have responded, and to any new commenters, feel free to add your own thoughts!
Update 2: After trying out EOS, Arch, Manjaro, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Universal Blue, among many other options, I’ve come to the decision that I’m okay with sticking to Mint for now on my main desktop and setting up UBlue Aurora on my work laptop, but might consider switching to Kubuntu or Fedora if I want something similar at work and at home (one of my main draws away from Mint was that it didn’t offer a KDE option), or to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if I must have a rolling distro for some reason. Thank you all for your guidance, and happy distro hopping!
Hey all! I’ve lurked here for a while and not really posted anything, but here goes.
Title says most of it. I’m a hardware nut with a little programming background knowledge, who built my own beefy desktop about 3 years ago. I started on Windows 10, but I made the switch a few months ago and haven’t looked back. I was worried about how much trouble I might have with Linux given my limited software background, and picked more beginner-friendly distros to start out. I toyed with Ubuntu for the first couple weeks before switching to Mint, and I’ve now been a happy Mint user for several months with no big hiccups. I’m a little bolder and wiser now, though, and I feel like I can still get more out of Linux by jumping to a more unstable and tweakable distro. I was hoping you’d have some suggestions - and knowing the nature of the Linux community, lots of options to consider. :)
Here’s what I’d like in a distro:
- Tweakable. I like having lots of settings, and one of the things I liked most about Mint was how much more customization I could get than Windows. I like config and setting things up to my unique tastes, and knowing that many people say this is a weaker aspect of Mint, I’m interested in what other distros have to offer.
- GUI-friendly. I’d like to learn the Terminal, but I’m not confident enough in it just yet to use it for everything. Making my GUI look good and setting it up to fit my tastes are also important to me, and I liked Cinnamon’s slick UI/UX features like Hot Corners and panel applets. I don’t necessarily want something that imitates Cinnamon OR Windows, or even need anything outstanding in a UI, but having something more than Spartan would be much appreciated.
- Well-documented. I’m still new to Linux; I’ll need a lot of help getting used to its quirks. I’ve been interested in Arch because of what people say about its documentation. A good wiki to follow and readily available answers for my nooby questions may be the deciding factor on whether I stick with a distro and spin/flavor/etc or move on.
- Reasonable gaming compatibility. My library is small, I don’t play a lot, and all the games I’m serious about run with only a couple hiccups on Mint with Proton, Lutris, and Mesa. Most of what I do is browse the Internet, write in LibreOffice or equivalent, check my email in Thunderbird or equivalent, and maybe open GIMP or a game once in a while. I’m not so serious about how my games run, I just wouldn’t want to daily drive a distro that’s handily much worse than Mint for gaming, and would prefer a rolling distro or one with frequent updates, so I have the latest drivers. Anything significantly better for gaming is a plus, not expected. I’ve been interested in Nobara and Arch for different reasons, but I’d like to look at all my options before I pick one, including other distros I haven’t heard of or looked into. Thoughts?
Something with KDE would be ideal for you. I personally use fedora, as it has a very modern yet fairly stable software cycle with one major release every semester
Distro hopping gets addictive and honestly if you’re happy with where you are i wouldnt recommend you switch anything.
Buuuuut if you’re going to do it anyways EndeavourOS. Its arch for begginers you can branch out to more complex things if you want but the install is painless and works out the box. Arch is in general VERY customizable but its a double edged sword so having guardrails during the setup is helpful.
I’ve taken a good look at Endeavour, and it might be a winner for me! Admittedly, the terminal focus might be a bit much for me to start out, but it seems a lot more approachable than bare Arch, and I got comfortable with pacman and the other basics in an evening of messing with it in a a VM (with the Arch and EOS docs both being very helpful!) It just might be the push I need to let go of my reliance on GUI left over from Windows :-)
I ran various Ubuntu flavors, Mint, Pop!, and Debian on a wide array of devices for almost a decade before switching my gaming rig to EndeavourOS last year. I didn’t appreciate the snap package issues I was having, and the AUR is an excellent tool to have in the box.
I tried straight arch and probably would have stuck with it if I hadn’t royally borked up my audio during the pulseaudio/pipewire transition. I practically live in the command line, but I’m happy to let a well-appointed installer deal with the menial stuff, especially with the knowledge that I’ll inevitably have to reinstall someday. It’s not like there’s a shortage of shit to mess with or a dearth of dumb mistakes I’ll make. No matter what you choose, my best advice is to make a separate partition for both home and root. At the very least, that’ll give you the ability to easily evaluate different distros or reinstall without worry.
IME running newer kernels tends to be a boon for newer hardware and arch-based distros in particular are a good choice for gaming due to the rise of the Steam Deck. I still prefer Debian on servers and SBCs. Probably never going back to Ubuntu again. YMMV.
You sound like a future Arch user, BTW
I toyed with Ubuntu for the first couple weeks before switching to Mint, and I’ve now been a happy Mint user for several months with no big hiccups. I’m a little bolder and wiser now, though, and I feel like I can still get more out of Linux by jumping to a more unstable and tweakable distro.
Stick with mint.
This is exactly why I hate it when people describe some distros as “beginner friendly”. Because they’re also “expert friendly”. There isn’t anything you can’t do with Mint that you could do with another distro.
I wonder what I keep doing wrong with Linux mint. It just doesn’t work for me lol. But I hope it works better for you!
It definitely helps that I’m on very compatible hardware (all AMD) :-) But I was also lucky not to have any of the installation hiccups many seem to, just make bootable drive with Rufus/Balena, launch from in BIOS, profit - maybe some people have a green thumb for their distros of choice, who’s to say?
I was running a live version from my USB, and all I was trying to do was install wine… i first tried the built in software store but that didn’t work. Then I tried installing through command line and that didn’t work. I tried several different times and zilch. The first time I loaded up ubuntu I got wine working without a problem. Idk. But I’m glad it works for you.
If you’re looking for commercial games on Linux, Steam has pretty much solved this with the “Steam Play” compatibility feature, which uses a customized version of WINE to run Windows games. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 runs perfectly. It should work anywhere Steam does.
Baldur’s Gate 3 runs perfectly
Yeah, but jesus fucking christ I’m in pain right now trying to run some mods because of dotnet8.
Most of my library is on Steam, so I’m not too worried about whether my games will run. It mostly means I’m more interested in rolling distros like Arch for their latest support, I guess. :-)
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I am very happy with fedora KDE, although I have weird flickering issues since fedora40/plasma 6 and so i temporarily switched to cinnamon (which was really easy) untiljthe nvidia 555 driver releases. I can really recommend this combination
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I was kinda like you I guess. I was on Ubuntu for many months, probably a year or something and then wanted something new and refreshing, chose Arch and I love it. But this is very very personal so give everything a try if you want but all the distros work perfectly fine so if you’re happy with your decision then just stick with it.
