I’m what you would call an intermediate Windows user. I’ve built a couple of machines. I’ve refurbished a handful of machines. I do most of my own tech support. I’m not uncomfortable doing the occasional registry edit, and I’ve done command line stuff a handful of times.
That said, I know sweet FA about Linux. I have become Linux curious.
I recently picked up an Alienware Alpha - early mini-type PC which was meant to be their Steam OS machine, but actually shipped with the abomination that was Win 8. The machine itself has an i7 4765T with 8 GB of ram. I recently installed a 1 TB SSD. Graphics are handled by an Nvidia 860m.
Since I have almost nothing invested in this little machine, I thought it would be a good candidate for a Linux trial run.
My question is, what distro would you recommend to a total virgin, given the specs on my machine? I kinda want the to have the best chance at actually getting something running without tearing all of my hair out. I’m not against learning and having to figure things out. I’d just rather not get so frustrated that I end up yeeting the thing off the balcony.
Also, is the graphics card going to give me issues? I watch enough tech YouTube to have heard about problems between Linux builds and Nvidia cards.
My ultimate goal for this machine is to do some light gaming/emulation, video/media streaming from my data server, etc.
Any help/ advice/ suggestions would be most appreciated.
Well if you are new either a flavor of Ubuntu or Mint. You can spend the next few years learning to hate it and move to something good. I kid I kid…kinda (I am not a fan of anything Debian…Arch user here). Those are kinda the “Good for Grandma” distros.
Beware Alienware…anything Dell has a good chance of having whacky BS proprietary hardware so it might be a nightmare no matter what distro you choose. It might in fact be a terrible candidate for a Linux trial run.
nVidia poses issues but your issue will be that it’s old. Most times the nvidia drivers are fine (automatic simple bla bla) but the older card might need a version not in the repos anymore and require some manual intervention.
For something with nVidia graphics, I’d recommend giving either Pop!_OS (Pop!_OS by System76) or Nobara ( https://nobaraproject.org/ ) a try. Pop has a specific install ISO for machines with nvidia, and Nobara has a guided walkthrough to help set up the stuff you’ll need for gaming (drivers and whatnot) after you install. All through the UI, no terminal-fu needed.
I’ve used both of these, and they’ve been fairly straightforward to live with. With a nod to Pop! being a more polished, hands-off experience so far. Which makes sense – Pop’s done by a company trying to sell hardware with linux on it, Nobara’s a hobby project. Nobara also just switched to a rolling release with the latest version, so I can’t speak to how stable of an experience it will be vs. how it’s been for the last couple of versions that I’ve used it.
Your hardware is mature enough – with comfortable margin! – that it’s likely to just work with most distros. Although you never know with Nvidia.
Just try 2-3 distros out using their LiveUSB images. If an image doesn’t boot, try another one rather than spending time on troubleshooting.
(You might want to take a peek into the UEFI/BIOS first and make sure the settings are sane – disable Secure Boot; I would also disable CSM to ensure you get a modern UEFI install. You might need to revert these changes to get your Win to boot again though, so remember what you change.)
Edit:
And prepare for a culture shock. Some main points that differ:
Drivers are part of the Linux kernel. You should never ever download binary blobs from a manufacturer’s website to get some HW to work on Linux. The correct solution is usually to upgrade to a newer kernel, or if the manufacturer is bad enough not to have proper Linux support at all, to get other hardware. (The latter is very rare indeed in my experience.)
Programs are installed through the distro’s package manager, mainly. Although lately Flatpacks and similar has started to become a thing. It’s very rare to have to download stuff from 3rd party sources.
If you want something that works out of the box for gaming like steam os, I’d recommend the latest version of Nobara (fedora with qol mods for gaming) with KDE (desktop SteamOS, as I use the Steam-HTPC for my home theater/livingroom PC. For desktop use download the “Nobara Official – Nobara’s Custom themed version of KDE" iso. https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/en/new-user-guide-general-guidelines
Otherwise mint, suggested by others, or Fedora works.
Amd gpus have the least amount of headaches as the drivers are open source and better integrated with the graphics modules.
I’m told that arc is also good
Nvidia GPUs older than 20 series might need extra setup out of the box. I had to do some extra tweaks to get my 970m working
The modern GPU drivers are better than before nvidia opened up their drivers.
If you need help feel free to post here, otherwise start a thread.
For more receptive replies, try to show what debugging or research you’re done to attempt to solve the problem. If you search the error printed in the terminal online, there’s a good chance that someone else or chatgpt has solved it.
If you want to read the experienceof others, this is a great thread. If you start a new post documenting your experience, you can get a 1 year Linux challenge badge
Once you get comfortable with the command line/terminal, I’d recommend NixOS as you can configure the system once and run it everywhere. I wrote my experience here
That was my approach when (re)starting with Linux years ago. Ubuntu, Mint, and maybe something more exotic, like Arch-based or Tumbleweed. I have all major “branches” of Linux ready on USB to check compatibility.
Flashing the USB is easy and downloading a handful of ISOs 2-10GB in size isn’t that difficult either.
Installation is like 10min each, check if everything is running…
Don’t listen to people. Stick to the one that “feels” best. That’s your distro now.
Can’t really state this enough. I always hated driver installation and updating/getting pop-ups to do so for software. Since Linux, things are so easy now. An OS that comes with all drivers and updates all the stuff I have at once, just great.
I do not like the default desktop environment for Ubuntu, nor the philosophy behind it. I much prefer KDE as a desktop environment, and more up-to-date distros.
I recommend EndeavourOS as a good starting point. Installation is just as simple as any other distro. Terminal based software management, which is the best way to find/install software, is arguably easier than things like Ubunto or Fedora.
One thing to be aware of with EndeavourOS is that you will have access to the AUR (Arch User Repository). The AUR has almost everything you could imagine, but with little to no oversight or verification. Official Arch software repos are safe, but in rare cases the AUR can have malicious software.
Can recommend Mint for first distro. PopOS would also be fine I would imagine. Just look into what desktop you like and see if any of those fit.
I think the 860M is Maxwell, so should be supported by the latest nvidia driver, for now. You can always use the latest legacy driver as well, if the new ones give you issues or when they drop support for Maxwell and Pascal shortly (within a year, I think).
And adding other repos almost certainly will get you into trouble (a virgin can’t deal with) at some point.
A good distro is a distro that has repos for the stuff you need.
I highly recommend choosing BTRFS if you meddle around with other repos. restoring old snapshot and undo the last update will save your sanity.
I would advise against stuff like AUR or other non-official repos as a beginner.
This tool basically allows you to place any distro image installers you want. If you are distro shopping this let’s you easily switch between distros, just flash any usb dtick with Ventoy and then put the distro image(s) on the separate exFAT partition created on the USB.
Pop! OS is possibly the best Debian based distro for newbies but their desktop is still not quite ready for the masses. Something to keep an eye on though. Mint would be my second choice.
Distro in general don’t matter beyond if there is sizable community thus mindshare and quality and breath of documentation. Plus matching target audience of distro builder with you own goals.
If you want to learn and grasp from inside out, they you must go the special path.
You will not understand unix like system engineering from using macos, that consumer prodduct built atop of that.
If you want distro for desktop use, start with fedora, ubuntu or mint.
There are step by step howto guides for them that will give you universal lessons across all the linux world.
I’m not uncomfortable doing the occasional registry edit, and I’ve done command line stuff a handful of times
Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone permanently. Getting to be natural in terminal is prerequisite for proficient operations nowadays.
Even windows on enterprise side of things.
Another vote for Endeavor. I would have saved myself noob trouble many many years ago, if I’d had access to the AUR. It is quite a hassle maintaining an Ubuntu system or the likes, with non-standard software on it. I definitely wanted non-standard software then moreso than I do anymore…
To be fair, you can get all that pretty stable with distrobox anyway so, whatever I guess.
I like the suggestion to try out a few different distros off USB sticks. I think that definitely sounds like a path forward. Pop OS is definitely intriguing. I noticed that someone mentioned that no one else had mentioned Bazzite, which is another distro I was considering. I had a friend several years ago who raved about Ubuntu (though, at the time, which was many moons ago, he mostly spent his time cursing at his computer because something he tried to do broke other things he was trying to do… I’m hoping things have gotten better in the intervening years), so I figured I’d take a look at it, too.
I’ll look up some info on some of the others mentioned, too. Mint sounds like it could be worth checking out.
Ha ha, I think I’ll just get my feet wet first, but I appreciate the sentiment. I think I’ll learn enough of the ways of the force to go to Alderan. Perhaps in some not too distant future my journey to the Dark Side can be more complete.
Work is going to kick me in the teeth for the next couple of weeks, but I’ll try to check back in and update/plead for help when I have time for extracurriculars.
Sorry for late reply, but, in essence pick anything stable with ui (since you’re coming from windows) , after some time: you will find your own path in the meanwhile (don’t let the complexity discourage you, windows registry is harder to navigate than /etc or ~/.config)
“We’re here only to show you the doors, You are the one that has to walk through”
It might be moot to say but I see a few mentions of newer distros that are for very specific tasks “gaming” as it were. I’m all for that but I see some missing context.
So if you want E-Z to learn I suggested the “Grandma” distros. Ubuntu really has gone down hill IMO but it’s still pretty simple, OK documentation and resources online to figure things out, fix stuff. The problem with these fancy new Steam OS competitors and such is you never know their track record because they are new. I’m not saying don’t try them…hell try EVERYTHING, variety is the spice and all that. Just know they don’t have a track record.
That said anything Debian (Mint/Ubuntu/POP_OS/MX/Zorin/Elementary) are slow and stable. I kinda think for a noob POP_OS is trying to be too fancy with their Cosmic DE but any Gnome flavor is also IMO too conveluted for someone who did that Win95 to Win 7ish trek. XFCE flavors are faster and simpler.
I’ll also mention Rhino, it’s Debian but it’s got some very breakable moving parts so while it’s “slow and stable” Debian it’s kinda set up like you’re looking for road rash. Avoid until you have some Fu under your belt…but if you want a rolling setup Arch is always best. Garuda/EndevourOS/Manjaro…
Also to touch on my warning about Alienware and by extension any other Dell products potentially being a terrible test bed don’t take that as a “Don’t even try.” Try by all means. Just know it might be a real PITA compared to some old “normal” box in the closet you might have.
I personally had a buddy who wanted to try Linux, he decided his Alienware laptop was the target. Some whacky Wifi card, dual nVidia GPU with some insane bus setup…He has zero computer skills but there is so much proprietary and odd crap in the machine it failed spectacularly and he was soured on things. If you watch Gamers Nexus you should have an idea of how stupid Alienware/Dell hardware can be even for Windows.
So I again say go with basic XUbuntu or Mint (not the cinnamon flavor but XFCE). Some of the other distros might have the promise of what you’re looking for but info might be much harder to find because of the lack of track record. That said also be mindful of anything you research. Make sure the info is current. Ubuntu has been popular so long searches for trouble shooting often pull up outdated crap from 20 years ago heh.
Some flavor of Ubuntu as it will be the easiest to search for solutions when you get stuck. I prefer MATE desktop with Yakuake installed for quick terminal access.
Bazzite ain’t bad, I was considering it or chimera before I settled on nobara. When I was choosing, I read somewhere chimera and Bazzite was more for portable handhelds. I picked nobara because it was just a customized version of fedora that I was already familiar with.
As I understand the Alpha, in particular, it was designed from the ground up to run the first version of Steam OS. By the time of Alpha’s launch, though, Valve had decided Steam OS wasn’t ready for broad distribution so the Alphas shipped with Win 8. This was my main reason for thinking the Alpha might be a good candidate for this particular application.
But trust me when I tell you that I’m taking everything you said under advisement. Dell/Alienware does plenty of dumb stuff I’ve never quite understood.
The catch to what you’re saying is that WHICH version of Steam OS? If you have followed things Steam OS was originally going to be Debian/Ubuntu based. However Canonical pulled the “We’re ditching 32bit libs.” stunt and while everyone was readying their pitch forks Valve just moved to Arch with KDE. (KDE is such a pig I can’t fathom why they chose it for a mobile device…)
So it if was built for the Debian side go Debian BUT if it was designed around the Arch builds best you start with something like Manjaro or EndevourOS.
Also just because it was designed for Steam OS doesn’t mean various things they planned on are still being supported or used. If they designed something for Debian with the expectation Valve would support it but then Valve ditched Debian…well support might be forgot, lost, kaput. Lots of nuance here.
That said just try things. Linux is often about learning which means a lot of head smashing and failure. (It’s worth it.) One thing you might want to look at is the Ventoy project. You can load lots of Distro Iso’s on a single Flash drive and just select at boot time. Given most Distros allow you to test drive before you install you can boot one after the other and see what works, what doesn’t and what you like.
Now get in the ring and FIGHT! cough I mean learn.
It’s OK, Macho Man Randy Sandwich isn’t real, he can’t hurt you…He can however fight Hulk Hoagie, ROUND ONE…BITE!
I kid I kid…kinda (I am not a fan of anything Debian…Arch user here). Those are kinda the “Good for Grandma” distros.
– that it’s likely to just work with most distros. Although you never know with Nvidia.