Distro choice for new Linux, but not computer, user?

I don’t think nvidia 390 is going to work with 4.18-rc6…You should have tried 396, and if it didn’t work use 4.17.

My windows user folder is that old (not kidding, it’s from vista and always carried over).

If you’re thinking KDE you might also try Fedora’s KDE spin, I found that ubuntu and its derivatives always did some weird stuff when I tried them…
One time the auto updater installed the new update on a second partition… that was fun.

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I’ll look into, I might switch later down the line - but those little things I might actually want to keep.

The entire idea of going ubuntu based was to put my feet in the water, not a completely isolated works 100% of the time system.

A little bit of troubleshooting I might need to do, learning lots of console, etc… I feel would be good for me, so weird little quirks like that I welcome. Nothing dastardly destructive just enough to make me need to critically think now and then.

If you want to get your feet wet I can also totally recommend Wendell’s udemy course:

It’s still a little in the works, but totally worth the 10$.

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Oh shit, I didn’t know he had this. 100% Ill buy and use it,

By the end of the year, i’ll be a 3rd dan black belt in Linux-jo.

(hopefully)

Weeell, it’s still a little beta so not really advertised, see also these threads:

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Bleg. Humbug, alpha never stopped me before, for better or worse.

mostly for worse but shhhh

Also, support level1/wendell (after rediscovering he didn’t die after tek syndicate) is something I am on board with.

It’s super useful as it is right now, it just has some rough edges here and there.

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@wendell should spam this more. I’ve been a Patreon supporter and follower of the show for months, and I boop around on the forums. This is the first I’ve heard of it.

Best distro for a new linux user is the most popular one, because you can google for answers customized to your specific configuration, and that is Ubuntu. The cognoscenti may look down upon it, but the truth is it’s perfectly fine. Now that they got rid of Unity, anyway.

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He did present it at computex :wink:

I think he doesn’t feel comfortable yet to constantly advertise it because it’s still “beta”.

While that is true, Fedora is basically RHEL and you can google a lot for that as well.
For Debian most stuff you can use Ubuntu tutorials for.
Arch and its derivatives has a comprehensive Wiki.

There’s good documentation for all the big distros :slight_smile:

They’re all linux, a random Ubuntu forum post solution you google will basically work for any distro. But the advantage of running the most popular flavor is that the solution precisely works with no adjustments, no “well this package is called SenorPoopypants on Ubuntu, what does Fedora call it? Oh, MonsieurPoopyShorts”, don’t need to look up syntax for similar but not actually identical commands like dnf, yum, pac, etc. As a new user that sort of thing matters.

Ubuntu or one of its derivates are definitelly good choices to start on.
There are plenty to choose from but i would rather recommend to stay with some of the bigger more well know and respected ones out there.

My list of distro´s i recommend to new users who wanne get their feet wet in Linux.

Ubuntu based.

  • Linux Mint.
  • Ubuntu or one of their official spins, depending on personal desktop preference.
  • Linux Lite.
  • Elementry OS if you like the MAC feeling.

Debian Based:

  • MX Linux. <-- one of the better Debian based distro’s in terms of additional MX tools to make things allot easier to configure.
  • Linux Mint LMDE.

Rhel based.

  • Fedora. <-- Fedora has become allot more open and welcomming to new users latelly.
    Its allot easier now to find packages you need, and its made easy to enable rpm fusion free and non free repositories, which pretty much opens the way to most packages you would need.

Rolling / Arch based.

  • Manjaro <-- One of the easier distro’s to enter the world of Arch.
    Its pretty userfriendlly from the get go.
    It tries to do the same thing to Arch, as Ubuntu does to debian basically.

Solus should be on everyone’s newcomer list

also: Antergos is better than manjaro for newcomers because it doesn’t break standards to that particular ecosystem.

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Solus:

i played arround with it a bit for a while,
and its definitelly a nice approach on what they are trying to achieve.
They are getting better nowdays with the amount of software packages in their repo´s.
But still their independentness also make them a littlebit lacking in the amount of available software packages in their own repo´s.
Allthough they seem to have improved on that part significantlly.
The Budgie desktop is a pretty nice project aswell.
The only real thing that i´m not a huge fan about is the package management at the command line.
Apt and DNF are a bit easier to learn imo, but that might be a personal thing.

Antergos:

I personally never had a great experience with Antergos.
The Cinci installer is a slow piece of crap imo.
And in my case it just never really worked out well.
Manjaro in my personal experience and opinion is the better more userfriendlly choice.
But yeah breaking is allways a part that will happen with Arch.
Allthough i do understand what you mean by Manjaro changing the Arch ecosystem a bit.

I’ve yet to find anything glaringly missing from the solus repos. Could you name some examples?

Also it’s one of the rare distros with a working graphical package manager, eopkg is functionally interchangeable with any other cli one at this point.

Also, Antergos has come a long way since its inception, too. You should re-try it if you haven’t in a while.

My experience with Manjaro is that it does a bunch of nonsense behind the scenes, that until it breaks, might improve UX a little, but when it does break, it’s much harder to fix because they don’t document their deltas and the community likes gaslighting people with actual software issues.

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I might re-look at Solus and Antergos again wenn i have some time.
Its be a while since i looked at them.
So the Solus software repo´s might have grown allot latelly,
last time i checked them out is about a year ago or so.

Antergos is also a while ago i checked them out.
Had allot of issues with the cinci installer that didnt really work well.
But once finally installed it was sorta kinda okayish.
But the experience i had with it sofar doesnt make it a distro for new commers.
But i might change my mind on that wenn i re-look at it.

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I’d start with Ubuntu because most commercial software with Linux support has ubuntu support.

Until you learn enough to know why Ubuntu pisses you off or doesn’t do something you want/need, then make your own choice based on your requirements.

But yeah, Ubuntu is the stereotypical noob distribution because it’s the path of least resistance. This isn’t necessarily bad. I’m running ubuntu at work for example (despite starting with Linux in 1995) because I have shit to do and it generally doesn’t randomly break, and software installs are normally a piece of cake.

Just because ubuntu is noob friendly, it doesn’t make it an inherently bad choice.

Rolling release/bleeding edge distributions cut both ways. You get the new features before everyone else. But you also get the new bugs/breakage before everyone else as well.

We’re not in the 1990s any more where major, major progress was made with new versions of KDE/Gnome/Kernel/etc.

The base system at this point is fairly stable/usable. The only reason I’d suggest to go bleeding edge these days is for bleeding edge hardware or if you’re doing something cutting edge like GPU passthrough/looking glass/etc. Until then… keep it simple.

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Thank you so much, everyone! I’m glad to see so many people willing to help a noobie, lots of communities would do quite the contrary.

I have been using Kubuntu and been having a fantastic time, resoundingly glad I switched. I have had a few problems with KDE and 3 monitors (apparently there are some errors with the OSS drivers), but the little bit of tweaking I’ve been doing edges me closer to becoming where I want to be.

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@FaunCB what’s the matter with mint?