r/linux_gaming • u/The_Ty • May 12 '25
"Just pick any distro" does more harm than good to newbies
I've noticed a lot of posts from people completely new to the world of Linux, which typically go along the lines of "hey I'm sick of Windows and I want to give Linux a try. I like gaming, where should I start?" All good so far
This will then usually get a dozen of the same type of response, "Anything is fine/Try anything you like the look of/Bounce around some distros see what works"
So this is true, fundamentally you won't go wrong with most distros, and there's something to be said for getting your hands dirty with something and truly seeing for yourself.
But man this does not account for human psychology at all
Imagine you want to buy a car, and know nothing about cars so you ask "hey what's a good car?", and people respond "oh they're all the same just pick one". Or you know nothing about laptops, and when asking which is a good buy people respond "oh they're all fine just pick one in your price range"
People are perpetually victims to decision paralysis, that's why they scroll Netflix endlessly or will struggle to pick a meal off a restaurant menu, there's too much choice. Conversely if you have an ice cream shop with literally 3 flavours people find it much easier to "just pick one".
Linux is overwhelming coming in fresh, people need some form of reference. Now this doesn't mean you have to be an evangelist for a specific distro, and it's good to ultimately mention that any distro is basically fine, but there needs to be some solid foundation for newbies to focus on
So, instead of "just pick what you like the look of", instead suggest say 3 specific distros *and* caveat with "...but ultimately anything you like the look of will work" if you need to. Newbies now have some kind of reference to work with and will gain some kind of consensus from the replies, but will still be aware that there's isn't a magic distro and it can be good to shop around
For example, I've had a great time with Fedora so that's one I suggest. I'm also aware that Bazzite and Linux Mint are well regarded and newbie friendly so I also recommend those too. So that's 3 solid suggestions I can recommend to a complete beginner, and they can still be told that other options are fine too. It doesn't make my answer magically right but it's far more helpful to a new guy, and ironically makes it much easier for them to "just pick one"
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u/Schlonzig May 12 '25
I feel like choosing the right distribution is the first roadblock for somebody willing to switch to Linux. It must feel very confusing, especially since there are so many different recommendations.
Here's what I think are the requirements for the distribution a Linux newbie should choose:
- Has a big and active userbase. Googling a problem and the distro name should give enough helpful responses.
- Has a good balance of up-to-date, but stable software.
- Works out-of-the-box with only minor tweaks.
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u/GooseGang412 May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
For all the issues Ubuntu has in terms of corporate management and project direction, it still hits all your most essential points. Being able to just google "(K)Ubuntu (problem)
Same is likely true for Fedora. I ran into some wonky issues with 41 but it's been smooth sailing on 42. At present, Fedora KDE is likely what I'd recommend to anyone remotely computer-literate, while Mint is my #1 for folks like my grandma, who just need access to a browser and maybe a word processor.
Fedora/Mint/Kubuntu/Ubuntu, in that order, is likely my recommendation path.
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u/Adventurous_Tale6577 May 12 '25
I was checking this recently, Fedora and Arch have the most active communities (out of distributions) on reddit. Was kinda surprising, Ubuntu has a lot of members but no one ever posts anything and not a lot of people are active (Fedora usually has twice as many active members)
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May 12 '25
Where is this active commuinity on Fedora? The Fedora subreddit is just spam of people posting their wallpapers with neofetch ran on a terminal window with a title of "finally made the switch"
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u/Prime624 May 12 '25
Pop OS is pretty good. Basically Ubuntu++.
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u/Saxasaurus May 13 '25
The problem with pop is that it hasn't had a full update in years. They basically put the distro on hold while the work on COSMIC (which I'm excited for).
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u/Prime624 May 13 '25
But it still gets security, kernel, and some library updates. So it's not really a problem imo. Stability is important, as it probably is to a lot of non-technical gamers who are used to getting a new windows every 5 years.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
Gamers don't want stability, they need the latest drivers.
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u/Prime624 May 13 '25
What gamers are you talking about? Gamers absolutely want stability, so they can play their games. The latest drivers generally don't change much.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
Well, they want a stable system, but not one that's lagging behind. The latest Mesa and Proton, for instance, can fix game-specific issues.
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u/Prime624 May 13 '25
I generally disagree. It's a small minority of gamers who would actually benefit.
But regardless, you can have all of that on popos.
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u/Faydane_Grace May 15 '25
Fedora XFCE, followed by Mageia XFCE. Mageia's friendlier and just works, Fedora's more flexible and better supported.
Of course, GNOME and KDE have more bells and whistles, but XFCE just covers the basics and gets the job done.
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u/Narrheim May 17 '25
Except most of the solutions are written in "Linux speech", which is completely incomprehensible for anyone not at at least advanced-intermediate level. Imagine English speaking person trying to speak with someone, who does not understand English.
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u/tailslol May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
i seen more the usual mint and bazzite advice.
a LOT more .
edit: nobara and cachy too.
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u/esmifra May 12 '25
I see a lot of bazzite but not enough people that warn the limitations of the distro when they recommend it. It's a great distro and definitely should take into account but depends a lot on the use cases.
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u/namelessted May 12 '25
I tried Bazzite on a partition. Worked decently but I immediately ran into issues when trying to install something that wasn't in the app store or whatever it's called. Tried doing the rpm-ostree thing but just ran into more issues and couldn't get it to work.
I'll give another distro a try at some point again, but I can't spend all my time setting up Linux, most of the time I just want to use my PC.
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u/TRi_Crinale May 12 '25
If it's not in the app store, use distrobox to install anything from any other app store
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u/tailslol May 12 '25
I don’t think those limitations are a bad thing, especially for a new user who is not sure about he is doing. I consider those limitations more as a safety.
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u/esmifra May 12 '25
Maybe, but if the user has to handle hardware drivers or settings that aren't natively supported he is going to have a tough time, especially if not familiar with Linux.
That's why I say it depends on the use cases. Which is something people recommending it rarely point out.
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u/whiprush May 12 '25
especially if not familiar with Linux.
Poorly suppoted hardware in Linux will always suck for new users, most of that is distro agnostic.
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u/TRi_Crinale May 12 '25
What hardware drivers did you have issues with on Bazzite? I've installed it and its non-gaming cousin Aurora on two extremely different systems (Bazzite on brand new 9800x3d/9070xt gaming system and Aurora on ancient Surface Pro3 laptop) and both times it just worked out of the box with near zero configuration needed
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u/digital1nk May 14 '25
Not the one you replied to but I couldn't get bazzite to perform like windows games no matter what I tried: for some reason my 7900 GRE would not boost to the same clocks it does it windows, so I lost anything from 20% to 50% fps that ultimately defeated the purpose I built that system for: 1440p gaming "console PC" upscaled to 4k so I could play games on my tv.
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u/tailslol May 12 '25
i don't really understand the point sorry.
in windows you install drivers from a user interface.
in Ubuntu and in mint you install drivers from another user interface.
so it is just a user interface thing.
if you mean installing from command lines , it can be very different from the hardware, distro or version.
and it generally leave a bad taste to the user mouth.
especially since it is not always a success.
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u/MultiScootaloo May 12 '25
what kinds of use-cases is it not fit for?
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u/Willing-Sundae-6770 May 12 '25
A Linux newbie not understanding the restrictions immutable imposes
I don't know why bazzite gets recommended so much.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
Atomic distros are better for beginners because everyone has the same system, makes troubleshooting much easier. It also means they're less likely to break stuff.
Unfortunately, some things like Blackmagic capture cards simply don't work with flatpak-only distros.
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u/striderstroke May 12 '25
True bazzite has some limitations because it's immutable, but I found this to not be an issue. It comes with distrobox to give more software compatibility, and rpm-ostree if you really need to install something that requires deeper interaction with the system. Everything else is more or less in flatpaks.
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u/whiprush May 12 '25
warn the limitations of the distro when they recommend it.
Contributor here, this is on purpose, most of the things linux users consider "limitations" most people don't want to care about, we just want to play video games.
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u/esmifra May 12 '25
I'm not saying otherwise, but that's relevant information for newcomers that are asking for advice to know about. Because it might not suit their needs.
People seem to think I'm implying it's a bad distro. It's not, it's an amazing distro, maybe "limitations" might have been a bad choice of a word.
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u/RedTuesdayMusic Feb 11 '26
I honestly think Bazzite should only be recommended to the people who want an immutable distro that's made for a console-like gaming experience. People who are terrified to screw up their system.
For people who want the same experience but without excessive guard rails there's already Nobara
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u/OkMemeTranslator May 12 '25
I see way too much Mint and way too little Tumbleweed. I used to hate gaming on Linux, but not anymore. Everything just works yet everything is up-to-date. On Mint I had a gazillion issues and apps not working and multiple monitors not working etc.
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May 12 '25
Its ubuntu being considered default openSUSE just feels more niche from what I seen in the overall community.
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u/Critical_Impact May 12 '25
Bazzite's fine if you know what you're getting into. I always recommend bazzite with the caveat that they understand it's an image based OS.
Then if they aren't so good with that CachyOS or Ultramarine
You really just want something that's fairly up to date, especially if your gaming
The fact is that if we want people to have a good experience than a preconfigured distro oriented around gaming is what we should be recommending to people. This is after all, /r/linux_gaming
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u/Wulffzie May 12 '25
I always recommend bazzite with the caveat that they understand it's an image based OS.
I'm curious about that if you'd mind explaining what that means and why it would be a bad thing?
I switched from windows to Linux while ago and settled in bazzite after trying out few others like mint, kubuntu, nobara and endevour. With all the others i had either random problems or they just "felt" bad to use. Bazzite on the other hand has so far been perfect fit. Everything just seems to work and with minimal tweaking I've been able to adjust it to feel just right for me.
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u/Text_Original May 12 '25
Bazzite is what’s called an “immutable” or “atomic” distribution. What that means is that you, as the user, only have read rights to the system files.
Additionally, every time you update it updates based off an image of the OS, so changes to those system files aren’t permanent unless they are provided in the image.
So you really can’t permanently break an atomic distro. SteamOS is a famous example of an atomic distro.
I’m not 100% sure on the details personally, so some of this may be wrong, but that’s the gist of it. It’s not a bad or good thing, just a different way to provide a Linux experience.
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u/sparky8251 May 12 '25
You can also always change the end result, its just its not always as simple as editing a file or
rpm installto do so on image based distros.You still get the full power of linux and the customization therein, its just done in a very different way and requires entirely different sets of knowledge than both "plain linux" and other image based distros depending on the given tech used to assemble the OS (there is no one single way to do it, so even image based distro to image based distro, the method to change a specific thing can vary wildly).
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u/mrwunderwood May 12 '25
This
TL;DR version
The good: hard to break your OS because it’s protected.
The tricky: Some software can be hard to install. But if you stick with flatpak (like the software store) and appimages everything is easy.
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u/tailslol May 12 '25
what is ultramarine?
i seen nobara too.
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u/Critical_Impact May 12 '25
https://ultramarine-linux.org/ I haven't used it myself but I'm considering installing it on my surface as support for that seems a bit better than bazzite
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u/TRi_Crinale May 12 '25
Bazzite has the surface specific tweaks baked into their kernel. If you don't want the gaming additions of Bazzite (since Surfaces aren't exactly gaming powerhouses) the same team developed Aurora and it has worked perfectly on my Surface Pro3 for the last few months
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u/Critical_Impact May 12 '25
I've got a SP7 and it's probably a result of moving from bluefin to bazzite but the keyboard doesn't work, almost everything else does but it's been a bit of a mess in regards to understanding what version i should be running. I also would have preferred to say on bluefin but it sounds like bazzite's the only one with the patches.
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u/TRi_Crinale May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
Aurora has the patches, it actually runs the Bazzite kernel as of the last couple of months. I'm surprised bluefin doesn't have the patches since it's developed by the same team.
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u/KGBStoleMyBike May 12 '25
Well to be fair mint is a good starter distribution. It's Ubuntu based which is also another good option. You don't have worry about snap though with mint. The UI tweaks mint has put in makes it a lot easier for windows users to come over too.
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u/dj3hac May 12 '25
And then that person installs Mint and they're back a day later asking why X game, or bleeding edge feature doesn't work.
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u/FabulousBileClone40 May 12 '25
That's the whole thing too, in these help threads we need to check first what their use case is, if its gaming or anything requiring more up to date packages then something like Cachy OS or Fedora would serve them better. Just recommending mint and the classic "beginner" distros doesn't work anymore as a blanket intro choice for what is increasingly becoming gaming focused newcomers.
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u/maltazar1 May 12 '25
it's really not
outdated, no hdr, no Wayland (broken multi monitor setups by default), random ass de instead of anything sensible
since users always pick defaults, these are also defaults
also snaps
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u/dydzio May 12 '25
for me linux is: "stable", "new stuff" - pick one
middle ground between these two would be probably something like opensuse tumbleweed
i use kubuntu LTS and I do not feel like missing anything
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u/mrwunderwood May 12 '25
I would recommend fedora as the middle ground because it’s also a large user base.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
And that right there is the problem. Gamers need new stuff to get the most out of their hardware.
But a real middle ground would be fedora, as it's not a rolling release with bleeding edge packages. On a podcast, fedora describes themselves as leading edge rather than bleeding edge.
Of course, it's missing a ton of things out of the box due to licensing restrictions, which is why I would rather recommend something like Ultramarine Linux, which is basically fedora with the Ubuntu treatment. Nobara is also good but It's currently making a transition to a rolling release model and also uses a lot of packages from outside its mean repose.
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u/userrr3 May 12 '25
Additionally, and I think this gets hidden by the fact that it's a good distro for beginners, it's also a perfectly fine daily driver. I've been using it for years and I mean I've tried other distros in the early days and on virtual machines but when it comes down to it, for my main PC I want a stable OS that does what I want and mint is just that for me.
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u/NoelCanter May 12 '25
My main 3 go-tos are probably Nobara/PikaOS/CachyOS if gaming is a heavy focus. Just easier out of the box and generally pretty good support. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there people have a good experience with, too. I'm not as big of a fan of recommending Mint. I followed that advice starting out and honestly, the more I learned the less I really enjoyed the experience. I don't think it is more intuitively newbie friendly than a Nobara or Pika especially. The biggest advantage of Mint is probably that a lot of people use it, so you find information on it, but between Nobara Discord or just generally searching Fedora information, I've never really had major problems resolving issues I had.
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u/Huecuva May 12 '25
Choice paralysis is a thing. There are so many different flavours of Linux it can be very overwhelming to "just pick one" when you're new to the whole thing. New people should be recommended Mint or Fedora if they want something general purpose or Bazzite if they want a gaming distro. That's all. Everything else should come after they've had some experience with one of those.
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May 13 '25
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u/Huecuva May 13 '25
Pop hasn't been updated in like two years because they're busy working on their Cosmic DE, if I recall correctly. I really don't know why anyone would recommend it right now.
You're probably right about Debian based distros having a larger pool of resources, and maybe Kubuntu should be added to the list. However, Cinnamon is specifically designed to be ex-Windows user friendly if I'm not mistaken. It certainly was very easy for me to get used to, coming from Windows 7 and 10. KDE can be a bit overwhelming as far as customization goes and if someone really wants to dive into that rabbit hole, again there is Fedora.
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u/nototno May 17 '25
Yeah fuck whoever ever recomends pop for gaming cuz they just forget the giant roadblock that is installing Waydroid on pop os for no reason
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u/murlakatamenka May 12 '25
The phenomenal has a nice name:
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u/Huecuva May 12 '25
I've been using Linux for several years at this point and even I'm experiencing this phenomenon. My main gaming rig is still dual booting Windows 10 and Mint 21.3. I need to do just a few more things before I'm ready to completely wipe the whole dual boot setup and install a Linux and I'm not sure if I want to use EndeavourOS, Tumbleweed, or Mint 22.x or something else.
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u/murlakatamenka May 13 '25
I'm Archer so I'd pick EndeavourOS
You use Mint so just update it and move on?
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u/Huecuva May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25
Updating from 21.3 to 22.1 isn't as simple as upgrading previous versions of Mint. 22 is a big step forward in Wayland support and other stuff for Mint and it's strongly recommend to do a fresh install.
With that in mind, I would have to fresh install regardless which distro I use and yes, while I do use Mint currently on my gaming rig and I love Mint as a distro, my hardware is a little on the newish side, particularly my 7800XT for which I had to use Mainline to install the latest kernel as well as the kisak ppa for mesa and I'm pretty sure 22.1 would also not have proper support for my video card since it has kernel 6.8 stock. I could do the same with Mainline and kisak in Mint 22.x, but do I really want to?
I also run EndeavourOS on my HTPC and it's also great. So I'm undecided whether I want an LTS or a rolling release on my gaming rig as a rolling release would negate the necessity of using Mainline and the kisak ppa. That being said, my gaming rig is perhaps one of my most important rigs and I would prefer if it remained as stable as possible, which is why I'm considering Tumbleweed, as it rolls a little slower than EndeavourOS and is reported to be significantly more stable. But I've also heard that zypper kind of sucks. There's also the consideration that a rolling release would mean I would theoretically never have to reinstall for a new version.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
Since Endeavour OS is based off of Arch, you might want to consider catchy OS, which is another arch-based distro, but this one is geared specifically towards gaming. I don't really have experience with anything but Mint and Fedora and tumbleweed, but my recommendation would be stick with what you're familiar with, and since you're familiar with Endeavour OS, you should be familiar with Arch, so catchy it is.
Also, I believe that Valve recently announced they were helping Arch fund something similar to the open QA thing that gives tumbleweed its legendary stability, but don't quote me on that.
If you do decide to go with the tumbleweed route, I would highly recommend Gecko Linux instead, which is basically tumbleweed, but much more user-friendly out of the box. That's actually how I experienced tumbleweed.
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u/Huecuva May 13 '25
I'm not really looking for a gaming specific distro, but I guess it would be nice if Gamespace and all that stuff was already set up.
I've never heard of Gecko Linux. I'll look into that.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
idk what gamespace is, if you mean GameSCOPE then yeah, Bazzite and Nobara HTPC edition have that, and yes, it's fantastic. But if you're using a mouse and keyboard, it's not that important, I imagine.
Cachyos isn't a gaming specific distro, it's actually just a blazing fast arch-based distro with kernel tweaks for performance. It also does something similar to Clear Linux where packages are compiled with architecture-specific optimizations for better performance. Given your familiarity with Endevoros, I would suggest using another arch-based distro like
They even have a cool wiki guide that shows off a lot of the cool things it can do, as well as help configure it for certain tasks like automounting additional drives and gaming. https://wiki.cachyos.org/
However, one could argue that ultimate stability would come from using an atomic distro. Tumbleweed is not that, but they have something called MicroOS that IS atomic. However, if you'd rather have the traditional style of distro and package management on linux, then yeah, tumbleweed may be what you want.
So TL:DR: cachy if you wanna stick with arch-based familiarity with extra optimizations, Gecko Linux if you want Tumbleweed's rolling stability, Fedora or its spins if you want a NON-rolling release with more up to date packages, maybe Ultramarine for a more out of the box experience or Bazzite if you'd like the atomic experience with gamescope out of the box. Nobara is also good and fedora based, but it's moving to a rolling release and it's mostly maintained by Glorious Eggroll, so take that into account. It also operates on a philosophy of move fast and break things more often to avoid dealing with the fewer but bigger bugs fedora itself can come with. SOME have said tumbleweed is more stable than any point release distro they've used, for what that's worth.
I hope all this has been helpful.
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u/Huecuva May 13 '25
Gamescope is what I meant, yes. But since it's a desktop, I guess I don't need it. What I actually meant was all the gaming related stuff like ProtonUp-QT and ProtonTricks and whatever else, including Gamescope which, again, I probably don't need. I also don't want an immutable or atomic distro like Bazzite.
Cachy does sound interesting, for sure. I will add it to my list of possibilities. I'll check it out along with Gecko Linux. I've heard good things about Nobara, but if it's going to "move fast and break things", it's probably not what I'm looking for.
You have indeed been helpful. Thank you very much.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 14 '25
Well, I'm not too sure how many gaming-focused distros have those things set up out of the box outside of nobera and bazite and chimera OS, but it's pretty simple to download all those apps. Actually, no bearer doesn't have that. It has something different. So I installed it myself, and it was really easy. There wasn't really much to set up.
I will say though, Game Scope with Decoloader is a game changer even on desktop. One of my favorite plugins adds theme music appropriate for each game, which makes it feel kind of like the PS3 did when launching games. To my knowledge, it isn't possible to use decky outside of the game-skilled micro-compositor, but I could be wrong.
Worth noting that cachy has a single command that installs the following packages: Gamescope, Goverlay, Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, MangoHud and Steam. Honestly, that sounds super convenient.
I've never used catchy before, but I'm starting to see why it's growing in popularity. But I have no horse in this race. I don't have a burden for you to pick anything in particular.
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u/murlakatamenka May 13 '25
Updating from 21.3 to 22.1 isn't as simple as upgrading previous versions of Mint.
Oh well. Such things are unknown to rolling distros. I've been running a single Arch install for 7+ years now, can't say it bricked itself much. I can recall only not booting into X11 after I forgot to setup DKMS for a short time I had to use Nvidia GPU. Anyway I have Arch ISO on boot partition that I can boot into from UEFI, but last time I had to use it was at least a few years ago. I can't really say anything bad about stability. And that said I like to try new things, like I has been using PipeWire early before it got mainstream.
So I can only quote the classics regarding stability on Arch:
It can only be attributable to human error
BTRFS + snapshots for more resilience. The better would be to use an immutable distro.
I imagine EndeavorOS is just an easy mode Arch, which is fine. If you already use and happy, using a single distro everywhere sounds good.
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u/AliOskiTheHoly May 16 '25
As a Mint user that upgraded from 21.3 to 22.x: you are correct. After the upgrade i have occasionally been experiencing Cinnamon crashes when closing windows. I've reported the problem but the Mint dev basically couldn't solve the problem, it was too specific to my system... If you want 22 I recommend you indeed do a fresh install. I'm probably going to do that when I get the time too.
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u/New_Series3209 Dec 27 '25 edited Feb 19 '26
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May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
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u/teren9 May 12 '25
Reading your comment was very eye opening.
I believe the same issues Bazzite solved for you might have also been solved if you tried CachyOS or Nobara.
I am currently using Bazzite as well and it's been a while since I tried a "general purpose distro". So I might have taken these fixes for granted.
It's interesting seeing a new user's perspective on the immutable nature of Bazzite, as a good thing. For me, I had to do a lot of tinkering to go around that immutability (installing applications using distrobox, or cli apps through brew for instance)
In any case, it's nice to see that you perceived. Linux is not without issues. No distro is perfect and no DE is perfect either. But, windows is so bad lately that I can't stand it anymore. I wish it wasn't necessary to troubleshoot everything in Linux for it to function properly, like you've experienced. But at the current state of things, it is still better than dealing Windows. Windows intentionally makes things difficult. Linux does it unintentionally.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25
Thank god you had your eyes open to what we've been saying for a year now (no shade, seriously thank you). Now you understand why the steam deck is atomic. It's the future of user-friendly Linux.
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May 12 '25
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u/teren9 May 12 '25
I've written my grievances with windows recently in a different thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1kamn2k/comment/mpyy40q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
It's the small things that keep showing.
And the more I use Linux, the more I customize it to my liking, the more unfamiliar and annoying every little thing in Windows becomes.
A recent, and very stupid example, I know it's stupid, but it's annoying nonetheless.
I use KDE, and it has a very Windows-like start menu with all of my apps pinned for easy access.
Then I move to Windows and all of my pinned applications are bullshit ads for Microsoft services I don't use or apps it wants to promote like tiktok or candycrush and shit like that.
Obviously it is an easy fix. But as long as I've used Windows, I never dealt with it, because it started off so bad that I never really used that "pinned apps" feature.
Linux, being Linux, gave me a clear canvas to use just like I want to, and not how they want me to. And so, I was much more open to organize it the way I like it. And now that I am used to it, moving back to Windows and seeing the mess that is my start menu just annoys me. I don't use it often enough (and for things other than LoL) in order to put in the time to debloat it. It will just stay like this, a constant reminder of how bad Windows is.
And as for the many issues you've experienced with Linux.
Some of it are because you're still new and don't know what you're doing, some of it was because you were unlucky with the distro and hw combination. These things tend to go away the longer you use Linux, either because you are more conscious over what HW you're buying, or because you're more familiar with different issues and know how to troubleshoot them.
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May 12 '25 edited May 13 '25
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25
Exactly, if the user NEEDS to know what they're doing, you've already failed. But Linux users don't understand this. It offends them. This is why people say Linux is free if you don't value your time.
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u/Indolent_Bard May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25
Well Windows, for all its faults, doesn't have teething pains. If Linux HAS to have them, as you make it sound like it's inevitable, then it's not a worthy replacement yet. For the hardware I get (it's the only os hardware isn't made for) but I doubt switching to Mac has as many teething pains that waste your time.
I could be totally wrong, of course, but I've never had trouble bouncing between Mac and windows without a manual for either. You don't need to know what you're doing to actually use a mac or a steam deck, as the guy below mentioned. And THAT'S why Linux is free if you don't value your time. This is what we're talking about right here.
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u/Sixguns1977 May 12 '25
I rarely see it recommended, but I'm very happy with Garuda. It's a beginner friendly gaming distro. The pros: beginner friendly, customizable UI, comes with damn near everything you need to start gaming(including a bunch of emulators of your into that). Its Arch based with KDE just like the steam deck, which i think will maximus the amount of games you can play). It comes bundled with office programs, A/V and photo editors, etc. Discord community is pretty helpful(and patient).
Cons: you're still going to have to learn to mount/automount hard drives(either by command line or GUI tools) and learn how to change permissions. You'll need to familiarize yourself with KDE Plasma's customization options if you don't like the default theme.
TL:DR:I think Garuda makes getting started very easy, but there are still some things that you'll need to learn, but those are things you'll probably need to learn no matter what distro you're on.
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u/jecowa May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25
I'm considering Garuda for my gaming computer. I like that it has a way to rollback updates if something breaks. Also considering Fedora, Arch, Nobara, and EndevourOS. I like these all because they seem to update often, which is good for computers with recent hardware like the AMD Radeon RX 9000 series.
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u/Sixguns1977 May 13 '25
That rollback is extremely easy to use. I used it the other night. As far as newer hardware goes, the newest thing in my pc is an Arc 770LE. Good luck, and I hope one of those choices is exactly what you want.
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u/jecowa May 13 '25
Garuda Dr460nized Gaming is my top choice at the moment.
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u/Sixguns1977 May 13 '25
I like the kde lite install best, but switched over to dragonized gaming so I wouldn't be missing any important packages. With the dragonized version, things that you didn't even know you needed are already included. That caused me some problems with the kde lite version.
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u/Fraisecafe May 12 '25
I hear you and don’t disagree … but you’re also talking many of the same crowd who’ve been generally happy with a ton of FOSS looking like absolute ass for well over two decades, many of whom will extol the virtues of bad UI design as being “amazing because it’s free as in beer” while telling you that if you have a problem with something to “fix it yourself”.
The fact of the matter is that a significant enough portion of the FOSS and Linux crowd, including the gaming sphere, are elitist pricks who don’t actually want to help anyone out in an actually meaningful way. Some even get off on being contrarian and pissing others off.
Conversely, we also have a ton of people coming into these forums/groups/whatever who are lazy AF and don’t bother using the search function or take time to read the thousands of posts where people have asked the same half dozen questions. I’m not saying those past posts are full of great info always, but there’s enough that do have gems from people who actually give a damn that the deluge of lazy posts gets exhausting quick.
And when these two groups meet? Fireworks.
Not raining on your parade. It’s good that you’re calling this out and it has gotten better in some regards. I just don’t expect much change to come when these are the ideas and behaviours that keep meeting in this space.
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u/gavff64 May 12 '25
I agree. There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle but everyone sort of just blankets it. A lot of the trial and error could’ve been skipped for me awhile ago if even just X11 versus Wayland, immutable versus mutable were discussed more to beginners. Those things (literally) make or break a user’s experience.
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u/murlakatamenka May 12 '25
The answer is simple, and "daddy Muta(har)" has given it multiple times:
pick a POPULAR distro with large community because it'll be easy to find info and support. Even better if your friend runs it. This way even vanilla Arch can be a good pick xD
try stuff via VM or bootable live USB, because it's easy no hard commitment way
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u/aykcak May 12 '25
My go to advice for newcomers is Ubuntu.
I don't like it personally. But by far it is the most used distro. Infinitely more content on the internet about particular issues, and topics and it has a very large and helpful community.
It also comes bundled with a lot of (proprietary) packages and apps so you don't end up researching how to play a mp4 file for example.
Once you get the hang of it, you can switch to something else of course, but it will get you a long way
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u/New_Series3209 Dec 27 '25 edited Feb 19 '26
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u/Damaniel2 May 12 '25
Also, a lot of people just want to get stuff done and not distro hop every week or two, as is common among people in the Linux community. I'm well past that point in my life; I just want to install something and use it for as long as possible.
Sure, Linux distros aren't one size fits all, but the solution to that isn't to tell people to 'try a bunch of stuff to see what you like'. I'd recommend a community-supported list of choices suitable for new users (i.e. not Arch), but most Linux users can't decide on something as fundamental as a package manager, let alone a whole distro.
The elitists might not like it, but most of us should be recommending Ubuntu or Fedora. They have large communities, are well supported, and a track record of working for most people for most things.
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May 12 '25
I think that is what most people do.
They recommend Mint, which is just 90% Ubuntu, or Fedora. Even in gaming subs like this that recommend something like Bazzite is just fedora with some pre-configuration
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u/STR1NG3R May 12 '25
Linux is overwhelming coming in fresh, people need some form of reference.
Linux is an open source community. There will always be some amount of churn that makes advice stale more quickly than other ecosystems. There is no silver bullet distro recommendation. There will be growing pains for any new user. Linux is very different from Windows and is likely less "polished" for most end users (ie to do some things you will need to use the terminal).
Beginners would do well to try many distros quickly. Pick 3-4 distros recommended in the last month. Install one and try to do what you want. Play a game. Edit a video. Mount extra drives. etc. If you're getting frustrated, wipe it and install another distro and try again.
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u/Puzzlehead-Engineer May 13 '25
Yeah our peers need to understand that average Windows users who aren't into IT in any way are laypeople. They DO NOT understand technology. They are afraid of breaking it permanently from doing one thing wrong and needing to pay someone a fortune to fix it. They don't dare to try to solve it because the fear of breaking it again is greater than the refusal to pay someone to do it. They'll beg you to switch them back to Windows before trying anything. Because they're not like us. They're not tech nerds, they're not interested in Linux like we are. YES even if they are interested in switching, do not assume they're suddenly like you in how they approach tech, they're not. And if that's too much to deal with then reconsider your desire to help them. There's no shame in that.
The whole "tech native" idea that says young people (kids, teens and adults), those born around 2000, understand technology inherently due to growing up with it is false. They understand social media, how to operate their hardware, the GUI (barely), videogames maybe and messaging apps at best. Maybe a few basic settings and tricks, but that's about it. They don't even know Windows, not really. Not like we're meant or expected to.
So of course when you grab one of them and plop them into some Fedora Linux install with a GNOME or even xfce desktop environment, they get lost and give up immediately. Only because the desktop and GUI is different! Maybe they have that stubborn curiosity to start figuring things out alone, vut if they don't then that's it.
Introduce them to Linux Mint with Cinnamon. At a glance it looks like Windows with a different coat of paint, and that goes A LONG WAY. And you can do most of the general stuff you'd need to do on Linux with the GUI there. That's how you get someone started. Then you introduce them to the terminal and slowly start their computer savviness.
But you need to start small, and as close to Windows as possible. Or to Mac if that's where their start point is for some reason. And you'll need to tolerate and deal with their "whining" because learning can be hard. If you're not willing to deal with this, don't teach. Don't even recommend unless it's to recommend some "Linux for newbies" YT channel or something.
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u/Skratti_ May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
Just as info for technical users with windows background and no Linux background whatsoever:
Owners of a Windows Pro license can install hyper-v and setup a Ubuntu system - Microsoft even provides a one-click hyper-v installation of Ubuntu.
And atm whoever dares to go Linux could also do the few clicks required for hyper-v.
Edit: I forgot to add that this is only to try out Linux. VMs don't have easily access to the graphics card. There's a way to pass through the card, but I cannot recommend that, since that setting has to be reverted to get the graphics card back to windows.
And btw - if you don't have internal graphics, it's a bad idea to give the only graphics card to the VM. That leads to a black screen during windows start. The only way I was able to revert that was by using a recovery point - windows had created one a few hours before I messed up...
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u/Niwrats May 12 '25
that seems like an awfully complex way when one can just live boot from usb.
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May 12 '25
Its not complex at all. You just type
wsl --installin powershell/windows terminal set to powershell and it just kind of workshttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install
It can even run GUI apps.
But I wouldnt really call it relevant for linux gaming... its more for if you want to use a unix filesystem for development while staying on windows.
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u/yanzov May 12 '25
There should be some entry level and transition sub for this kind of stuff iMHO.
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u/Possibly-Functional May 12 '25
Isn't that r/Linux4Noobs?
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u/yanzov May 12 '25
I don't know :) I don't want to be negative or sabotage OP's topic, just IMHO it would be nice to be to able skip the very entry level discussion here, since it hopefully would be more and more popular topic.
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u/NotScrollsApparently May 12 '25
When I was first getting into it I tried looking and asking for a comprehensive beginner guide and it also seemed like a point of pride for linux veterans that there isn't one and you're supposed to just dive in and bash your head against problems until they get solved (or more often, give up).
It is a crazy approach that I would never consider recommending for a newbie learning programming or almost any other skill, but it is what it is. It often feels like linux community wants it to stay niche and obscure.
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u/Griffin_Wood_EN May 13 '25
Count me in as one of the Linux users who wants to help with creating a comprehensive beginner guide. I want to get the ball rolling on this. I even might make a video on it, although honestly, I don't really have any video making experience, so probably not, but I'm at least thinking about it.
What do you think would be some good topics to cover?
The biggest issue is trying to find the line between necessary information and flooding them with an info dump that doesn't help them. For instance, stuff like Wayland vs. X11 can literally make or break your experience, but how in-depth do we want to go here?
Not to mention we also have to get into basic computer literacy in order to comprehend what Linux even is.
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u/NotScrollsApparently May 13 '25
I'd just like a written resource that will warn me of the common mistakes or problems in advance, before I run into them and get confused/frustrated. Of course ppl will have to google specifics but why not guide the linux newbies through the common beginner steps at least.
Wayland vs x11 - a newbie doesn't need to understand those right away, but they need to know which one to use. When I started i didn't want a historical lesson on how they came to be, I just wanted someone to tell me which one will work more reliably.
Some of the issues I remember:
steam games not working because they are on a different (ntfs) drive than the OS
using docker on immutable distro like bazzite was problematic
protondb vs wine vs bottles
flatpak vs appimages vs .deb vs .rpm vs dnf vs rpm-ostree (basically how to install stuff - I wish someone told me right away to just use fedora flatpak repo for everything, but there are sometimes apps that arent there)
common gnome extensions - i had trouble finding solid replacements for windows tools like sharex or ditto because they either dont work properly or lack functionality
etc.
I spent more time on stupid simple stuff because many online topics about them are either opinionated, outdated or wrong (at least for a newbie), I'd be happier if someone just told me what to do and that I could trust it to work.
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u/Griffin_Wood_EN May 13 '25
Ooh, this is good! Although the fedora flatpak repo has caused some problems as documented in the linux subreddit, so it's better to stick with the flathub repo instead.
Not familiar with gnome, or sharex/ditto on windows (gonna have to google those) so that's something to research.
The whole thing about flatpak vs appimages vs deb is a toughie, because how much do you NEED to know before it gets confusing?
Thanks a lot for this, I'm busy with classes rn but this is good to note, I'm saving your comment.
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u/yanzov May 12 '25
I was being yelled at when someone found out that I used Manjaro back then, rotfl. It was the first distro that was working for me great, run into some problems, and just get bashed into the ground when I run into some problems and asked for help.
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u/NotScrollsApparently May 12 '25
Linux always works perfectly.
But if it doesn't it's your fault.
But if it's not your fault then you're using the wrong distro and you should switch.
But if you already switched and it still doesn't work then go back to windows because why did you assume that everything would work the same way, this is a different OS, stop complaining if you're not willing to completely change your expectations and way of working.
... I might still be slightly bitter.
Also, if you have nvidia get ready for every single problem to be blamed on that.
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u/teateateateaisking May 12 '25
Some people on arch and derivatives really don't like manjaro. It's not entirely unjustified, but the solution is to calmly suggest and encourage movement to something else, not to begin screaming.
They've had multiple issues with SSL certificates not automatically renewing. Pamac has accidentally DDOSed the aur more than once. That one really annoyed the arch users. Other than that, it's mostly just some controversy over manjaro internal politics and users of the arch forums not liking the derivatives.
Manjaro is a decent distro. It was the second one I used seriously, after Mint and before my current setup (Endeavour). If you're happy there, it's fine to stay. Most advice about arch and endeavour applies just fine, since they all use the same base.
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u/New_Series3209 Dec 27 '25 edited Feb 19 '26
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u/wrd83 May 12 '25
I think this is good advice, but we should add beginner friendly.
I would try to steer people to the beaten path of fedora/ubuntu and its derivatives/forks. This gives exposure to common support channels.
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u/SuAlfons May 12 '25
In the meanwhile, I'm pretty reluctant to recommend any distro to people.
There are a lot of people interested in running Linux where you get the feeling, they would still need some guidance regardless of what OS to install.
IDK, I install OSes since the Amiga days, so the very basics about partitioning, I had those down before Linux was a thing. People today just don't need to know as much about PCs to just use them. Like you don't have to be a mechanic just to drive a car. Unfortunately, this results in people having sometimes quite false pretexts about how things work in a computer OS.
I'd recommend "see a local Linux user group for assistance" to most. But I know those LUG are scarce and full of nerds....
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u/mathias_freire May 12 '25
First of all, there is a pinned FAQ post above that should cover most of those questions and a summary of gaming on Linux at all. If they would care to read that, they would notice there are recommendations and how they differ from each other. I mean, they are already answered, they just need to look a tad more.
Secondly, this analogy is not proper to use here because, eh, all those desktop distros are pretty much same in the matter of functionality. Yes, they are same. They use 99.9% same software. It boils down to how it feels. Does this specific distro run your game, let you browse the internet, let you watch your movies/shows, listen to your music, edit your office documents and provide other productivity tools available on the market? Yes to all. When it comes to cars or laptops, buyer could ask specifics. The specs would matter more. Would this specific laptop let you to do these tasks. Yes. But one would perform better than the other. Among Linux distros, one distro wouldn't perform better than other one inherently. Your specific build matter, the support for your devices matter.
Linux is not Windows, it has different approach, different concepts, different software (generally) and people should be aware of that. They should pay more attention to if it's already asked, if there is already documents around. For starters, answers are all same. Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, Nobara... These answers don't change, they are all almost same for what they are doing and we cannot know which specific distro would make you feel better more.
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u/PigSlam May 12 '25
It seems like newbies should be pointed to one of the bigger distros with a lot of support available, like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. It's ridiculous when someone that's been using Linux for 30 years recommends something obscure that they and 9 other people use. If they're new, something too specialized will give them a distorted view, and if they have enough interested to continue with Linux, they'll find their own way to the more specialized variants if that's where they belong.
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u/RedArmyRockstar May 12 '25
Straight up, I'm just waiting for an official SteamOS release.
I love it on my Deck, and I'm waiting for that before I jump in on my main PC.
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u/TheShredder9 May 12 '25
I usually recommend to pick one of the following distros known to be good for beginners, like Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin.
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u/bcbroon May 13 '25
I just and I mean just ( 2 days ago) built my first Linux machine. I only want to game on it and web browse maybe watch a few copyright free videos I have downloaded.
I just grabbed the most current Ubuntu distro I couldn’t figure out any reason not to go with a simple basic version.
I still haven’t gamed on it, but I downloaded steam, vlc and libre office. Hopefully windows is behind me forever
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u/MountainCricket2670 May 13 '25
And remember that there are terrible people who recommend Arch to newcomers
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u/Cephell May 12 '25
I think most users just completely miss the point of distro recommendations.
You can't just recommend a distro in a vacuum. Most users will be coming from Windows, and they will expect Windows convenience features, even if they don't or can't articulate them. Most users will have NVIDIA hardware (pure argument from market share).
The point is not to suggest something that's theoretically correct, but is PRACTICALLY USEFUL for the person looking to join Linux.
Mint is a HORRIBLE suggestion because it's catastrophically outdated and essentially nothing will work as expected. Except people CONSTANTLY recommend it because they vaguely heard "it's like Windows". But then you install it and the new convertee immediately quits Linux for the next 10 years, because their sound doesn't work, their multi monitor setup doesn't work and their graphics doesn't work.
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u/KGBStoleMyBike May 12 '25
Honestly, I pretty much will tell people to go with Mint. Ubuntu is also an option too it has many flavors. There is also options like Manjaro that makes Arch type distros a bit easier too. I'm not a fan of it but Fedora isn't too bad learn on nor is openSUSE. Debian is not a bad distro for beginners either.
I'd stay away from Arch or Slackware or Gentoo. They fall into the power user or advanced user categories.
The one thing that most users don't tell ya a lot of distributions are based on other distributions. Once you know base distribution the distro based off its not hard to figure out other distros. Most Modern distros are based off Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL or Arch. Source based ones like Gentoo are outliers and are their own things.
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u/GoogleFrickBot May 12 '25
I love mint and I recommend it to anyone wanting Linux for a pc that just works, it's bulletproof. But I've found that it's a bit behind on some packages that would concern gamers.
I like to recommend endeavour to people because it has sensible defaults, but you can still reference the arch wiki when things go wrong (which is a great resource regardless of the distro).
There are many packages that would concern people who play games that are on the AUR and seem to get support for arch first (maybe due to the steam deck, I'm not sure).
That said, I love mint for keeping an ancient pc useable for 10 years and never getting tired. King shit. So I don't think it's a bad recommendation either
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u/Nokeruhm May 12 '25
Usually no one suggest to choose "any" distro, but just a few well know derivative distros... and that's the point, derivative distros are (usually) more friendly for starters. That's why there are those "solid" recommendations.
And in the opposite way, I've seen more times warnings against Arch and Debian than any recommendation.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC May 12 '25
I think the "just pick any distro" advice exists for the benefit of the existing Linux community, not to help newcomers. People only say it because if you tell people to use a specific distro, you inevitably get into an argument with the fans of another distro, which completely derails the discussion away from the original question asked by the person seeking advice.
That being said, the advice should obviously be "just pick Fedora".
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u/Conscious-Brain-8790 May 12 '25
I don't disagree, I usually get a hand on what games they play and how computer literate they are and how much they want to learn, if they aren't playing a lot of newer titles and or aren't that literate I will usually suggest Mint, If they play a lot of newer games with newer hardware and or are a bit more computer literate I'll usually go for Cachy or a baseline arch though with baseline arch I'll still let them know about archinstall if they don't want to set it up manually.
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u/bogguslol May 12 '25
I'd recommend Linux Mint to my sister, grandma and friends who use their computer for surfing, watching videos and handling practical every day tasks. It is just so very simple to install and use.
I do not recommend Linux Mint for my gaming friends. Sure Linux Mint works fine to game on but a majority of all error related gaming posts on this subreddit is due to default Linux Mint having way too outdated drivers and packages. You can fix that with minimal effort but at that point I already lost my ADHD friend Gamer Brian who can't deal with any sort of setback in such a transition phase. I got around 10 friends to stick with Linux with suggesting Bazzite, Nobara, PikaOS and CachyOS since you can start gaming immediately after installing the distro, no additional setup or tinkering required.
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u/michggg May 12 '25
Agree. Linux users have a reputation to like tinkering, but a lot of people, including me, just want something that works without too much hassle.
And there are enormous differences in terms of user-friendliness between different distros.
Since these are people that are switching from Windows, most important aspect should be IMO to recommend something that is close to Windows in terms of UI. So I personally would recommend Mint or Ubuntu or similar (have no experience with Bazzite etc.).
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u/Momentous7688 May 12 '25
The main problem I see is "arch or die". As a low-intermediate Linux user, having used in on and off since SuSE wasn't open use. Since red hat was a thing. I've seen several distros come and go. I know my way around some of them, but Arch is NOT newbie friendly. Fedora, Bazzite and mint all are. And they're not necessarily worse than any others either. Arch is great if you want to customize every little thing, and tinker to your hearts content. But if you are used to Windows and just want a better alternative, go with something that's more streamlined and has less tinkering. I prefer Bazzite these days, as it's super friendly and easy to use, and comes with stuff pre installed. But it's based on Fedora, which is also great.
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u/TechaNima May 12 '25
I've stopped recommending Mint to most people. It's good and all, but when a gamer Windows refugee comes asking. Fedora and everything based on it really is the way to go. Not too bleeding edge or hard to get into like Arch and not so outdated that their shiny new gfx card doesn't even have drivers that work/perform well yet. Or that they'll have to give up on Variable Refresh Rate, desktop scaling and HDR. Or that the desktop looks so alien that they'll immediately give up and go back to Winblows.
So usually I just give them: Bazzite, Nobara or Fedora KDE as options.
If they are asking for a distro to setup and forget about for their parents or for an office PC, Mint Cinnamon 100%. I usually also throw in Fedora KDE as the second option, since it seems stable/easy enough for a non tech savvy parent to handle just the same as Windows. They can probably handle it better, since it'll never confuse them by making them click through the stupid first time setup wizard every few months
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u/Dhayson May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
There should be a tier list of distros:
Beginner friendly (Ubuntu, Mint, Pop OS)
Intermediate (Debian, Arch)
Advanced (Gentoo, LFS)
Specialized use (Kali, Tails)
You are insane to daily drive this (Tiny Core Linux)
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u/linuxares May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
https://distrochooser.de is this a website to recommend if so? Just as a baseline?
It recommends me all kind of small odd distros first. Should be an option for the most well known and documented. So not a good tool
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u/JackDostoevsky May 12 '25
most new users will be entirely suited with Ubuntu or Fedora. but some new users don't want to be told the equivalent of "just buy a Toyota Corolla": they want something snazzy and unique and fancy.
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u/nichdamian May 12 '25
I always say the same thing. If you're coming from Windows start with Mint if you're coming from Mac go with Pop_os, And if you're looking to play games and only games try Bazzite.
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u/SadClaps May 12 '25
I can't say I agree with the OP's take, especially this part here:
Imagine you want to buy a car, and know nothing about cars so you ask "hey what's a good car?", and people respond "oh they're all the same just pick one". Or you know nothing about laptops, and when asking which is a good buy people respond "oh they're all fine just pick one in your price range"
If you're buying a new car or laptop, you're looking at spending thousands of dollars. Downloading a Linux distro and the subsequent distro hopping is free! (and painless too if you try things out in virtual machines)
Of course there's nothing wrong with keeping note of beginner friendly options to start with (Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, etc.), but say, switching to Arch later down the line isn't some major life decision. Distro hopping is a feature of the Linux ecosystem and I see no harm in encouraging it.
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u/Joshuamalmsteen May 12 '25
Lots of people will recommend distros, but I’ve seen that people who recommend UBUNTU, get downvoted… that doesn’t give you much confidence to recommend anything for newcomers.
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u/Effective_Baseball93 May 12 '25
If you decided to use Linux I don’t know why more harm is a bad thing to be honest
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u/Gordao_Geleia May 12 '25
Any newbie should start from Ubuntu. And many must stick with it. Standardized experience is meant for standard uses, and companies like Canonical are great in providing it. It's a little fraction of users that will benefit from customized experience. Most of them will expend more time trying to find a good distro and optimizing it for their use than actually using it. I did it a lot. It was funny ngl. But I ended up where I started. Using windows + wsl (Ubuntu).
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u/NUTTA_BUSTAH May 12 '25
I like the sentiment but the end result is pretty much the same. Each one recommending their 3 favorite distros. Each one has different subjective favorites. Newcomers get paralyzed by choice again.
But at least they will clearly see that anything truly goes.
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u/nick1wasd May 12 '25
Everyone I've had ask me, I just point them at Mint. It's becoming my default answer for the non-tech savvy that want to try their hand at linux, since it behaves a lot like Android in developer mode
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May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
I mean the real answer is Linux Mint, but dont be afraid to try other things out if you are adventurous. But Linux Mint should be the real fall back point.
anyone saying some other than linux mint for the "normie user" is kind of falling for flavor of the month syndrome. 6-7 years ago that was ubuntu, but I think mint has taken that place over.
I personally like fedora more myself just because of the update cycle is more frequent. Fedora workstation is the like the default home for the latest version of GNOME. KDE is also getting more and more popular and is now on the front page of fedora's site as well.
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u/ThirstyWolfSpider May 12 '25
I always avoided recommending one because I knew mine (Fedora, chosen out of habit and familiarity dating back to the '90s RedHat days before Fedora split off) was my own preference and used to be considered déclassé, so would give a vague "new users should probably use something like Ubuntu". I was surprised recently to see recommendations that put Fedora near the top of the pack, so perhaps I should update my understanding.
I also tend to hear people complaining about not being able to use Linux without Flatpak, which seemed weird as I've still never needed it, but could that be due to Debian/Ubuntu quirks and the state of their repositories? I don't know.
But I agree that no guidance is probably worse than a clear satisficing suggestion.
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u/Spiderfffun May 12 '25
I like sayin something along the lines of there's quite a bit of good choices and a lot of bad choices but you'd probably be fine with mint
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u/azeoUnfortunately May 12 '25
Can attest. I have made a similar asking question, and there were people who were extremely helpful. And, also, helped me see things I didn’t see before lol. I know this is the complete opposite of what you were saying in the post, but there are some helpful people out there! (For reference, my post was about handheld OS’s, and I got many helpful answers such as Nobara, CachyOS for handheld (I cannot believe I missed this before) Chimera and others.) I think this sub has the best frame of reference for Linux newbies, however.
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u/Goatfryed May 12 '25
https://distropicker.vercel.app/
but seriously, anything you see and like the look and feel of will be fine
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u/Dragon911X May 12 '25
As someone completely new to Linux, that's still shopping around, but has one in mind, here's what I've found.
Mint is a good starter distro. Bazzite is great for gaming, but is an immutable is (meaning it's not very customizable and may revert things, while disallowing changes. SteamOS is the same) PopOS has solid Nvidia drivers support. still likely not as good as windows because Nvidia doing Nvidia things. Although doesn't mean much with their recent driver instability on windows. Might be a good time to switch to an amd GPU if you plan to swap.
I'm personally going with ZorinOS. I like the look of it, and it feels like a good first step into Linux given the familiarity to windows.
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u/Xperr7 May 13 '25
This is the main reason people are waiting for SteamOS. People know and trust Valve, they know the Steam Deck. They know it works. Sure, Bazzite and other distros have similar features and may even work similar (IE arch based, or immutable), but giving a list of even similar distros can cause them some headaches.
Hell, I'd imagine that more and more devs will be deliberately targeting SteamOS (you already see it with certain anticheats).
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u/OrangeKefir May 13 '25
Agreed OP mostly. But not Mint. Not anything that isn't a cutting edge distro. There's good reason SteamOS is Arch based now and not Debian.
Bazzite/Nobara/CachyOS there's 3 cutting edge distros likely to give minimal BS.
If someone's on this gaming sub coming from Windows they're probably looking for something that just works. It needs to be an up to date distro. Mint and anything Debian/Ubuntu based isn't that. It can work, sure, and once every 2 years Mint and friends are up to date with the cutting edge distros but then they drift away from that.
I saw someone who was complaining about getting their 9070 XT working on Mint taking months? 1 week on Bazzite! Day 1 it worked, day 7 it could game. If something doesn't work on Mint etc you could be waiting a long damn time for it to work. Mint and friends are great distros, but not first class recommendations for gaming.
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u/Kishetes May 14 '25
I usually just suggest Ubuntu. It's the most "newbie friendly" distro out there and perfectly to get their feet wet with
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u/konovalov-nk May 15 '25
I think there could be really only two distros for beginners.
Ubuntu – if you want something that “just works.” It’s super popular, has massive community support, and everything works out of the box: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, graphics drivers, GUI installer, software store, etc. It’s the closest thing to Windows in terms of ease of use.
Gentoo (or maybe LFS if you're masochist) – if you’re the type who wants to understand everything. The Gentoo Handbook is honestly one of the best Linux learning resources out there. It doesn’t hold your hand — you’ll be learning real fundamentals:
- Using the terminal for everything
- Understanding the Linux filesystem layout
- Mounting disks manually
- Partitioning and formatting drives
- Setting up GRUB
- Compiling your own kernel and picking features
- Managing kernel modules
- Configuring audio (ALSA/PipeWire/whatever you choose)
- Setting up networking manually (dhcpcd, wpa_supplicant, etc.)
- Installing and configuring X11 or Wayland
- Picking and configuring a desktop environment or window manager
- Installing fonts, input methods, locale settings
- Understanding USE flags, package masks, and portage
Basically, it teaches you everything that most distros hide. And after Gentoo, literally any other distro will feel like cheating.
(Bonus: LFS if you're a masochist.) That’s the “I want to build Linux from scratch and suffer gloriously” route. Not recommended unless you're doing it for fun, pain, or a PhD.
Myself, I chose Gentoo back in 2009 and it was the best decision I had in my entire life in regards to computer use. It allowed me to become a programmer. Unfortunately, an accident with HDD crashed my system and my gaming and guitar hobbies forced me to go back to Windows for almost 15 years. Today I'm writing this comment from Proxmox/Arch Linux setup, with GPU + USB audio interface passthrough, and rocking a low-latency audio, no telemetry, reliable setup with crazy fast hyprland wm. I had so many problems with 4090 + 7900x + 96GB RAM on W11 Pro, it was a disaster and my patience have finally ended.
It took me around 1.5 days to set up Proxmox and 2 days to configure a minimally viable Arch. There's a ton of to-dos for configuration but I'm glad I moved here. It's a peaceful life.
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u/IArchBoy May 16 '25
you are not wrong here standardization effect here now you are question answer its depend on you i use arch linux as i build up from arch base where i started from wayland(its all on those hyprland reigns) to minimal need and optimization on many sides like configuring so if you want somethin as window alikes here 3 Main DE is suggested in distro which kde gnome xfce. while i use Dwm as window manager and x11 as display server meaning that i do not have DE i have minimal setup so if you want that kinda stuff you need to explore after choosing distro and i choosing distro you need to know the support and need of yours on those distro
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u/jerrygreenest1 May 16 '25
Just pick Ubuntu, – they should all have said.
Mainstream way is da way, for novices.
When they get familiar, after a year or two, they might have a search for options and choose your beloved NixOS if they feel advanced enough, or become some Fedora queer, or Mint if they feel for poor man’s macos clone, or some other. For novices though, it’s just good to have a good widespread reliable with many tutorials good ol Ubuntu. You can’t and should not recommend a novice «any distro».
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u/baldiplays May 16 '25
Ah that explains why it is really hard for me to figure out which 007 film I want to watch first
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u/RedTuesdayMusic Feb 11 '26
I usually recommend a handful of distros to beginners.
Bazzite for the gamer who's terrified of screwing up their system.
Nobara for the more technical gamer who wants to either have something like Bazzite but not immutable, or have the easiest experience possible installing DaVinci Resolve with hardware acceleration. Or both.
CachyOS for the 50/50 gamer and workstation person.
Mint for the desktop user who cares less about games and more about Windows -likeness
ZorinOS for the MacOS exile
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u/Responsible-Sky-1336 May 12 '25
How about we all agree on the Arch masterace (hence manjaro wrapper too) And we tell them about archinstall pick kde, do all the steps... done.
Some redditor going to scream because I didn't set my locales manually :(
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u/teren9 May 12 '25
> Imagine you want to buy a car, and know nothing about cars so you ask "hey what's a good car?", and people respond "oh they're all the same just pick one". Or you know nothing about laptops, and when asking which is a good buy people respond "oh they're all fine just pick one in your price range"
But that's basically the answer people give.
Sure there are differences between a Hyundai and a Toyota. But for the average commuter? Just pick one in your price range that feels comfortable.
Sure there are differences between Lenovo, HP and Dell, but they are all basically the same in a given price point. Just pick one that's most comfortable for you to use.
And same goes with Linux distros.
What is the difference between Pop_OS and Mint? Like really. What's the difference?
For the average user, especially one who's a beginner in Linux, They are practically identical apart from the DE.
So yes. My answer will be "just pick one, and go for it"
Worst case scenario, they encounter a distro specific problem, like trying to install Nvidia drivers on Fedora and realizing it is a pain, then they ask again or find on their own, that if they move to a different distro, it will solve their issues.
Sometimes it's OK to make a small mistake and learn from it.
Also, as soon as you recommend one specific distro, it gives the false notion that others are bad. Or it opens the gate for other comments arguing with you about the suggestion. (I bet even mentioning Fedora here in a slight negative light, will upset some people here)
Imagine not knowing anything and asking about it, and the comments all suggest different options without really explaining what are the differences, and even if they do, you still lack the background to understand these explanations.
Imagine someone suggesting Mint, then someone else says it's not good because of no Wayland support. Then someone else suggests Bazzite, and another guy says it's no good because it is immutable. Then another one suggests Ubuntu and another one says it's problematic because of snap.
What would a new user not knowing anything about any of these things do with this information?
My best advice for people would be "find a distro that is easy to use, that makes it simple to install GPU drivers, and that comes by default with a DE you find cool looking because any one you might choose these days is going to be good enough"
And I think it's as good as you can get without overwhelming people.
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u/rghmtn May 12 '25
A lot of other people are saying this but I am one of those people with limited linux knowledge (though more than the average non techy person), and i am using Bazzite Linux as my main system OS with kde plasma DE. All amd because of the great open source driver support and it's baked into Bazzite along with all the stuff for proton. It's a beautiful distro. *
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u/The_Corvair May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
I think that's the most important aspect of it. People who've only ever known Windows lack reference to a lot of things that we kind of need to make informed decisions; Most 'computer-literate' people should roughly know what a kernel is (if only 'it's not something I should dig around in by myself'), or a BIOS, or a file system.
...But Windows has taken much of that basic, fundamental knowledge out of the equation; Most people who work on a PC don't know anything more than what they need to to do that work. My aunt, for example, cannot for the life of her even start her word editor - the only way she has made herself learn is to take a text document on her desktop and "start" that. Inside the editor, she then deletes the entire document, writes what she needs, prints it, and then saves the file. That's what she calls her "file system", and I can't even make her understand that she's been saving hundreds of documents to the same file.
So, as someone who has also just recently stepped into Linux: Us newbies really thrive with 'beginner context'. I had to have explained that there aren't just different distros, but that every distro comes with several desktop environments. That's just an idea that isn't a thing with Windows. It's not hard to understand, but it does need explanation - especially with stuff like X11 and Wayland, and how they play more or less nice with different setups.
Or take the (actual) file system. On Windows, it's all NTFS these days, and I would gather than most Windows users don't even know that. They don't need to. So you usually have no (or very little) reference for file systems on Linux going in. Even people who know that FAT32 and NTFS are different file systems may not immediately be aware that Linux doesn't really run on the latter, and how that may impact interoperability between systems.
In any case: There really is a lot of info to learn when switching to Linux (any distro). Giving context and a rough structure has really helped me with understanding the mere basics so far, and I gotta commend the Linux community for actually delivering that on many occasions.