I'd rather someone's first choice about Linux was which DE to use. This plays a way bigger part in first impressions.
~~The obvious choice is KDE, ofc~~
I'd rather someone's first choice about Linux was which DE to use. This plays a way bigger part in first impressions.
~~The obvious choice is KDE, ofc~~
I totally agree, that's a way more important factor when you're starting out with Linux.
~~Gotta be Gnome though~~
That's a strange way to spell Xfce.
Maybe you misheard LXQT?
DEs are clearly bloat, so the best DE is no DE.
~~Definitely not just because I prefer i3~~
DE? WM!
~~ctwm rocking along nicely since last century~~
Whatever, I always say, use what you want when you want to dive into things. When you don't want to dive into things, use either IOS when you can afford it or Windows. (As long as they don't expect help with the last 2 ;) )
The arrangement of Start menu hardly matters. Virtual desktops are indispensable though. And I can restart crashed Plasma in 35 seconds.
I used to be a huge Plasma evangelist. At first I hated it, the old versions I mean. You just moved the mouse pointer the wrong way and your whole DE was fucked. Too many options and settings. But KDE 5 changed my world. Stable and lighter than Gnome, but still fully configurable. Last night I switched to Debian 12, Gnome. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm loving it. I don't tinker with my DEs that much anymore. Just a couple Gnome extensions and I was good to go.
You missed the step where you tell everyone what distro you use, and that its the best.
Five minutes after you installed it and haven't tried anything else.
I feel personally attacked lol
I use Mint, btw
I use SteamOS btw
(Which is arch based meaning.. I use arch btw lol)
Otherwise Debian stable is my go-to set it and forget it server OS
Searched, not googled. Google is bad, M'kay?
Reference
Drugs are bad, M'kay? Don't do drugs.
me and the boys out here still asking Jeeves
Fellow old fart detected.
Hannah Montana Linux is the best distro! It leaves out all those newfangled things like Wayland, GNOME 3, SysVInit and gives you Hannah Montana.
newfangled... SysVInit
You mean systemd? Cause SysVInit was created in 1991 based on Unix System V from 1983. Which means it's literally older than Miley Cyrus.
What if I don’t want to use whatever I want? What if I want my distro forced upon me?
I've decided that you have to use Slackware
Thank you sir. May I have another?
Yes, you have to use Softlanding Linux System. You can't go back to Slackware
It's been a long time since I've played around with Slackware, wonder how it's doing lately. Might need to find an extra machine to throw it on.
Install Gentoo
the ultimate beginner's distro, it's a great start before moving on to something complicated like mint
Oddly, Gentoo was where I started out when I got serious about using Linux. That was when I was in my 20’s and I wanted to get every last bit of performance out of my computer. Also, breaking stuff was fun and gave me a chance to figure new stuff out.
Now I just want stuff to work and be relatively up to date. So I use Debian testing.
What a madlad
Okay, but when most people are looking for advice on which distro to use it's because they don't know what they want.
Yeah, this meme is mostly to poke fun at the people who genuinely think that Linux Mint is only for beginners or you have to switch to Arch or whatever else, that kind of crowd.
I'm a little bit tempted to try and make an actual flowchart with distro recommendations since I've used and like most of the major ones at this point, but there are better resources out there than what I could contribute.
Linux mint is the sort of distro newbies start with and long time linux users retire to after theyve explored the distro multiverse.
If beginner, use PopOS.
If Linux nerd, use Arch.
That's my guide. I don't like any other distros. :)
I started with Ubuntu and then migrated to Arch. I learned a ton about Linux and how tune everything for optimal performance!
...And then I went back to Ubuntu because I just want to work with my computer, not on it.
Hmm I don't see arch on here it must've gotten cropped
yeah that's my bad, here's a corrected version
The endgoal: Linux from scratch.
I was a huge distro hopper until I started using immutable distros. One thing no one tells beginners is that you do have to maintain your system more on Linux than other OSs because Linux gives you the rope to hang yourself with. I would always bloat my OS and things would get unruly, everything would slow down or become unstable and I would lose track of how I had everything set up. Immutability make things so much cleaner.
The two things that matter when choosing a distro - package managers and desktop environment/window manager. And even then, universal package managers like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage can provide a substitute for the package managers.
Which distro should you pick? -> openSUSE tumbleweed
I literally just switched to openSUSE yesterday because I'm trying out an Intel Arc GPU for a bit and wanted more recent packages than Fedora offers to give it the best chance possible. Gotta say...it's really good. Once I'm done testing the Intel card, I don't think I'll be switching back.
Sums up what I did
Mainstream choice? Raspbian it is
I was going to joke about compatibility, but apparently there is a version of Raspberry Pi OS for desktops...huh, TIL
Hint: :q!
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