maybe the distro you use? so that you could directly offer help.
if not, maybe just plain old debian?
I’m using fedora server right now and my daily driver is still a Mac at the moment. I’m still transitioning.
This. I use Arch myself so to my friends I just recommend one of the downstream distros. Might not be the most stable things ever but it's just easier for me to help them.
Arch or Debian. Depends on their personality and use case. I prefer Arch, but have no problems with recommending Debian and use it on one machine myself.
Edit: after re reading I'd say Debian. Little more stability but it is more annoying if they ever do wana tinker more. OpenSuse is an honorable mention as well!
On dual booting, I'll say I've been running Win11 through several updates with GRUB and Mint installed on a second SSD with no issues for over a year now.
do you think it could be safer to dual boot if windows an linux are on separate physical drives? he really doesnt want win11 but for a few of his games he's going to need it.
My instinct would be yes, and this was the recommendation I found while researching it before implementation. Windows is less likely to screw with another drive than it is the partitions on it's own drive. That said, it's a best guess and you never know what Microsoft vibe coders will break next! But I have found it stable.
I don't really follow what's going on between different distributions as Debian has been my workhorse for decades, but a few weeks ago out of curiosity I threw bazzite on a desktop which was left ower due to work changes and that hardware is now just for gaming. Installation was pretty much just next-next-next and it after boot there was a steam login window ready to go. Every game in my library so far has been just as flawless experience than with windows, if not even better. I don't have any the new AAA-titles and I'm not a fan of any online-multiplayers, so YMMV. For Epic I installed Heroic-launcher and (atleast games I've tested so far) everything works.
After I left Bazzite I switched to Garuda, it is also gaming and performance focused, works with Nvidia, and has been super easy as a beginner.
It may be worth a look.
We aren’t building with nvidia. Absolutely not.
I mean .. it's not required. So, good for you, I guess.
It’s a matter of their ties with palentier at this point. We aren’t paying for that.
I mentioned it because a lot of people already have a card they need to accommodate, not to try and convince you.
Kubuntu is fine. I've been running that without issues for months now.
Bazzite is good too. But do push for the KDE version.
So, I’m an all-around Bazzite fan, but it does have a bit of an odd learning curve. It’s easy to use for a beginner, child, or grandma. However, if you’re used to fiddling with your system, it might be a little harder to get into because you have to navigate the immutable nature of the OS, which can complicate some online tutorials and potentially lead to frustration for an intermediate/experienced user migrating from Windows.
So my suggestion would be:
Child - Bazzite
Grandma - Bazzite
Gamer - Bazzite
Experienced Windows user - Fedora or Mint, then once you’re used to Linux, Bazzite
Developer - Bazzite
I personally use the Gnome version. It's really polished and pretty.
Get a usb with decent capacity
Install Ventoy
Drag and drop whatever linux iso you feel like trying (put in as many as you can)
Boot them one by one to try the out live
Linux Mint
Mint, Fedora, openSUSE.
I can't speak about Bazzite, but I installed Mint for a friend about two months ago and he was totally able to web search himself through a few problems. I didn't have to intervene at all.
mint is in a weird place with wayland right now so I'm not putting him on that.
Nobara, LinuxMint, Zorin, PopOS & Manjaro. Or MXLinux or Antix if the hardware is potato
For gaming, start with Bazzite. It “just works” and is almost impossible to break.
If your friend wants more control, switch to Fedora KDE.
If your friend is very technically inclined — comfortable on a command line — and wants even more control, switch to CachyOS.
Whatever you choose, I strongly recommend using the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
I do not recommend Mint, even though it is very popular here, since it does not support the KDE Plasma desktop environment, the Cinnamon DTE is ugly and outdated garbage, and Mint has more hardware problems than other distros on newer gaming hardware.
Fortunately, switching Linux distros is fast and easy, unlike Windows. So you can quickly and easily try different things to see what you like. Consider putting Ventoy on a USB drive, since it lets you copy ISOs straight onto it and you can boot directly to whatever you want. It’s a handy way to test drive any distro you want that has a “Live” image.
If you absolutely must keep Windows around, install it to a separate physical drive to prevent it from destroying your bootloader. Then configure BIOS to boot to your Linux drive.
NixOS. You can tinker a lot if you want but you can also just install nix packages by typing in the default config file and call it a day.
While I love the idea or NixOS, I haven't pulled the trigger myself. And that being said it doesn't seem "noon friendly." Mainly because it seems to to against the standard paradigms.
I mean, the installer is Calamares, so it's easy af. To install packages, just look it up here and add that to the config file. Steam in particular needs you to add 4 lines of code shown here but other than that, it's not hard. You can certainly make it a pain in the ass if you want to go ultra customization mode, but it's actually really easy to setup and maintain.
I guarantee you the people who tell you to stay away are either people who NEED to beautify their setup or people who haven't tried NixOS and just assume it's as hard as Gentoo.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0