I’m to dumb for ARCH, and I find default Fedora and Ubuntu very annoying (although I haven’t tried them in a while). I did have a good experience with mint several years ago. What distros should I consider?
Mint is still basically mint from several years ago. Having tried a dizzying array of them it continues to be easy and hated on because it doesn’t involve text based configing your life away. That said, because it lags behind compared to other distros in updating the kernel, the thing that makes new hardware work, it can have a hard time with things made recently. Try the edge ISO, which has a newer kernel. The team is working on more frequent updates, Wayland (a thing you ideally never have to ever know what it is), and just delivers a comfortable desktop experience since I first screwed up my computers with Linux in 2007.
The Ubuntu version is still probably the best. You won’t have to think about graphics drivers or printers. It all sort of just… Works. They rip the awful out of Ubuntu and keep the excellent, world class, support in place. You’d be hard pressed for find a better commercial and non-commercial support. You can easily search for any problems you do run into and there will not be some esoteric DISCORD as your support. There are countless forms with literally thousands of people probably somewhat knowledgeable on how to address issues. Things like CUDA and dev work are also extremely supported. My barometer is how much time I have to crap away to get a printer and scanner work. Both of which just work with Linux Mint out of the box.
when i used mint, the things that would perfectly solve all my issues without any of them returning ever were 11 year old youtube videos with 1k views. mint community is the best /srs
currently trying to move my mom to linux because she hates windows spyware (especially with co-pilot), will be trying zorin and mint with her.
unrelated but is libreoffice calc good for basic excel stuff? she isnt doing anything very very complex on it, but if something breaks i do NOT want to install windows and go through that whole thing again. (i do not use libreoffice calc, just writer and sometimes draw for pdfs)
Fedora is great, if you don’t like the default UI (I am a GNOME hater btw) you can easily try out one of the Fedora Spins with a different desktop environment while keeping Fedora’s stability and features. I recommend Fedora KDE for faster machines and Fedora Cinnamon for older machines or people that want something that’s snappier.
I am running EndeavourOS which is arch wrapped in an installer and easy updater oneliner to update all your system and AUR packages. Still do have to interact with pacman and yay to install most things but really gives you a leg up to get started.
Zorin if you want a simple to use system, or with a different learning curve OpenSUSE if you want GUI configuration for everything that would be CLI based in another distro. YAST2-GUI GTK has everything covered from setting up services, tweaking kernel, to adding users, altering hardware setup, GUI package selections and snapshots for rollback if you accidentally wreck your system.
I’m to dumb for ARCH, and I find default Fedora and Ubuntu very annoying (although I haven’t tried them in a while). I did have a good experience with mint several years ago. What distros should I consider?
Mint has became Linux 7 IMO. It just works.
Mint is still basically mint from several years ago. Having tried a dizzying array of them it continues to be easy and hated on because it doesn’t involve text based configing your life away. That said, because it lags behind compared to other distros in updating the kernel, the thing that makes new hardware work, it can have a hard time with things made recently. Try the edge ISO, which has a newer kernel. The team is working on more frequent updates, Wayland (a thing you ideally never have to ever know what it is), and just delivers a comfortable desktop experience since I first screwed up my computers with Linux in 2007.
Is LMDE easy tok? Snaps scare me. (I have Nvidia 30xx btw.)
Neither version of Mint use Snaps.
Mint uses the good parts of Ubuntu without the bad parts.
The Ubuntu version is still probably the best. You won’t have to think about graphics drivers or printers. It all sort of just… Works. They rip the awful out of Ubuntu and keep the excellent, world class, support in place. You’d be hard pressed for find a better commercial and non-commercial support. You can easily search for any problems you do run into and there will not be some esoteric DISCORD as your support. There are countless forms with literally thousands of people probably somewhat knowledgeable on how to address issues. Things like CUDA and dev work are also extremely supported. My barometer is how much time I have to crap away to get a printer and scanner work. Both of which just work with Linux Mint out of the box.
when i used mint, the things that would perfectly solve all my issues without any of them returning ever were 11 year old youtube videos with 1k views. mint community is the best /srs
Fedora is really nice now
Fedora is too stable and boring, same as Debian and Opensuse, Ubuntu is just ugly
Hahaha, too stable and boring… Do you use OSs as a form of entertainment? No wonder why people can’t take Linux enthusiasts seriously.
Fedora is too stable and boring, same as Debian and Opensuse, Ubuntu is just ugly
The rpm-ostree versions are exciting and powerful.
Linux Mint, Pop!_OS and ZorinOS are pretty nice for new users. If you want to get a little more advanced, maybe check out something like Fedora Atomic (e.g. Kinoite, Silverblue) or Universal Blue (Bazzite, Aurora, Bluefin). Arch isn’t actually that hard, they have an installation script that makes everything super easy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YE1LlTxfMQ), or you could watch a video on how to install it manually (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JYIAaLrwcY, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC7NMbl4goo)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=8YE1LlTxfMQ
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=_JYIAaLrwcY
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=YC7NMbl4goo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
currently trying to move my mom to linux because she hates windows spyware (especially with co-pilot), will be trying zorin and mint with her.
unrelated but is libreoffice calc good for basic excel stuff? she isnt doing anything very very complex on it, but if something breaks i do NOT want to install windows and go through that whole thing again. (i do not use libreoffice calc, just writer and sometimes draw for pdfs)
Never really used Excel or LibreOffice Calc either, but I think it should be fine. OnlyOffice is another option to check out.
wasn’t onlyoffice bought out by a corp?
You might be thinking of OpenOffice? OnlyOffice is at least open core under AGPL.
How about PopOS?
Fedora is great, if you don’t like the default UI (I am a GNOME hater btw) you can easily try out one of the Fedora Spins with a different desktop environment while keeping Fedora’s stability and features. I recommend Fedora KDE for faster machines and Fedora Cinnamon for older machines or people that want something that’s snappier.
I am running EndeavourOS which is arch wrapped in an installer and easy updater oneliner to update all your system and AUR packages. Still do have to interact with pacman and yay to install most things but really gives you a leg up to get started.
Zorin if you want a simple to use system, or with a different learning curve OpenSUSE if you want GUI configuration for everything that would be CLI based in another distro. YAST2-GUI GTK has everything covered from setting up services, tweaking kernel, to adding users, altering hardware setup, GUI package selections and snapshots for rollback if you accidentally wreck your system.
Mint. Try them all out here: https://distrosea.com free, no downloading.
Debian
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