Well, I was thinking of moving to Linux full-time anyway now that my Windows install is obsolete.
Any reason to avoid this distro? Past experience is with Ubuntu, Gentoo, and SuSE. I mostly game.
Serious answer? It’s a meme distro seemingly maintained by a single person, so the odds of the project being abandoned and you having to migrate in the very near future are extremely large. Better to stick to one of the bigger distros unless you have good reasons to choose a smaller one specifically.
Stick with something better known. Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Ubuntu…If you’re just getting into this for the first time, full time, a niche meme distro is not your best choice.
Linux Mint is best for stability, but will be a bit more “stale” for updates, since it’s based on Ubuntu LTS. It is an incredible distro and is my daily driver for mission critical desktops, like my work PC.
Fedora and openSUSE Tumbleweed will both be great non-Arch distros that have fairly recent, yet stable updates.
Arch is basically the king of rolling, bleeding edge, always on the latest and greatest, but since it’s bleeding edge…you might get cut on occasion.
Ubuntu is Ubuntu. I don’t like Ubuntu, but it is the defacto “newbie/first timer” distro for a reason. Debian-based, lots of guides, both LTS and non-LTS options, and has variants for practically every major desktop environment out there.
Mint takes all the good work that’s been put into Ubuntu and keeps a bunch of that while not including anything Canonical-specific like snaps. Almost all the typical “how do I linux” webpages new users will stumble upon will have instructions that will work for them. And of course there’s a lot of added polish in the Mint distro.
I also like to point out that, unlike we expect to see with non-free corporate enshittified tech, the fact that Mint has a nice layer of polish, looks like Windows out of the box (talking of the default version with the Cinnamon DE), and installs in like 1/10 the time and clicks as Windows… basically, being friendly on the surface doesn’t mean it is restricted under the hood. Mint doesn’t get weird on me if I have half my monitors covered in terminals, ya know?
I was a windows only guy most of my computing life, 10 years ago I got sick of it and gave Linux a shot. After trying Ubuntu and hating it I tried ZorinOS and started getting comfortable then switched to Mint.
I’ve been running Mint exclusively for 9 years on all my machines and I love it. It’s close enough to windows to be intuitive while still letting you use and learn Linux.
Arch will take several hours to setup. If you want plug and play then avoid it.see comment replies - If you want to commit to it the wiki is quite easy to work through for the install process and post install troubleshooting help is top notch. Also always check the homepage before doing system updates.
Not true. Archinstall automates much of that, and it’s easier to navigate than the Calamares installer. The process takes less than five minutes of interaction, the rest is just waiting for the packages to sync. Installing Arch manually using arch_pacstrap is an option, but it’s the worse option.
If you follow the official guide, you can install base Arch in 20 minutes tops. Pulling the metapackage for a DE like KDE, Xfce or GNOME is just a single command after that, and at that point you’ve got a perfectly functional desktop. Everything after that is customization. It does not take “several hours” to set up.
Well, I was thinking of moving to Linux full-time anyway now that my Windows install is obsolete. Any reason to avoid this distro? Past experience is with Ubuntu, Gentoo, and SuSE. I mostly game.
Serious answer? It’s a meme distro seemingly maintained by a single person, so the odds of the project being abandoned and you having to migrate in the very near future are extremely large. Better to stick to one of the bigger distros unless you have good reasons to choose a smaller one specifically.
Stick with something better known. Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Ubuntu…If you’re just getting into this for the first time, full time, a niche meme distro is not your best choice.
Linux Mint is best for stability, but will be a bit more “stale” for updates, since it’s based on Ubuntu LTS. It is an incredible distro and is my daily driver for mission critical desktops, like my work PC.
Fedora and openSUSE Tumbleweed will both be great non-Arch distros that have fairly recent, yet stable updates.
Arch is basically the king of rolling, bleeding edge, always on the latest and greatest, but since it’s bleeding edge…you might get cut on occasion.
Ubuntu is Ubuntu. I don’t like Ubuntu, but it is the defacto “newbie/first timer” distro for a reason. Debian-based, lots of guides, both LTS and non-LTS options, and has variants for practically every major desktop environment out there.
I’m surprised LMDE almost never gets shoutouts. I’d assume since people don’t like Ubuntu they’d recommend it over Mint.
Mint takes all the good work that’s been put into Ubuntu and keeps a bunch of that while not including anything Canonical-specific like snaps. Almost all the typical “how do I linux” webpages new users will stumble upon will have instructions that will work for them. And of course there’s a lot of added polish in the Mint distro.
I also like to point out that, unlike we expect to see with non-free corporate enshittified tech, the fact that Mint has a nice layer of polish, looks like Windows out of the box (talking of the default version with the Cinnamon DE), and installs in like 1/10 the time and clicks as Windows… basically, being friendly on the surface doesn’t mean it is restricted under the hood. Mint doesn’t get weird on me if I have half my monitors covered in terminals, ya know?
I like LMDE, but for gaming Debian is too stale without pulling in backports.
Gaming is really good on bazzite.
Y’all have some good points. What I’m hearing is “install it on a fresh hard drive, play around, then move on to something more stable.”
generally speaking its safer to go with larger well known distros as smaller ones tend to die off.
I was a windows only guy most of my computing life, 10 years ago I got sick of it and gave Linux a shot. After trying Ubuntu and hating it I tried ZorinOS and started getting comfortable then switched to Mint.
I’ve been running Mint exclusively for 9 years on all my machines and I love it. It’s close enough to windows to be intuitive while still letting you use and learn Linux.
better off going cachyos, you can grav nyrarch apps like for customization seperately
Others commented on nyarch.
Arch will take several hours to setup. If you want plug and play thenavoid it.see comment replies - If you want to commit to it the wiki is quite easy to work through for the install process and post install troubleshooting help is top notch. Also always check the homepage before doing system updates.Not true. Archinstall automates much of that, and it’s easier to navigate than the Calamares installer. The process takes less than five minutes of interaction, the rest is just waiting for the packages to sync. Installing Arch manually using
arch_pacstrapis an option, but it’s the worse option.Guess there’s lots of options!
If you follow the official guide, you can install base Arch in 20 minutes tops. Pulling the metapackage for a DE like KDE, Xfce or GNOME is just a single command after that, and at that point you’ve got a perfectly functional desktop. Everything after that is customization. It does not take “several hours” to set up.
I’m speaking for someone with only basic experience with Linux and consider troubleshooting and day 1 customization as part of install.
Since all the distros OP has experience with are graphical install i stand by my statement.
You are entirely correct for the case of a highly experienced Linux power user.
Or just grab Endeavour
That works too