Good day nice people.
I, like many I’m sure, am taking Microsoft’s discontinuation of Windows 10 support as an opportunity so switch over to Linux. As such, I have some questions about various things. I have included some context as to my personal use case at the end of the post should it be relevant.
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Does the distro I pick matter? There seems to be a lot of debate around which distro is best but a lot of the discussion I’ve seen breaks down to what each distro comes packaged with. This confuses me as if a distro doesn’t come prepackaged with something can you not just install it? Or is there some advantage to preinstalled packages other than mild convenience? Are some components difficult to integrate into your local environment?
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One of the more salient differences I’ve seen between distros has been what the various companies and teams include aside from installed packages (such as snap and rolling out amazon search as a defult search), and the data they choose to retain/sell. Part of the reason I’m switching is due to Microsoft’s forcing in of unwanted features and advertising. Is the company that owns whatever distro I choose likely to be a problem in the future? Are there particular ones to avoid/ones to keep an eye on?
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I am the sort of person who does like to tinker with things from time to time but I do also want to use my computer most of the time so I’d like to end up using a mature distro. I have identified a few frontrunners in my search but I have seen conflicting information on which of them is “mature” (sufficiently stable so I spend less time fighting my computer than I do using it as well as having a large enough community and resources to help me remedy issues I might come across). Do any of these seem like they wouldn’t fit that bill? The frontrunners are: fedora, kubuntu, mint, pop and tuxedo.
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Does linux have issues interfacing with multiple monitors? Does it handle HDR okay?
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In terms of UI and workflow I really don’t mind putting in some time tinkering with the DE, exploring it and getting it how I like. It seems Plasma KDE might be good for this? Please let me know if this is an incorrect assessment. If it is, does it matter what DE I choose? If so, is there something you could recommend for my use case.
My use case: I have a Nvidea build (RTX 2080). I have heard this can be an issue with Linux. I also have intermediate experience with linux through university and my job (with servers) as well as tinkering with SteamOS.
Things I use/do on my PC (roughly ordered in terms of priority):
- Gaming including emulation
- Firefox
- VLC
- Spotify
- Discord
- Godot
- Visual Studio
- Git
- Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
- Misc “Tinkering” (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
Thank you very much for your time and help in cleaing up my confusion.
For a distro, I recommend Fedora KDE Spin. Fedora is beginner friendly, is widely supported, frequent updates (so less outdated packages), rock solid stable, works with gaming or anything else.
People recommend Linux Mint often, but I am just not a fan of how outdated the system is and its reliance on X11 (deprecated and insecure display server). I’ve daily driven mint before for like a year and it was good but I’m not a fan of cinnamon DE.
Fedora Silverblue was VERY easy to install. I opted to go the GNOME route but its been great so far as a former windows user. I rebased from Fedora to Bazzite and it was dead simple. Been on Bazzite for a couple months now and have had no major issues. Figuring out my printer drivers was a bit tedious but it worked the first time once I got the process figured out.
Bazzite is great Fedora-Atomic-based distro, especially for nvidia users. I had a friend move to Linux and that was the distro that worked. But in general, if someone is a programmer/Dev, they want to learn how to use Linux, or just install a lot of packages, I’d avoid Atomic.
Don’t get me wrong, I use Atomic. But it isn’t as straight forward as a traditional distro.
The equivalent of Bazzite but traditional Fedora is Nobara
I’m very new to Linux, and the two distros that seem the most appealing are Fedora, possibly Nobara, and openSUSE. Do you know why Fedora gets recommended so much more often over openSUSE? I’d like to narrow down my choice between these two. If it helps, I’d like to use KDE, and I game a lot.
Mostly because Fedora is more popular. I like both.
openSUSE Tumbleweed gives you much more control of what gets installed by default (you can customize every package during the GUI installer). It has been the most stable distro ive used. It is a “rolling-release” distro, meaning that packages usually get updates quicker from upstream. If you dont like getting frequent updates it may not be for you. A key feature of openSUSE distros is the system management apl Yast, which allows you to manage a lot of stuff from a GUI.
Fedora is also quite stable. I think it’s more user-friendly in my experience. After Debian/Ubuntu based distros, Fedora is the most likely to have packages built for it by developers (I’m talking 1st-party builds, not repacks). Fedora is a semi-rolling release, meaning updates are frequent but not constant.
Fedora is currently my distro off choice, but I may soon use Tumbleweed again. I daily drove Tumbleweed for a year on both my general PC and my admin computer.
Honestly a lot of it is just momentum and familiarity although I also think US vs Europe is a factor. Linux was popular in North America first and Red Hat was one of the most successful distros early on. The fact that SUSE uses the Red Hat package manager reflects this. Fedora is backed by Red Hat, the de facto standard Enterprise Linux.
Both have their fans though and trying to argue that one is better than the other would be a war of preferences. Many people believe that Tumbleweed is the best rolling distro.
Fedora offers a KDE version.