this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
722 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

72769 readers
1404 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 84 points 2 months ago (7 children)

There has never been a better time to switch to Mint, Pop_OS, or Bazzite.

[–] gradual@lemmings.world 31 points 2 months ago (6 children)

You could just say Linux, lol.

We gotta stop upvoting distro-shilling.

[–] witx@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (14 children)

Right and people that don't know which distros to use will get lost

How are you supposed to get new people in without advising?

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They are probably the best distros for newcomers. I think its an absolutely valid comment.

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You could just say Linux, lol.

Yeah, but which one? There are hundreds of distros. There's nothing wrong giving some pointers to begginers out there.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] BJ_and_the_bear@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

Or GNU plus Linux, as I've recently taken to calling it

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I find that’s very unhelpful to potential Linux converts. They will quickly find out that there are infinite flavors of Linux, become overwhelmed, and give up.

When you are introducing newcomers to Linux, it’s best to make specific suggestions.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 4 points 2 months ago

Try just telling someone that they need to switch to Linux with no other details. They'll either get confused/overwhelmed by choice, or possibly choose one that isn't user friendly and hate it.

People have to start somewhere, and I see no issue with recommending user friendly distros to get them going.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, went Mint 18 months ago. Started at MSDOS in the 1990s, ended at W10.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I sometimes feel like bare-metalling FreeDOS. Except that and modern laptops, ha-ha, shouldn't work too well, but at the same time Lenovo even sold some with it pre-installed.

Would just play X-Wing and TIE Fighter and WarCraft II, edit simple text documents, smile at how right it'd feel.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Did you see that e-mail?

"Nope!"

[–] FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago
[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 6 points 2 months ago
[–] TheFonz@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Already on the way babayyy. Ubuntu gang here we gooooo I know, i know. There are other popular distros but I wanted to start there

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 9 points 2 months ago

Ubuntu is perfectly valid, feels very mac os

[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago
[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Ubuntu is great for begginers, go for it

[–] PeterisBacon@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I will be looking into these, thanks for sharing! Any top recommendations from the three??

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Pop!_OS is my top recommendation for Windows expats, followed by Mint (Cinnamon Edition), and then Bazzite (KDE Plasma desktop). Bazzite is so, so, so good, but it has some unique features that make it a little more frustrating for Windows power users who are new to Linux. But honestly they are all good. Pick one, and if you aren’t vibing with it, try something else.

Also, keep in mind that “distro” and “desktop environment (DTE)” are two different things. Sometimes a distro has a default DTE and sometimes it gives you a choice. The DTE makes the biggest difference to your experience. There are many different DTEs, but the two biggest are GNOME (MacOS-like and moderately customizable) and KDE Plasma (Windows-like by default, but very customizable).

[–] Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 months ago

I recommend Mint. It’s super easy to install and maintain. And very easy to use.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I cannot recommend Bazzite. It's an atomic distribution, which is pioneer tech that tries to make some things better but in effect makes a lot of things more difficult. FWIW, I've been using Linux for 20+ years.

Just go with regular Fedora KDE Desktop. https://fedoraproject.org/kde/

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I see that Fedora uses Btrfs, so it should be able to take file system snapshots, which are sort of an alternative to the immutable thing, isn't it?

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Yes, but not really. It can be convenient. Just remember it takes more space so provision accordingly for /.

[–] shininghero@pawb.social 4 points 2 months ago

It's not on the list, but I've been rocking the same KDE fedora installation through about ten version upgrades. Once you dial in your settings and software choices, it's fairly solid.

The only issue I can recall was some weirdness with steam's dependencies blocking my last version upgrade, but it was easily bypassed.

[–] damdy@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I started with pop os 5 years ago and haven't found a reason to change. I'm not hugely techy and just wanted something to play games on. Had very few issues overall.

[–] PeterisBacon@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Sorry to sound absolutely dumb, but does it work well with things like steam?

I primarily only use Adobe (learning Affinity) and Steam. I'm a pretty basic bitch ngl lmao! Pop_OS looks CLEAN on their website

[–] damdy@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

Works great with steam. I went back on my ethics and played wow classic for a while though and battle.net was a little tricky for me to get going. But yeah steam works perfectly.

[–] damdy@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Every issue I've had has been easily fixable with searching and following instructions. There's not been many issues, and I can do it anyone can.

[–] GoodOleAmerika@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Of course we need three flavor so we don't have a single majority and each of them have their own nuisance. Same as JavaScript libraries.

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

openSUSE is also pretty great, and doesn't get the attention it deserves.

There really is a Linux for everyone.

[–] j4yt33@feddit.org -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But not Ubuntu. We don't like Ubuntu here, I feel like

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Ubuntu is fine. I do understand the hate, though. Snap is contentious for very good reasons, Canonical makes major decisions by fiat rather than listening to the community (see Snap again), and they have corporate motives that are often at odds with the spirit and desires of the greater FOSS community (like forking upstream projects instead of contributing).

Mint is still based on Ubuntu, for example, but I feel it’s a more ethical suggestion than Ubuntu itself.