Isn't TW the rolling-release variant?
Maybe I'm just scarred from years of IT, but I would avoid recommending any rolling release to someone if they specified "stability" and were likely fresh out of the Ubuntu/Green Ubuntu kiddie pool.
Just assume that they mean they want to set it up with minimal user interaction and then never, ever, ever have to change settings again.
-it should be more or less stable, comparable to Ubuntu with or without LTS
Ubuntu was based on Debian, which touts its stability
-it should not be related to IBM to any way (so no fedora/redhat)
Debian has no afiliation to IBM, they're not even loosely part of each others' "partners" programs
-it should not feature snaps (no Ubuntu or KDE neon)
Debian doesn't use snaps (welcome to the greener side of the fence btw, fuck snaps)
-KDE plasma should be installable manually (best case even installed by default)
Debian uses KDE as one of it's default install options when installing the OS, and it can be installed later with tasksel (or by just getting all the packages if you want to do it the hard way)
-no DIY Distros
Debian has a barebones headless option, but the installer defaults (which come with the whole DE and oyher convenienve packages) are pretty user-friendly
In summary, I have no fucking clue what OS you should use.
P.S. newlines on lemmy are either done by using two spaces at the end of a line
and then pressing enter
(make sure your phone doesn't autocorrect/one of the spaces away like mine does)
or by pressing
Enter twice (without the double spaces), so there's a
blank line in between
I might give Fedora a try then, finally see what's so yummy to all the users. Originally stayed away because I heard it was based of RHEL and didn't want an office-grade OS to do tinkering on.
Also, how about that "freedom," Red Hat?? what happened to FOSS????
I would reckon your original hardware also played a big part if it worked swimmingly this time around. I've installed half a dozen Debian- and Arch-based OSes on 3 different PCs and four different hypervisors at different times, and run a few more live CDs to boot, and my experience is that there is simply some hardware/emulated hardware that Linux in general refuses to play nicely with.
Debian does make it harder if there are no free drivers, but my non-free wifi cards (an intel and a broadcom) don't play nicely with any of the OSes' defaults
I'm just gonna copy from my other reply to ulterno
Once again overestimating beginners. Any OS installation is inherently not beginner friendly, and requires helping them, regardless of Debian/Arch/Nix/windows/Big Sierra Lion Yosemite III, Esq. Jr. MD or whatever Apple’s calling it nowadays.
I find Debians defaults during installation very beginner friendly, set and forget type stuff. It won’t use the hardware to full potential, but that’s up to advanced users to decided after they’re comfortable with the training wheels.
on a laptop with both the Ethernet and Wi-Fi unsupported
You're right, it didn't use to be beginner friendly. The installer has definitely gotten a lot better, and now they're offering non-free-firmware in it; that avoids that whole issue..
On top of which, it had an nVidia GPU
Nouveau comes packaged. Most people that ditch nouveau do so because it doesn't give them high performance metrics they expected out of their GPU, or it didn't support multimonitor, or played poorly with RDP or any other issue which goes outside of my "watch youtube on my laptop" use case. That is, once again, deviating outside of "average user" territory. If you had problems getting any display or DE to work, that's different, but you may find it sucks less now.
So, it’s beginner friendly as long as someone helps you out with the installation after checking up on all the stuff you will need to run.
Once again overestimating beginners. Any OS installation is inherently not beginner friendly, and requires helping them, regardless of Debian/Arch/Nix/windows/Big Sierra Lion Yosemite III, Esq. Jr. MD or whatever Apple's calling it nowadays.
I find Debians defaults during installation very beginner friendly, set and forget type stuff. It won't use the hardware to full potential, but that's up to advanced users to decided after they're comfortable with the training wheels.
The average user needs a web browser and maybe some office apps
For RDP, I use Remmina. Multimon only works on X though, not wayland, so make sure that's the graphic server you're running. Idk if it'll work for 2x2 tho, I only have 2 monitors.
For the headaches, I use a magic pill that I'm not legally allowed to view the ingredients of and cry into my Tissues as a Service.
Y'all seriously overestimate thr average user:
Debian. It's simple, stable, minimal upkeep, rarely if ever has breaking changes, and all this out of the box.
Someone new doesn't need to be thrown in the deep end for their first foray into linux, they want an experience like windows or mac: simple interface, stable system, some potential for getting their hands dirty but not too much to worry about breaking
This bird's-eye view of the process really sells it short. "making a modern CPU is insanely complex" doesn't even scratch the surface of chip fab.
I mean, some guy did make his own lithography setup in his garage, and last we heard he had managed to fit 1,200 transistors on the same chip. This is just a few transistors shy of the 6,000,000,000 transistors in Intel's Rocket Lake die.
So if you want your PC to do much beyond blink an LED, you need an industrial photolithography machine. And of course, that entails a clean room, specialized HVAC and sanitation equipment (Intel's clean rooms have less tolerance for contaminants than hospital clean rooms). Then it's only a matter of getting the rest of the chip fabrication machines (because the process requires more precision than a human hand). And materials that have extremely specific proportions and purities.
And so it only costs a few hundred million dollars to just make a cpu. And even that was still just glossing over some of the most ridiculous, precise, specialized and esoteric marvels of science and engineering humanity has ever come up with.
Now it's just a matter of just making all the other parts.
Very cool. I was expecting like a Ben Eater style breadboard, but bigger. This is so much more.
stable ✅
technically comparable to Ubuntu ✅
not related to IBM ✅
doesn't feature snaps ✅
KDE plasma ✅
not DIY ✅
WCGW