I'm not a complete newb when it comes to Linux but I am a newb for running it as my main desktop OS. I ran Mint for a few months but the game I play just stopped working. I kept booting back into Windows as a work around. I eventually wiped Mint off and went with Arch. I gotta admit I was expecting to run into issues but I've had no issues at all. I've always been a fan of minimalism so Arch has always been on my radar. I'm glad I sucked up the courage to try Arch as it really has worked out well for me.
"Hey New User, shut up and come back when you've read the documentation for each component of every distro and studied how they interact with each other. I am too burned out from maintaining my rare and arcane DIY configuration to answer your stupid questions."
You're making a lot of unfounded assumptions here. Also, either your reading comprehension sucks or you're being deliberately obtuse by claiming I said any such thing.
I'm an arch user myself, chose it because i wanted to get familiar with command line and force myself to learn a bit more about linux. Since choosing a DE was also paralyzing, I opted for i3 and now use sway and learned more about config files. Great part about linux is you can try and use what you like and works for you.
Was that the joke? I don't know if I was misunderstanding, but I thought the loud crow was supposed to be a new Linux user complaining that the few-mentioned easy-to-use distro's being too many options.
No. It's someone responding to questions for what distros to try as a new user. That's why it starts with "new user?" to identify the subject of who it's speaking to. The crow is giving it's own advice for harder distros that a Windows user would switch to.
I definitely recommend a beginner friendly distro to start with, but also encourage going through a Gentoo install at least once to get a better understanding of how the system works
Whether you succeed or fail at getting the install to boot and run or not, you'll learn something from the experience
It fells like we have some sort of natural difficulty to deal with choices, doesn't it? Even when choosing between equally good things, it isn't something we do so easily.
I truly love Debian. As long as you get the right ISO (live with non-free firmware included), it's perfect for beginners. Calamares installer and good hardware support.
I generally recommend Kubuntu for new users though.
I liked Ubuntu prior to snap. I've gone back to Debian and aside from a slightly complex install, I think that the distro is the epitome of stability and "just works", especially for the normal software stuff I do. It's 30 years old for a reason.
My experiences with arch are that it just broke if you looked at it funny and I like stuff that doesn't require the constant tinkering. This is the same reason I don't do smart tech and still own dumb and mechanical watches.
I feel like I'm in the minority in this community lately.
Go with OpenSuSE Tumbleweed or Fedora, because software updates roll in at a good pace. Stable, easy to use and configure.
Go with Arch or Manjaro only if you really want the bleeding-edge software versions. You can have some instability as a result, or not. Good luck.
Don't go with Debian, Ubuntu and likewise, only if you want to make some gymnastics to update your programs every major release. These are the most stable Linux distros.
If you want fairly bleeding edge, go with OpenSuSE Tumbleweed and you'll still have a stable system with no version update worries (well, technically, there's a version update every other day).
I want to go pick a fight with openSuse forums because the installer failed 3 times in different ways. I changed it up to different releases, Leap, etc... Never had issues like that with any other distro.
Hate saying it, but Ubuntu just works for me. I'd rather focus my computer configuration and maintenance efforts on clients rather than my own laptop. If I have to reinstall for whatever reason, its pretty easy because I'm already very familiar with the (shitty) installer, and I don't do much customizing because I'd rather not have to go through that every time I reinstall.
Granted I've never even bothered to run Arch, or any really other desktop distro for that matter. Ubuntu + Gnome looks nice, seems to just work, all I need to do is apt install nvidia drivers and firefox post-install and I'm up and running. I don't want to do work on my laptop, I want my laptop to enable me to do work.
I think you can install nvidia driver by clicking on "third party driver and codecs" check box during install? It should even register the secureboot key automatically.
Ubuntu installer is pretty good IMO, at least much better than the current fedora installer.
I haven't used ubuntu for a while, maybe these are outdated impressions.
I dont really fuck around with the GUI stuff tbh...I've always just done ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
I guess my issues with the installer have mostly stemmed around the software raid and manual partitioning. Simply installing on a single drive isnt bad.
I don't hate saying it. I have used Linux professionally and personally for 20 years now, and Ubuntu is just a solid choice for productivity. It has wide hardware support and even better user support. People hating on Ubuntu are Linux hipsters and their opinions can typically be dismissed.
There are many ideological reasons to hate ubuntu but I agree it was a solid choice and still is for people just wanting to get shit done without caring too much for the stuff underneath
Ideologically Ubuntu makes me cringe, but I also use Google and a host of other technologies that fuck my privacy, so I guess I have accepted the world we live in.
In the same way that I think it's noble when people try to live waste free, I think it's noble to use things like GrapheneOS, or selfhost all your services, or de-Google your tech. But it's unrealistic for all of the world to live waste-free or customize their tech so as to be private. In the end, the government needs to step in and force these giant-ass companies to behave better, because they are the primary forces pushing forward the destruction of the environment and personal privacy.