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Once you get out of a monoculture, you start to better appreciate that ‘best’ is a subjective term.
Some distros are better for some users (and purposes) and others for others.
But it’s got to be Mint ;p
Simple, GNU Guix System Distribution because it’s not an Operating System
it is though too
Mint is (subjectively, for 90% of people), because something a lot of Linux nerds seem to forget is that the average computer user does not even want to think about their operating system. 90%+ of people who use a computer want it to turn on and just work for the things they want to do, and for like, 99% of the time, Mint has been just that for me for a solid year and a half. I adore it for that reason, and wish more Windows users would just try switching to it. I understand the apprehension not to, having tried other distros over the years (and having fought with Bazzite on my steam deck on multiple occasions), but it really does “just work”.
like I get it, some like to fiddle-fuck with their OS, and that’s cool, but that does not appeal to the majority of people and pretending it should is asinine. Some of us want to view and use our computer as an appliance/a means to an end, not a project in and of itself. When I used Windows and had issues, you know how much fun I had digging around in Event Viewer, or Group Policy Editor, or Regedit, or Control Panel? Zero. Zero fun was had. Same amount of fun I have dicking around with Linux. I want my computer to turn on, do what I tell it to, nothing I don’t (this is the sticking point that got me to leave Windows), and god damnit if it breaks it’d better be as easy as googling an error message (which, Mint also has enough reach/widespread use that it usually is). Anyone who disagrees, I applaud your patience, but that is simply not the way I and most other people operate.
And salty Linux ricer downvotes get me moist, so bring it on, dweebs.
the average computer user does not even want to think about their operating system. 90%+ of people who use a computer want it to turn on and just work for the things they want to do
I’m the more typical Lemmy user that DOES think about their operating system and will happily fiddle-fuck with it on occasion. And I still use and love Mint because even in 90%+ of the cases when I use the computer it is to do something WITH the computer and not do something TO the computer.
The “it just works” factor is very high with it.
Pop os is easy and doesn’t look like windows 95
you must’ve not seen Mint in a long time if you think it looks like Windows 95, I’m using it right now and it looks much nicer.
Further, that’s really not the cutting dig you think it is. Windows 95, for all its boxy, gray 90s aesthetic, was a very clean UI with minimal bullshit. If you like ricing your desktop/want it to look fancy, great, I’m happy for you. Most normal users, on the other hand, really don’t care how their OS looks as long as they can find what they need to. For normal users, the OS should be an invisible plinth that other programs you actually give a fuck about sit on top of. Mint stays the fuck out of my way to that end impeccably well.
I was kind of kidding, I just think it’s wild that out of all the options, mint is recommended 9/10 times
I think it makes some sense once you take a look at the big picture. Mint has been around for a very long time and has become one of the most popular distributions on its own. On top of that, it is designed to be an easy turnkey system for inexperienced linux users.
That alone would gain it plenty of recommendations, but ubuntu would probably still be the top recommendation. However, the same thing that made it good — Canonical and its resources — is also the thing that drove away the Linux enthusiasts that recommend distros to new users.
So you take Ubuntu, the user friendly distro built on one of the sorta OG distros (debian), strip out the proprietary stuff that annoys the Linux community (snaps etc), and make it even more user friendly while removing none of the Linux goodness, and there you have Mint as the obvious recommendation.
Hell, I’m a computer person and I happily use Mint on multiple computers daily.
Yeah, I get your reasoning – but there are other distros that match all of that as well. PopOS and ElementaryOS are two that I have personal experience with. Elementary had a rocky upgrade once so I tried PopOS and haven’t looked back. It’s great. Ubuntu minus the crap. The average user (getting recommended mint) probably wouldn’t care about being on the latest release and would likely not even run updates all that often, so even Elementary would’ve been a good choice for them. I have since installed it on my girlfriend’s slow/old laptop and it works very smoothly there compared with windows.
Going directly from modern Windows to the Cinnamon desktop in Mint was a distinct improvement!
Stuck on version 22.04
Pop!_OS is more outdated than Debian
Probably because they’ve been building their own DE (which will replace their GNOME fork) for a while now. It’s in alpha and hopefully will roll out in the next few months. Having said that, I don’t have issues doing the things I want to do. I think it’s fine for now because 22.04 is LTS, so most app makers support it.
The one you fucking feel like using. God, stop trying to make tribes mandatory.
Never heard of it. What packaging system does Tribes use?
Well, it’s built to use Ooga, but it’s also set up to be able to handle Booga as well. It depends on the driver set you need to load Fire and Club.
I prefer Ook! Ook! over Ooga.
The wrong one, obviously!
I feel like there’s a lemmings reference to be made here but I’m tired. Internet, do your thing.
SHAZBOT!
I’m tempted to commit to pretending that “Tribes” is a Linux distro that we’re all worried will gain too much popularity and hurt the ecosystem…
I wanted to interject about how “ecosystem” is a word only used for locked-in stuff like Apple and Google, but y’know what?
THIS is a proper ecosystem. It is actually organic, made of independent moving parts, unlike the clockwork made by big tech, internal to each and to a large extent indivisible.
*Except for beginners
Try a beginner distro, and when you’re done with the tutorial, go ahead and install your arches or nixes, IDC
SteamOS was my tutorial and today I run Arch on my main system. But I like learning and I like the fact that I can build my own system and choose my own components. I understand that Arch is not for everyone but for me it’s perfect.
Also, fuck GNOME. When I tried Ubuntu in 2009 it was GNOME that made me hate Linux until I learned that KDE Plasma was a thing.
GNOME is horrible. Looks pretty, but it’s opinionated approach means that nothing works as expected and you have to relearn how to use a stupid window manager.
Steamos is a great introduction… If you touch desktop mode of course.
Personally I recommend Linux mint, or even KUbuntu or Cinnamon Ubuntu (gnome is not meant for windows refugees so better not show it yet)
Ooga Booga, caveman like Arch, caveman spread Arch!
Edit: i never read the other comments and someone already sorta used this joke… shit.
I’m a simple man, but I love Fedora
I’ve bounced around to plenty of distros, Fedora KDE is my current daily driver.
Fedora is the best because it fits my use case the best.
We need a healthy mashup OS between TinyCore, KolibriOS, ReactOS, and TempleOS, then I’ll be happy.
I thought you said healthy.
You’re right, we also need a CP/M terminal running on top of the Minix kernel…
Why not just ReactOS atop FreeDOS?
I’m not even sure if this is satire or not, but is that even doable? I mean I’ve tested both FreeDOS and ReactOS before, but do they play well together somehow?
Side note, I’ve also tried KolibriOS before, amazing project for its tiny size, still have it on physical floppy disk right now even.
Mostly satirical.
Gotcha, no worries 👍
Future goal, emulate Linux (any version that might work) under KolibriOS.
I think that’s actually doable, to some extent… 🤷♂️
That’s like asking if MS-DOS and WinNT work well together. I guess they can both rw off FAT32 and run on x86-32…
Hey, there actually are NTFS drivers out there for MS-DOS/Win3.11, I’ve used that for data recovery when neither Windows NT nor Linux could access the partition.
Very little surprises me anymore, and I have no idea what all tricks FreeDOS and ReactOS have up their sleeves.
It depends on who’s asking. But if it’s someone who is curious about Linux, it’s always Mint.
Yeah. “I use OpenSUSE tumbleweed, but have reasons I’ve been thinking about switching. I consistently hear that mint is a good place to start, or maybe pop!os if you’re looking to run games”
I don’t actually even say the first sentence unless the question was “what do you use?”
Sometimes, if it’s clear they’re trying to revive very old hardware I might help them search for something built around being lightweight.
I’m mostly happy with tumbleweed, except that I have the nvidia repo set up and am convinced that it’s causing issues. One of these days I’ll look into how to try the nouveau drivers and/or how to get from my current setup to dualbooting pop!os without disrupting things I need for work.
Also, an update straight up broke emacs while i was in crunch time once, but I learned to be more careful about my update timing.
My guy just uninstall the Nvidia driver, it will fall back to the driver in the kernel, which is the Nouveau driver.
I’ll try that soon. Tbf, it’s absurdly easy to roll back with snapper if I make a change and it’s not better, I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Games run great in Linux Mint.
Mint also has a GUI driver manager that makes it really easy to see and change which nvidia driver you’re using.
That’s good to know, thanks. I don’t get asked for Linux advice that often, but I’ll just recommend mint unless there are extreme hardware restrictions (which I’m sure mint can work with, but I’ve looked for whatever modern lightweight-focused distro is when it’s a concern)
People having problems on Tumbleweed almost always seem to be using Nvidia, KDE, and/or Wayland. That’s what I’ve noticed based on official forum threads, anyway.
Yep. I got a thinkpad a couple years ago that was enough of a deal that I forgave its nvidia GPU. I followed the documentation on how to connect a repo controlled by nvidia, and since then: a) the actual GPU appears to be used, but b) maximum brightness on the screen is significantly dimmer, and games run worse than they did when the GPU wasn’t actually used.
And also I use KDE. I’m still on X11, though, so I didn’t complete the set.
Haha. Well, I hope you get it worked out. Have you used PopOS before?
I haven’t, but a colleague (small all remote web dev outfit) plays rocket league and had said that pop!os has felt great for games without having to tweak anything. Meanwhile, I tried to play through cult of the lamb while some friends were all playing through it and it wasn’t playable
I try to avoid telling people what I use as they will wonder why I don’t use mint if I recommend it.
I like Fedora + plasma, but I don’t want to explain rpm fusion and Fedora flatpak problems.
If someone is new, show them DEs and recommend based on that
I think that can come later. I think decision paralysis would be a problem.
Would Aurora be a better recommendation these days?
Not familiar with it, but one thing mint has is a long history. That’s important to me.
And a lot of support, especially aimed to the beginner userbase. Most basics questions a first time linux user will encounter are usually answered to by searching the forum
Great point! I hadn’t even considered that.
It even goes beyond that because if you just search how to do something in linux, you are almost guaranteed to find instructions that work on whatever random site you find. It’s pretty rare to find instructions for dnf or pacman without also having the APT instructions right there.
Am I understanding this right? It’s Linux installed to a remote server and then streamed to the desktop?
Never ask a woman her age.
A man the length of his penis.
And Someone who posts memes like this how long they had to dig to get to this ancient stereotype.
Right? I’ll talk about my salary all you want. I think it’s great to know where you stand against others when negotiating for a new job or a raise. Especially since unions aren’t really a thing in my profession.
Don’t talk about my penis. If I want you to know, you’ll know.
I use Nyarch, btw.
Holy shit I lost it after Material UwU. The system requirements and FAQ (including a famous Torvalds quote) were excellent highlights as well.
Found the weeb
Fucking Astolfo in there… this is just too good.
Thank you for this, you’ve made my day.
I didn’t really like Gnome, but one day I might spin up a VM for this.
Your a Linux user?
What’s the best distribution of Windows?
XP was
Windows 7 Embedded.
Windows Vista.
Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC.
Windows XP Black Edition (xD)
Royale Noir was the shit
React OS
3.1
Windows 2000 was the best (and last good) version.
Why is Tux flipped, is this some sort of subliminal message? Is BigTech behind of this meme?
Oh, oups. That’s a remnance from a meme I made a few minutes earlier. However now Tux is looking towards the text, therefore this was all planned.
The best distribution is always the one you currently use. All others are trash.
and it is also the worst.
Until you realize that the current distro isn’t the worst like the others were.
That’s when you know you’ve found home.
My distro is shit
But all other distros are diarrhea
I love my shit distro
You don’t need to ask, because they will tell you their thoughts regardless.
Just switched to NixOS recently, after years on LMDE.
See I just like LMDE. Everything works without fiddling (I want my OS to be boring). And if I feel spicy - backports.
Fuck yeah NixOS! I freaking love declarative config!
Pfft Linux is too mainstream… I run BeOS and OS/2 Warp.
Pfft, those are still maintained (Haiku and ArcaOS respectively) and so corporate man.
TempleOS all the way baby. Nothing is more powerful the the almighty HolyC.
Haiku! 🍁 exists :3
Like this BeeOS?
Tap for spoiler
Okay just kidding I know you wrote BeOS, I just wanna promote metaroom cause I like listening to them and their song was on when you posted this.
Rad music. Reminds me of Earthbound battle music.
I loved BeOS. It was great.
Shame on all of you for not knowing Hanna Montana Linux is the best possible OS ever.
I thought that it’s a fact everyone using Linux just instinctively knew.
