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There are many correct distro choices (except Ubuntu), but the only correct desktop environment is KDE Plasma.
If Cosmic keeps evolving, it could win me over.
People go about it backwards when recommending/choosing. Beginners should be encouraged pick the desktop environment first (my KDE preference excluded the universal recommendation of Mint). Then the next decision should be stability vs fast updates (potential instability); and then ease of finding support for the inevitable problems they run into (beginners might find it easiest to find support for Debian based distros).
That being said, I had constant problems when I was starting and the distro with which I managed to get there best start was OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Yet my most downvoted comment ever on Lemmy is suggesting Tumbleweed to beginners.
KDE is good for a first go at Linux. I started with SUSE, ages ago, which was nice enough.
But by now, I’m just more of a gnome fan. I don’t know how that will change if I dig deeper into window management logic, but right now, it just works for me.
I’ve now gone down this rabbit hole several times now and installed several of them many many times over now just figuring it all out and finally getting a stable setup which took a few months.
From my perspective after doing all of that : Chances are if you are not a developer, high end cgi artist, or specialized in tech, you might just need something safe like Ubuntu. At least just grab it to start. It gets you up and running, nice interface. Easy to use. Works for basic out of the box stuff making plex server, basic computing, house hold stuff. Could set it up for your technophobe friends and family and find it easy to just update and run. Big colorful app icons. Looks and works like an android phone for usability and easy to learn. Stuff even installs from a gui similar to how windows does.
You’d only go deep on something like fedora/nobara with some serious intentions with a high end computer where you just couldn’t reach some goals on Ubuntu. You just wouldn’t go to these ones if you didn’t have to. Those reasons also rhyme with kde plasma reasons/Developer reasons where in you absolutely need specialized software. And you have to be comfortable with swimming in the bios often.
If you don’t know and it sounds weird just googling it then just stick with Ubuntu.
I’ve talked to people in the Linux community gatekeeping hard on others who don’t even know about why someone would need kde plasma. So that should tell you everything you need to know about the fanboys. And I’ve taken heat from them only to have them breaking their own brain on the idea that people actually use computers for simulations or just use computers for anything other than what they would use a computer for.
so Take what they say with a giant truck of salt. Not even Mac users are as annoying as the some of Linux assholes I’ve met.
former solaris / irix / ubuntu user here who works in graphics. is there a particularly good distro suited for someone doing davinci resolve, blender, inkscape, godot etc ? desktop use specifically.
what properties in a desktop env and a distro should I seek and avoid?
slow clap Half these posts are shitting all over Ubuntu. It’s fine for newbies.
Gate keeping Linux bros are seriously hilarious. It’s like silly No True Scotsman.
This is like people, they are all different, so annoying! /s
I have to choose people i like?? Gaaah.
How many are there?
It depends.
See, that’s not helpful. The right answer is to direct someone to this GitHub project:
https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline
The releases page contains a 3420x12488 PNG to provide a simple and concise answer.
That picture is also hosted on Wikimedia:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg
Edit: just pasting the link now, making it into an embedded picture lagged and crashed voyager??
Either 2025 was a horrible year for linux or the image needs an update.
I can see my OS from here!
I see the one I like! :-)
“Simple and concise”
i am not religious, but oh god…
Doesn’t even have CachyOS. Smh
I always assumed webOS was Linux but I expected it to be a fork of Debian
what’s with the weird white lines in the image?
Same thing with Fediverse instances.
IMO the linux and/or fediverse community could learn a thing or two about UX from the establishment.
I believe the best approach is to take note of the Pareto Principle: 20% of instances / distros would meet the need of 80% of users.
I would simply recommend Ubuntu / lemmy.world to complete beginners (just based on market share). If they are interested in alternatives, they would naturally seek those out themselves.
This concept is nothing new e.g. Google presents their searchbar front and centre; power users would click on “Advance Search” for their needs.
I started mainlining Linux about a year and a half ago after playing with it for a bit in 2007-ish and running a headless server for a decade or so.
I just installed Ubuntu because that was what Framework officially supported. I can’t think of what a newbie user would find lacking with Ubuntu. It does about everything that Windows does fine. I’ve heard similar things about Mint. Why do we have to over-complicate things for new users? Just shove them towards a distro and let them know they can probably fix whatever they don’t like with a reinstall later.
If someone were to recommend me a distro with the GNOME desktop environment then I would not be a Linux for long. GNOME is weird and confusing. I am convinced that KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, LXDE and other more Windows-like desktops is better for a new Linux user. If they want an alternative desktop environment they can seek it out themselves.
a distro with the GNOME desktop environment
We would have lost a newbie by this point.
I don’t think we are representative of the average user. For example, noone from my family heard of these terms, or even care. They just want to browse the web, watch some Youtube videos, and that’s it.
That why they shouldn’t be recommended anything that has to do with GNOME. Just give them anything that closely resembles Windows.
I installed Linux Mint on my mom’s old laptop and on my stepmother’s aunt’s laptop as well. I have had 0 support calls since then! As you say, all they want to do is browse the web.
Clearly there’s an unwarranted assumption baked into this comic that one needs a desktop environment. I have my non-headless Linux systems set up to run the emptty display manager using the Linux console:
Which then launches the Sway compositor without having Sway start any desktop environment if I want to log into a graphical environment. That’s my favorite option. Let’s not impose an artificially-restricted set of choices, here. :-)
@mudkip I’ve picked MX Linux with XFCE for my 2007 laptop (which originally had Windows Vista Home Premium). Not my main device, but still worth mentioning as a Linux machine.
Proceeds to use it exclusively for browsing the web.
All you need to know is that, whatever you pick, you made the wrong choice and you will be roasted if you ever attempt to explain your decision.
Unless you use Arch, then you have chosen correctly.
Urgh! Why did you choose Arch? It is just the worst!
Actual reenactment:
I use Fedora, but I frequent the Arch wiki often enough that I feel like an honorary Arch user.
The Gentoo wiki is pretty good too
Screams in Debian…
Not true, you just become immune to the opposition.
Arch is utterly inferior because of its use of the Systemd “init” system, which is a bloated mess that completely disregards the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, and shouldn’t be forgotten for its sins and heresy. “Arch Linux” (Really Arch Gnu/Linux, or more preferably Arch Gnu+Linux (Unless you consider that Gnu runs on top of Linux, in which case it’s Linux+Gnu)) cannot be taken seriously as a minimal do it yourself distro when it hinges on an software that has ties with RedHat, which has had a history of forcing their woke Wayland Display Server (Even though Xorg worked just fine, suspicious much?), as well as their DEI onto the entire Linux space - where politics shouldn’t play any role. A WOKE company like RedHat has no place in the open source community. If you want to be a true and righteous Linux user, I recommend Either Void Linux+Gnu (What manly men like myself use) or Gentoo.
It says something about how sad of a state the world is in when I can’t tell if this is satire or not.
There are four main flavors
- Debian - For every day
- Red Hat - For work
- Arch - To tinker and learn
- OpenSuSe - To German
Also the additional flavours of
- Nix – whole OS determined by 1 file
- Gentoo – Arch but it takes longer
- Alpine – small and simple
- Slackware? – for old people
- Void?? – like Alpine but not small and simple
- LFS??? – like Gentoo but takes longer
- AOSP??? – not even really Linux anymore
Gentoo really has nothing to do with arch. Gentoo in my opinion is more like Debian with compiling and rolling release.
And what about Fedora? Last I checked it was wildly popular.
Gentoo is just frequently cited as the “next step up” from Arch and also funny.
And Fedora is bucketed into the Red Hat flavour.
- Void - the most BSD Linux (according to BSD people)
Gentoo – Arch but it takes longer
Supports full binary versions since december 2023.
Slackware? – for old people
Aka people who know what they’re doing and what they want, noted.
also …
Debian - for when you want to wait two years
Alternatively: when you want to not worry for two years.
The popular Debian based distros are up to date. That said, core Debian stable is indeed boring, but sometimes boring and stable is what you need.
yeah no hate for debian here
I use Kubuntu LTS for that exact reason. Even though I am an experienced Linux user for over 20 years, I don’t have time to fuck around fixing my PC when something goes wrong. It’s stable and it works. And, yes I game on my PC and it’s doing just fine with my 3070 RTX NVidia card with the drivers provided by Ubuntu through their 3rd party driver system. No hassle, no crashing, just me using my computer doing the things I need to do.
Its not even stable though😭 I spent 6 hours fixing my networking on my debian 13 stable server, after it randomly got 90 percent packet loss with no explanation
What was the issue?
Definitely a brick of an operating system, boring as hell, but reliable and has been that way since ancient times.
Before the dawn of history
Well I’ve been using openSuse for a while and habe noch keine German influence gesehen.
I appreciate the effort put into this but if answering yes to “are you new to Linux?” leads to the follow up question “apt or rpm?” then there’s a problem.
Exactly. One is a package format and/or local package utility, and the other is a frontend to do downloads and updates for that local package utility.
Should be “rpm or dpkg” — assuming that we’re excluding the other options — and then if someone chooses RPM, you can start talking about the frontend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager
Front ends
Several front-ends to RPM ease the process of obtaining and installing RPMs from repositories and help in resolving their dependencies. These include:
- yum used in Fedora Linux, CentOS 5 and above, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and above, Scientific Linux, Yellow Dog Linux and Oracle Linux
- DNF, introduced in Fedora Linux 18 (default since 22), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8, and CentOS Linux 8.
- up2date used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS 3 and 4, and Oracle Linux
- Zypper used in Mer (and thus Sailfish OS), MeeGo,[16] openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise
- urpmi used in Mandriva Linux, ROSA Linux and Mageia
- apt-rpm, a port of Debian’s Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) used in Ark Linux,[17] PCLinuxOS and ALT Linux
- Smart Package Manager, used in Unity Linux, available for many distributions including Fedora Linux.
- rpmquery, a command-line utility available in (for example) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- libzypp, for Sailfish OS
Then for
dpkg, you can choose from amongaptitude,apt,apt-get/apt-query/etc, graphical frontend options likesynapticthat one may want to use in parallel with the TUI-based frontends, etc.Sure, but my point was that someone new to Linux can only answer that question with “what the fuck are those”
You’ve completely missed the point. If you’re new to Linux you have no clue what those are and shouldn’t care.
I hate myself but I don’t Gentoo hate myself.
gentoo for small computing power?? no offense, but that’s bonkers 😹
gentoo for small computing power?? no offense, but that’s bonkers 😹
Why?
Surely if you’ve low computing power, you want to make the best of it… Gentoo can help with that.
Tight compile flags, choosing USE flags carefully to be minimal and snug to meet needs, can make a very very lean efficient-running crisp-feeling system for when you’re using it.
Or, if your concern is more about the package install time, just use the official binhost [the
-goption onemergecommands is your friend], and minimise USE flag changes, and then it’s as fast as any other distro with precompiled binary packages.
I judge distro chooser flowcharts by whether they correctly point me to Slackware. These both pass.
Lots of pro-Ubuntu propaganda in those floe charts. At this point, Ubuntu of any flavor shouldn’t be recommended to anyone. There are always better alternatives.
Redox is UNIX-like, not a BSD flavor. The kernel, init, userland, etc. aren’t BSD related.
These are magnificent. Now I can turn off my brain lol.
LOL.
That’s so broken and biased.
NixOS btw.
No kidding.
JFCLM
Just Fucking Choose Linux Mint.
Nah. I’m a gamer and need something with more up to date packages. I can’t rely on Debian / Ubuntu base.
Fedora and Arch base are my go to.
If you know what you want then you’re not the person depicted in this comic.
I’m a gamer too and i’m not sure what is about that, everything seems fine on the 6.12 kernel LMDE is on.
Ditto. Also a gamer on Linux Mint and never once had a problem.
bazzite?
I used Bazzite for a bit and I like the direction of the project. I’m still not happy with where Flatpak is and so I switched to CachyOS for now.
I’ve been gaming on Debian (granted, with the backports kernel). What am I missing? Everything works and I’ve had zero issues.
The present-day Linux kernel tree (not the Debian guys) actually has a target to build a Debian kernel package (
make bindeb-pkg) straight out of git if you want, so you can pretty readily get a packaged kernel out of the Linux kernel git repo, as long as you can come up with a viable build config for it (probably starting from a recent Debian kernel’s config). I have run off Debian-packaged kernels built that way before, if you want to play on the really bleeding edge.Yep, been gaming on Ubuntu for decades. Zero issue. Occasionally have to do a thing, but it’s Linux, so you know; everything is always do able.
maybe youve always been using 2 year or older hardware *shrug
Debian and Ubuntu get packages and kernels upwards of 6 months late. If you run newer hardware, you need the most up to date drivers/kernel. Fedora and Arch just offer more bleeding/cutting edge releases.
I’m using Kubuntu LTS and I’m gaming just fine.
mint doesnt even offer kde, i dont see the point.
cant use gnome after realizing all the terrible usability choices/lack of customizability options is deliberate, people really will powertrip/gatekeep the weirdest shit
I think Zorin OS did a really good job at customizing Gnome to make it the way it should have been. As for limiting customizeability, I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by KDE’s customization options. Vanilla Gnome has too little. Zorin’s desktop is just right.
But that’s my opinion.
yeah i dont hate gnome users or even if i have to use gnome, but i do hate the conceptual approach to functionality they take, as you mention.
If you know what KDE is you can make an informed choice. Mint is the recommendation for people who just want something easy to get started with.
this touches on my point exactly. i find that due to the “over recommendation” of mint/cinnamon, that many new people will inevitably “waste time” with cinnamon. this is a feeling i have that frustrates me, is all. KDE is exactly as easy to get started with as is cinnamon.
anyway cheers :)
Exactly. I never see people actually liking Cinnamon as a DE, but everyone keeps recommending Mint. It’s so frustrating, and perplexing.
If Mint would just treat KDE as first class like it used to, I would be inclined to recommend it more often. Not as often as Fedora KDE — which has always seemed to have the best hardware support of all major distros — but at least I wouldn’t feel the need to fight people for recommending Mint to new users. Blindly recommending something as clunky and outdated as Mint and Cinnamon to new Windows expats is a great way to earn Linux a bad reputation just as things are looking up.
They can try Kubuntu (or whatever) live whenever they’re ready. Beginners just need something that works with minimal configuration.
kubuntu is trash. you have to wait forever for kde updates and not everyone wants to use ubuntu / derivatives. it just seems like everyone is so stubborn and just says mint. tons of distros “just work” out of the box with minimal configuration, even some based on arch.
really i only have one opinion here that im strong on, and its that i feel cinnamon is a waste of time for many (new people).
kubuntu is trash
That’s like… your opinion, man.
true
Cinnamon >>>>>>> KDE, you can install KDE regardless, but cinnamon is plainly better IMO.
Why is it better? KDE has more features and first-class Wayland support. If I wanted an X11 DE, I would choose XFCE because of its general clean code and performance.
it comes to personal preference i guess, but i find KDE clunky at times and not that ergonomic, even when you customize it a bit, like adding centre spaces to put things in the panels.
Cinnamon feels polished and relatively simple while still being highly customizable.
You’re not wrong. I think there’s definitely room for some improvements.
And sometimes too many customizations can become confusing. I tend to keep everything vanilla to avoid things breaking, except for a few things. I installed a Win 10 theme and even a Win 10 style Tile start menu because I love the concept so much.
I know it’s controversial in a Linux community, but I absolutely LOVED the Windows 10 ergonomics. Square, flat, predictable, and your eyes can quickly pick up the necessary information and you can navigate faster with a mouse. Plus with the Powertoys that added the fancy zones feature, that was perfect. I get all of this in KDE.
is reasonable to say, that W10, specially years ago, was one of the good windows, specially with a debloater.
there were a lot of shit in the middle but yeah, Cinnamon feels like “what if the windows desktop was made with love and passion”.
wdym by ergonomic in this context, may i ask?
you get to develop muscle memory faster, configurations are easier to find, and things start simple and become complex when you need them to get complex instead of always be kinda complex.
Also, I hate dolphin, it is quite bad, you can’t open files with sudo directly, you have to navigate trough various menus to find the button for that, is also harder to read IMO.
i think i explained it poorly, but i mean you get the hang of things faster, and usually stuff is where is more convenient for for them to be.
I don’t hate KDE, if Cinnamon wasn’t a thing, i would go for it, but as things stands now, I prefer cinnamon.
hey right on, appreciate the thoughtful reply. i cant say i share the same experience, but now i understand where youre coming from.
side note, im new(ish) to lemmy and im really appreciating the quality of the takes im seeing on here. refreshing feeling, so cheers to adding to that.
better how?
Bazzite is good now and you don’t have to spend hours trying to install Nvidia drivers
in linux mint there is a buton, that says “driver installer” you press on it, select what version (choose the recommended one) then press install.
I did not know that! I was thinking about my issues on Debian and assumed Mint had a similar process
if you use LMDE is still a bit easier because the sources are already added, “sudo apt install nvidia-driver” and then use the envy control program to configure it properly.
lol no. Completely failed to run 90% of my games and had audio popping no matter what I did with pulsewire or whatever. If a noob encounters that they’re never using Linux again.
how long ago was that? what GPU? what kernel version?
is something odd
see heres the problem, youre doing that in the wrong order.
first figure out your DE/WM preference, THEN choose a package manager with the repos that will best support that for your use case and update cycle preferences. (the distro)
It depends.
ok true
Choose a distro that supports upgrades between releases.
