A lot of distro recommendation threads focus on the questions that novices think are important, but leave out the questions people would have after experiencing the differences (things that distro-hoppers might ask). As such, answers vary between “use _____, I found it very user friendly” and “use whatever, you can turn any distro into any other, and tweak it to your needs.”
What are some questions that newbies should ask when deciding on which distro to use as the basis for their system. Things like “what package manager suits my needs and how do I try out different ones without changing distros?” Or “what is a desktop environment/window manager, and how do I figure out which suits me?” Or “how does an init system affect my user experience as a newbie?” Or “how what are the choices made by such-and-such distro during install?”
Bonus points for also answering the questions you propose (I don’t have answers, picked a distro and stuck with it)
Here’s my main questions:
- What brand of graphics card do you have?
- Do you primarily want to play games?
- Do you want to tinker?
- Do you prefer the look/feel of Windows or MacOS?
While most distros support Nvidia cards, manually updating the drivers via CLI is a pain, especially the first time when things randomly break and it takes you 4 hours going through Ubuntu forums to find the answer because you don’t know what to ask. For new Linux users, always direct them to a distro with Nvidia drivers baked in.
If they want to primarily game, I’d recommend pointing them to a distro with gaming optimizations and pre-installed gaming packages. This narrows it down to CachyOS, SteamOS, Bazzite, or Nobara. If they mainly want a PC to do work, I’d recommend Mint or Fedora.
If they don’t want to tinker, I’d recommend Mint, Bazzite, or SteamOS, depending on what their previous choices are. If they are fine with tinkering, or at least have the option open for a particular edge case they have, then I’d recommend the other Distros.
Look and feel would determine which desktop environment to go with. Many of the above distros have multiple options, and thankfully CachyOS supports all common DE’s.
While not every combination of choices is supported, you can get close enough to prioritize one factor over another to get a happy compromise.
PS, I personally wouldn’t recommend Nobara, but I’d still include it in a list with a precaution. It works, it’s my current distro. There’s a couple minor annoyances than can be mostly avoided, such as the default “Nobara” theme having global menus enabled by default. If someone was really interested in Nobara I’d try to nudge them towards CachyOS with KDE, but it’s best not to push people too hard if their heart is set
What are some questions that newbies should ask when deciding on which distro to use as the basis for their system?
Do I want to get rid of windows without too much hassle?
- Yes? →
Linux Mint - No? →
Linux Mint
Once you’re used to
Linux Mint cinnamon, you can start hopping to other DEs like KDE, Gnome 3, Cosmic or XFCE.
And then once you’re used to that, you can hop to other distros.I absolutely hate that Linux Mint doesn’t come with KDE anymore.
It’s an otherwise brilliant newbie distro, but I feel it would feel limiting and outdated to many, featuring Cinnamon or XFCE.
Typically, this kind of anecdotal n00by nonsense accompanies newer, less heard of distros. There’s plenty of bitching and legit gripes about Mint filling forums nowadays.
At first I wanted to disagree. But honestly, the more I think about it, you are right.
- Yes? →
Just use Fedora ¯\(ツ)/¯
Newbies will ask stupid questions, that’s not their fault.
The people answering should know better than to answer with their favorite distros.
The correct answer is “pick a popular one and don’t worry about the differences, you’re too inexperienced to notice them anyway.”
I second this. Linux by its nature is very customizable. Once you start asking about it you’re entering the rabbit hole. There’s no way to help someone navigate that if they don’t know what they want – and they wouldn’t, yet, as a beginner.
So I know that recommending the same handful of distros to beginners is trite and has been done do death… but really it’s all you can do until they get a bit more accustomed to the culture, and the community, and they see what’s possible and so on.
As a counterexample look at the people holding on to Windows for dear life and how little weight any Linux suggestion carries with them. You can’t get through to someone who doesn’t want to hear it.
my balance (using 1-7 scales) is
- 2
- 5 (for security, but would be 6 for privacy)
- 1
- 5
Arch Linux it is, then 😋
I’d say picking a desktop environment is the most important question you should make. Then, after that, pick a rolling release or something with a short release schedule (Fedora for example), because for most people, LTS doesn’t matter, and you’ll have a worse experience having old packages.
https://distrofighter.com/ A dumb but fun way to pick both
While old packages do ruin experiences, stuff changing too rapidly can as well.
Arch as well as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed are good examples at this.
This is it exactly. For a typical new user the things that make them bounce are, in order:
- The difficulty of writing a bootable USB stick and partitioning their drive for installation.
- Hardware support, mouse/keyboard, video, wifi, audio, and webcam being most important for most people.
- A familiar feeling desktop environment.
- An easy to use package installer GUI
The whole discussion of things like immutable, deb, rpm, systemd, Wayland vs x11, etc are somewhere between meaningless and a scary sounding distraction for normal people who are fed up with MS/Apple and thinkng about trying something else.
LTS doesn’t matter, and you’ll have a worse experience having old packages
I’d say the opposite it true. Up to date packages doesn’t matter for most people but having to upgrade to a new release can be a hurdle for people.
I have yet to see a decent explainer on things like VMs, docker, flatpacks, etc. all in one place/article.
What are you looking for in that article?
I’m not sure I’d be a good reference for what should be in the article as my life has been… unusual, to say the least. I used to be quite techy, albeit mostly self-taught. A couple decades ago my life changed dramatically & took me away from all that. Now I’d like to play some catch-up, but still don’t really have the time, budget, and now brain power for it (older ADHD sufferer).
I mean I can still remember some random basics like a minimal TCP/IP understanding, my fingers still have some muscle memory on using a *NIX shell (tcsh in SCO UNIX, to show my age) & vi (supplanted by vim now), etc. I was just getting into VMs when shit went down, so I get the basics there. But I don’t fully understand what exactly docker, flatpacks, snaps, etc. are, their differences, advantage to each, etc.
And don’t get me started on init - I cannot fathom what a monolithic systemd provides that is so much better than traditional startup systems that it was worth breaking the UNIX philosophy of small, simple programs dedicated to singular tasks for.
But like I said, my situation is kinda unique so I don’t expect to find much info targeting former techies who effectively may as well have been in a coma for over 20 years. But some explainers that get to the point of all that’s come along in that time without treating me as if I’m clueless would be nice.
ETA: and no, I wasn’t in prison, or anything like that. Just stuff happened that severely screwed me up.
I think if someone asks for a recommendation without specific requirements or background the answer is always Mint.
my hot take is that a distro at the end of the day is just a package manager and an install script.
the question i would ask is: what do you want out of your package manager?
this would be an odd question for your given non-Linux user because their package manager before was called “fuck it YOLO”.
i’ll go through some that i use or have used.
apt/rpm/etc: stable. designed for the Linux of the 90s. uptime is king. i end up using these usually out of network effects. some popular package uses it in their Docker file or my VPS only supports these. they’re boring, but that’s on purpose. updates are purposeful and vetted (relatively). these are your Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc flavors.pacman: seriously just a great design philosophy imo next to the others. rolling release. no versions. fix forward. also with the AUR, you get your “fuck it YOLO” packages back in a way that they can actually be maintained, updated, or nuked as appropriate. if you ever caught yourself waiting for a CUDA release onapt, this is for you. Arch, Manjaro,… i think there’s a ton of vibe coded configs that all pretty much amount to Arch.nix(/maybeguix?): a software engineer’s package manager. everything is declarative, reproducible, and version controllable. what was that thing i installed last weekend? it’s in the commit log. need 3 different C compilers/graphic drivers/toolchain dependencies installed? handled by the OS, and cleaned up when those versions change. this is my current rig cuz it helps me keep a bunch of machines in sync for my home projects.Gentoo and LFS and anything else would be a bit much.
I’ve been using Chimera linux recently (coming from Arch), and APK v3 is so good. It is so fucking fast and it’s dependency management is next level. Also the world file is really cool. Pacman felt more powerful in some ways, but a bit slower and more cumbersome. I also have had it just remove dependencies that another package still needs, and optional dependencies aren’t handled as cleanly.
Putting aside the question, the answer is that they should use upstream or Mint. There are basically no exceptions.
I’d say distro choice for newbies should probably come down to the following questions:
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What are you using Linux for / what device will it go on? A desktop distro is very different from distros for servers, or single board devices like Raspberry Pi. Also even for a desktop, a modern PC versus an older device changes things up too.
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Which desktop do you like the look of the most? If you like the look of KDE, go for something KDE based like OpenSuSE or Kubuntu or Fedora KDE spin. If it’s Gnome then Fedora, or Ubuntu or OpenSuSE Gnome. If you want something windows like and straight forward, then Linux for Cinnamon. If you want something newer then Pop_Os! for Cosmic
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What kind of release schedule? Do you want something stable and robust; big well tested upgrades every few years but otherwise just something very reliable - then go for Debian. Want something cutting edge with all the latest packages then go for a rolling release distro like OpenSuSe or Fedora or Arch based distros.
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How popular do you want it to be for support? If you want to have lots of simple advice and tutorials then maybe go for something thats been widely popular like Mint or popular and around for a long time like Debian. If you want a technical challenge but with good documentation then go for Arch. Otherwise most mainstream distros will have support or you can learn to turn generic advice to your chosen distro.
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Does the distro’s ethos or location matter to you? If not then go by other factors. Location generally doesn’t matter too much, but if it does to you (e.g. such as the legal system the orgs are under governance with), then maybe for European distros like Mint, or OpenSuSe. If you don’t mind American based then maybe Fedora. etc. Similarly ethos - free software only vs proprietary software.
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I’m not sure newbies should be dealing with package manager choices. Package manager is secondary to DE useability.
I’d say, don’t even ask questions about the distro. Instead ask: what do you want to do? Make it an exhaustive list! There are few distros that cannot do what most people want them to do. 🙃
The only questions you really need to ask when picking a distro are which one aligns best with your effort, skill and preferences. To begin with prior to using any distro, those are very low and basic, so you want to start with a low effort quick and easy introduction to Linux. Start with a live distro to play around with. Then decide how much hand holding you need from there to choose which distro you actually want to commit to at the start. Then after weeks or months on that first distro, you will figure out what you like and dislike, which will guide your choices to move to the next distro. To begin with is all about learning and experimenting.
