hey nerds, I’m getting myself a new personal laptop as a treat, but I very much do not want windows 11 shitting it up. Is there a linux distro with caveman-compatible instructions for installation and use? I want to think about my OS as little as possible while actually using it.
I’ve got one friend who uses mint, but I’ve also seen memes dunking on it so who knows. I actually really only know what I’ve seen from you all shitposting in other communities
Fedora Silverblue. The family of Fedora Atomic desktops which Silverblue is one of brings almost unbreakable user oriented systems. Fedora Silverblue provides highly customizable via extensions Gnome Desktop experience, stability of an immutable OS, and a wide range of apps installable using Flatpak from Flathub.
Linux Mint.
+1
+1
I’ve done dozens of distros and Linux mint is the most familiar, unexciting, and stable one I have found. Ignore the hate. Real Linux fans don’t care how you participate in open source, other than being toxic. Consequently, do whatever you want and install whatever seems like it would be something you’d want to use.
Id highly suggest having a separate hard drive for Linux as it can be easy to break dual boot if you don’t know what you are doing. Last thing you want to do is panic and decide you need to reinstall Windows.
Mint gets dunked on for being slow and HDR variable refresh rate and Wayland is not on the cutting edge. Nobody hates it for being stable though.
Its also popular and easier to google issues for.
to be fair you can always remove gnome-keyring and it will go 20x faster. Found out the hard way. I wasn’t aware mint had it.
Huh; any idea why that, of all things, would slow everything down?
Linux Mint is one of the most common gateway drug for getting into linux.
It’s incredibly easy to set up and use. And it has plenty of resources if you ran into any issue.
- Mint
- Kubuntu
- Fedora KDE Edition
- OpenSuSE
- Pop!OS
These are all easy to use desktop distros (or variants). Use them with their respective default desktop environment. Check screenshots first or try them out in a VM or via live USB before installation, to see whether you like the look&feel.
Fedora’s KDE spin
I really hope more beginner distros switch to kde from GNOME. When I was first getting into linux and did not know about what a DE was, GNOME put me off from fully switching to linux and themeing it was hell with it not playing nice with qt applications, of course as a newbie i did not know what “qt” or “Gtk” was and did not understand at the time why some applications were not following theme.
while kde default is not pretty it can be anything you want it to look like and its easy to customize and plays nice with gtk applications. GNOME IS very customizable that you might even be able to make it into a usable desktop.
Came to say Fedora KDE is the way to go now. Stable, reliable, powerful and customizable.
When first coming from Windows, starting with Mint is the safest bet for a good transition because things will work pretty much as you expect them to, and there’s a very helpful forum if you have any questions. But I always say to try several distros and Desktop Environments to see how you like them. Everyone is different and it’s all a matter of preference.
I suggest that once you’ve got whatever distro you decided on up and running, install a virtual machine software such as Boxes (very simple) or Virtual Box (a little more complicated but with more options). Then just download various distros and make VMs for them to try them out easily. Have fun!
I use my laptop as a tool - no real idea how it works. If Linux nerds are mechanics then I’m just a taxi driver. Use mint. I do. Zero regrets. Caveman compatible.
You got a lot of distro recommendations from across the spectrum and it’s honestly hard to go wrong with any of them. It’s mostly a matter of preference. As such I’ll give you two pieces of advice:
- Set up a multi-boot flash drive (assuming you’re currently using Windows, YUMI is a great utility) so that your can try a bunch of them and see what jives with you most. A great feature of Linux installers is that you can actually run the entire OS, full-featured, from the ISO. So grab a whole slew of them, throw them on the flash drive, and spend some time taking them for a spin.
- Do your research on compatibility. Laptop makers often don’t make Linux drivers, so the latest hardware has compatibility problems until the community covers the gap. There are also some laptop manufacturers that have Linux in mind when they make their products, like System 76 and Framework.
Good luck! IMO getting into Linux for the first time is a fun journey. Enjoy it!
I just set up Nobara.
Shockingly straightforward.
Entire install process was very simple, with a GUI, then a neat little post install app that gives you another very straightforward GUI for running your first batch of system updates.
... Oh, and I was able to do this on a SteamDeck, without an external mouse or keyboard.
Nobara has a SteamDeck edition now.
The install process has a bit of Deck specific jank, basically i just had to change the screen UI scaling level from 175% to 100%, it defaulted to 175% when booting from the SD card i wrote the ISO to…
And then there’s a bit of jank doing initial updates off the ‘bare metal’ install, because the SteamKeyboard overlay thingy will prompt your admin password for a system access prompt… which will disable most of the SteamDeck inputs for everything other than Steam untill you input your password to allow it to work.
The work around I figured for this is… when that prompt comes up, you push the steam button and hamburger menu button on the physical deck until you get Steam in big picture mode.
Then your controls all work in Steam.
Then you close Steam.
Then your mouse works via trackpad on the desktop, but the X button to bring up the SteamKeyboard does not.
So then you open Steam again.
Now the SteamKeyboard does work, and you can type in your admin pass to the system access prompt.
I had to do this silly process a number of times through the initial set up 0.o
I eventually set Steam to not automatically launch itself, and now that all the updates have gone through, I just have to mouse (trackpad) over to manually open Steam when I am in desktop mode and then give Steam the admin pw for the keyboard to work… just once per desktop session now that its all set up.
Probably I also could have gone back into gaming mode and just bound a button to whatever button combo Nobara/Fedora uses as a shortcut to open the actual Nobara/Fedora virtual keyboard, but I could not figure out what this key combo actually is lol.
But uh if you’re just looking for an OS for a standard desktop PC, everything I’ve outlined in the above spoiler is not gonna be a problem, and you’ll likely have a very straightforward install process.
I’m also a fan of Nobara’s default UI… kind of a gnomeified KDE?
As well as its default apps, built in DeckyLoader and plugins for the Deck, ProtonPlus for runtime environments, and of course its built in kernel customizations/optimizations for to play vidya gaem.
Oh, and I went with Nobara over the default SteamOS because SteamOS on a Deck is a read only OS by default…
You can install flatpaks, but if you want to actually install new core packages, those will get wiped with a SteamOS update… or you have to use DistroBox… which may also get wiped on an update?
Not sure, but Nobara allowse to use the deck as both a Deck and a more standard desktop linux PC with more customizability… and not having to rely on the AUR, which I find incredibly frustrating.
Nobara is pretty painless. Fedora without having to dink with adding repos and fixing graphics drivers. A pile of built-in tweaks for making gaming work out of the box.
This is quite a rabbit hole you are getting yourself into, but to keep it short and relatively simple, you need to figure out something very important beforehand:
- Do you want a rolling release or a stable distro?
I’m assuming that, you are not yet familiar with these terms, so let’s go with the stable distros.
You have a lot of options here, most of them will all be based of Ubuntu, which is based in Debian, so let me drop a few generally good suggestions in no particular order:
- Linux Mint
- MX Linux
- ZorinOS
- PopOS
- Fedora, (This one is not a stable distro, but you should be good with it)
Either of these is a good starting point. If down the road you feel like they stop fitting your needs, start exploring the big three, (Debian, Fedora and Arch Linux).
Don’t want to think about your OS? Install Aurora. The hardest decision will be choosing your password. Install instructions are identical to any other Fedora installation. Auto updates to everything, never breaking system with bleeding edge software all the time. Superb documentation, zero maintenance, windows like desktop experience but better. That’s all.
I always recommend to beginners ElementaryOS. The name being coincidental. It is a relatively simple looking but very very elegant and polished interface. Give it a try.
Good old I can’t believe it’s not macos
Well, simple and clean appeals to people who don’t want to be overwhelmed. There’s a reason it’s pleasant.
I agree, elementary was the distro I stuck with longest before I settled on nix
Actual macos ux kinda sucks though in my opinion, when I’ve had to use a Mac I find it gets in my way half the time with the emoji picker pop up or something
Well, despite the fact that I’ve heard more than once that Elementary “looks like Mac” it’s really only the fact of having a dock on the bottom and a status bar on top. And the dock that ships with Elementary does not even zoom (it’s disabled due to some license issue). So I really don’t see it as resembling Mac except maybe to someone who has only ever seen Windows and Mac and only the one style. Thinks resemble other things in some ways sometimes. But it behaves nothing like Mac. I do find some of their choices rather disturbing like how there’s no minimize button. Immediately fixed by installing tweaks. That’s one of many great aspects of Linux: you can change what you don’t like.
Anyway, I usually recommend it because of its simplicity and elegance. You can just dive right in and use it, and likely accomplish whatever your ordinary work entails, and you don’t ever really have to fuss about with anything. The only reason I don’t use it myself is because I customize the shit out of all my tech. I have many widgets and such things to enhance efficiency and the variety of tools I use. So that’s why I’m on KDE Plasma. But if not for my customization I would honestly enjoy using ElementaryOS.
I also have a few touch-screens one on a hybrid notebook and one a Tpad. I have Pop!OS on the hybrid and a slightly older Ubuntu on the tpad. Gnome is a really good DE for touch interface. I really wish something truly touch would arrive, but I think because Android is so successful, nobody wants to try tackling that with straight up Linux. I can understand it, especially given the limited demographic I mean how many people would really make serious use of a touch Linux system? Too few to make it worthwhile. But the Tpad I use is a very slow device, relatively, and yet Ubuntu works quite smoothly on it. It’s prompt and responsive and does what I need out of it without any problem or noticeable latency.
I am quite happy with my main laptop which is a fairly new ASUS Zenbook. I’m running Kubuntu but I think pretty soon I may be changing over to plain ol’ Debian which is my favorite by far. I just need to be certain that all my hardware will function and it should, as it’s no longer brand new. But when I first got it, literally only the latest build of Ubuntu was properly seeing my audio device. Even 22.04 would not, it had to be 23 or 24 which had just come out.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on quite a bit. I think if builds like Elementary were more popular, it would be easier for newbies to take a stab at using Linux and it would be easier for folks like us to encourage others. I hate when someone I know has problem after problem with WinBlow$ 11 or 10, and I know that Linux would be just perfect. But they are scared of new and different. Even customization could be really offered and appealing if it were done with templates rather than so many little elements.
But, that being said, I’m happy that for the most part, when I interact with another Linux user, I can usually assume they’re savvy and understand what I’m talking about. I am glad that there’s no completely dumb-friendly distro, and I don’t think there should be. But simplicity is appealing to even the most clever of users if all they need to do is use and expect reliability. For shits sake Windoze just does a million things you never asked it to, because it serves a master other than you. It’s worth getting away from it for pretty much anything.
I dare you to install Gentoo
