If this is in the wrong community let me know, but I have been away from linux for a little while now, and I have decided to come back to it. I am trying to figure out what Distro and Desktop environment I should use.
I used to use Ubuntu and, Ubuntu based Distributions, though for various reasons I had bad experiences with the ones based down stream of Ubuntu, I have also heard that Ubuntu is no longer nearly as good as they where before. As for desktop Experences, I never really liked Gnome. That being said from what I can tell there has been quite a bit that has changed sense I left, and any recommendations would be much appreciated.
No matter what I try, I always end up back on Mint, with Cinnamon desktop. It just seems to require the least amount of fuss and configuration to set up and get comfy in. In the past, I enjoyed Fedora, and I did use Manjaro for awhile when for some reason, it was the only distro I could get to install on my aliexpress minipc.
I use plain debian with cinnamon in one of my VMs. Can’t complain.
actually had to unblacklist the wifi driver and you need to modify apt sources and add non-free. you can also make it a rolling release that way
That’s cool. I can see myself ending up there actually.
How hard is Debian to set up? I have heard it is a bit of a pain to do
The graphical installer is more or less like any other… (It let’s you pick a DE like Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE4, etc…) The difficulty is with enable’ing non-free packages. Go to /etc/apt/sources.list and add non-free to the repo lines. That should be it but don’t be afraid to ask.
After you do that it should be about as usable as the other debian distros but without the bloat and bs. I’ve been using it to run my wallets, play steam games, etc.
debian is easy to set up imo. There is a graphical install if that helps
I think it’s useful to install the “non-free” Debian because then you can configure WiFi easily
I was using Mint with Cinnamon for a long time. But after learning about the AUR I moved to Manjaro Cinnamon and now I can’t believe how complex was installing everything on Mint by comparison.