I’m a windows loser looking to make the plunge into Linux. I was thinking of switching my gaming PC to Linux in the near future. Before I make up my mind, I’ll probably try out VMs of distros.

I’ve lurked a few Linux communities here and on lemmy.ml, some I’m gonna regurgitate some things I half remember in the hope of being being corrected and starting discussion about what I should be doing.

  • Ubuntu isn’t good
  • Mint is good despite being based on Ubuntu. Made with former windows users in mind
  • Debian is good because of their packages or package manager or something. Recently sold out, but there are spinoffs that don’t use proprietary software like Duvian.
  • Fedora seemed to get some good word but I can’t remember why.
  • Arch and it’s spinoffs require a shit ton of finagling to get right but can do a lot of cool things
  • There are different desktop environments like GNOME, Cinnamon, and … others? I honestly don’t know what a desktop environment is.
  • Wine (or the fork Proton) can run windows native games on Linux
  • There are snap, flat something or other, and … other ways for installing software.

I’m sure I’m missing a lot and got some things wrong. Any help getting started is appreciated.

Edit: I ended up going with a KDE plasma spin of Fedora 36. Once I figured out how to get the nvidia drivers set up it was smooth sailing.

  • ☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺
    6•2 years ago

    If I get something wrong please correct me.

    I am in your boat, I am getting back into linux after many many years away, and moving over to it as my daily driver. I chose for my main laptop Fedora XFCE, it took a little playing arround with but I got it how I like it pretty quickly.

    I do have a second older laptop I use regularly and I moved it from Kubuntu to Manjaro XFCE, I chose manjaro over XFCE because Manjaro worked with the network card better.

    Debian has from what I understand the most packages and is the most used still I believe. It is also what I knew best, well its off shoots, Ubuntu, Zorin ect.

    Desktop enviroments are what runs on the OS, if you use an android phone it is like your launcher. I personally use XFCE, it is basic, and if you dont play arround with it a a little it can be a little like Windows XP. I have also used KDE Plasma and GNOME, I am not a personal fan of GNOME but that is a personal prefrence and lots of people love it

    If I understand this correctly Snaps come from the company behind Ubuntu, and are really only popular in Ubuntu, Flatpak will work on any distribution, there is also your package manager, For ubuntu that is APT for Fedora that is DNF and I think YUM still aswell.