I’d rather someone’s first choice about Linux was which DE to use. This plays a way bigger part in first impressions.
The obvious choice is KDE, ofcI totally agree, that’s a way more important factor when you’re starting out with Linux.
Gotta be Gnome thoughThat’s a strange way to spell Xfce.
Maybe you misheard LXQT?
DEs are clearly bloat, so the best DE is no DE.
Definitely not just because I prefer i3I used to be a huge Plasma evangelist. At first I hated it, the old versions I mean. You just moved the mouse pointer the wrong way and your whole DE was fucked. Too many options and settings. But KDE 5 changed my world. Stable and lighter than Gnome, but still fully configurable. Last night I switched to Debian 12, Gnome. Maybe I’m getting old, but I’m loving it. I don’t tinker with my DEs that much anymore. Just a couple Gnome extensions and I was good to go.
KDE is lighter than GNOME? In my experience GNOME uses slightly less resources.
DE? WM!
ctwm rocking along nicely since last centuryWhatever, I always say, use what you want when you want to dive into things. When you don’t want to dive into things, use either IOS when you can afford it or Windows. (As long as they don’t expect help with the last 2 ;) )
The arrangement of Start menu hardly matters. Virtual desktops are indispensable though. And I can restart crashed Plasma in 35 seconds.
Maté is awesome
You missed the step where you tell everyone what distro you use, and that its the best.
Five minutes after you installed it and haven’t tried anything else.
I feel personally attacked lol
HaHa Same
I use Mint, btw
I use SteamOS btw
(Which is arch based meaning… I use arch btw lol)
Otherwise Debian stable is my go-to set it and forget it server OS
Needing to feel superior is meaningless. Feeling just in your distro decisions is something you can only give to yourself when you are honest. If I need to shame your decisions based on your needs, I know I am doing something wrong and I need to distro hop. I should feel self sufficient in my choices, and so should you. I encourage your distro usage and hope you master it enough to suit your needs.
Searched, not googled. Google is bad, M’kay?
Reference
Drugs are bad, M’kay? Don’t do drugs.
me and the boys out here still asking Jeeves
Fellow old fart detected.
Fellow old fart detected.
Just ddg-it
Just duck it.
Brave it
Hannah Montana Linux is the best distro! It leaves out all those newfangled things like Wayland, GNOME 3, SysVInit and gives you Hannah Montana.
newfangled… SysVInit
You mean systemd? Cause SysVInit was created in 1991 based on Unix System V from 1983. Which means it’s literally older than Miley Cyrus.
Frankly i don’t know much about Linux. I was looking for some boot programs and i thought SysVInit was one of the newer ones after systemd. My gf uses Void Linux and it has some boot program that is supposedly less bloated than systemd.
Void uses runit. Small, simple and ~20yrs old.
I’m personally a huge fan of Red Star OS.
It’s the best Linux distro and only the best OS is enough for our glorious leader Kim Jong-Un! I heard he has the nuclear launch button integrated right into GNOME 2.
What if I don’t want to use whatever I want? What if I want my distro forced upon me?
I’ve decided that you have to use Slackware
Thank you sir. May I have another?
Yes, you have to use Softlanding Linux System. You can’t go back to Slackware
Thank you sir. May I have another?
You must use all these systems as VMs under Proxmox
No
Lfs
It’s been a long time since I’ve played around with Slackware, wonder how it’s doing lately. Might need to find an extra machine to throw it on.
Lmao of all possible choices you went with that xD based
Wow, 1.3 was fun, as was RedHat 4.2 (guessing,. version on infomagix nov '95 CD set, can’t find it now). Most fun though was kicking them off and dumping Debian on there early '96. (yeah,
fan boylazy admin that doesn’t want re-installs for major upgrades)Lol, this is exactly what happened to me
Install Gentoo
the ultimate beginner’s distro, it’s a great start before moving on to something complicated like mint
Oddly, Gentoo was where I started out when I got serious about using Linux. That was when I was in my 20’s and I wanted to get every last bit of performance out of my computer. Also, breaking stuff was fun and gave me a chance to figure new stuff out.
Now I just want stuff to work and be relatively up to date. So I use Debian testing.
I’ve found a good compromise between the two. I’ve disabled most of the desktop profile USE flags and I compile everything with -Ofast and LTO
Portage errors are uncommon, and build failures are easily fixed by disabling compilation flags from package.env. Build failures get less and less common as package.env grows (it’s currently at about 20 lines)
As for the kernel, I just started with a distribution kernel, disabled all modules and only enabled the ones that I need (this can automatically be done with
make localmodconfig). These modules are built-in (solsmodusually returns nothing)I chose systemd because of the huge increase in boot speed
Compiling everything with LTO landed me in a situation where a bunch of packages fail to build because apparently having some LTO’d static libraries can cause issues.
I’m now going to start investigating where exactly the issue is. Trouble is, the package that was giving me errors, depended on a whole lot of static libraries, soooooo… Good luck to me.
Being an ultra-madlad, I used to also -ffast-math everything that didn’t fail, but because I didn’t know about
package.envyet, I found it easier to just keep it off rather than turning it off and on again every time I needed to emerge something that failed because of it.apparently having some LTO’d static libraries can cause issues
Yeah, I think I’ve had that problem once or twice. I think I found the culprits by disabling all build flags for libraries that seemed related, rebuilding them, running
emerge @preserved-rebuildand then repeating the process to narrow it downdmesg and PFL help with diagnosing crashes due to libraries, but I don’t think that would help here
If it helps, here’s my package.env:
# Build failures app-emulation/wine-vanilla noflto O3 sys-apps/groff O3 dev-lang/rust noflto dev-lang/python O3 sys-auth/polkit O3 sys-libs/libomp noflto sys-libs/compiler-rt noflto net-libs/nodejs O3 dev-lang/duktape O3 x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel noflto # Runtime failures gnome-extra/cjs noflto O3 sys-devel/llvm noflto
What a madlad
If beginner, use PopOS.
If Linux nerd, use Arch.
That’s my guide. I don’t like any other distros. :)
I started with Ubuntu and then migrated to Arch. I learned a ton about Linux and how tune everything for optimal performance!
…And then I went back to Ubuntu because I just want to work with my computer, not on it.
Yeah many people say that but Ubuntu is not very good in my opinion. Outdated packages, snaps, commercials in the installer and so on. I would pick PopOS any day over that myself. But it’s because I’m really sensitive to those things.
Yeah, I honestly agree that Ubuntu is getting worse. For better or worse though, it’s a base that I’m familiar with. I end up customizing and tweaking it, but I’ve automated enough of that to where I can just run a few scripts on a fresh install and be back up and running.
Basically, I built myself a shittier, highly specific version of Nix in self-defence. 😁
What about using Nobara for a guy who used Linux Mint and PopOS! ?
Dumb move?
No, absolutely not dumb at all. I have tried almost all Linux distros myself over the years, and ran them for a while. It’s fun. And maybe you like this one and stick with it.
Either way you will learn new things just by trying it.
Great! I’m looking forward to testing it, seem a great distro that comes with many Linux gaming stuff ready. I just wanna check if it is that good, cos I was impressed once I read it’s only one guy maintaining this whole project
I started with Pop_OS then switched toto manjaro and now again switched to Pop
It really is the best system for new people using Linux. Everything is so smooth and nice. Looking forward to the new cosmos desktop that is coming. :)
Okay, but when most people are looking for advice on which distro to use it’s because they don’t know what they want.
Yeah, this meme is mostly to poke fun at the people who genuinely think that Linux Mint is only for beginners or you have to switch to Arch or whatever else, that kind of crowd.
I’m a little bit tempted to try and make an actual flowchart with distro recommendations since I’ve used and like most of the major ones at this point, but there are better resources out there than what I could contribute.
Linux mint is the sort of distro newbies start with and long time linux users retire to after theyve explored the distro multiverse.
Hmm I don’t see arch on here it must’ve gotten cropped
yeah that’s my bad, here’s a corrected version
Perfection.
yeah that’s my bad, here’s a corrected version
“use Arch btw”
The endgoal: Linux from scratch.
The two things that matter when choosing a distro - package managers and desktop environment/window manager. And even then, universal package managers like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage can provide a substitute for the package managers.
Even DE doesn’t really matter, as you can change that. And if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself, most major distros have versions available with all major DE options, or let you pick during the install process.
I was trying to find what ran best, while still being usable, on a cheap mini pc I picked up and installed a bunch. I simply picked my DE from a drop-down menu on the login screen.
Which distro should you pick? -> openSUSE tumbleweed
I literally just switched to openSUSE yesterday because I’m trying out an Intel Arc GPU for a bit and wanted more recent packages than Fedora offers to give it the best chance possible. Gotta say…it’s really good. Once I’m done testing the Intel card, I don’t think I’ll be switching back.
The distro itself is pretty good, but the repos are missing many packages, and it can get pretty frustrating.
You can use opi to install packages from packman repo and open build service. It has pretty much everything.
I was a huge distro hopper until I started using immutable distros. One thing no one tells beginners is that you do have to maintain your system more on Linux than other OSs because Linux gives you the rope to hang yourself with. I would always bloat my OS and things would get unruly, everything would slow down or become unstable and I would lose track of how I had everything set up. Immutability make things so much cleaner.
Sums up what I did
Mainstream choice? Raspbian it is
I was going to joke about compatibility, but apparently there is a version of Raspberry Pi OS for desktops…huh, TIL
