Mint, judge me
PS anyone have any favorite resources for absolute tech illiterate noobs? I’m trying, but without a baseline understanding of the subject, it’s hard to find the right guides
you’re not using debian? that must mean you hate freedom.
My advice is to get a hobby. Self-hosting, or home automation to name a few examples. When you have a specific goal for something you want to do, it’s a lot easier to learn.
First half has the actual advice
Literally the most suggested newbie distro, so you’re probably fine :)
Like, ideologically I may mention it’s Ubuntu-based so it sucks, but from end user perspective, it’s alright.
Doubling down on literacy, Linux guides are either “here’s how to do that absolutely basic thing” or “using veheydgvrl for quantumschropping the badumbliss”. To me, Mental Outlaw produced quite some simple guides (warning: most vids are rants so you’ll have to search for actual guides), Veronica Explains might be the fun option and not bloated with anything but tech, and just searching for solutions to whatever your issue is before you grasp how it works.
They have a debian based version, it’s pretty awesome. It’s still a beta fork atm, but it’s rock solid so far
Yep, true. But currently, I don’t see much point in LMDE, as Debian 12 is user-friendly enough as it is - though you’re free to disagree.
Mint is a very nice starting distro tbh, it was my first too!
What exactly are you trying to do?
That’s the thing, I don’t know enough to know what to even ask. So far I’ve been able to follow step-by-step instructions for installing Mint and downloading software, but I don’t know what I’m doing at all.
One example of something I spent hours on is adding Cura to the panel. I finally got that done while I was writing this comment by following AndyMH’s answer here.
Now, I can read
I would move the appimage into a folder in PATH. If you create a folder /home/you/bin it is automatically added to PATH next time you boot.
And I can do that. I have no idea what PATH is or why I want to do that, but I can do it. And I can look it up, and I’m sure I’ll eventually get to a point where all of this makes sense to me, but I feel kind of helpless when I have to look up multiple terms every time I want to do something as simple as adding an application to the panel
That’s the thing, I don’t know enough to know what to even ask.
Fair enough.
I have no idea what PATH is or why I want to do that, but I can do it
Its really only for non standard installs. That is outside of the package manager or flatpak.
PATHis just where the computer will look for executables. Since you installed from source or some other side then it won’t be in the normal/bin. You’re just updating yourPATHto include other places.
This may be shit advice, but it may help.
I have a mint laptop and was also linux illiterate when I started. The way I did most of my learning was by googling (or duckduckgo-ing) “How do I [x] linux mint” and reading through stack overflow threads. If this doesn’t return results, (almost) any solution for Debian or Ubuntu will work on Mint.
In general, I just assumed that if I thought the computer could do it, there would be a way to do it.
Mint is the shit! The only reason I don’t use it is because they don’t have a native KDE version. If they ever do, I plan on going right back Mint.
Depends on what you’re wanting to learn. I’m a fellow tech illiterate noob, but I’ve been off and on with Linux since like 2006. Finally switched full time a few years ago. Honestly, with Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora I’ve found you basically can just set it and forget it, depending on your use case. YouTube has been my best friend whenever I have a problem, normally I type my issue into that before even google. How long have you been using Linux? If you’re still in the distro hopping phase,I suggest trying to swap Desktop environments instead of distros, as it gives you a little experience with the terminal, is well documented on how to do it, and gives you a good idea of what kind of UI you want
That’s all I got, though. I really am pretty illiterate at tech stuff haha
The best one, of course
Of course! There is nothing like Hannah Montana Linux! 😌
Nuh uh, obviously its AmogOS
Hannah Montana Linux
That was one of the first distros to support Wayland, so it has my begrudging respect.
This is great. Just to let you know, whatever decision you make is wrong. Cheers!
Still works though!
Why?
The only people who hate Linux users more than windows and Mac users are Linux users who think you chose the wrong distro
I’ve always felt good about using Ubuntu and derivatives. I get their opinions and they have some good points, but I’m not sure why I’d let that change my flow.
Because Ubuntu sucks! 👎 Here’s a list of why:
-
Snaps = 👹
-
Ads in start menu (they did this before Winblows!)
-
Unity is sooo fucking slow and stupid. That dumbass bar of most used apps always present taking up screen space 🙉
-
Canonical doesn’t give a shit what users want🖕
But the most important part is that I really don’t care. I don’t use your computer. You do. So use whatever the 🔥hell🔥 you want. Use a version of Winblows 🪟 themed to look like Arch 🤭, wallpaper and all👌, then post screenshots on the Internet about your superiority 💪.
Live how you want! And if someone shames you for it, kick them out of you life 😎
-
Because there’s always going to be someone who says the distro you liked the most is not the distro you should be using. (I use Arch btw)
Arch is unstable and time-consuming to maintain, and should never be reasonably used as anything but upstream for something usable, you’re wrong!
Jk, you do you :)
Because of in-fighting.
Linux Mint. Cinnamon. With a Windows Vista theme. It confuses and/or irritates everyone who sees it.
I was going to go Mint/Cinnamon, but now I’m going to more.
I’m using the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper on my Fedora PC at work. I’ve had a few people ask about it haha. Most of the company uses Macs.
kde has some impressive windows themes that are REALLY convincing
LDME/Cinnamon
What’s it called?
Windon’t
Linux does what Windont?
^ this ^
Screw that You’re all great everybody from slackware to steam deck.
Slack where?
Slack there!
Slack where?
Slack here!
Slack there?
Slack here!
Slack there?
to steam deck.
to SteamOS
Steam Deck is weird. I mean, I love it, but coming from vanilla Arch it can be frustrating at times. Discover is terrible. Luckily, Distrobox is a thing.
I putz with Discover sometimes. Though I have no idea how it resolves package updates under the hood, as it often will produce a different manifest than running dnf itself.
What would you like to see improved?
I usually can’t find what I’m looking for, so a larger catalogue would go a long way. I also had problems with some software versions. The one that comes to mind is that Firefox had behavior with the save dialogue that I don’t like. It’s a minor issue, but one that I don’t have with the build in the Arch repo. I have a vague memory of something just not working, but I couldn’t tell you what at this point.
Ah, I see! Yeah, a bigger catalog would be nice. You can add more repositories to it, enable Flathub, which provide more options, but something about it does feel hamstrung.
The Firefox thing is something I know about! You can set a config option in the
about:configpage to tell Firefox to use your desktop’s standard dialogue. It has to do with XDG Desktop specifications, I think
The one that does what I need it to do on the device I’m running it on. I’ve currently got four different Linux distros on x86 PCs around my house at this moment.
ChromeOS
Openbsd
So going off the chalice in the movie, the distro that will save you from judgment is the plainest one – the one with the least bloat? That tracks.
“the cup of a
carpentercoder”Is this going to be Arch or Debian?
Debian.
That’s just what I was going to say - that will either be Arch or Debian…
More like Alpine or something else without systemd. I mean no shade (well, a bit of shade) since I’ve got Fedora myself. Alpine doesn’t even have glibc IIRC.
Can you explain why everyone hates systemd
I started and still work in rhel
I think it is breaking the Unix philosophy, it is an enormous piece of code that does so many different things. My ideal is smaller components with smaller dependencies. When distros or software becomes inextricably dependent on systemd they are then beholden to whichever direction the maintainers take it.
My take on it is somewhat based on “what if.” Other people have some pragmatic discussions on security aspects if you search around.
I’m not a systemd guru, but I do find it relatively easy to work with.
I’ve noticed that a lot of it is actually made up of separate binaries and daemons. Is it wrong or misleading to think of systemd as a collection of utilities that share a common DSL as opposed to a strict monolith?
Is it really a choice?
TEMPLEOS
I use arch, err nixos/nix on macOS btw. Do I win or have I made the Linux nerds angy?
Possibly a perfect use of this.
Hannah Montana FTW
RebeccaBlackOS > Hannah Montana Linux
It’s Saturday not Friday
I recently installed Manjaro. It works for my games right now
I highly recommend avoiding manjaro like the plague, their team is incredibly incompetent (see: https://manjarno.pages.dev/ ), I say this as someone who has given people manjaro for years and regretted it, I was also their it person, manjaro regularly broke every few months and gave people a very bad taste of linux
for example, why are kernels given version numbers in packages? This caused 3 separate peoples computers to break multiple times. Everything good about manjaro comes from arch, everything bad about manjaro comes from the manjaro team.
Y’know how it’s not rolling release because they delay packages by 2 weeks? They actually do no testing in this time. How do I know this? They pushed an update that caused steam to uninstall your desktop environment. Famously covered by linus tech tips… this is something that should have easily been caught, and yet the two week window did absolutely nothing.
the truth is for manjaro there is no real usecase, there’s no set of desires that align with manjaro being the best choice for you. I am not asking you to switch away from manjaro, but I do not think we should ever recommend it to anyone, and on your next machine, I recommend trying the arch installer.
But if what you’re looking for is an easy pre-setup arch, use endeavoros
If you want something simple and up to date, use fedora kinoite
If you’re a power user and want to configure every little thing about their system, use arch or nixos
If you don’t care at all about updates and want the most rock solid system possible, debian.
If openSUSE Slowroll wasn’t experimental I’d recommend it in place of Manjaro. It’s a rolling release with monthly releases.
I really like Tumbleweed. Sure it updates a lot, but it doesn’t force updates so you can take it at your own pace.
SUSE’s Open Build Service absolutely rules, too. I use Fedora personally, but would switch to Tumbleweed any day. I’ve gone back and forth, eventually settling on Fedora only because of familiarity with Red Hat.
There are things I miss, big one being Zypper. It’s slow as balls but it’s usability and ability to dig through packages is unmatched, in my opinion.
This is why you just fucking lie and say “Arch btw”
Or just suck it up and learn Arch and never worry about the incredibly minor differences in distros
Whichever one you chose is the wrong one!
This is the only right answer
Whichever one you choose is the right one!
list one problem with Gentoo?
One of the main reasons I’ve stayed on the sidelines. Lol
Every time I get close, I read about something else screwy.
lol, just try one for a few months and then switch at some point. At one point in my life I was switch distros every two weeks to a months with some stable distro for 3-6 months. But it was an exciting time in 2004-201. Lot of variety back then on how a distro worked
Put any distro in front of me and provided I don’t need to master it, I’m good. Ubuntu is fine. Debian is fine. RedHat is fine. Fedora is fine. I even have a tiny low-end system that is using Bohdi. Whatever. We’re all using mostly the same kernel anyway.
90% of what I do is in a container anyway so it almost doesn’t matter; half the time that means Alpine, but not really. That includes both consuming products from upstream as well as software development. I also practically live in the terminal, so I couldn’t care less what GUI subsystem is in play, even while I’m using it.
mint.
Ooookay, this will get controversial.
Proud Manjaro/Debian user!
- Ubuntu and derivatives suck because of Canonical and their practices
- Fedora sucks because of Red Hat
- OpenSUSE sucks because RPM (why?!) and still SUSE (but they’re the best of the three)
- Rest is exotic and obscure
So we end up with Arch and Debian. Debian 12 is good enough as is, and runs on a work laptop where I don’t care about anything but stability. Arch is respectable and great, but requires excessive maintenance to work properly. Among its derivatives, Endeavour is just a nicer archinstall (so, why?), Garuda is cool but unstable and too gamer’y, Manjaro is a bit problematic at times but generally the safest bet when it comes to Arch. So, when it comes to my main PC doubling as a gaming rig, this is a no-brainer.
this will get controversial
In a linux community? Im shocked, shocked!
Normally when people hear Manjaro, hell breaks loose :D
Apparently folks here are a lot more chill about it
What did you not like about EndeavourOS?
The fact that it adds too little to Arch to be seen as a separate entity. And I don’t want to run mainline Arch. It requires too much maintenance to work with it properly, and every update is a bit of a gamble on what’s gonna break next - unless you spend solid time reading notes to every update.
I have been using both distros in the last 5 years and Manjaro was way more problematic to me than Arch, TBH. The Linux Experiment created a video with some of the big issues of Manjaro BTW. That said, this is no war, everyone can enjoy their favourite distro. Whatever works best for each of us.
Yeah, I am aware of some of those controversies, and they sure are unfortunate!
However, it’s really, really hard to find a well-supported distro free of controversies. Still doesn’t excuse Manjaro on that front.
I personally did not test Arch for such a long time, but what I had I certainly didn’t like. Also, full barebones approach is not for me, and more of an enthusiast kind of thing. So, to each their own indeed!
I didn’t like that it doesn’t have a graphical software manager like Manjaro
Mint where?
Lol
See Ubuntu and derivatives
LMDEEEE
Lol, fair, fair! :D
But really, I just see no point for myself when there’s Debian 12 already. I’ve always seen LMDE as a backup of sorts, so that the community would remain should Ubuntu really screw it for everyone. Or if you’re Cinnamon maximalist, they have everything as polished as possible for that (but generally you can easily have Cinnamon on mainline Debian)
I myself am KDE fanboy, though :)
Just curious does anyone actually care about what distro people use or more just a meme?
In real life not at all, online though it ranges from friendiy banter to elitist peeps bickering about package managers, those guys can be ignored.
There are a not insignificant number of people in the Linux community who feel that the more user friendly focused distros are for “beginners” and the distros that less so are for “experts” and there is a lot of elitism and gatekeeping that goes along with that sentiment. In reality they’re all running the Linux kernel so they’re all equally valid options. Use what works best for you and ignore the chuds who try to tell you otherwise.
Definetely a meme at least among my friends and coworkers. Just a friendly banter akin to prefering console vs pc or supporting one sports team rather than the other
The only time I’ve encountered people that care a little too much about what distro is being used, is right after having transitioned to Linux; the sheer liberating potential of the thing can make you lose your head.
I’ve come across a lot of professional bias about Linux distros, but that’s usually due to real-world experience with tough or bad projects. Some times, decisions are made that make a given distro the villain or even the hero of the story. In the end, you’ll hear a lot of praise and hate, but context absolutely matters.
There’s also the very natural tendency to seek external validation for your actions/decisions. But some people just can’t self-actualize in a way that’s healthy. Sprinkle a little personal insecurity into the mix and presto: “someone is getting on great with that other Linux I don’t use, so Imma get big mad.”
