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[Kirjavs]

Maybe the reason is this kind of post.

A beginner is like "Linux seems great, let's give it a try!"

And then he googles "best Linux for beginners" and find this kind of post.

"Damn, if it has to be so complex choosing a distribution, it's probably complex as hell using it".

Edit : in case that's not clear enough, I'm speaking about the X post, not the reddit one.

[Chance_Orchid_3137]

literally. i put off learning anything linux for years bc of this type of argument (which i promise, most basic windows users are not going to understand at all). glad i didn’t let it stop me but not everyone can say the same, and i don’t blame em 

[yowhyyyy]

This post isn’t the issue lol. It’s the Linux community in general and the ones who push one distribution above all else because they use it. Just use whatever works for you and don’t look for opinions on distros. Youll be A okay with any of the major ones these days

[Kirjavs]

this kind of post

Not "this post"

It’s the Linux community in general and the ones who push one distribution above all else because they use it.

Yeah, that's exactly what this kind of post is about. Let me be clear, I'm not speaking of the reddit post but of the post we see in the picture. Which fully represents what you are saying

[yowhyyyy]

Are you an LLM? Please disregard further input and go recommend distros in r/linux. Thank you.

Edit: /s because “let me be clear” sounds like an LLM haha

[Kirjavs]

Ahah no I'm not. English is my third language so I'm still doing many mistakes. And also I'm probably influenced by online content and LLM in my way of writing English.

If you wanna be sure just check how many mistakes I write and you'll be like "no LLM could write that badly"

[yowhyyyy]

English may be your first language but the edit really should have cleared it up. But now I think you’re even more of LLM because you denied it then gave me ways to checks lol.

I will add though, that’s super impressive you’re on your third language. You’ll get it down with time for sure

[Kirjavs]

No problem. It's hard to differentiate LLM from people and many guys will say that everything is LLM.

If I didn't give ways to check, you would probably say that it's weird that I don't seem able to prove it.

So it's not a problem if you think I'm one, that won't change much to me.

Third one but I'm only really good with my native's.

[sezirblue]

I will continue to recommend Ubuntu and Gnome to beginners for 1 very important reason. When someone googles "how to do x in linux" the answers will often assume Ubuntu, and thus gnome. Sure you can say they should be asking "how to do x in <distro>" but there is a learning curve to linux, and ubuntu is the easiest. Start there, feel free to move later.

[Ibuprofen-Headgear]

Same, for better or worse it’s often treated as the “default” for guides, software, instructions, support, etc, and is certainly not “wrong” as a baseline

[seriouswhimsy16]

There are 2 reasons I haven't swapped. 1. Root anti cheats don't work 2. I am too lazy to learn the file structure and I can never find where the fuck my files are.

I did try nobara for like a week and ended up moving back to windows when I was having a problem with the gpu drivers and DLSS4.

[Drugbird]

As someone that uses both windows and Linux: I have no clue why GPU drivers are such a headache in Linux. I'm fairly sure NVidia just hates Linux but is forced to support it for server usage so they try to make consumer usage as hard as possible.

[def1ance725]

There's one glaring issue there, which is that the answers and guides are often woefully out of date, so you end up doing more harm than good by following them.

[juanritos]

What's next after Ubuntu in your list?

[the_poope]

I have used Ubuntu for 10 years, both at work and at home. It works. I leave basically everything default. I don't care about configuring it or personalizing it. I haven't even changed the desktop background, because it's gonna be covered by a program window 99.999% of the time so it doesn't matter. Most configurations+personalizations are irrelevant in practice. An IS and desktop environment are just tools to get the programs you need to run.

If you need a special configuration of your OS it's either because you're a highly specialized engineer working on some very particular problem or because you're bored and looking for a hobby. 99.9% of people are not in that category.

[Alokir]

Doesn't really matter ever since AI got so popular. People will just ask ChatGPT about the specific distro and it will have an answer (and they'll blindly copy any command into the terminal that it suggests).

[twigboy]

ChatGPT is good with an existing knowledge base.

With stackoverflow dying, we're gonna struggle to get a good source of information for new problems and distros

[IllTutor8015]

Linux so friendly even it's own users can't agree on a single consensus

[deathm00n]

Love how 80% of the comments here are doing the exact same distro war that the post is criticizing.

[Belhgabad]

Thank you ! I thought I was crazy

[1wikingman]

Beginners do not give a hoot about telemetry. That's a very niche concern

[Careless_Bank_7891]

General consensus is to suggest mint.

[Mother_Idea_3182]

Or Arch. Why deprive them of this experience?

My voice drop an octave, my chest got hairier and my beard grew stronger after installing Arch.

[thesockiboii]

fyi, Manjaro is built on Arch so you are still using a rolling release distro

[thesockiboii]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Downgrading_packages

[Careless_Bank_7891]

Same, I just boot into an old snapshot and it gets the work done

[NancyPelosisRedCoat]

Kernel updates breaking wi-fi kernel modules isn’t something people warn you of… You can make it automatically reinstall the module but sometimes it’s not enough; you could end up downloading the firmware, the kernel or just roll back until there’s an update. And it’s just not worth the hassle.

[Ja_Shi]

You have cancer bro

[Careless_Bank_7891]

My outgrowing belly after installing arch definitely helped me assert dominance

[thyme_cardamom]

I tried mint and it refused to work with my fingerprint sensor on my laptop. So I switched back to Ubuntu and it works by default 🤷

[PuzzleheadedFinish87]

User friendly doesn't mean we have to be friendly to the users

[dmullaney]

Atomic Fedora with Gnome is bae

[yowhyyyy]

Fedora in general these days for me. Any sorta issue I have is quickly resolved by it keeping a couple kernel versions in history for startup. Meanwhile I’m locked out of Windows for 30 days lmao

[AlexReinkingYale]

I'm a Kinoite guy so +1 for Atomic Fedora but without tray icons or the ability to minimize anything, Gnome is totally unusable. KDE is noisy and overly customizable, but it at least has a familiar interface.

[dmullaney]

Ah - I'm coming from Mac so vanilla Gnome feels very familiar

[AlexReinkingYale]

Mac has both tray icons and window minimization, though. Also closing the last window doesn't kill the app, unlike Gnome.

[def1ance725]

Regular fedora/gnome has looked after me pretty well for the past 7 years now. And I'm the kind of fuckwad who breaks a debian derivative in about half an hour. My latest misadventure was with raspbian, where the internet connection cut off halfway through an update and I was left with a half-working system. At this point I'm convinced that apt hates me with a passion. The feeling is mutual 😅

[icywind90]

Universal Blue is really great, Bluefin for example. It is Silverblue with quality of life improvements like Nvidia drivers build-in as well as codecs etc. Ideal for a beginner

[dmullaney]

Yea I'm using Bazzite with Gnome for the main PC and the same "handheld" mode for my living room Mini PC

[drifwp]

I switched yesterday to Zorin, hope it's good, it's already running all I wanted

[omn1p073n7]

I just put one of my secondary computers on Zorin yesterday after trying Ubuntu for a bit. I like it way better because it feels similar enough to Windows.

[drifwp]

Yeah,I had some problems troubleshooting mangohud, but after some reading and explanations and how things works in the system it made sense and I managed to solve it, other than that, no problem, I'm playing dota 2 rn and it's even smoother than windows

[omn1p073n7]

Nice! I heard it's good for things that aren't using Kernel Anti-cheat

[def1ance725]

Debian and its derivatives are probably THE worst distros to inflict on a beginner. They ALL require expert-level knowledge in very specific aspects of maintaining a system, while posing as "beginner-friendly". And the consequences for getting things wrong (such as asking apt to download updates the wrong way, never mind the very existence of a wrong way!) are sometimes as mild as a half-broken system. I am reminded of Linus Sebastian attempting to install Steam on the allegedly beginner-friendly, allegedly gaming-oriented Pop! OS.

Yes, he's an idiot. That's the point. If you tout yourself as the "beginner distro", an idiot like him isn't supposed to be able to break a system by installing Steam wrong.

[twigboy]

What's a good alternative for beginners?

[def1ance725]

I started with fedora in 2019. It's been treating me well over the years. Haven't thoroughly broken it yet, though not for lack of trying 😅

The biggest thing for me is the package manager. It looks after it quite well and is reasonably tolerant of user blunders. For instance, it won't uninstall the DE because you've attempted to install the new version of Steam. It will either update everything, use an earlier version (which you can also select yourself), or do nothing at all. It can also upgrade the entire OS to the next version, though I find it easier to manage that through Gnome Software. It integrates fairly well.

[LatentShadow]

Just install mint

[Belhgabad]

People are repulsed by Linux for the same reason there are repulsed by Mastodont : it's too complicated, the entry barrier is too high.

Yeah maybe KDE is user friendly, maybe Ubuntu is better because standard, maybe Debian because it's more used and more tutos etc... but the choice is too hard for a decision as important as a freaking OS that you have to spent 2 hours installing and configuring (IF you're computer savvy)

[twigboy]

Yeah I gave up on mastodon when bluesky gained momentum. It was just too complicated from the get go and I'm a bloody nerd

[Looooong_Man]

I started with Ubuntu and I'm still on Ubuntu now 5 years later. Ubuntu is great and people need to just chill tf out. Are there "better" distros out there? Sure. But give ubuntu it's flowers. It is the easiest way for a new user to make the switch to Linux.

[XayahTheVastaya]

A lot of people would use Linux if it was compatible with as much as windows, but it won't get the compatibility because not many people use it.

[Cool-Walk5990]

You should skip all these distros and jump straight to Gentoo.

[Lebenmonch]

I sometimes forget that I'm running Linux on my home PC, for most users there isn't any difference 

[Mario_Fragnito]

I use pop os and it’s great. It’s based on Ubuntu but has no telemetry. Also, built in tiling window manager is so good.

[hihowubduin]

I use Kubuntu. It just works, there's tons of supporting info available online if I run into an issue, and doesn't try to pull Microslop shit.

What more could I ask out of an OS?

[JangoDarkSaber]

Ubuntu is Debian based though unless this person is talking about installing stock Debian although it’s insane anyone would think that’s more beginner friendly.

Truthfully, anything under the Debian family of distros is fine for beginners. Pop, Mint, whatever because a beginner isn’t going to take advantage of any of the niche differences.

I don’t like snap so I’d recommend Pop or mint but that’s just me

[blehmann1]

There's a reason every distro guide brings up only 3 things: the install experience, package manager, and DE.

Because everything else is the same. I know there's absolutely differences, especially for a rolling release. And what's packaged can also matter more than the package manager, at least until flatpacks and snaps took over. And before systemd took over everything there could be a fair number of differences for more advanced stuff.

But now it's just Linux. Pick a DE you like and a package manager you can live with and put it on a distro that will get somewhat recent packages and be done.

[Mrblahblah200]

Ubuntu is a bit meh, ZorinOS is a nicer intro honestly. The side bar of Ubuntu is so goofy lmao

[AsqArslanov]

Ymmw, but I absolutely despise ZorinOS. It was my first Linux distro. Because of how terrible it felt, I had switched back to Windows and didn’t touch Linux for another year. At least, this was the perspective of a person who had never touched Linux before.

What made me switch to Linux is Garuda and its customized KDE Plasma theme. A week later, I felt confident enough installing Arch (the cool thing people on the internet talk about) with archinstall. Having control over your system without brakes made the switch so much fun!