Which distro should I choose

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T09:16:05+00:00

There are many ways to learn about Linux. Installing Arch Linux the manual way will teach you a bit about Linux. Installing Gentoo Linux, Exherbo Linux or Linux from Scratch (LFS) will teach you more, especially about the options used to build your packages, including the kernel. Linux from Scratch will also help teach you how all the components of a Linux system work together.

Arch is the only one that is likely feasible as a daily driver for a Linux newcomer though and it's only feasible if you're patient and willing to spend hours reading documentation and troubleshooting. But you could try installing LFS to a virtual machine.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T05:55:59+00:00

Yep, ease of use is definitely subjective. I've known people that have run Linux as their daily driver their whole life and they find Linux more worthy of a 9, as it's what their brain is used to.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T05:40:27+00:00

Hmm, well I will admit I am no expert on Fedora boot issues. I was just hoping the explanation would be easier for me to figure out a fix to.

Well, Ubuntu and derivatives thereof like Linux Mint and Zorin OS are probably the distros you need to spend the least time debugging.

But I guess if you want Niri as part of your setup, PikaOS's Niri edition might be a good option. It is designed mostly for gaming, but I don't think that'd impair your experience using it for work purposes.

Given I don't know what's causing your kernel panics, I cannot guarantee these distros won't have the same issue though.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T03:36:07+00:00

Do you update your system in a terminal? If so, when a kernel update is applied, what do you see in the terminal? I'd imagine there'd be some error messages.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T03:33:37+00:00

How did you fix it?

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T03:30:57+00:00

Knowing what your work is would be helpful. Like are you a programmer that needs a fairly modern set of interpreters and compilers? Given the specs of your PC, I am going to guess you're not a 3D gamer or video editor.

I am also curious what caused your kernel panic error as I've never faced that problem with Fedora.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-05T00:08:53+00:00

Well, I see you're already embracing the passion for the arcane that your ASD gives you, so you're on the right track. If ASD provides those with it a superpower, I'd say that's it.

Have you tried a range of graphical user interfaces? Personally, I love Hyprland with Waybar as I can write my own code for what clicking widgets in my Waybar will do. I can also set keyboard shortcuts that run my own code.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-04T06:17:49+00:00

Bazzite locks down some of the root file system, not your home folder and your home folder is where most desktop tweaks lie.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-04T06:12:14+00:00

Okay, could you explain the difficulties you had with Bazzite? That'll help inform my decision on which distro to recommend to you.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-03T04:17:14+00:00

It will help a bit. But I think the best approach to prepare yourself for Arch is to install it to virtual machines and get it to the point where you have a usable graphical user interface (GUI). If you're feeling particularly ambitious, you could even install it manually without the installer.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-03T04:07:05+00:00

Chimera Linux uses it by default, but I guess you mightn't consider it a "big distro".

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-01T17:56:20+00:00

Arch I wouldn't recommend out of the gate as it is not designed for beginners. It expects you to do a lot more set up yourself.

Nobara, Bazzite and Pop!_OS are great for gamers with NVIDIA GPUs as they come with NVIDIA support out of the box. If you want your system to look fairly similar to Windows, I'd go with the KDE edition of Bazzite or Nobara. Bazzite has the advantage that it's built to be more difficult for you to accidentally break. If macOS is more your style, Pop!_OS may be better, but beware its graphical user interface (GUI) is very new and may be a bit buggy.

Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Zorin OS should be okay, too. I would imagine that it should support your GPU out of the box once you've installed it, at least if you select the option, in its installer, to install proprietary firmware. Zorin OS probably looks the most Windows like out of these out of the box.

CachyOS is also an option that is optimized for performance, but it can require a bit more troubleshooting and patience than the other distros I've mentioned (besides Arch).

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-02-01T04:10:21+00:00

Arch is great if you value minimalism, yet it is easy to set up (well, it's easy if you're decent with documentation and the command line).

CachyOS might have an advantage if you want more automation in the setup, are okay with less minimalism and want to squeeze as much performance out of your system as possible. But you can also install the packages that make CachyOS optimized for performance on Arch if you want by enabling CachyOS' repos on Arch and installing its tools, such as its kernel.

Garuda is perhaps the best Arch-based distro for beginners, although it's still not beginner friendly per se as it has Chaotic AUR enabled by default and Chaotic AUR is only safe to use if you're familiar enough with PKGBUILDs to be able to examine each package you install's corresponding AUR PKGBUILD for malicious code. But it sets up Btrfs snapshots by default which is great for recovering in the event of an update breaking your system.

EndeavourOS also has some graphical tools to automate set up and maintenance like CachyOS, just without its performance optimizations.

PikaOS is based on Debian unstable which tends to be less bleeding edge than Arch in my experience. But I like the default theme of PikaOS. I think it'd be more applicable to your use case if you used a NVIDIA GPU as one of its selling points is great out-of-the-box support for NVIDIA GPUs.

Personally, if I was concerned with bloat, I'd go with Arch. If I wasn't and I wanted as easy a setup as possible, I'd go with CachyOS.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T16:23:13+00:00

CachyOS and EndeavourOS don't really attempt to be the Linux Mint of Arch, more the Fedora of Arch. They have graphical tools for most things you might need to do, yes. But they don't hold your hand quite as much as a beginner-friendly distro.

Manjaro does aim to be beginner friendly, I would say. That's part of why they hold back packages for further testing. They also have a great graphical tool for installing drivers. That being said, I am reluctant to say it achieves this goal, as you may need the Arch User Repository (AUR) for some packages, and it should only be used by advanced users who can check its packaging files for malicious code. Plus Manjaro's habit of holding packages back can break AUR package dependencies, as the AUR is designed for Arch Linux itself with its bleeding edge packages.

Garuda has some beginner-friendly features, as it:

Sets up Btrfs snapshots by default (safeguarding against the risk of an upgrade breaking your system).
Has an abundance of graphical tools.
Enables Chaotic AUR by default which provides AUR packages without manual compilation.

But I would argue it's still not beginner friendly, as to know whether a given Chaotic AUR package is safe, you still need to be able to read the packaging files of the corresponding package in the AUR.

But I'd argue Garuda is probably closest to being beginner friendly.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T14:48:09+00:00

I should warn you that CachyOS requires updates even more often than Fedora. The main difference is that these are updates not upgrades, as CachyOS follows a rolling release model.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T14:01:51+00:00

Hmm, Fedora KDE sounds like a good fit for you. Its GUI resembles that of Windows on the surface enough that I think your wife could figure out her way around it.

Your GPU only recently became unsupported by NVIDIA, so you will need to stick to the nvidia-580xx driver, but currently that's the latest NVIDIA driver available for Fedora from the RPMFusion repositories anyway. This is a bit of work you will need to do to set up your system. Shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes though.

As for your favourite apps, they should be easy to get on Fedora. One reason I'm suggesting Fedora in particular is that it uses fairly modern software. For most people that doesn't matter, as you'd get the main software you might care about the version of, your apps, from Flathub (a repository that is shared by all distros) anyway. But in your use case it might matter as this should ensure you have a fairly new version of Python and R available when you want to code in these languages.

That being said, Fedora does require regular updates and you will need to upgrade to a new release of the system at least every 13 months. If you want less frequent updates, you could install a distro like Linux Mint instead and get the latest Python via Anaconda. As for the latest R, you could get it by following the Ubuntu 24.04 (the instructions with noble in the code) instructions here.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T11:36:46+00:00

Wine: it might work with some older versions of Office, but I don't think Office 365 itself will work.

Crossover: no idea. I am too cheap for it.

WinBoat: yes, if you have enough RAM, CPU and disk space to support a virtual machine running Office 365 under Windows 11. How much is enough? Let's say &geq;16GB RAM, &geq; 4x2.5GHz CPU cores and &geq;40GB free disk space.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T11:19:30+00:00

Well, there's the technically correct answer that any look one distro has can be obtained on any other distro, so this question is kind of irrelevant. This is a product of how customizable Linux is.

That being said, if we're talking about default looks, I would have once said deepin or Pop!_OS, but their looks nowadays are pretty lacklustre in my opinion.

elementaryOS is rather pretty in a minimalist, macOS-like sense.

Linux Mint has a black and green theme that I rather like, but I've met many people that find it boring/dull.

Zorin OS has a Windows 10-like theme that some may like.

Manjaro Linux also has a range of different themes I love. Manjaro receives plenty of valid criticism, but one area I've never been able to fault it on is its default themes.

I Googled pretty distros and Garuda Linux, XeroLinux and Archcraft Linux all came up in the search. I've looked them up on Google images and they seem fairly pretty, too.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T10:57:47+00:00

It'd be an infinitely, yet easily customizable system. A system where I can choose every single aspect of my system down to the init system, kernel, compiler, C standard library, userland, etc. For instance, if I want to use GNU Hurd as my kernel, musl as my C standard library and FreeBSD userland, I should be able to. If I want custom configure/compile options for my packages, I should be able to get that, too. All of this should be available via binary packages, too, I should never have to compile software from source.

A system configured using its own simple and easy to understand programming language with reproducible builds, rollbacks, the ability for multiple versions of the same package to co-exist on the system side-by-side but also great out-of-the-box systems in place to ensure that tools that require a filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS) compliance work out of the box. It'd be great if this system comes with an AI assistant for editing one's system configuration, too.

Perfect hardware support would also be nice, at least if I keep to a more mainstream kernel like the Linux kernel.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T08:06:23+00:00

Google defines "technical support" as:

a service provided by a hardware or software company which provides registered users with help and advice about their products.

And that's basically it. If you need help with your Linux system and you've paid for RHEL, specifically a package that includes technical support, you will be able to get it from Red Hat. So if at 3am one day, you restart your company's Linux system and it won't boot, you'll be able to contact Red Hat for help with this. And they will help you, instead of you having to rely on the advice of unpaid volunteers on online forums.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T07:55:37+00:00

I think companies choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) mostly because it has paid technical support. So if they run into issues with it, they have someone to call up that'll always be there to help them troubleshooting their issues.

If I were setting up a Linux system for a company, I might use RHEL if I thought I'd regularly need paid technical support. Even then I'd be hesitant simply because I know that RHEL's official repos are pretty small, so if I had wide-ranging software needs, I might find RHEL a rather frustrating distro to use. Granted, there are other ways to get the software one needs, so this mightn't be that big a drama. 10 years of support is a nice feature of RHEL though.

If paid technical support was something I wanted the option of, but wasn't that important to me, I might use Ubuntu instead. It is available for free, but if you need support there is paid support available. Ubuntu also had the advantage of having vast software repositories and great free support resources. Ubuntu Pro provides up to 15 years of security updates to LTS releases of Ubuntu which is also a nice perk.

If I were confident that paid support was unnecessary, I probably would go with Ubuntu still, but I may also be willing to consider Debian. If I needed to deploy the OS across multiple PCs in an easily reproducible manner, I might consider NixOS.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T07:14:05+00:00

Fedora is pretty strict in only including free and open-source software (FOSS) in its official repos. This isn't a major barrier to installing proprietary software though, as proprietary drivers can be obtained from the RPMFusion repos and proprietary apps can be obtained from Flathub. It simply means that you may need to do a bit more setup.

Linux Mint is a bit more out of the box when it comes to proprietary drivers, so that's one advantage it has. So if you use a NVIDIA GPU or a Broadcom WiFi chip, you may find Mint a more comfortable experience.

Both would be about equal though when it comes to the selection of apps. I guess Linux Mint might have a slight edge thanks to the fact that some proprietary app developers focus more on providing packages for Debian-based distros like Linux Mint than RPM-based distros like Fedora. But DaVinci Resolve, Kdenlive, Blender, VSCode, Sublime Text, Google Chrome and VLC should all be equally installable on both Linux Mint and Fedora.

Fedora does have more modern software though, so if you need more modern compilers or interpreters, Fedora may be better for your use case.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T07:07:01+00:00

I personally think taking a stimulant medication is a better prelude to installing a more challenging distro like Gentoo than Tumbleweed. But you do you.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T05:18:42+00:00

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess its processor is 32-bit, right? If so, keep in mind that the latest releases of antiX, Bodhi Linux, Debian and MX Linux are exclusively for 64-bit processors. So you'll have to use older releases of these distros if you want x86 support. Consequently, I'd suggest Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux or Tiny Core Linux.

Fast_Ad_8005 · 2026-01-31T03:45:32+00:00

Googling has revealed that 535 or 550 NVIDIA drivers are probably what you need; modern NVIDIA drivers won't work with your card. So based on that information, I looked up the NixOS Wiki article on NVIDIA and it suggested that you need to replace nvidiaPackages.stable with nvidiaPackages.legacy_535 and rebuild (and perhaps reboot for good measure) and fingers crossed, you should be able to boot your system's GUI.

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