i’m about to take my first peek into linux on mint. i’m not completely put off learning some new things but being able to do that in a desktop that is familar makes everything a lot easier to pick up on. who knows, if it all goes smoothly maybe next week i’ll be running arch (i won’t)
just works “almost” is pretty funny but i know what you mean. i wasn’t having much trouble with it testing it with a virtual machine. the nice thing is a lot of the applications i use on windows are already free software that im realizing are a lot of the go to’s for people running linux, so really a lot should “just work”
I’ve been using Linux on and off for ~15 years and I run Mint on my main desktop PC just because it’s so intuitive and stable. I want my gaming PC to “just work” and not need any tweaking, so Mint is perfect.
Using Mint right now, started off with Kubuntu but decided to stick with the Gnome desktop environment for a bit, at least until KDE works out some of its kinks lol. I will say, KDE worked better with my drawing tablet than Gnome so…
Arch is easy enough to install. If you ever get tired of overhead, ala all the apps on the OS which you never use, just start from scratch. It’s not hard to install the base, desktop envo + a browser and start from there. The cleanest desktop you can imagine and probably the resulting OS too
arch is interesting to me and i’m not too worried about the install, the rolling releases and stability of the system are what i think would snag me in using it. though the minute regular updates are probably more an issue for people who delve into the system more to get the absolute most out of it. it’ll be more stable, works out of the box-type distros for me while i get a grasp of things like the file system and using the terminal. but i do think the setups people post of their riced out installs look pretty cool ngl
It is a common misconception that rolling release distros are inherently less stable than other distros. My experience has been exactly the opposite. I’ve used, for extended periods, Ubuntu, Manjaro and Arch. Both Manjaro and Arch were far more stable than my experience with Ubuntu. With ubuntu, every time I had to do a full system upgrade it was a crapshoot about whether or not I would be spending the next day or two fixing my system. But with Manjaro and Arch, it’s never a full system upgrade, as long as you are doing updates regularly, they tend to remain small and manageable.
I’ve never had an update brick my system on Arch and have never felt the need to restart from scratch because an update went to shit. But that was an experience I was getting used to on Ubuntu.
Disclaimer, this is just my experience, and your own mileage may vary.
The rolling release being unstable is wrong. You don’t get the “dev” version of update with bugs and instability, you get a proper update, just in small increments usually.
A lot of people who actually run arch will tell you the same, sometimes it’s even more stable than the major release type systems.
Getting the damn thing to install was a total nightmare for me .
The instructions on their site had nothing step by step, -still no idea how to work checksums- so I had to figure out how to get an ISO onto a flash drive (turns out it needs additional software), how to get it onto the hdd without bios access (thanks Windows 10), then fight through tpm errors.
Hell, even having to torrent the file in the first place was a pain since the machine I was installing on didn’t want to download the ISO.
Took me all morning, but could’ve been worse in my mental fog, I guess
I used mint for a long time, the only reason I switched is that my Nvidia card was preventing mint to boot/install on my new laptop. I didn’t want to spent hours on it tried a few distros until one worked (Manjaro). I like Manjaro now, but might have to try mint again (laptop is a few years old so it will probably work now).
i havent really looked into that, been mostly researching debian based distros specifically ubuntu and it’s bunch since a lot of recommendations go to it. nobara looks interesting for the big gaming spin it has though i’m still iffy on being at home with linux for games, but from the outside looking in things like proton seem to be doing a lot of good in that space recently.
I started with Mint and then moved on. Honestly I think Debian based ones are not nearly as good as Redhat or Arch based. You can get easy to use versions such as Fedora or Manjaro without being a headache at all, and their systems are superior to PPAs (which in itself is far superior to windows updating). Obviously my opinion is not the end all, but I highly recommend branching out a bit and trying things with the different base systems. I thought Debian was the bees knees, then tried the others and really haven’t looked back.
i’m about to take my first peek into linux on mint. i’m not completely put off learning some new things but being able to do that in a desktop that is familar makes everything a lot easier to pick up on. who knows, if it all goes smoothly maybe next week i’ll be running arch (i won’t)
Mint is honestly the best one to go for really especially since everything just works there almost.
just works “almost” is pretty funny but i know what you mean. i wasn’t having much trouble with it testing it with a virtual machine. the nice thing is a lot of the applications i use on windows are already free software that im realizing are a lot of the go to’s for people running linux, so really a lot should “just work”
I’ve been using Linux on and off for ~15 years and I run Mint on my main desktop PC just because it’s so intuitive and stable. I want my gaming PC to “just work” and not need any tweaking, so Mint is perfect.
Yeah, was my first that didn’t crash during install, really enjoyed it
Using Mint right now, started off with Kubuntu but decided to stick with the Gnome desktop environment for a bit, at least until KDE works out some of its kinks lol. I will say, KDE worked better with my drawing tablet than Gnome so…
Arch is easy enough to install. If you ever get tired of overhead, ala all the apps on the OS which you never use, just start from scratch. It’s not hard to install the base, desktop envo + a browser and start from there. The cleanest desktop you can imagine and probably the resulting OS too
arch is interesting to me and i’m not too worried about the install, the rolling releases and stability of the system are what i think would snag me in using it. though the minute regular updates are probably more an issue for people who delve into the system more to get the absolute most out of it. it’ll be more stable, works out of the box-type distros for me while i get a grasp of things like the file system and using the terminal. but i do think the setups people post of their riced out installs look pretty cool ngl
It is a common misconception that rolling release distros are inherently less stable than other distros. My experience has been exactly the opposite. I’ve used, for extended periods, Ubuntu, Manjaro and Arch. Both Manjaro and Arch were far more stable than my experience with Ubuntu. With ubuntu, every time I had to do a full system upgrade it was a crapshoot about whether or not I would be spending the next day or two fixing my system. But with Manjaro and Arch, it’s never a full system upgrade, as long as you are doing updates regularly, they tend to remain small and manageable.
I’ve never had an update brick my system on Arch and have never felt the need to restart from scratch because an update went to shit. But that was an experience I was getting used to on Ubuntu.
Disclaimer, this is just my experience, and your own mileage may vary.
The rolling release being unstable is wrong. You don’t get the “dev” version of update with bugs and instability, you get a proper update, just in small increments usually. A lot of people who actually run arch will tell you the same, sometimes it’s even more stable than the major release type systems.
Getting the damn thing to install was a total nightmare for me .
The instructions on their site had nothing step by step, -still no idea how to work checksums- so I had to figure out how to get an ISO onto a flash drive (turns out it needs additional software), how to get it onto the hdd without bios access (thanks Windows 10), then fight through tpm errors.
Hell, even having to torrent the file in the first place was a pain since the machine I was installing on didn’t want to download the ISO.
Took me all morning, but could’ve been worse in my mental fog, I guess
I used mint for a long time, the only reason I switched is that my Nvidia card was preventing mint to boot/install on my new laptop. I didn’t want to spent hours on it tried a few distros until one worked (Manjaro). I like Manjaro now, but might have to try mint again (laptop is a few years old so it will probably work now).
If you want a EAVEN more windows like distro I will recomend nobara. The official version is a windows 7 styled gnome and it is based on fedora.
i havent really looked into that, been mostly researching debian based distros specifically ubuntu and it’s bunch since a lot of recommendations go to it. nobara looks interesting for the big gaming spin it has though i’m still iffy on being at home with linux for games, but from the outside looking in things like proton seem to be doing a lot of good in that space recently.
I started with Mint and then moved on. Honestly I think Debian based ones are not nearly as good as Redhat or Arch based. You can get easy to use versions such as Fedora or Manjaro without being a headache at all, and their systems are superior to PPAs (which in itself is far superior to windows updating). Obviously my opinion is not the end all, but I highly recommend branching out a bit and trying things with the different base systems. I thought Debian was the bees knees, then tried the others and really haven’t looked back.