Hey all! I’ve lurked here for a while and not really posted anything, but here goes.
Title says most of it. I’m a hardware nut with a little programming background knowledge, who built my own beefy desktop about 3 years ago. I started on Windows 10, but I made the switch a few months ago and haven’t looked back. I was worried about how much trouble I might have with Linux given my limited software background, and picked more beginner-friendly distros to start out. I toyed with Ubuntu for the first couple weeks before switching to Mint, and I’ve now been a happy Mint user for several months with no big hiccups. I’m a little bolder and wiser now, though, and I feel like I can still get more out of Linux by jumping to a more unstable and tweakable distro. I was hoping you’d have some suggestions - and knowing the nature of the Linux community, lots of options to consider. :)
Here’s what I’d like in a distro:
- Tweakable. I like having lots of settings, and one of the things I liked most about Mint was how much more customization I could get than Windows. I like config and setting things up to my unique tastes, and knowing that many people say this is a weaker aspect of Mint, I’m interested in what other distros have to offer.
- GUI-friendly. I’d like to learn the Terminal, but I’m not confident enough in it just yet to use it for everything. Making my GUI look good and setting it up to fit my tastes are also important to me, and I liked Cinnamon’s slick UI/UX features like Hot Corners and panel applets. I don’t necessarily want something that imitates Cinnamon OR Windows, or even need anything outstanding in a UI, but having something more than Spartan would be much appreciated.
- Well-documented. I’m still new to Linux; I’ll need a lot of help getting used to its quirks. I’ve been interested in Arch because of what people say about its documentation. A good wiki to follow and readily available answers for my nooby questions may be the deciding factor on whether I stick with a distro and spin/flavor/etc or move on.
- Reasonable gaming compatibility. My library is small, I don’t play a lot, and all the games I’m serious about run with only a couple hiccups on Mint with Proton, Lutris, and Mesa. Most of what I do is browse the Internet, write in LibreOffice or equivalent, check my email in Thunderbird or equivalent, and maybe open GIMP or a game once in a while. I’m not so serious about how my games run, I just wouldn’t want to daily drive a distro that’s handily much worse than Mint for gaming, and would prefer a rolling distro or one with frequent updates, so I have the latest drivers. Anything significantly better for gaming is a plus, not expected. I’ve been interested in Nobara and Arch for different reasons, but I’d like to look at all my options before I pick one, including other distros I haven’t heard of or looked into. Thoughts?
Anything with KDE Plasma 6.
I highly recommend Fedora Kinoite.
If you want gaming, use Bazzite which is based on Kinoite.
Read my comments on previous posts where I mention the reasons.
Atomic Fedora is just way better than everything else in the categories I need. (It is very stable, while not actually shipping “stable” i.e. randomly frozen packages. The packages are tested but up to date, and the distro packaging mechanism is rock solid and near unbreakable).
eh, i am a firm believe in if it aint broke, dont fix it.
im still on mint for app curation/compatibility. i have yet to have a process/task/server product not function as i need it to on mint. im up to 6 machines and a few ‘servers’.
Tweakable
Linux Mint scores less favorably on this due the absence of GNOME, KDE or a Window Manager within their offering (though you should be able to install them). Therefore, consider a distro that comes with (in alphabetical order):
- GNOME, if you want customization through extensions
- KDE, if you want built-in customization
- A Window Manager (too many to name), if you feel particularly brave
GUI-friendly
GNOME and KDE score excellent in this regard. Special mention goes out to openSUSE Tumbleweed and Garuda Linux for scoring better on this than most other distros.
Well-documented
The gold standard has been set by Arch and Gentoo. Gentoo is probably too hard for you currently. Arch could work out, but that requires you to do an excellent job at reading through its documentation and acting upon it.
Reasonable gaming compatibility
There shouldn’t be a lot of difference between different distros in this regard. However, distros optimized for gaming (like Bazzite, Garuda and Nobara) do tend to score better as they’ve received patches and whatnot to solve edge cases.
Thoughts?
To conclude, I think you should play around with both GNOME and KDE. After that, consider one of the following distros:
- Arch; this one will undoubtedly teach you the most on Linux. However, you might perceive it as exhausting to keep up with coming from Linux Mint; FYI it’s the most hands-on experience, though your mileage may vary*.
- Bazzite; likely to be the most hands-free experience out of these. Documentation does leave some to be desired.
- EndeavourOS; Arch with easier install.
- Garuda Linux; Opinionated Arch. Though, I’d say its defaults are relatively sane
even if I loathe its themes. - openSUSE Tumbleweed; Mostly included for YaST; i.e. its excellent suite of GUI apps that are simply absent on non-SuSE systems. Though, being the gold standard for a stable rolling release distro doesn’t hurt either. Documentation is lackluster.
(FWIW, you could also try some spin of Fedora)
My 2 cents.
GNOME is NOT GUI friendly. They limit the things you can do through the GUI a lot.
If you want a “normal persons desktop” then it works.
The problem is, random things are missing and fixing them requires tons of work
- changing the mouse cursor
- adding right click “create new” entries (afaik)
- custom application launchers
GNOME just works if everything is perfect. For example apps, if you want to edit a .desktop entry of an app you need to go straight to the text files.
They just present you with “app icons” and you can only display the app in Software. Which is very fine but not friendly to people that need a little more.
Or when entering a manual path in Nautilus, you need a keyboard shortcut. Or when doing more advanced settings.
I agree that GNOME is not perfect. Never implied as such anyway. You’ve excellently noted some things that are easier to achieve on KDE than on GNOME. However, likewise, GNOME’s extensions allow for customization beyond what KDE allows (see e.g. https://material-shell.com/).
Yes but GNOME breaks extension compatibility nearly every 6 months. Maybe not from now on, as they switched for a different model.
But still, this is not GUI friendly if you need random peoples unmonitored code.
I was not referring to a single KDE Extension here. Extensions are a big security issue. Literally nobody is monitoring them. You can be happy if there are people doing badness-enumeration and flagging bad ones.
But still, this is not GUI friendly if you need random peoples unmonitored code.
Say whatever you will, extensions are a feature and/or design choice of GNOME. One that definitely comes with its own set of implications. But, like always, the user should interact responsibly with it.
I was not referring to a single KDE Extension here. Extensions are a big security issue. Literally nobody is monitoring them. You can be happy if there are people doing badness-enumeration and flagging bad ones.
I’m not a fan of how extensions are handled in general. But some of the the more popular ones are handled by GNOME developers and/or friends. So there’s at least some chain of trust.
I also see that Dash-to-panel has a very active community, which is really good as it is pretty much needed for me to make GNOME usable.
It’s not quite what you’ve asked for here, but as a Dev I’d be remiss if I didn’t shill for Gentoo.
It ticks your rolling release box, has fantastic docs, a huge package repository (and the community repo Guru), and by design enables almost infinite configurability and customisation. We also have a binary package repository now for popular architectures, so you can choose to avoid compiling if you don’t want to deviate from sane defaults (or only compile in cases where you do!)
On the hardware side, we have fantastic support for a number of architectures, I recently brought up a SPARC system and have some arch64 and riscv in the past.
Finally, even if you just decide to check the distro out, the process of installing, configuring, and maintaining a Linux system is outlined in detail within our handbook, and can provide a peek behind the scenes at what some other distros abstract; it’s a fantastic learning experience for those interested.
Finally, we have fantastic support through volunteers in official IRC channels and forums, as well as unofficial hubs like discord.
Hopefully I’ve planted a seed and you’ll check it out down the line. :)
DO. NOT. HOP. AROUND. DISTROS.
Stick to Mint. Play with Ubuntu as live ISO or in a VM. Take a few years, and go to Debian.
Arch is a different universe than the Debian/Apt family, so take your time until you really feel like nerding out on Linux, or fall into this hobbyist rabbit hole.
Use the most common, user friendly distros, so that getting support and getting the job done is easy.
Update 2: After trying out EOS, Arch, Manjaro, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Universal Blue, among many other options, I’ve come to the decision that I’m okay with sticking to Mint for now on my main desktop and setting up UBlue Aurora on my work laptop, but might consider switching to Kubuntu or Fedora if I want something similar at work and at home (one of my main draws away from Mint was that it didn’t offer a KDE option), or to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if I must have a rolling distro for some reason. Thank you all for your guidance, and happy distro hopping!
Thank you for the update!
Could you elaborate upon your decision-making?
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Sounds like you should just use Mint, especially if you tried and like it. It’s customizable, GUI friendly, it’s based on Ubuntu so most guides for either will work, and you can download Steam to it and play native games (or Windows games through Proton).
I don’t know what you’re looking for, that Mint doesn’t provide. You can download different DEs or window managers, you can write your own bash scripts, and the core functionality for regular use is already there.
