That one universal linux is Fedora, or OpenSuse, or Debian, or Pop_OS. Take your pick. They are all excellent daily drivers.
I recommend Bazzite to gamers. If you primarily play games, there is no reason to look at anything else.
If you want more control and like to experiment, try one of the above distros I mentioned. I like Fedora and constantly come back to it, but any Linux with KDE Plasma is going to be fine for most people. I am very excited for the upcoming version of Pop_OS with the Cosmic desktop beta. There is a strong chance that becomes my go-to once that releases, since it has the good parts of Ubuntu and none of the bad ones.
Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu are the only ones I tell people to avoid. Also, avoid Arch until you get really into Linux and crave complete control.
I do primarily play games, but it only takes one program to not work for the whole OS to be a failure for that use case.
And then over time, another program, then another program. It either all works or none of it does.
I almost forgot to mention, because I always forget, if you play games that use anti-cheat, you are almost certainly ruled out, even if the ones you play are supported, because later you might want to play something that isn’t supported - and again, that’s all it takes to not be suitable. https://areweanticheatyet.com/
True. But if you do ANY research 99% of people will say mint for beginners.
After that if you delve in more you can go fedora/arch etc. But almost everyone is going to say start with mint, or if you REALLY only wanna game, bazzite.
The same reason why there are many political parties, or restaurant brands, or even games: everyone thinks that their way is better, or are trying to improve on something that they like.
I get that it can be daunting for someone wanting to start, but just like with other topics you should start with something simple to dip your toes and move on from there. My personal recommendation has been Linux Mint, it has sane defaults, works out of the box for most cases and it’s popular enough (and based on another popular distro) which makes getting help easier.
Trying to pick your distro from the sea of available options might feel impossible, but 99% of the stuff is the same, so picking something that works out of the box for you is a great start, and you can learn what you need to make a meaningful choice afterwards.
Let me give you an example on the sort of differences you can expect: do you think that updates should be delivered as soon as possible or leave some delay to catch bugs/issues? If a delay how big should it be?; How much stuff should come installed by default with your system? Should you get a bare ones system to build up or something at least functional for everyday tasks to adapt?; Should you be able to edit your system files or should they be locked so it’s harder to break stuff?. These sort of questions might seem pointless, but they’re the core differences between Linux distros, and if you’re answer to them is I don’t know/care anything that works out of the box would be good enough until you develop an opinion on the matter.
+1 for Mint, i recently switched from win10 to mint and shit just kinda works. Applications boot way faster too, discord will open in like 2 seconds where on the same machine running windows would take upwards of 10 seconds
My recommendations for starter OSs are bazzite if you really only care about gaming. Mint if you want a more general pc, and to learn more about standard linux-ey stuff
People who think an OS should look/behave a certain way make a distro to reflect that. I think it’s awesome that there are so many distros. I don’t understand why so many people love gnome, but far be it from me to just tell them to pack it in and work on KDE instead. Some people want an OS that updates often so they get the latest versions of their software and don’t mind the risk of being potentially unstable, some want their OS to be stable despite it meaning their software isn’t the bleeding edge. We have so many distros because we have a lot of people that know what they want out of an OS. Moral of the story is just use Linux mint (I use arch BTW).
Because Linux is open source and each group has a different idea on the direction it should go. They are all linux at their core, but they all have different use cases.
Bazzite and Zorin are both great options for leaving Windows for the first time. Bazzite is generally more gaming focused but Zorin is a better desktop in my limited experience of both. Bazzite for example is more locked up on OS files, so it’s harder to break in some regards. But it also bakes drivers into the image and they only get updated on the next release. Afaik you can’t tinker with the drivers much but I’m not experienced enough to say 100%.
You lot need to cool it with the Linux versions, there is loads of them and it’s confusing. Why are there so many?
It is ridiculous. We need to develop one universal Linux that covers everyone’s use cases. (Relevant XKCD on Standards)
That one universal linux is Fedora, or OpenSuse, or Debian, or Pop_OS. Take your pick. They are all excellent daily drivers.
I recommend Bazzite to gamers. If you primarily play games, there is no reason to look at anything else.
If you want more control and like to experiment, try one of the above distros I mentioned. I like Fedora and constantly come back to it, but any Linux with KDE Plasma is going to be fine for most people. I am very excited for the upcoming version of Pop_OS with the Cosmic desktop beta. There is a strong chance that becomes my go-to once that releases, since it has the good parts of Ubuntu and none of the bad ones.
Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu are the only ones I tell people to avoid. Also, avoid Arch until you get really into Linux and crave complete control.
I do primarily play games, but it only takes one program to not work for the whole OS to be a failure for that use case.
And then over time, another program, then another program. It either all works or none of it does.
I almost forgot to mention, because I always forget, if you play games that use anti-cheat, you are almost certainly ruled out, even if the ones you play are supported, because later you might want to play something that isn’t supported - and again, that’s all it takes to not be suitable. https://areweanticheatyet.com/
True. But if you do ANY research 99% of people will say mint for beginners.
After that if you delve in more you can go fedora/arch etc. But almost everyone is going to say start with mint, or if you REALLY only wanna game, bazzite.
Nah, 99% Mint is only for old computers. If you have a good pc the recommendations change a lot.
Using mint on both pcs with newish hardware is great for me! One of them is older and ones a ryzen with an rx580
The same reason why there are many political parties, or restaurant brands, or even games: everyone thinks that their way is better, or are trying to improve on something that they like.
I get that it can be daunting for someone wanting to start, but just like with other topics you should start with something simple to dip your toes and move on from there. My personal recommendation has been Linux Mint, it has sane defaults, works out of the box for most cases and it’s popular enough (and based on another popular distro) which makes getting help easier.
Trying to pick your distro from the sea of available options might feel impossible, but 99% of the stuff is the same, so picking something that works out of the box for you is a great start, and you can learn what you need to make a meaningful choice afterwards.
Let me give you an example on the sort of differences you can expect: do you think that updates should be delivered as soon as possible or leave some delay to catch bugs/issues? If a delay how big should it be?; How much stuff should come installed by default with your system? Should you get a bare ones system to build up or something at least functional for everyday tasks to adapt?; Should you be able to edit your system files or should they be locked so it’s harder to break stuff?. These sort of questions might seem pointless, but they’re the core differences between Linux distros, and if you’re answer to them is I don’t know/care anything that works out of the box would be good enough until you develop an opinion on the matter.
+1 for Mint, i recently switched from win10 to mint and shit just kinda works. Applications boot way faster too, discord will open in like 2 seconds where on the same machine running windows would take upwards of 10 seconds
My recommendations for starter OSs are bazzite if you really only care about gaming. Mint if you want a more general pc, and to learn more about standard linux-ey stuff
People who think an OS should look/behave a certain way make a distro to reflect that. I think it’s awesome that there are so many distros. I don’t understand why so many people love gnome, but far be it from me to just tell them to pack it in and work on KDE instead. Some people want an OS that updates often so they get the latest versions of their software and don’t mind the risk of being potentially unstable, some want their OS to be stable despite it meaning their software isn’t the bleeding edge. We have so many distros because we have a lot of people that know what they want out of an OS. Moral of the story is just use Linux mint (I use arch BTW).
Because Linux is open source and each group has a different idea on the direction it should go. They are all linux at their core, but they all have different use cases.
Bazzite and Zorin are both great options for leaving Windows for the first time. Bazzite is generally more gaming focused but Zorin is a better desktop in my limited experience of both. Bazzite for example is more locked up on OS files, so it’s harder to break in some regards. But it also bakes drivers into the image and they only get updated on the next release. Afaik you can’t tinker with the drivers much but I’m not experienced enough to say 100%.
Well, first I’m not “that lot”, been using Windows since 1997 and will continue to do so because my line of work.
But, I think you can see what’s going on with Android over Google, where there’s not so much “versions” around.