I’m a windows loser looking to make the plunge into Linux. I was thinking of switching my gaming PC to Linux in the near future. Before I make up my mind, I’ll probably try out VMs of distros.
I’ve lurked a few Linux communities here and on lemmy.ml, some I’m gonna regurgitate some things I half remember in the hope of being being corrected and starting discussion about what I should be doing.
- Ubuntu isn’t good
- Mint is good despite being based on Ubuntu. Made with former windows users in mind
- Debian is good because of their packages or package manager or something. Recently sold out, but there are spinoffs that don’t use proprietary software like Duvian.
- Fedora seemed to get some good word but I can’t remember why.
- Arch and it’s spinoffs require a shit ton of finagling to get right but can do a lot of cool things
- There are different desktop environments like GNOME, Cinnamon, and … others? I honestly don’t know what a desktop environment is.
- Wine (or the fork Proton) can run windows native games on Linux
- There are snap, flat something or other, and … other ways for installing software.
I’m sure I’m missing a lot and got some things wrong. Any help getting started is appreciated.
Edit: I ended up going with a KDE plasma spin of Fedora 36. Once I figured out how to get the nvidia drivers set up it was smooth sailing.
Ubuntu is actually quite good. there are also spins (xubuntu, kubuntu, etc) for other desktops. Ubuntu gets hate because of snaps but it’s fine.
Mint is good too. They’re both good choices for anyone new to linux.
Apt (the package manager) comes from Debian, and therefore is the default on ubuntu and mint. It’s a very good package manager.
Fedora gets praise because it’s always getting the newest software, and whenever there’s a new technology in linux fedora is usually one of the first to have it.
My advice is just pick one, and try it out, maybe in a vm first. Stick with it, it really isn’t as complicated as it seems. Before you install on actual hardware, look up your hardware online and see how compatible it is with your distro of choice.
Ubuntu also gets hate because of wild decisions like advertising amazon dot com when you search for something om your local computer… https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/mark-shuttleworth-explains-ubuntus-new-amazon-adware-feature
I remember when that was introduced. It was something you could turn off (although it should have been opt in rather than opt in) and was later removed. Agreed that canonical can be shitty at times, but ubuntu (and the different ubuntu spins) are perfectly good operating systems for new and experienced users, I say that as a long time debian user.