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.

  • FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    I honestly don’t know what a desktop environment is.

    To answer your question, a Desktop Environment is basically a set of programs that make up a whole Graphical Desktop. A typical Desktop Environment consists of a Window Manager, some core programs (Panels, Dock, Settings App, etc.) and some utility programs such as a File Manager, Calculator, Text Editor, Media Player, etc.

    You actually don’t need a whole Desktop Environment to use a Computer with GNU/Linux -or really any UNIX-like OS- as a PC. But it may be easier and much more convenient for most.