• NotNotMike@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    In the spirit of these kinds of changes, I’d love to hear some honest Linux distribution recommendations. I’m leaning towards Ubuntu because it is the most widely advertised and UX focused from my perspective. But I’ve also heard good things about Arch. Any others I should be considering?

    I’ll probably not go full Linux any time soon - I want at least one Windows OS to play games on - so whatever option it should be dual-boot friendly.

    • swordsmanluke@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      If not vanilla Ubuntu, I’d still suggest trying an Ubuntu derivative like Linux Mint or POP! OS. Ubuntu has a huge community, so in the event you run into issues it’ll be easier to find fixes for it.

      What you’ll find is that Linux distros are roughly grouped by a “family” (my term for it anyway). Anyone can (theoretically, anyway) start from a given kernel and roll their own distro, but most distros are modified versions of a handful of base distros.

      The major families at the moment are

      • Debian: A classic all-rounder that prioritizes stability over all else. Ubuntu is descended from Debian.

      • Fedora: Another classic all-rounder. I haven’t used it in a decade, so I won’t say much about it here.

      • Arch: If Linux nerds were car people, Arch is for the hot rodders. You can tune and control pretty much any aspect of your system. … Not a good 1st distro if you want to just get something going.

      There are many others, but these are the major desktop-PC distro families at the moment.

      The importance of these families is that techniques that work in one (say) Debian-based distro will tend to work in other Debian-based distros… But not necessarily in distros from other families.

    • Varyag@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Linux Mint. That’s always the answer. It’s lightweight, it’s simple, it’s easy, it does what you need. Even gaming. SomeOrdinaryGamers did a vidso on YT about installing it, it’s pretty easy!

    • sep@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Debian stable on servers. Debian testing on the daily driver.
      Gives you a rock solid server, that will pull absolutly no suprises.
      And your daily driver gives you a playground for what comes in the next upgrade.

    • janNatan@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      “Dual boot friendly” means installing Linux on its own hard drive, just so you know. If you don’t do that, it’s likely the next Windows update will screw up the Linux bootloader. Maybe that’s gotten better, but it’s what I’d recommended from past experience.

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      You’ve heard good things about arch solely because you’re on Lemmy. Using arch means you’ll be dedicating about 50% of your working time towards tinkering and making it fucking work, which is fun don’t get me wrong- unless you have actual work to do.

      Ubuntu is solid but a little sluggish, I’m personally an advocate for Mint as far as something you can drop a windows users in and they’ll generally figure it out.

    • ogeist@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I would go with Linux Mint if you don’t want to tinker with it much, but Arch will allow you to be in the bleeding edge easily if you install things from the AUR but you could stay in the stable channels as well.

      Regarding games, I’m mostly a Single Player kind of guy and basically everything I have tried so far just works if it’s installed from Steam, for others you can use Lutris or Heroic Launcher but tinkering might be needed.

      All of this just to say: I use Arch btw. It’s been practically 2 years already since I haven’t boot into Windows for gaming.

    • ebits21@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I wouldn’t recommend arch as a first distro imo. I don’t see what the advantage would be for a newbie.

      Personally I would recommend Fedora.

        • ebits21@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          Like Ubuntu, I like that Fedora is backed by a big company. Fedora is quite good at pushing the Linux ecosystem forward and often adopts and pushes new technology before other distros (flatpaks, Wayland, pipewire, btrfs etc.) that all Linux distros eventually benefit from.

          Ubuntu on the other hands seems to want to be the Microsoft of Linux… which is not a compliment. I’ve been put off by things like their pushing of snap packages.

          I personally like the stock gnome (on a laptop) or kde (on a desktop) desktops over the cinnamon mint desktop (but mint is closer to windows). Fedora is pretty close to stock (gnome by default).

          Fedora has great flatpak integration for installing apps (think App Store) which is my preferred way to do it. Mint has this as well.

          Fedora also has semi rolling releases and constant updates, which I prefer over Linux Mint’s 2 year release cycles (this doesn’t matter for any software you install from flatpaks).

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Install Steam’s Proton and just run whatever windows games you want*, no more need to dual boot.

      *unless they have kernel-level anticheat and isn’t Linux compatible

    • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
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      8 months ago

      Given that this is in a thread about Microsoft Server, I’d recommend using Debian as the distribution to replace Microsoft Server.

      If you want a desktop, I’d start with a LiveCD version and familiarise yourself with the various available distributions on offer.

      The intent of a LiveCD is essentially to boot into Linux without modifying your hard-disk and keeping your existing OS unchanged.

      I’ll note that many of these images are available for DVD or USB. Some will offer a mechanism to store data on your existing drive without wiping anything.

      With USB drives being fast and cheap, you can also often use a LiveCD to install onto an external drive.

      Finally, you can install a virtual machine on your computer and use it to run your Linux tests.

    • pezhore@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Are you looking for a Windows, server, replacement or desktop replacement? Your experience will differ depending on which one you’re trying to replace.

      For instance, if you’re trying to replace Windows active directory services with a single Linux server, might have a bad time. I’m in the process of migrating from AD to FreeIPA, PowerDNS, and isc-dhcp (or something similar for DHCP).

      • NotNotMike@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        Sorry, forgot to specify in the post. But I’m looking for a desktop replacement. We thankfully don’t use Windows Server anywhere at the moment.

    • warmaster@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Linux Server Distros:

      • Ubuntu Server = easier but with more bullshit out of the box (eg. snaps)
      • Debian Stable = a tad bit harder because it’s cleaner out of the box.
      • Fedora Server = clean and easy, documentation may be a bit harder to follow, less community tutorials.
      • Arch & others = Just no. You don’t want a rolling release for a server. You want older and thus stable, tested, software and drivers.

      If you want a distro for general use:

      • Linux Mint = easiest of the bunch, but it has old packages that may not offer the best environment for gaming.

      • Fedora Based distros = middle ground between ubuntu based distros like Mint, and rolling release distros like Arch.

      • Arch based distros = bleeding edge drivers and packages (for better or worse), best for gaming. Manjaro could work for you, as it is not fully Arch.

      • Bazzite OS = It’s an immutable Fedora based distro but with Arch customized to make it work like Steam OS all inside a container. It’s unbreakable, easy to use, and game-ready. Has AMD & NVIDIA images ready to go.

      My recommendation is to flash Ventoy on a thumbdrive load it up with all the recommended distros, and proceed to test drive the ones you think might work for you, and only time will tell which one is the best for your specific needs.