When I started my Linux journey, it began in 2014 with Ubuntu. Eventually I installed mint. Then I got a new laptop and installed Ubuntu on it. Then I switched to manjaro and lasted an actual while on that install. I then deleted that install. Then I tried fedora, and didn’t like it because it was too plain. Now I’m on pop os and nobara, still plain.

My preferred desktop environment is kde, but don’t know what distro I should get.

I am familiar with apt the most.

I also appreciate the other features that nobara offers, like auto mounting drives for steam.

Should I try kubuntu? I haven’t used it.

Edit: I have decided to install kubuntu.

I bought a two in one.

Learning about machinectl got me thinking on installing a light host (maybe alpine or arch), then use machinectl nspawn containers with some distros.

Then run all in parallel and use TTY changing to jump from one another.

GUI might be a tricky part... but if it works then you could have parallel distros running, one some for fun, some for work without needing to reboot and stuff.

Anyone tried anything similar? Or maybe some distro already doing something like this?

I'm shifting to Linux to minimize distractions.

I am currently daily driving Windows 11 where I am having my work (college) profile and regular profile in the same account. Not really great for keeping me off of social media and the YouTube / Reddit rabbit hole while i'm working / studying. So, I'm planning to shift to Linux for my work / study. I'm planning to slap it onto an SSD that I have lying around. Only boot into it when i'm working / studying and it will only contain the relevant study material.

Need your recommendations on a distro that I can just slap on an SSD and get working with. I'm a CS student so I'm gonna be programming a lot. I've worked with Ubuntu quite a lot so if nothing else, I'll just put Ubuntu and call it a day. I want to explore other distros that Linux has to offer. I considered Arch but I really don't want to get into the pain of setting it all up from scratch. I just want to install it on the SSD and call it a day. Plus points if the desktop environment looks beautiful with good animations as I have got a laptop which will be able to handle it (Ryzen 7 5700U + 16GB RAM + Integrated Graphics). Was also thinking about exploring Pop_OS or even Linux Mint, if that's an option.

I'm definitely not new to Linux. Been using Linux since a long time so yeah. I've got experience with distros like Manjaro, Pop_OS, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Pop_OS.

I know that pretty much any Linux distro would work in my usecase but I just want your experience with such sort of setup where Windows is where I'll do non-work related stuff and Linux would strictly be for work.

To sum it up, I want recommendations for a Linux Distro which will allow me to work (programming and uni assignments mostly) and looks good as well (decent animations and desktop environment, tiling support, etc.) I know that all of the "good looks" can be customized and I can just install stuff but I really do not want to put much effort into all that. I would really like if a distro just comes out of the box with all this.

Thank you.

Edit: Added two paragraphs for better conext.

Hi! I've experimented with a few different distros in the past but could never fully transition from Windows, so I always ended up switching back. I've tried both Nobara and Manjaro, but unfortunately ran into issues with both—things like constant screen flickering and complete audio failure. I’m not sure how much has changed since then, as it's been about a year since my last attempt. So, I thought I'd reach out and see if anyone has any recommendations on distros that might work better for me now. If you have any questions feel free to ask, I just want to try to switch over finally lol

Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i9-12900KS
• GPU: MSI RTX 3070ti VENTUS 3X OC
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
• Main Monitor: LG 27" 27GL83A - 2560x1440 144Hz
• Secondary Monitor: Dell 34" S3422DWG - 3440x1440 144Hz

Hey there. So I'm new to linux and i wanted to try some distros before choosing one, so I putted the most popular ones like mint, ubuntu, debian, etc, in a USB drive with Ventoy.

The problem is that upon booting to the desktop normally, after 30 seconds to a minute, theres a warning that says "0 disk free space", and I know that the live session runs on my RAM(8GB) so I found it odd.

I initially thought it might be the images ISOs that were damaged, so ran it in a VM and everything worked normally, then i thought it could be the USB or the USB Port, so i ran mint wich was the one with the problem with RUFUS and BALENA ETCHER and worked normally with my usb.

So I'm thinking it might be ventoy, that somehow is filling my RAM, i don't really know but after discarting the USB hardware problems or using other softwares, this only happens with ventoy, same thing with ubuntu testing.

I was wondering, if you have a home partition and then distro hopped, would you still keep your Firefox sessions?

Some explanations:

"Why Arch isnt S?": It is on bleeding edge and as such, it does break things more often than most other distros. yes, things do break in literally every single distro, but they are very, very frequent on bleeding edge ones like Arch.

"Why is SuSe (TW) on S then?": while SuSe does have the same problem, it gives the user better default tools to deal with the problem going from the verbosity of Zypper before every single update, to Btrfs + snapper and YaST, while things can and will break quite often, solving those issues is as easy as turning your computer on.

"Slackware in unusable makes no sense": i saw no benefits of trying to learn it, it is very difficulty to setup and theres a lot in the way of usability, it doesnt have extensive repos like Gentoo and as such, i see no reason to use it over gentoo, maintaining pretty much every package you have on your system is too much of a headache.

"Why lubuntu is ranked higher than other Ubuntu flavors? its only a flavor": It revived 2 laptops i had graciously in a way that not even mint or anything else i tried did, it is my go to distro when it comes down to just getting ancient hardware working.

"Zorin make it way too easy to use Windows programs": its very easy to setup WINE, i don't see much benefits, its extremely difficult to change DEs on zorin either, try KDE and you are asking for trouble.

"Another Manjaro bad take?": i tried for some time as daily driver in 2022-2023 but i had as many breakages as i had on arch, even more if i used the AUR a lot (even if pamac solves a lot of issues related to that). one in particular made me very annoyed and it was related to xdg-desktop-portal for KDE, which just stopped working after a certain update, after a lot of time debugging it i found a solution, but until then i couldnt even use filesearchers on my flatpaks and had to switch my browsers. i simply see no reason to use it over arch.

"Why nobara is so low": maybe i lost something, but isnt this just fedora but with pre-installed gaming tools? this is way too fast to setup, it was actually my very first distro but i don't know why i would use it, i may be ignorant on this one since when i used it i knew nothing about linux, but theres some other benefit?

Hello. I recently bought a Thinkpad P50 off of ebay. It should arrive within the next week or so. It has an i7-6820HQ, 24GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and both intel and NVIDIA (Quadro) graphics. As for the distro, I'm torn between Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.. Both have KDE and GNOME. Both have good package selection, though Fedora's is slightly better iirc. Either way, theres flatpak. Both have up to date packages but neither is as unstable as Arch. Iirc, Fedora 41 gives you a way to use NVIDIA drivers with secure boot. Plus, I'm more familiar with Fedora and DNF. But OpenSUSE has YAST and also atomic updates. The distros seem so similar and I'm not sure which one fits my use case better.

I'm mostly planning on using this laptop as a development/learning/experimentation and maybe trying out some gaming depending on just how powerful it actually is. It could also come in handy further in college.

Hello everyone, mostly what the tittle says. My main laptop died a few days ago and it so happens that i have an old hp mini 110-3500 netbook that i can use while i save money for buying a new one. I tried antiX and its really good managing the resources but since i came from Arch im kinda breaking the "dont break debian" stuff. So now im here asking for a distro withouth systyemD and extra tips. The netbook specs:

-Intel Atom N550 (2cores 4 threads 1.5ghz), 64bits compatibility.

-2gb ddr3 ram (max from cpu)

-HDD 5400rpm.

My config in arch was just i3 and later sway, but also like gnome and sutff. Is artiX a good choice or its unstable? Mostly for work and uni, a little code and research.

Thanks to anyone who responds :)

Suppose I wanted to run a.machine dedicated to audio recording. How hard would it be to to set up a machine starting from tiny core Linux to do this. Suppose I were going to use audacity as the sole software aside from what was included in tiny core.. the idea is just to make something very stable and fast with just a single task plus what ever command line tools needed to trouble shoot.

Hey I'm using opensuse tumbleweed now

I wanne give arch with hyprland a try

if I only use pacman packages how stable is my machine I do not Wanna fix my system each week For stability best avoid the AUR?

Do i need network manager for steam?

I created a video reviewing as many distros as I could in 5 minutes.

Obviously doesn't go in depth for each distro but if you want a quick overview it might help....

https://youtu.be/QShiNBVtjoQ

Context -

I recently full time switched from windows to linux. Prior to this, in 2023 I used Fedora for a week and loved it but back then I wasn't liking gnome's workflow. This time though, I jumped straight into it. I installed Arch manually with BTRFS and timeshift, and chose Hyprland for my WM cause why not. I riced it entirely manually again to learn linux and the terminal and I have finally attained "perfection". I also absolutely love my workflow using virtual desktops and only keyboard hotkeys / shortcuts. Recently I installed cachyos repos and kernel with nvidia drivers to test out gaming for fun (I'm not a gamer) and it was smooooth. I also tried out GNOME (I love KDE but wanted GNOME'S simplicity) and it was awesome. But again I stuck with arch and didn't switch to cachyos due to their weird decisions like installing and using fish by default.

Reason -

However after Fedora 41 and gnome I was thinking of switching over to fedora (or maybe even nobara ) since I wanted a simple DE with no fancy scripts and configs like my Hyprland setup. I basically just wanted to focus on my work rather than rice my WM. My main issue with anaconda and dnf was also fixed. I've never had arch break on me, but I still do think and know that Fedora is more stable.

The issue is I don't see how this is also a valid reason to jump ship. I fear that unlike Arch where I know exactly what I'm doing to my system I won't know what exactly is happening in fedora, so it might end up being a hassle to resolve problems. I was also looking at bazzite but I'm not sold on immutable distros yet. I realllly wanna switch (and I have tried it out already) but I don't know if it's worth it. What do you guys recommend?

EDIT: just switched to Fedora with gnome, let's see how it goes lmao

EDIT 2: caved and went back to arch, hopefully I don't hop again soon

It runs kvm, it's stable, it uses a floating window manager. It's perfect.

Hello, I'm looking for a good distro for an old laptop. I am mostly using it for the Internet surfing, academic stuff and home networking (I have my own NAS). For a long time I have used Ubuntu, but I'm bored by it. Recently I have tried Manjaro OS with KDE Plasma and I'm in love with KDE, but the Manjaro itself is too engaging for me when it's going to maintaining the system. I'm familiar with CLI, knowing some basics of Linux, open to learn new things and having fun with that, but to some extent - at the end, I just need a stable OS, not a new hobby 😅 I would try openSUSE, but I'm not sure if my hardware will meet the requirements, especially CPU: the official site says that openSUSE needs 2 GHz unit... Other options considered by me are EndeavourOS and Debian. What you would recommend? Here are my system specification + I have SSD drive.

https://preview.redd.it/gzccv6151hyd1.png?width=478&format=png&auto=webp&s=5334522a94222c2219ebd54cd7a5dc883c4a0de7

What is the best distro?

CPU: Intel Celeron N4500 (2) @ 1.113GHz

I have an Asus notebook with AMD integrated graphics (Ryzen 5 4600h). I tried to migrate to Linux Mint a few times, but gave up when I saw that it's not as simple as Windows to limit battery charging. I use the notebook plugged in frequently, so I like to leave it limited to 60%, as the MyAsus app recommends on Windows. It turns out that there is no simple way to do this in Linux Mint. There is no native configuration and the methods I tried were not easy for a beginner. I tried through TLP but it didn't work.

I also had another problem, but with the screen temperature. With the MyAsus app or AMD's Adrenaline, I can easily change the screen temperature and leave it in a color that is pleasant for the eyes. Not on Linux Mint. I tried qredshift, redshift, but this application is no longer updated and it is not even similar to the configuration that I can do simply in Windows.

Honestly, how come people say Mint is "beginner-friendly"? I realized that it is a fast system, but that is not enough. It looks archaic. I noticed that KDE Plasma has a native option to limit battery charging. If Mint wants to be an easy distro for beginners, then it needs to have these native settings or develop decent apps for it.

Hi,

so I got Win11 on my T480 and really want to try Linux. I downloaded Fedora 41 yesterday and did try it out a bit. It's somewhat smooth, the swiping on touchscreen to change workspaces or show "all apps" (superkey) feels not really smooth. I notice micro lags, if that makes sense. I like the interface though, its literally made for touch.

But i dont know, it's not that smooth as Win11 due to this micro lags. Is my hardware too bad?

My main keys:
- recherche the internet, having lots of tabs/windows open including pdfs

- programming python, JS (beginner)

- dont care about gaming AT ALL

- I just want a smooth experience (main point)

- im a "willed-beginner"

Is there anything I could try that can make it as smooth as possible? Or what would you recommend for my keys and hardware. Note that I only got 8 GB RAM. I am willing to upgrade to 16 or 32 GB, IF it increases smoothness.

Hey everyone. I've been distro hopping for quite a while ever since I bought my new gaming PC after using an M1 macbook air for roughly 3 years. I've tried different distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora and different desktop environments like GNOME and KDE with different flavors. Unfortunately, my experience hasn't been very good especially when it comes to the smoothness of the OS. Most issues seem to be a result of my 4k display (fractional scaling issues) or Nvidia RTX GPU drivers. Using the distros just feels too sluggish and slow.

In case you're curious, here are my PC specs: : AMD Ryzen 5 7600, RTX 4070 Super, 2TiB WD SN770 SSD storage, 32 GB DDR5 6000MHz RAM. Also, looking to use 2 monitors soon (4k + 1080p).

I have used windows so far (mostly for gaming) and it is running just fine but I miss having a UNIX-like OS with good customizability. In short, I miss macOS. I would like to dual boot a linux distro alongside the existing windows installation. Also, if possible, I'd like to run kinto.sh which helps with using mac keybindings but apparently it doesn't work with wayland (not a hard requirement for me though).

So,. here's the main question - Is there any combination of a distro, DE, Display server protocol, GPU drivers which will work well with my Nvidia RTX GPU (or completely ignore it and use my iGPU at all times), 4k monitor (150-175% scaling) along with a secondary 1080p monitor. I do not care about gaming on the linux distro, I just need it purely for my programming workflow.

Hi

I recently bought another computer with the following specs:

https://preview.redd.it/62ekqcpiaixd1.png?width=447&format=png&auto=webp&s=4bb4d51c772fe48d3bbd3835ca3467462e054d50

This processor comes with the following capabilities:

https://preview.redd.it/42db6h62bixd1.png?width=421&format=png&auto=webp&s=73c9c2d59efa326c0e3b235fe96c7332f7631cba

I want to install a Linux distro that can use the AI Instructions.

If a distro supports AI the notebook will have a better performance or doesn't make no difference?

I am not using AI for developing.

I wouldn't like to use UBUNTU or REDHAT . I was thinking in Debian or ZORIN. POP OS is an option but I need to have Windows 11 in Dual Boot.

What do you suggest?

set up : 1 ssd 500gb, 1 hdd 1TB, nvidia gtx 1650 dedicated, intel integrated.

History: mostly used EndeavourOS and arch based distros. used ubuntu, mint, kali for very brief time. (XFCE as DE mostly)

Use case: I want to dual boot now with windows and linux on SSD, i dont mind if windows cant read hdd.

I dont want to deal with constant update and nvidia problems, I dont mind if there is no nvidia on linux.

I would prefer something stable and easy to use, looks good out of the box. I am bored with arch based ones.

I dont like snap. I am mostly gonna be using it for small programming, browsing and maybe little editing (davinci resolve and darktable maybe), although I think I would do that mostly on windows.

So, basically no extraordinary usecase. mostly good UI UX with multiple workspaces with libinput gesure. ( i am addicted to it)

I was thinking Void (just because I havent used it before), but not sure if there will be problem with dual boot.

I’d like to see which Linux distributions come with the Sway window manager pre-installed, besides the ones I already know about.

1. Fedora Spins

https://fedoraproject.org/spins/sway/download

https://preview.redd.it/tg2ysei06fxd1.png?width=1176&format=png&auto=webp&s=2abc6f6cc5f4a33d118e80d07bf87a3fb059505a

2. Garuda Linux

https://garudalinux.org/downloads

https://preview.redd.it/gysiuse16fxd1.png?width=1454&format=png&auto=webp&s=23ec77141b4d701d33519d81e6beb718e190fff9

3. Manjaro

https://manjaro.org/products/download/x86

https://preview.redd.it/t3pcxz386fxd1.png?width=1482&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba69ae3cac469ed5f42ae1ea436dd3be7c627425

4. Ubuntu Sway Remix

https://ubuntusway.com

https://preview.redd.it/ceadhh1a6fxd1.png?width=1413&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c8556e7eb92be56dca3171ff91ef2db33013bc5

5. EndeavourOS

https://github.com/EndeavourOS-Community-Editions/sway​

https://preview.redd.it/vtwqtosa6fxd1.png?width=1593&format=png&auto=webp&s=835782ad1ddfef03f44734f6aab30180aa3e5a91

6. Crystal Linux

https://getcryst.al​getcryst.al

https://preview.redd.it/tyhmywrj6fxd1.png?width=1463&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4a42d8456ae814ad4f99009ed16aafaa21fb2ed

https://preview.redd.it/a2qzuppxufxd1.png?width=1284&format=png&auto=webp&s=28089c77c59e18ee932f047c4cef2370dafb6b23

Hi, I am currently using Tumbleweed and I would like to install on an old pc that I have been given as a gift (because it is not valid for Windows 11) a rolling distribution for testing other than Tumbleweed.

I think that the option is limited to Arch and I would like to know if the configuration of tools like snapper is difficult in this distribution. I'm used to snapper and it has "saved" me several times from failed upgrades, so I don't consider using a rolling distro without having a tool like snapper enabled. Thanks

I want to install Garuda linux in my external harddrive instead of internal, internal runs on windows can't remove (important files and software, passwords, different browser data) . I am facing issue while installing

1. Bios need to be installed location
2. OS installation itself is stopping after a little while.( Latest downloaded yesterday only). Some bug in iso file I think.

If this not possible I want to install arch on external drive instead of Garuda. Main issue installation on external drive.