this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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I won't be going to W11, but I'm looking for ease of use with gaming in mind. Mint will likely be my first go at it.
Ignore all other instructions. Just try Mint. I'm using linux for I don't know how many years and have ended up back on Mint. It's the Alpha and the Omega and just a super solid distro. Immutable distros are a pain unless you are a casual user, in which case try it.
A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I appreciate how thorough that reply is. My experience with Windows is either expert level or, given my job, should be. I don't really want to have to fight with my system at home, which is why I was looking at ease of use. I stayed away from really working with Linux for a while because there was a time when it had a reputation for being finicky with AMD hardware (which I often have at least a processor of) and problematic with game compatibility.
It is my understanding that neither of those are much of a problem these days, assuming they ever were (I never actually verified either one). That mixed with Microsoft's audacity with Recall is enough for me to learn the transition. I might take you up on that offer for troubleshooting assistance, but I think once I commit to a Linux flavor I'll be capable of figuring it out. It's more laziness that has caused me to procrastinate than lack of skill, but thank you!
the hardware / games compat problems were definitely real, at least for me. the number of times I've had to dive into config files to fix a hardware problem has dropped way off since I first started using linux. It's very much better now.
Whatever you go for, make sure drivers are up to date. Anything pulling directly from the Debian repos requires manual installation for Nvidia drivers later than v525.x.x.
Not that doing so is hard, its just tedious and tbh I don't expect the average new user to have a firm enough grasp of everything going on to handle it smoothly.
Mint is fine. Some people like Fedora, but its sluggish on some hardware. I'm a fan of my arch Based distributions personally, but I don't recommend pure arch to a newbie (endeavor maybe, but even then expect to do a ton of reading)
If you're looking for something to tinker and learn with, something more advanced might be good.
I usually recommend something that is immutable if you're looking for a set and forget system that won't require much (if any) tinkering.
In my house we use Arch, LMDE, and FreeBSD (do not recommend unless you prefer to live at a terminal)
Appreciate the advice. I may want to tinker someday, and do have the skill to do it, but I do not currently have the interest to tinker. Someday perhaps, but for now I will take the suggestion of looking at immutables!