What are some questions that newbies should ask when deciding on which distro to use as the basis for their system?
Do I want to get rid of windows without too much hassle?
Linux MintLinux MintOnce you're used to Linux Mint cinnamon, you can start hopping to other DEs like KDE, Gnome 3, Cosmic or XFCE.
And then once you're used to that, you can hop to other distros.
At first I wanted to disagree. But honestly, the more I think about it, you are right.
Newbies will ask stupid questions, that's not their fault.
The people answering should know better than to answer with their favorite distros.
The correct answer is "pick a popular one and don't worry about the differences, you're too inexperienced to notice them anyway."
I'd argue they'd have to answer (or at least think about) what their goldilocks is in terms of the following axis:
my balance (using 1-7 scales) is
Arch Linux it is, then 😋
I’d say picking a desktop environment is the most important question you should make. Then, after that, pick a rolling release or something with a short release schedule (Fedora for example), because for most people, LTS doesn’t matter, and you’ll have a worse experience having old packages.
https://distrofighter.com/ A dumb but fun way to pick both
While old packages do ruin experiences, stuff changing too rapidly can as well.
Arch as well as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed are good examples at this.
This is it exactly. For a typical new user the things that make them bounce are, in order:
The whole discussion of things like immutable, deb, rpm, systemd, Wayland vs x11, etc are somewhere between meaningless and a scary sounding distraction for normal people who are fed up with MS/Apple and thinkng about trying something else.
my hot take is that a distro at the end of the day is just a package manager and an install script.
the question i would ask is: what do you want out of your package manager?
this would be an odd question for your given non-Linux user because their package manager before was called “fuck it YOLO”.
i’ll go through some that i use or have used.
apt/rpm/etc: stable. designed for the Linux of the 90s. uptime is king. i end up using these usually out of network effects. some popular package uses it in their Docker file or my VPS only supports these. they’re boring, but that’s on purpose. updates are purposeful and vetted (relatively).
these are your Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc flavors.
pacman: seriously just a great design philosophy imo next to the others. rolling release. no versions. fix forward. also with the AUR, you get your “fuck it YOLO” packages back in a way that they can actually be maintained, updated, or nuked as appropriate. if you ever caught yourself waiting for a CUDA release on apt, this is for you. Arch, Manjaro,.. i think there’s a ton of vibe coded configs that all pretty much amount to Arch.
nix(/maybe guix?): a software engineer’s package manager. everything is declarative, reproducible, and version controllable. what was that thing i installed last weekend? it’s in the commit log. need 3 different C compilers/graphic drivers/toolchain dependencies installed? handled by the OS, and cleaned up when those versions change. this is my current rig cuz it helps me keep a bunch of machines in sync for my home projects.
Gentoo and LFS and anything else would be a bit much.
I've been using Chimera linux recently (coming from Arch), and APK v3 is so good. It is so fucking fast and it's dependency management is next level. Also the world file is really cool. Pacman felt more powerful in some ways, but a bit slower and more cumbersome. I also have had it just remove dependencies that another package still needs, and optional dependencies aren't handled as cleanly.
Putting aside the question, the answer is that they should use upstream or Mint. There are basically no exceptions.
I have yet to see a decent explainer on things like VMs, docker, flatpacks, etc. all in one place/article.
What are you looking for in that article?
I'm not sure I'd be a good reference for what should be in the article as my life has been... unusual, to say the least. I used to be quite techy, albeit mostly self-taught. A couple decades ago my life changed dramatically & took me away from all that. Now I'd like to play some catch-up, but still don't really have the time, budget, and now brain power for it (older ADHD sufferer).
I mean I can still remember some random basics like a minimal TCP/IP understanding, my fingers still have some muscle memory on using a *NIX shell (tcsh in SCO UNIX, to show my age) & vi (supplanted by vim now), etc. I was just getting into VMs when shit went down, so I get the basics there. But I don't fully understand what exactly docker, flatpacks, snaps, etc. are, their differences, advantage to each, etc.
And don't get me started on init - I cannot fathom what a monolithic systemd provides that is so much better than traditional startup systems that it was worth breaking the UNIX philosophy of small, simple programs dedicated to singular tasks for.
But like I said, my situation is kinda unique so I don't expect to find much info targeting former techies who effectively may as well have been in a coma for over 20 years. But some explainers that get to the point of all that's come along in that time without treating me as if I'm clueless would be nice.
ETA: and no, I wasn't in prison, or anything like that. Just stuff happened that severely screwed me up.
I'd say, don't even ask questions about the distro. Instead ask: what do you want to do? Make it an exhaustive list! There are few distros that cannot do what most people want them to do. 🙃
The only questions you really need to ask when picking a distro are which one aligns best with your effort, skill and preferences. To begin with prior to using any distro, those are very low and basic, so you want to start with a low effort quick and easy introduction to Linux. Start with a live distro to play around with. Then decide how much hand holding you need from there to choose which distro you actually want to commit to at the start. Then after weeks or months on that first distro, you will figure out what you like and dislike, which will guide your choices to move to the next distro. To begin with is all about learning and experimenting.
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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