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What would you say is the most reliable, "it just works" distro currently? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev
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Obviously this is somewhat subjective, but I've had a lot of problems in my previous attempts to switch to Linux, so I'd like to create a list of distros to try out, and see what works for me. I'm mostly expecting to be doing basic office work and light gaming via Steam.

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[–] 11 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Shortlist of traditional distros, ordered roughly in descending order:

  • Linux Mint^[Attracts most noobs and is probs the most popular out of these; no-brainer. Lack of proper Wayland support and not offering (!) a (semi-)rolling release model are the only reasons why the others deserve to be on this list. Otherwise this would sweep clean.]
  • Zorin OS^[If you want something slow-moving, but still need/want Wayland.]
  • CachyOS^[Arch-based distro, but comes with very sane defaults. Recommended if you're on very new hardware.]
  • Fedora^[Relatively bare-bones. Especially compared to all the other distros found on this list. But, if you want a more minimalist approach while preserving excellent defaults, then this is definitely it.]

Shortlist of Only^[Technically, any of uBlue's distros qualifies. But Bazzite is a lot more popular than the others. Hence you'll have an easier time finding resources for it.] recommendation for atomic distros:

  • Bazzite^[This probs deserves a footnote of its own in which I elaborate, but I got tired. Here, have a flower; 💮.]

As for deciding between a traditional or atomic distro, I'd personally suggest to try out Bazzite first. And refer to their documentation whenever something comes up during initial setup. If at any point, you're not able to get it to work even with the help of its community —^[I know using the em dash here makes me look sus AF, but I can assure the reader that no LLMs were used in the creation of this writing.] be it through their Discord, Discourse or subreddit — then simply pivot to the traditional distros.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    what is wayland and how important is it?

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    what is wayland

    Basically, whenever an app has a GUI it wants to display, it communicates that to 'the system' with all the necessary details. After which 'the system' does the rendering and whatnot. Wayland is a protocol that defines a set of rules on how this interaction should take place. Hence, technically, it is only (the defining) part of the modern solution.

    how important is it?

    Very. Basically, either it or its 'predecessor'^[The term is used loosely here, because there's a very big difference between the two.] X11 is involved whenever you want to display/render anything^[Which, to be clear, happens literally all the time. Unless your display needs don't go beyond what was already available on MS-DOS*.] on desktop Linux. As X11 has been abandoned in favor of Wayland, some modern features like HDR or VRR are only found on the latter. On the other hand, I believe Wayland was never meant to offer full feature-parity with X11. Hence, some unsupported edge cases may continue to exist indefinitely. Thankfully, it has come a long way. What remains are some concerns related to accessibility AND the adjustment^[Like, how only very recently Electron got to become proper Wayland-native. Note that Xwayland is included with Wayland as a compatibility layer whenever something is not Wayland-native yet.] of the surrounding ecosystem.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Thank you for the intro, that helped. Sounds like Mint not having it is relevant

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Thank you for the intro, that helped.

    Glad to hear it was helpful.

    Sounds like Mint not having it is relevant

    Yup. FWIW, there's also the security argument; I.e. X11 makes keylogging trivial, while Wayland provides protection against it by default. Having said that, there is experimental support for Wayland in Linux Mint. But, ideally, it needs more time to cook.

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