• stupidcasey@lemmy.world
      41·
      3 months ago

      I think the whole works part is the most important part, Linux can be janky (and by that I mean obsolete information and deprecated or outdated packages are often recommended and there are a thousand different ways to do anything with only one of them actually working (don’t have an aneurysm)) on the best of days, If something just works you can change what you want later.

      • PlaidBaron@lemmy.world
        30·
        3 months ago

        This is why I switched to Mint. It just works. It’s broken less than vanilla Ubuntu did. So thats what I use.

        • Zink@programming.dev
          9·
          3 months ago

          Yeah. Generally when I’m using a Linux PC to work on something, I don’t want to be fixing the PC itself too. And we make an embedded Linux product at work, so it’s not like I miss out on the fun, lol.

          I use Mint everywhere. It works great. Being easier for newcomers to use and having an extra layer of polish does not restrict my use of the command line or scripting.

    • foo@feddit.uk
      4·
      2 months ago

      I won’t use Ubuntu Desktop now, but I used it for 6 years: 16 to 22, and loved it for many reasons. I left it for two reasons:

      1. Snaps
      2. Trying to get bridged networking going for VMs in Boxes ended up wrecking my network settings and I couldn’t get them back to normal. With more expertise I could have probably fixed it, but I realised it’s too easy to do things that I can’t fix.

      So, I went to NixOS for the declarative setup. It’s not always easy especially for niche cases , but at least I always have a working backup. Yes, there are other options, but I like NixOS so I plan to stick with it for now.

      My kids use Bazzite and I like that too.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    7914·
    3 months ago

    Kubuntu for modern systems, Xubuntu for older systems, Lubuntu for older, low-end systems with limited RAM, Ubuntu server for headless servers.

    Stay mad, Ubuntu haters.

      • cRazi_man@europe.pub
        381·
        3 months ago

        It depends on the desktop environment.

        Ubuntu is the base version and uses GNOME.

        Ubuntu + KDE (the most superior of all DEs) = Kubuntu

        Ubuntu + XFCE = Xubuntu

          • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
            15·
            3 months ago

            I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Gubuntu, is in fact, Gnome/Ubuntu, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNUbuntu. Ubuntu is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Gnome system made useful by the Gnome libs, utilities and vital system apps comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the Gnome system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of Gnome which is widely used today is often called GNUbuntu, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the Gnome system, developed by the Gnome Project.

            There really is a Ununtu, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Ubuntu is like he kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run.

            The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the Gnome desktop system: the whole system is basically GNU with Ubuntu added, or GNUbuntu. All the so-called Ununtu distributions are really distributions of GNUbuntu!

    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
      193·
      3 months ago

      I quite like Kubuntu with the Snap-free minimal install. That said, Snaps are so bad and Canonical’s repos are so dangerous that I cannot recommend it to anyone any more. It’s a shame how greed has ruined Ubuntu.

    • Sestren@lemmy.world
      7·
      3 months ago

      Snaps do suck, but from a usability standpoint, you really can’t ignore the fact that 99% of documentation assumes deb, and Ubuntu is generally more up to date than pure Debian. I don’t like it myself, but it works and it’s better than Windows.

      • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
        42·
        3 months ago

        Snaps are awesome, I need to be on 20.04, or 18.04 for humble, for ROS noetic and so being able to install generic snaps which are fully up to date with modern software is awesome.

    • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
      6·
      3 months ago

      I use Ubuntu for ROS and work specific tasks, but I get the fuck out when I want to game. Ubuntu looks like a job to me. Just like Windows looks like a job to me.

      But the thing is, that’s just me. Can’t imagine being mad at someone else for using it, but Ubuntu makes me irrationally mad because it’s associated to work.

        • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
          4·
          3 months ago

          I loved Fluxbox, which was over 20 years ago. I had completely forgotten about it.

          New set of memories unarchived, thanks!

            • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
              3·
              3 months ago

              Kamen Rider will always be great.

              Henshin!

              Edit: I started rewatching the series a few months ago and can’t stop listening to the soundtracks again. l always loved Shunsuke Kikuchi’s music and hadn’t listened to it for far too long.

              • gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com
                2·
                2 months ago

                I actually started a personal project in June to watch the entire franchise in order, including the main movies and specials. Not sure about spin-offs yet, but I’m only 2/3 of the way through Kamen Rider X so I have a lot of time to decide, lol.

                The original series’s opening song is absolutely S-tier. I keep waiting for something to top it.

    • felbane@lemmy.world
      8·
      3 months ago

      Same. Tried bazzite, works fine, but immutable was annoying me for things like getting openvpn3 working (or anything involving more direct kernel stuff). Still use bazzite on my kid’s pc and my laptop but switched to fedora for my desktop and it’s been just right.

      Ubuntu and Canonical can fuck allllllll the way off. If I had to go back to a dpkg based distro it’d have to be Debian bleeding edge… and honestly I’d probably bite the bullet and try Arch instead just because of Debian’s release lag.

      • Turret3857@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Ive tried Arch before and it wasn’t for me. Having to find all the packages that work for my setup was a bit of a pain. I was 6 months in trying to print something, not realizing I didnt install CUPS and that was my breaking point lol. Its great for those who want it. Real on canonical tho.

    • Laser@feddit.org
      3·
      2 months ago

      Debian gaming wasn’t great when a lot of the landscape was changing (around 2016?) and even one of my very Debian friendly colleagues switched his gaming machine to Arch back then because getting the new stuff like AMD Vulkan drivers and DXVK running was really hard on Debian. Don’t think he migrated that particular machine back since then.

      • Rob Bos@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I’ve always enjoyed the tinkering. My gaming habits pretty much grew up with WINE. DXVK was very exciting!

        Never been a stranger to compiling my own kernel or mucking about with DLL overrides.

        • Laser@feddit.org
          1·
          2 months ago

          The thing is, back then, for the stuff to work on Debian, you needed to

          • compile your own newer kernel
          • compile the new mesa that depended on that kernel

          and with how frequent updates were, this was something you’d probably do multiple times per month – at this point, why bother with Debian when you need to compile all the packages yourself? Remember that was a gaming machine… so why bother with Debian and spend hours each month when with Arch, it was just a pacman -Syu followed by a reboot and you could try out all that fancy new stuff?

          • Rob Bos@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            That really was not my experience. I didn’t game much. WoW mostly. Some StarCraft. Minecraft. Online games. Debian unstable worked fine and I don’t think I had to compile my own kernel (for gaming) at any point past 2005 or so.

            • Laser@feddit.org
              21·
              2 months ago

              The discussion was implicitly around the changes brought by Vulkan and DXVK which enabled playing Windows Direct3D (this part is important) 11 and later 9 games without performance penalty. You could previously play Windows Direct3D 9 titles using Gallium Nine if you had an AMD card, though this was a bit iffy.

              WoW mostly.

              That’s OpenGL, so not affected.

              Some StarCraft.

              Not 3D even.

              Minecraft.

              Neither Windows nor Direct3D, but Java with OpenGL.

              True, if all the games you played were OpenGL-accelerated, these changes didn’t matter. But about 95% of games on the market weren’t.

              • Rob Bos@lemmy.caEnglish
                11·
                2 months ago

                I’m glad you’re here to tell me how my experience the last 30 years was. Thank you for enlightening me as to how my choices were wrong and how I was silently suffering.

                I gamed on Debian. I was so wrong.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Prior to bookworm making non-free easy and nvidia driver opening one could make some arguments.

        These days, though, nothing compelling can be said to walk past Debian.

        • Laser@feddit.org
          3·
          2 months ago

          Yeah, but the post I replied to said “since 1998”. That is prior to bookworm.

          Personally, I don’t care for it too much. Every time I try it (which is rare) something annoys me. "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE"s, deviation from upstream that renders official documentation less valuable. With Arch (which I don’t use anymore), you can be pretty sure that what’s on your machine is what’s currently released by upstream. This refers both to version and the software itself. Remember cdrkit? xscreensaver? The weak OpenSSH keys? Sure, these must notable examples are from long ago, but there were just so many issues over the course of my “career” that the distribution for me is somewhat burned. Also because all of this could have been easily avoided.

          Anyhow, use what you want, but it’s for sure not my favorite distro.

      • hue2hri19@lemmy.sdf.org
        4·
        2 months ago

        Installed 24.04 this week. On the second day my graphical interface was completely borked. Bare in mind I only installed the usual things I need like neovim, appimage support, compilers, etc.

        I’ve used the same installation of Arch, Fedora and Suse on different machines for years in a row without an issue

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Canonical is focused on servers and the cloud. Ubuntu lacks quality controls and does things differently than many other Linux systems which leads to instability. I’ve seen people complain about gnome but in reality they are complaining and Ubuntu gnome not stock. Ubuntu also uses netplan instead of network manager and doesn’t have as much systemd integration.

        Snap is also it’s own special form of hell. It runs as root as daemon and is slow to do anything. It also forces auto updates and takes control when you try to do anything with apt. It is much heavier than Flatpak and you are forced to get your apps from it.

        The sad part is that 15 years ago Ubuntu was actually pretty solid. They have just slowly lost relevance as they move the focus to things that make actual money.

        • polle@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Thanks for explaining! I am currently on kubuntu, because after some testing different distros, it had the best kde plasma 6 experience with less bugs then the others. Iam not really an ubuntu fan, but it just worked best as an kde distro.

          As for snap, I don’t know any backgrounds of it. But I had several problems with flatpaks and the same program in snap worked. It was mostly random small stuff like, Signal does not show notifcation bages or copy paste that did not work in remmina. In Both situations lots of debugging didn’t help, but switching to the snap package did. Could be a kde/flatpak/kubuntu issue of course. Auto update (for some specific) applications can be good I think and I can understand thats not the vibe that the typical linux person wants. As of the overall anti snap hype I started with just flatpaks, but they aren’t as golden as they are sold.

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
    321·
    3 months ago

    Fedora on the right tbh. Even when you chill and get wisdom Canonical and Snap are just a bit too far.

  • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.orgEnglish
    222·
    3 months ago

    Mint users make it sound like the distro will literally suck your dick. It’s a cult at this point. Forums are filled with issues (which is normal obviously) but nope, “it just works”. When it doesn’t then that’s too bad because as easy as it is to find a vocal Mint user it’s much harder to find one who knows anything about Linux.

    They should have named Fedora something like “red hat personal” or anything else that doesn’t sound like only smelly neckbeards use it and maybe that would be more popular but here we are.

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
      12·
      3 months ago

      I believe Fedora was named that before the association with neckbeards was a thing. It’s hard to believe, but back before the 2010s fedoras were mostly known as the cool hat Indiana Jones and old timey detectives wear rather than the stupid looking hat slobby idiots trying to look cool wear.

    • Deathray5@lemmynsfw.com
      3·
      3 months ago

      Yeah I have found driver issues with mint (particularly with WiFi cards) where Ubuntu doesn’t have a problem

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Bit of selection bias.

      Car shops are full of cars that have problems. Why would you be at a shop if you didn’t? Same with forums.

  • MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works
    20·
    3 months ago

    Legitimate question as I’m gonna move from Windows 10 within the next couple months. Is there something wrong with Bazzite or Nobara? I had narrowed my decision down to those two since they seem to be an easy transition, they do the things I need, and they’re popular enough that I can probably find fixes to any issues I experience. I pushed off my plan to build a desktop, but I still have an aging laptop that is losing security support in a couple of months.

    Also, my wife needs Excel specifically for school. Can Excel work on these distros or are there just good alternatives? She might need to keep a Windows 10 partition just for Excel stuff if she can’t run it in Bazzite or whatever she picks.

    Edit:
    Thanks everybody for responses! School is not flexible about using Excel specifically, and she has to share her screen during exams to show that she’s just using regular Excel. It’s not a hill we’re willing to die on lol.
    We aren’t super interested in doing anything beyond gaming and basic browsing type stuff with our computers, so I’m not sure that Bazzite being immutable really means anything to us. There were some good tips like a /home partition to easily swap distros when needed without losing everything, plus some people pointed out that some of these distros come and go over time so it would be harder to find fixes and continue getting updates if we get too entrenched in something that won’t be around much longer.
    Overall, I don’t think we’ll be too picky. We just want a pretty simple process to get something that’s like an unbloated Windows, and we don’t want to rip our hair out looking for a new distro and starting over every six months. Most people are not power users. I can do pretty much all of my computer stuff on my phone and all of my gaming on my PlayStation, so I really won’t notice the difference between most of these recommendations probably.

    • SincerityIsCool@lemmy.caEnglish
      22·
      3 months ago

      I landed on Mint because it’s a simple no fuss distro that feels familiar to Windows refugees. I game on it just fine and use my computer for a lot of things so wanted something general. I bounced off Ubuntu because it has some decisions that are trying to protect you from actually learning Linux, which is a priority to me.

      As a professional spreadsheet pusher, I can confidently say that LibreOffice (the Linux version of MS Office) has been able to do everything I needed that word/excel can, and then some.

      But really any distro will be able to install the software you need, and it’s easy to switch. Just try it and have fun.

    • Damage@feddit.it
      18·
      3 months ago

      Nothing wrong with them, surely better than Ubuntu, despite the meme.

      I went from Nobara to Bazzite and it feels way more polished, although the immutable thing may not be for everyone

    • Fisch@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      11·
      3 months ago

      Those distros are fine, I haven’t heard anything bad about them. The only distros I wouldn’t recommend are Ububtu and Manjaro (I can explain why if you want).

      About Excel, it doesn’t work on Linux unfortunately. But you have some options. You can try LibreOffice and OnlyOffice (you can install them on Windows to try them out before switching) and see if they’re enough for your needs. There’s also a web version of Excel which you can use in your browser but it doesn’t have all the features. If you really need Excel, you can also try using a virtual machine with Windows and run it inside of that but dual booting might be easier for you at that point.

      • Penguin_1024@lemmy.sdf.org
        34·
        3 months ago

        Another option for Excel is running it using Wine. A lot of Windows games run on Wine, which also means that things like Excel run well too.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          9·
          3 months ago

          From what I understand MS Office is notorious for not working well at all in Wine. The only ones thst I have seen evidence of running consistently in Wine are older ones like Office 2000-2007. 20-some year old products are probably simply not current enough to be useful.

          I think the better bet would be dual booting or better yet virtualization.

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      From what I understand, it’s still an excellent choice. It’s well supported and decent for new users.

      Can you look into if the online version of Excel works for your wife? That might simplify your install. Libre Office and OnlyOffice are decent alternatives, but they might not map 1:1 with the instructions she gets from school.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      The main reason why I would steer newcomers away from the likes of Bazzite or Nobara is because I don’t think they’re going to last long. CachyOS has sprung up just as I was starting to hear less and less about Nobara. They get trendy as THE distro for newbies to install because it has a gimmick or two aimed at newcomers, which will inevitably get rolled into the mainstream, fixed, rendered obsolete or otherwise dealt with in the mainstream within a couple years anyway, then it’s off to the next one.

      Who here remembers PeppermintOS being the hottest thing?

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Staying power is an important and under-rated consideration for sure. Particularly as they get popular and the team behind it needs to be more serious about updates and such (if they aren’t already).

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      Bazzite is an immutable distro, and it expects you to install all your programs through containers. Not all software works with these containers, but like 99.9999% does. I’m a weirdo who wants the deepest of hardware monitoring tools and many of them don’t work with these containers. I haven’t used Nobara yet but it doesn’t appear to be immutable and based on regular Fedora so it shouldn’t have those issues.

      excel

      It may run through wine, and I’d test that out before fully committing. Worst case if that’s the ONLY thing you need you could do a VM. But would the cloud (web) version of office work for her? If you’re already paying for office 365 then I believe you get it included.

    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
      6·
      3 months ago

      Bazzite is fantastic, but because the system is immutable, you can’t just install packages like you can with other distros. This makes it very stable and very secure, but it also means you need to take extra steps if you want to get creative with your system. If you are already familiar with Docker and containers, then you can do anything you want that way, if there isn’t already a flatpak available. As a last resort, you can also use rpm-ostree to create new layers, but if you go that route you need to understand how to use ostree since eventually you will need to fix those layers manually.

    • cacti@ani.social
      3·
      3 months ago

      I’ve had a much better experience with OnlyOffice compared to LibreOffice in terms of MS compatibility, and it’s a Flatpak so it should have no issues running under Bazzite.

    • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      3 months ago

      I’m not familiar with the above distros, but I’m pretty certain there’s more people on Ubuntu which helps a lot with troubleshooting and finding solutions online. One option is, when installing any Linux OS, is to create a separate partition for “home/”. that way, you can reinstall any other Linux based OS, and keep most of your files installed.

      Excel doesn’t work on Linux, but LibreOffice and Google sheets do.

    • dil@lemmy.zip
      2·
      3 months ago

      Setting up qemu is easy, vm that opens the apps as windows so it seems native while running off a vm works well with cpu based stuff

    • twinnie@feddit.uk
      2·
      3 months ago

      Honestly, most people keep a Windows partition anyway. I have one for Fusion 360 which intermittently stops working in Bottles.

    • 474D@lemmy.world
      2·
      3 months ago

      I usually get downvoted for this since it’s not open source, but WPS Office is free and basically an exact ms office clone. I use it regularly moving files between my work laptop with windows

    • Rikudou_SageA
      1·
      3 months ago

      I went with Nobara because it’s pretty much Fedora + gaming related fixes. Meaning every Fedora guide out there works and Fedora on its own is pretty user friendly.

      Excel, as in Microsoft Excel might be a problem. If she needs something Excel-like, the default LibreOffice stuff is very capable, but it’s not 100% compatible, really depends on what she needs. The online Office 365 thing might also be enough.

      As for the Windows partition, a simple virtual machine might be enough and you don’t have to reboot the PC every time you need to open an Excel file.

    • Unboxious@ani.social
      13·
      3 months ago

      I’ve had Bazzite break its own update utility such that it needed manual intervention at least 3 times now. I see no point in a “just works” distro that doesn’t actually just work.

        • Unboxious@ani.social
          2·
          2 months ago

          One of the breakages was caused by an expired signature or something from Universal Blue, which hit all users. I’m surprised that one doesn’t get talked about more. One of them was caused by Bazzite changing how Steam itself is handled and not transitioning my system over properly. Can’t remember what the third one was caused by.

      • ook@discuss.tchncs.de
        13·
        3 months ago

        Don’t have a link to underline this but it was just a proposal and was not endorsed officially. This is not going to happen.