hi,
I have had to use windows for a long time because of school (word and excel, the ms version, was like mandatory, tho free), and I have been interested in trying or at least learning linux more.
I tried once before on Manjaro but I messed up the install and I was having annoying issues with the graphics drivers with an nvidia card (having to manually change the settings for two monitors and the refresh rate every time i rebooted, for instance). That was around 4 years ago now though.
My main question was what distro I should try? I am fairly experienced so I know my way around things but not in linux, and I am okay with learning curves.
It seems like everyone has a different answer for this so I wanted to hear suggestions. Thank you
Stay with one of the big boys: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, then you’re golden. For NVIDIA users I guess I’d still recommend something Ubuntu based: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Pop_OS!, etc because the drivers can be preinstalled.
On Fedora you need to install the NVIDIA drivers from rpmfusion, and on openSUSE you need an additional repo. It’s an extra step, but otherwise I’d strongly recommend one of these two.
OpenSuse Tumbleweed really is amazing. If I ever get tired of Pop, Tumbleweed is absolutely what I would consider as an alternative.
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There is an aspect to this that I’d like to mention, and that is you should consider the community of people around your distro, when makling this choice. There’s a point at which online guides won’t suffice, or you won’t know what what to Google, and you’ll have to reach out on forums or IRC or something, although i hear kids these days like Discord. I have long sense learned to pick my distros based on the people around them. I was Debian/Ubuntu foir years but switched when they started giving me bad vibes. Fedora has been great, i just wish there contributor documentation and onboarding was a bit better. And on community factors I’d recommend Gentoo over Arch any day and twice on Sundays.
this is a point I think most newcomers to Linux/Fediverse/Indieweb/etc. fail to grasp. To use these technologies, puts you in a far closer relationship to the people making/maintaining the software, then you would otherwise be. To Microsoft/Google/Random Cooperation. You’re just an inconvenient expense. You’re probably not even the primary customer. But to your instance admin, your linux distro people, you can be much more, and you’ll have a better experince if you at least pop by and say hello occasionally :)
Anyway sorry for the length of this response, tl:dr check the forums and chats before you pick a distro see how they treat people, see if you vibe because you’ll depend on those people to keep your stuff running
I’ll chip in my two cents:Pop!_OS
It’s based on Ubuntu and it plays nice with Nvidia. Easy to install, its built in package manager keeps everything up to date, and is already integrated with flatpak.
>nvidia card
Found the issue :^)
(On a serious note, I’d suggest giving a Fedora a spin since it’s been pretty rocksteady from when I used it. DNF was pretty slow but I heard that it has gone better over the past 5 years)
As a tech-savvy person, I tried a few of the easy-to-use ones like Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora. I didn’t really like them. I then tried Arch after taking a “Distro Selection Quiz”, thinking “ugh, there’s no way this will be good right?” and it absolutely hit every expectation I had of Linux. I love the feel that the OS is in my hands to be configured however I want it. I can use old and reliable systems or bleeding edge tech ideas.
Once you get past the installation you can always install Gnome or something like it anyway to make it just like the easy distros.
