Any effort that goes into making Linux more accessible is a worthwhile thing, so props to you for sitting down and putting this together.
That said, it wouldn’t be a distro recommendation discussion with out at least some disagreement, so I guess I’ll start the ball rolling!
In my view, the primary considerations for new users getting into Linux are:
- How easy is it to find and select the live image I want to install?
- How good is the out-of-the-box experience?
- How much manual tinkering will I need to do to get everything working so I can get on with gaming/studying/whatever?
- How easy will the OS be to maintain and is there a pre-installed system restore utility in case I break anything?
From this standpoint, distros like Pop OS! and Nobara are leaps and bounds ahead of Debian and Fedora, the former of which is infamous for having one of the least user friendly websites in the Linux distro world (and yes, it’s better since Bookworm, but it’s still a maze for new users to find the right Live image).
Sure, forks and downstream distros tend to add a bunch of extra software that may or may not be needed, but the overall utility and improved ease-of-use to new users greatly outweigh the drawback of having some extra packages that they don’t end up using. The base distros are great if you only want free, non-proprietary software on your machine, but the average new user is much more concerned with having a working computer without having to dig around in config files and find the additional packages they need to install first.
Also, while Linux Mint is still a great distro, its lack of Wayland and multi-monitor support means it is falling behind and is no longer the automatic recommendation it once was, I would argue. Users with a newer machine are going to find distros that offer KDE Plasma or Gnome feel much more slick and modern than Mint does.
TL;DR - Debian and Fedora are not beginner-friendly distros and should not appear on any recommendation list for new users, IMHO. Pop OS! and Nobara are the safest and best two to recommend to most users right now, for my money, with Tumbleweed and Mint following along behind.
it would be a distro recommendation discussion with out at least some disagreement
I would be disappointed if there wasn’t, lol
I actually put quite a bit of thought into how I wanted to go over forks/downstream distros, and I may have come to a weird conclusion but I decided discouraging them was the best option because:
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Distros like Manjaro/EndeavourOS are being described as “beginner friendly” when beginners should not be starting with anything Arch based. Listing out individual bad examples would just make the entire message more confusing.
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People will always google their question in the format of “distro name” + “problem”. Someone with Linux experience using KDE Neon will know to google “ubuntu problem” because it’s just Ubuntu, but a beginner will google “kde neon problem” and will find very few results. Alternatively, if they’re using an upstream distro, that search will (probably) return lots of thorough results with more information on why exactly that problem occurred.
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Upstream is (generally) less likely to break than downstream, although this shouldn’t be an issue for well managed downstream distros. But again, listing specific examples will make things more confusing.
Regarding Linux Mint and Wayland, I completely agree. I didn’t know that Cinnamon/Mint still didn’t support Wayland, so that should’ve moved Mint into the tentative recommendation category.
Fair points all round.
I totally agree with #1, somewhat agree with #2, and somewhat disagree with #3.
For support, I would point to the fact that both Nobara and Pop OS! have very helpful communities and are quite good about directing users to use those channels to troubleshot problems rather than simply googling them.
As for upstream distros being generally less prone to breaking? I can’t say that has aligned with my experience. My laptop had more issues with Fedora than any other distro I tested on it, and while Debian is definitely pretty solid in terms of stability, the age of the packages and the general unfriendliness of the user experience don’t quite make up for it, in my opinion.
This is obviously why the question of “which is the best beginner distro?” remains a point of perpetual debate!
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TBH, I’ve found Debian is quite rough for beginners. I have a older computer that I tried to put Debian on. Does not have NVIDIA so drivers are not an issue, however after installing Debian it wouldn’t recognize my Radeon gpu so I had no screen to work with, it was like I installed a headless server system but I couldn’t even access a tty prompt. I tried to go to Debian from ubuntu which worked ootb. Tried mint no problems. Ran that for a few years, with barely ever using the terminal. I dropped mint when they started pushing the auto update policy.
Went to fedora 36 and it loaded things slower than any other distro I have tried, not to mention DNF would fail on updates quite often.
Then switched to tumbleweed. Ran that for about 6 month. Their rolling release profile constantly broke my computer so I was always reinstalling the OS.
Finally decided to take the plunge to the arch universe. Didn’t like Manjaro’s policies so went with endevourOS which I have been rocking for 2 years with absolutely no issues, with the exception of the one grub update last fall.
Endeavour has a great community and the archwiki is phenomenal. I found that 90% of the time of I had issues with a distro, with the exception of tumbleweed and vanilla Debian, I would use the archwiki to fix them. The archwiki is not just for arch installs in the long run.
I guess the key here that I’m trying to point out, even though it’s lengthy, generally speaking the forks like Ubuntu, EndeavourOS or Mint are by far a greater way to get someone started in the world of GNU/Linux then their mainstream bases. Ubuntu is solid if you can live with the snaps issue. Mint is great since it fixes a lot of Ubuntu’s flaws if your ok with the auto update policy they made. Endeavour is by far the best experience for an ootb arch install.
As with any distro ymmv.
My first experience with Linux was with mint (tried all flavors), and it was a frustrating mess. Unless you’re trying to revive your grandma’s 10 year old laptop Linux mint doesn’t feel like a good choice to me. Used Ubuntu after that and it was a lot better, although didn’t like the gtk ui.
Edit: maybe mint experience gets better when you’re more familiar with Linux, idk about that
How long ago did you try mint? (I’m not disputing your experience, time just adds a bit more context)
Distros are like cheese, some mature over time, some spoil. I first got into Linux around fedora 4, and it’s definitely improved since then.
Like two years ago, true that it might’ve improved since
“Update Frequency” seems the wrong term to describe how quickly a bug fix reaches the users, “Update latency” or “Update promptness” may better describe it?
Excluding Ubuntu for political reasons also seems wrong, especially for beginner recommendations. I don’t like Canonical either, but it is a very polished and easy to use distro, which is perfect for beginners.
Yeah, something like “Update Promptness” does fit better now that you mention it. I wrote “frequency” and never thought about it until now.
If it weren’t for Snaps, I would’ve had the warning and still recommended Ubuntu. It’s been a couple months since I last used Ubuntu, so maybe this has improved, but the opening times for Snap applications is brutal. Firefox taking forever to load? Install Flatpak, add the Flathub repo, uninstall the Firefox Snap, install the Firefox Flatpak. I just can’t call Ubuntu beginner friendly if they’re pushing Snaps like this while refusing to support Flatpak out of the box.
Okay, that’s a fair take, I haven’t been afflicted with snaps yet, and if the performance is that bad then definitely not beginner friendly.
First of all: thank you! The necessary info is there and it’s written splendid. I think it or a future iteration should definitely be considered as a sticky post in the long run.
A few nitpicks which you may or may not agree with:
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In the section in which you talk about update frequency, you end the paragraph with something along the lines of “new and stable”. While this is correct technically, you should define what you mean with ‘stable’ here. Because there exist two (somewhat related) definitions for ‘stable’:
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“(Certain) resistance to breaking” - which is used in the context of “stable rolling release” when one refers to something like openSUSE Tumbleweed. This definition does not necessarily oppose new.
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“Release model in which packages are frozen over a long(er) period of time and primarily only continue to receive security updates” - which is e.g. used in the name of the “Debian Stable” distro. This definition does oppose new.
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In the section about desktop environments you mentioned something along the lines that Fedora defaults to GNOME. This applies only to their Workstation and Silverblue distros. For which both other “Spins” exist, which happens to be the recommended method of installing another desktop environment on Fedora; similar to how “Flavors” work for something like Ubuntu. While one can technically install it like how you’ve mentioned it, I wouldn’t recommend it to a newer user.
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MX Linux/Xfce is a superb distro, on 15 years old 32bits, on 5 years old 64 bits, and on brand new system with the AHS version.
Mint is my daily driver on a couple of old personal machines, although I’ve been condemned to Windoze for work for the last several months. It’s a good distro with great multi-monitor support. For anyone who’s skittish about Ubuntu, they were developing a Debian-based version a few years ago. No idea the current status of that project.
I have a Debian system running on a Linode server and can’t complain. I’ve tried out a handful of other distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop, Arch, Zorin, Suse, etc.), but I keep coming back to Mint and Debian. They seem to be the fastest to get up and running without performing surgery on the systems.
That’s what I love about Linux: the variety. It’s incredible to have dozens choices.
