Thank you for the link. This is the site I found while browsing. It will require reading on my part to know which version is what I would need as I see, I stand to be corrected, there is 5 versions, but I am not exactly sure what the differences between them are. Which is something I would need to do further reading on
Nothing has changed for LTS at all. Scroll down to the pretty graphs on https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle, and pay particular attention to how the ratio of orange to purple on the LTS graphs has changed over time. (it hasn't) The base LTS support window has always been 5 years, and the extended window has always been another 5 years.
What they did add was additional security updates for Universe packages, which are represented by the black line. Note that this black line is independent of the LTS coverage. From https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/34042:
Your Ubuntu LTS is still secured in exactly the same way it has always been, with five years of free security updates for the ‘main’ packages in the distribution, and best-effort security coverage for everything else. This has been the promise of Ubuntu since our first LTS in 2006, and remains exactly the same. In fact, thanks to our expanded security team, your LTS is better secured today than ever before, even without Ubuntu Pro.
Ubuntu Pro is an additional stream of security updates and packages that meet compliance requirements such as FIPS or HIPAA, on top of an Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu Pro was launched in public beta on 5 October, 2022, and moved to general availability on 26 January, 2023. Ubuntu Pro provides an SLA for security fixes for the entire distribution (‘main and universe’ packages) for ten years, with extensions for industrial use cases.
You can also dig into this AskUbuntu answer for even more details, but the long and short of it is this has no impact on Ubuntu LTS whatsoever. Keep using it if that is your thing. Keep using something else if it is not.
Edit: This old news will become newsworthy if Canonical starts shifting packages out of the main repo and into universe, which would in fact reduce the security update coverage of LTS releases. That said, the article has not asserted any evidence of this. Nothing to see here...for now.
MintLinux and Pop!OS are normally the two front-runners for new users. Basically, if you use Steam and you don’t play online-only games with bad implementations of anti-cheat software, you are good to game on either.
Make a USB that you can “live boot” from, so you can test out how they work with your hardware. Generally spearking, Mint works better with AMD, and Pop! works better with Nvidea.
I don’t think they do. But once you’ve already started looking into swapping the desktop environment from whichever is the default, I don’t think you can call yourself a newcomer anymore.
Well, yes, that’s why I asked. Some newcomers to linux find Plasma more familiar than GNOME et al. Having it preinstalled can help them get comfortable faster, with less effort.
I was a Win XP/7 user that bought a laptop with Windows 8.1, emigrated to Linux, and found that Cinnamon felt more like Windows to me than Windows did.
No; Linux Mint used to offer a KDE variant but have stopped; Linux Mint is the showcase distro for the Cinnamon DE, so obviously they have that, it is my understanding that Clem is active with the MATE team as well, so Mint MATE edition is a thing, and they also offer xfce as their lightweight offering.
Pop!_OS has their (IMO) godawful Gnome fork that they’re turning into their own thing, and that’s IT. They offer instructions on installing other DEs, which I tried once. I managed to install a very unpolished, ugly and feature incomplete version of Mint that broke flatpak somehow.
So if you really want KDE, just install a distro that ships it, like KDE Neon, Kubuntu or Fedora KDE Spin.
I was using Mint with my Nvidia GPU for a while but found that games felt very laggy. Not sure what was going on but I switched to Kubuntu and that seemed to resolve the issue. (I assume the problem was something to do with cinnamon).
I like KDE and feel like the tools are more mature than they are in gnome or cinnamon anyway. Snaps are annoying but are fairly easy to avoid.
“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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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!
As someone who runs 7 servers in different datacenters (including cloud, local, and 2 in my home rack), being able to test and update on one system, then push that update to all the others, is a dream. Immutability is a step in that process, since it prevents weirdness from creeping in between updates. My only gripe right now with the options is they all still feel bloated. I miss original Rancher. All I need is Docker/Podman, and maybe wireguard to string the servers together. Likewise, my data hoarder computers need only zfs and enough on top to link them safely (so, wireguard). If I could focus on 2 stacks that I can push out elsewhere easily, I would be soooo much happier. Sain immutability tools are honestly magical.
All distros are capable of providing a decent gaming experience – no distro has a feature that makes it “stand out” compared to other distros. But if all you want is to “boot and game”, then Nobara, Garuda, ZorinOS or Linux Mint are your best bet.
probably due to no downstream patches and better overall - more fitting at least - policy about updates. Also it is very different that an normal arch install. It uses steam's own repos.
SteamOS is Arch-based. Arch as a distros is extremely bare-bones. The main difference between all base-distros is how they manage their packages.
Sub-distros may opt to change how the package manager works; Manjaro delays updates until everything has been verified to be working and not likely to break anything. Yet, it is still Arch based.
There’s nothing about a base-distro that makes it inherently unstable. Arch is extremely reliable, depending on what you need it for.
Manjaro delays updates until everything has been verified to be working and not likely to break anything
Yeah that’s what Manjaro thinks they’re doing (or would like to do) in reality the packages depend on specific versions of eachother so things actually break more often than base arch IMO. Please look at the list here as to why you shouldn’t reccomend Manjaro to new Linux users. Their management is really bad and preventable issues happen a lot
Manjaro isn’t great, but for a new Linux user, who doesn’t tinker, it’s quite reliable. Manjaro avoided the Grub crash a year ago which every other Arch-based distro failed to boot from.
My recommendation is Endeavour, but having the Pamac Manjaro GUI makes things a lot less daunting for those trying Linux for the first time.
I learned this the hard way. Started with Manjaro because it was “easier”, and I had nothing but trouble. Switched to Arch, and it’s been smooth sailing.
The Valve devs have complete control over every update that goes out. If they do something that breaks the system then their testing was inadequate. But even when that does happen, they can quickly push out a patch. Also, having just one hardware target to test for makes things a lot easier.
Valve devs said they like Arch because it allows them to update steam deck faster than other distros. Looks like they’re skilled enough to limit the downsides of an unstable distro in order to get the latest and greatest package versions.
This has been my exact experience in the 8 years I’ve been using it as my desktop OS. Boot into windows to play some game I can’t get working, beat it a month later, come back and I need to get my boxing gloves out to use my computer again
If you go a long time without updating there are generally lots of updates. So when you update sometimes you can have dependency issues. Basic maintenance prevents this.
Personally I never have this issue and generally don’t have any issues with Arch. Truly have no idea why people think it’s unstable. Maybe bad experiences with Manjaro which is Arch based. Now that distro has stability issues! Garuda and vanilla arch have been rock solid as far as my experience goes.
I read this article a couple of years ago about the subject. Apparently, one part was ease and rapidity of rolling updates with the likes of Arch, and another part of wanting a bit more experimental nature of Arch versus steady-as-she-goes and stable Debian. It’s a rather neat discussion and debate.
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