I have never really seen arch or gentoo unironically pitched to new users. However, I have seen new users try to use arch because they didn’t get the joke.
I have seen arch recommended to first time Linux users more times than I can count. It’s usually said that installing it is a learning experience. If that’s a joke it’s a really stupid one.
Literally the top comment at this time from KubeRoot:
I will happily recommend Arch to a new user… If they’re interested in learning Linux, and not dependent on it working reliably, while warning them of the risks and telling them about the advantages.
Then a bit lower by mac:
I think Arch is a good distro to learn for new users who are interested in tech, it gives an amazing example of good documentation and teaches you a lot about how UNIX-Like filesystems work.
I think Arch is a good distro to learn for new users who are interested in tech, it gives an amazing example of good documentation and teaches you a lot about how UNIX-Like filesystems work.
That being said for non-technical users with zero interest, my main recommendations are Mint if you are coming from or prefer Windows and Elementary if you’re coming from or prefer Mac.
This, I switched from win10 to Mint, the only issues I had with the transition were self-inflicted, or stemmed from me approaching it with a windows mindset rather than the mindset of learning a new OS.
I’ve settled in quite well now, and actively cringe when I’m forced to boot into my windows install for some reason or another.
I’ve been distro-hopping with my orangepi, however I can only do so much hopping on arm, I’m considering adding yet another drive to my rig with which to try out some other distros and see if I can find a better fit than (the already great fit) Linux Mint.
I would consider myself an intermediate-advanced user (not quite power user), do you think trying Arch is a good idea at this stage?
I would consider myself an intermediate-advanced user (not quite power user), do you think trying Arch is a good idea at this stage?
Arch Linux used to be pretty difficult to install for new users, but now it comes with a build in installer it requires less reading than before. btw There is Arch for ARM archlinuxarm.org maybe your orangepi is supported. Distro hopping or just testing another Linux distro can be comfortable on SBC since replacing SD card or USB stick is usually easy.
I wasn’t aware Arch had builds available for arm, I will certainly give it a look-see.
Unfortunately the Orangepi 5 is somewhat shitty to hop around with, many builds either don’t support the RK3588 at all, or certain things just don’t work at all on most (I’m looking at you GPU acceleration).
On top of this, the SPI flash can be quite a pain to work with, due to orangepi doing the bare minimum to ship the product, I would really love to see dual-boot in future for it, though my expectations have been seriously tempered when it comes to orangepi.
The result of this, is that any distro I installed to the SSD removed boot priority from the SD slot, ergo, without formatting/overwriting the SPI flash, it will refuse to boot from SD, even with no SSD present. Some builds boot fine from having been directly flashed to the SSD, so far Batocera, Ubuntu and the J-Reik Rockchip Ubuntu have all booted flawlessly when directly flashed to the SSD, no luck with most others though.
I must admit though, that RK3588 is blazingly fast for how little power it draws. The hardware is top notch, I just wish the software weren’t lagging so far behind. If I remember rightly the incoming kernel should resolve many of these issues, I believe it’s still running 5.10 currently.
Apologies for the rant, during my writing of this reply I came across a repo on GitHub that someone’s been building for the Orangepi, I’ll give it a shot and hope for the best I guess! Seems to have rkbootloader paired with it, which might help dodge the bullet that the SPI flash can feel like at times.
Oh, I see :/ Forgot that I’m kind of privileged with using Raspberry Pi (I don’t particularly endorse them actually.It just happened years ago). From time to time when I look at other SBC hardware options I do see that the software is not catching up as well as it does for the rpi. Good to hear your story.
I do actually have an RPi4, it’s on full-time Kodi duty at present. I’ll have to pick up a few more SD cards to load up and mess with.
I bought the Orangepi first funnily enough, because it was the peak of the RPi shortage and I didn’t want to spend blood money on an aging SBC, I did pick the RPi up the moment stock was available though, no regrets, it’s been rock solid since first boot, and even easier to work with than the community attests to.
I love that little fucker to bits, I just wish it had the power of the Pi 5 (orange OR raspberry), as it drops a fair few frames during 4k directplay, 1080/1440p runs butter smooth though.
It’s a shame really, I’d be first in line to buy the Orangepi Neo (their incoming 7840U handheld) were it not for the piss poor experience I’ve had with the Pi. Now I’m firmly planted in the “wait and see, but probably not” camp.
The dual booting problems are enraging. I somehow have the opposite problem, that it will always boot from the SD if the SD is present during power on. How hard is it to make an alternative boot method button?
I wish I had known this beforehand, I’m sure there are other SBCs with sane booting. I am never buying an Orange Pi again.
It’s a ballache through and through. I am (cautiously) optimistic for the Orangepi 5’s future, Raxda and several others have release RK3588 powered SBCs, my hope is that through some level of market saturation and community development to prevail.
I hope so. From what I read, my problem is burnt in on some boot ROM, so it may not be fixable. I’m willing to try a different vendor using the same chip.
I’m not sure this will help, though I’ll suggest anyway that you poke around looking for (I hope I got this right) “rkdevtool”, I believe you can get it from somewhere in the Orangepi tools, I found it while looking into putting orangepi os (droid) onto it.
Do let me know how you go, I have a copy if you can’t find it that I’m happy to share. I haven’t yet tried it so I can’t speak to whether or not it works.
I’m actually attempting to convert my windows install into a VM these past few days, it’s most of the way there now, just need to get the VM to actually boot from that drive.
It was my original intent upon switching to Linux that I would VM my windows, however only in the last few days of trying (read: failing) to get mods for a few games working under proton, that I’ve really upped my effort.
If there are any resources you recommend, I’m all ears.
Absolutely this. Arch can be a first good distro, but only for a limited subset of new users with a very specific goal in mind. Anybody who says it’s any more stable than Debian or mint is either delusional, very lucky or disingenuous. I’ve never had to chroot into my system to roll back a bugged grub update on fedora, Debian or Ubuntu, but on Arch yes. And I’m saying that with love from EndeavourOS. I love my system to bits but I’m realist enough to acknowledge the reason why I am comfortable on it is that I have enough years of experience on Linux to not stress about what to do when something breaks.
Gentoo will probably be better if you’re using AUR, and Gentoo recently started shipping binary packages which can be mixed and matched with compiled software. 😄
NOBODY wants to have to sit through a multi-hour YouTube video just to install something.
I’m a Linux user with 20+ years of experience who has done LFS, compiled kernels for fun and put together their own mini-distro and I don’t want to install Arch.
That’s not how you teach people Linux. That’s not how you teach people anything, let alone difficult stuff.
Beginners being told to use Arch is like telling a person “you might like some fresh air” and then taking them deep into the mountains, putting them in front of a vertical cliff face and telling them “start climbing”.
Any unsuspecting person bring tricked into installing Arch would be well within their rights to say “fuck you all with a rusty spoon” and then refuse to hear the word “Linux” for another decade.
The worst part is that the install would be the least of their problems. Assuming they have a saint’s patience and make it through, then what? They’re now a complete beginner stuck on a distro for advanced users. Did a 3 hour install make them an advanced Linux user? No, it didn’t. So what’s the point?
Honestly never used tutorial videos. That sounds like a horrible way to learn. So slow and filled with unexplained steps you have to hunt for to understand.
Just follow the wiki it takes like 20min to an hour to get to the desktop based on your comfort and experience with computers. Like 10 minutes if you know what your doing, five minutes if you just want a basic system that boots and connects to the internet.(No desktop).
I used kde on my arch system hassle free for years, I really don’t get the stereotype. If you constantly tinker with your system I get it but that’s true for any Linux system. I also thought having to role a package back was a rare but unique problem for arch until I had to do it on Debian and fedora.
I learned arch out of necessity because at the time no other distro would install on my desktop thanks to poor support for Nvidia graphics and fedora being fedora broke almost instantly after the installer.(I’ve always had bad luck with fedora) I’d say you really have to live with arch to understand how painless it is to use daily.
I have no experience with DNF, but both APT and Pacman are not the best solutions for beginners, simply because their extensibility relies on weirdness like PPAs and the AUR or even just different repositories.
Pacman sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf && sudo pacman -Syu steam [Enabling multilib by uncommenting two lines in package manager file]
This is just partially the fault of the Linux distributions, package managers or package repositories (licensing issues), but the ease of installing could be better even with the legal issues afoot.
Sure, to us experienced with changing configuration of package managers this seems a bit lazy or untrve, but for those who are new to Linux or software configuration in general, these instructions can look like crawling into the equivalent of Windows Registry simply to install Steam.
Without going that far. With Fedora you almost certainly have to deal with extra repos, like RPM-Fusion in order to have a fully working system, or install some proprietary software like Steam, Spotify, Nvidia drivers…
Fair point but… in Fedora the Flathub repository is not there by default. Only Fedora Flatpak repository is present and active after a fresh install and you shall add and activate Flathub repository manually. Today on my main computer I have 18 apps installed from Flathub, and only 3 from Fedora Flatpak.
both APT and Pacman are not the best solutions for beginners
Depends on your use case. You are focusing on gaming. There are also folks who only need to browse the web, check email, write a letter and print it. For them the GUI for installing software will do just fine. Heck, they might be fine after a default installation without installing more software.
That’s fucking rich – at least apt is a pleasant and mature package manager that works fast, something that DNF can’t ever say, also you have to enable RPM Fusion to even think about doing shit on Fedora
Steam is not in the AUR. Arch’s main repos have way more than Ubuntu and Debian. And then the aur is a better alternative to installing from source or doing other hacks
I don’t use APT-based distributions or store-based software aquisition, so I don’t know about that, but I see how that lessens my point. I was just using a steam installation as an example for context, you could replace it with anything with sketchy licenses.
It’s true tho… for some new users. If the new user wants to learn linux fundamentals, there’s no better way than hand installing Gentoo or Arch. Ideally on a second PC and using it as a home server.
Now if they just want an alternative OS for their main PC, yeah, go for something else.
Not for people wanting a simple windows replacment, void is my favorite distro by far, but i would never give anyone but an aspiring fellow hacker void to try out, it is great for customization, being light af, and being based, but it is by no means easy to use
Fr? Getting it set up wasn’t a perfect experience but I didn’t find it any more difficult than any other non-debian based distro once I had a DE. Pretty much just need xbps-install and xbps-remove 99% of the time. I might be out of touch tho lmao
I do like that there’s a reasonably comprehensive website with docs covering a lot of common pain points, which is more manageable than fighting with searching through a galaxy of wikis of varying degrees of currentness and relevance.
Reminds me of the celebrated docs of BSD systems.
There’s also a case that going a bit away from “easy Windows replacement” is useful because even trivial users need to get some bearings shifted to avoid floundering when they reach something not-quite-Windowsesque. (I. e. dealing with updates and software distribution is an important lesson that isn’t obvious if they hide everything in an ersatz App Store)
Of course, my first proper Linux setup was Slackware with a 2.0.30 kernel. I wanted the Unix-like Experience.
Okay, I guess I’ve gotta play the crow here … Is Arch really such a bad choice for a beginner these days? Obviously building it the “proper” way would be a bad idea, but there are tons of Arch-based distros with GUI-installers. I currently run Garuda on both my personal devices and the install process really couldn’t have been easier, and almost everything worked out of the box. The stuff that needed tweaking was all minor and mostly related to this being my first foray into KDE in over a decade. Let’s face it - that’s a pretty high bar even on Windows systems these days.
Granted, the rolling release aspect means inevitably you’re gonna get a borked update that you have to revert, so that’s a stumbling point for a complete newbie. It’s not like that doesn’t sometimes happen on other distros though - or even Windows. On the other hand, the AUR means little or no manually compiling stuff. Plus, the best wiki in the community (even if you don’t use Arch). And gaming (at least on AMD) is rock solid.
Hell, I have a fifteen-year-old intern at my work (through his school). He’d had almost no exposure to Linux when he started with us, so as a learning project I had him set up Arch with Hyprland from the console. The little bugger did find the install script, but even then he had to learn a bunch of stuff and still had a running system in about an afternoon.
ANYWAY, I’m not saying that Arch should necessarily be the first distro for most beginners, just that it’s not as daunting as most people make it out to be.
Setting up a computer for Grandma? Mint.
Already something of a power-user in Windows? Depending on your use case, Arch is worth consideration.
Granted, the rolling release aspect means inevitably you’re gonna get a borked update that you have to revert, so that’s a stumbling point for a complete newbie. It’s not like that doesn’t sometimes happen on other distros though - or even Windows.
People post things like this constantly and I feel like I’m living on a different planet. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Windows install needing to be reverted through no fault of the user.
I have never used Arch but I have had SEVERAL FUCKING TIMES Windows comppletely fuck up something in my system through updates. Thankfully it hasn’t happened in my latest machine running Win10, but in my laptops one ofthenm literally died trying to upgrade versions, and I had to block ut from ever attempting it again.Nowadayas that same laptop is happily running Mint and testing Fedora.
How? Are you digging around in windows internals trying to do stuff? I mean if so you’d be better off with Linux anyways, but I’m curious how this happens.
There are some updates that broke stuff on Windows. Like that one which broke all those HP printers for a lot of people.
The thing is that it is kind of impressive how little it happens seeing the sheer amount of users. And normally Microsoft is quite quick to release an other update to fix it.
I’ve had more windows updates breaking stuff than I had arch updates breaking stuff, that’s for sure. I think it’s frankly laughable that a paid OS has problems such as that.
I am a sysadmin and believe me when I say that happens. Mostly due to updates. Within that updates that just plainly break things. E.g. deleting the users files. Or other updates which only break some PCs. (those are fun to diagnose) E.g. if the recovery partiton created by its own installer is suddenly to small. and I also had it more than a few times that Windows pulled in a driver “update” which broke things. One time it even tried to apply the wrong driver! I have now disabled all driver updates trough windows on all PCs I manage. Rarely PCs also just suddenly refuse to boot, being caught in a recovery loop. After trying two times for hours to find the reason and only one success I don’t care anymore and just restore a working backup in that case. Mind that (nearly) all users do not have admin rights.
On Linux? I had it that release upgrades broke things, but only once several years ago on the PCs where I wait till the official release is made. On my own ones I am often to feature hungry to wait until after the beta, and I know I can fix things. I had one 12 year old PC where X11+KDE got unstable after a release upgrade, thankfully a switch to Wayland solved this. Besides that? Never had any issue I didn’t cause myself and never had a running system which suddenly broke. Granted I do not administer as many Linux PCs as Windows ones. But there are a few, some of them also in the hands of users.
I’ve only tried EndeavourOS with the i3 wm, it was better than setting it up myself from scratch, but it still left a lot to be desired (in particular; no way to deal with external displays as far as i could tell, except using xrandr)
But i guess it’s more focused on the desktop manager options?
Aren’t there any applications that can automatically manage displays? Many dms let you cycle through "only primary, “only secondary”, “mirrored” “side by side”, is that something that has to be built in to the wm/dm?
Is that something arandr can do? I couldn’t get it to do anything useful, so i ended up writing some scripts on top of xrandr to do it
Based on my search when i looked into arandr earlier, and also my search now, it cannot :( looks like it’s just a graphical interface for xrand
But looks like there’s a different project, autorandr, that looks promising, it won’t automatically run when a display is connected or disconnected, but that’s easy enough to do with an udev rule or something
Then I misunderstood your question. I’m pretty sure you can do all of these things:
"only primary, “only secondary”, “mirrored” “side by side”
But it’s not like in a DE where you jump through those modes with a keybinding. Instead you generate an xrandr config. It can preserve the position if you unplug an extra monitor and then plug it back in.
If you need that quickswitch functionality, you can generate configs for all of those scenarios and just use a script to cycle through them.
You could also use built in wm functionality. For example you can create modes (I think that’s what it’s called) in i3. Press a shortcut, it opens up a menu, and you can choose your option (load an xrandr config).
Another option is to use Xfce or KDE, and replace the default wm. It’s the best option if you’re lazy about setting everything up. That’s why I’m currently running Xfce + I3. That functionality is useless for me as the Xfce version doesn’t seem to allow you to customise those configurations. The regular display configuration is pretty useful though.
Quickswitch or automatic switch to a different profile, i often found myself enabling an external display and disabling the built-in one, then when packing down my laptop i forgot to manually configure the built in, meaning when i got home i had a laptop with a blank screen, Sometimes i was able to log in, open a terminal and enable the screen, other times i would have to reboot it. Something that could automatically enable the builtin if no external display is connected would’ve gone a long way for my usecase (my attempts at writing scripts for that never worked from what i recall, something got messed up when going to sleep)
Doesn’t xfce use a dm? What kind of display configuration does it give? A gui for manually configuring the layout or something more?
I’d most likely keep it like that and go on with my day, but here’s an ai response for automating it:
To trigger a script when an external monitor is connected or disconnected, you can use udev, the device manager for the Linux kernel.
Here’s a step-by-step plan:
Create a script that will be triggered when the monitor is connected or disconnected. For example, /usr/local/bin/monitor-hotplug.sh. Make sure to make it executable with chmod +x /usr/local/bin/monitor-hotplug.sh.
<span style="color:#323232;">#!/bin/bash
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">export DISPLAY=:0
</span><span style="color:#323232;">export XAUTHORITY=/home/username/.Xauthority # replace "username" with your actual username
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">xrandr | grep "HDMI1 connected" # replace "HDMI1" with your actual monitor identifier
</span><span style="color:#323232;">if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> # commands to run when the monitor is connected
</span><span style="color:#323232;">else
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> # commands to run when the monitor is disconnected
</span><span style="color:#323232;">fi
</span>
Create a udev rule that will trigger the script. For example, /etc/udev/rules.d/95-monitor-hotplug.rules.
<span style="color:#323232;">sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
</span>
Now, whenever an external monitor is connected or disconnected, the monitor-hotplug.sh script will be triggered.
Please note that you’ll need to replace “HDMI1” with your actual monitor identifier, which you can find by running xrandr without any arguments. Also, replace “username” with your actual username.
And here’s an example of using modes in i3 if you need to switch between multiple configurations:
<span style="color:#323232;">set $mode_system System (k) lock, (l) logout, (u) suspend, (h) hibernate, (r) reboot, (s) shutdown
</span><span style="color:#323232;">mode "$mode_system" {
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym k exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh lock, mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym l exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh logout, mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym u exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh suspend, mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym h exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh hibernate, mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym r exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh reboot, mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym s exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh shutdown, mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> # back to normal: Enter or Escape
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym Return mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> bindsym Escape mode "default"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">bindsym control+mod1+X mode "$mode_system"
</span>
Doesn’t xfce use a dm?
Display manager?
A gui for manually configuring the layout or something more?
Basic stuff you’d expect, and it has a quick switch keybinding to go between a few basic configurations.
Display manager I thought the d stood for Desktop, but i’m thinking of de, i see i’ve been mixing up terms, i’ve also been under the incorrect understanding that window managers and desktop environments were mutually exclusive, e.g. a desktop environment like xfce would conflict with a window manager like i3
Those scripts look cleaner than mine, perhaps i should give it another go, i’m currently on ubuntu, but many of the packets being 15 years out of date is starting to get annoying, i miss aur with its [xxx]-git packages
X11 DEs have a built in wm. For example xfce has something like xfce-wm. If you disable its autostart and replace it with a different one like I3, you get the best of both worlds.
You can’t do that in Wayland because compositors are a monolith.
i’m currently on ubuntu, but many of the packets being 15 years out of date is starting to get annoying
Use an external package manager. For simplicity I suggest flatpak or snap. I prefer nix, but the setup is more complicated. That way you’ve got a rock solid system, but fresh or bleeding edge userland packages.
Endeavour does not aim to be used friendly, it just aims to make Arch faster to install. After that you’re on your own just as much as you’d be on Arch.
Yeah I do. “On your own” is used very loosely here. You get a graphical installer, you pick from a list of DEs or WMs, make sure you want all the default software, done. You don’t have to do the Arch thing, which is the hard part, and you still get an Arch desktop. And once Arch and your environmemt are installed, it’s so much more user friendly than Ubuntu or Debian, you’re “on your own” with any Linux system once it’s installed and working, it’s not like you have to dig into the guts of the system just to use it with any of them.
I installed Debian with XFCE a while back and it didn’t even have curl installed. Ubuntu tries to force you to use snaps. I installed EndeavorOS, I haven’t had to do anything extra except install the programs I want to use personally, all the graphical and terminal utilities you’re going to need are just there and work the way you expect them to.
I agree, the experience of switching to Linux as a regular end-user is overwhelming. The worst are the sensationalist articles that seem they were plagiarized and make you feel like you are missing on some epic feature if you pick one distro over the other.
“Real soon” for Fedora means “maybe in the release after next” which in real world terms means it’s at least one year away if it gets approved. Which approval keeps getting reverted. So basically it’s a “maybe one year from now” time frame which keeps being pushed back.
I agree. and I happen to enjoy baking. arch was my first distro and after a whirlwind tour of other options at some point, has remained my daily driver os for the better part of a decade.
i don’t suggest arch to just any newbies. I suggest it to the ones who are overtly interested in baking. I don’t suggest it to people asking the best way to get tasty cookies, who are perhaps the majority, but not by as much as people seem to naturally suspect. sometimes I think some people giving answers don’t remember or realize that there are many kinds of people interested in learning about Linux and therefore many right answers for a starting distro.
mint has the same problem that butyric acid has in american herseys chocolate. if you associate the ingredient with toothpaste/vomit first, then you come in with a much more negative view of it.
Alright so I got a steam deck and that seems cool. Windows has sucked for awhile and now it blows too so can I just install the steamdeck’s version of linux on my PCs too? Or do I choose a different distro? Or uhhhhhhhhhhhh wtf do I do I just wanna play games without being spied on and advertised at
Archlinux is very similar to steamdeck so i recommend either that or EndevourOS. Lutris + Wine-GE lets you play basically any game, from Windows or other hardware, on linux so i recommend that
If you like traditional desktop approach, just go with Linux Mint. If you wanna try something different, go with PopOS. You can always use Steam’s Big Picture mod if you want Steam Deck UI.
Obviously the distro choices are limitless but it’s a good idea to start with one of these.
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 before you actually install the OS. Generally speaking, Mint works better with AMD, and Pop! works better with Nvidia.
Awesome, thanks for the guide links, definitely bookmarking this whole post haha. The Nvidia vs AMD thing is good to know too, I scored a great deal a few years back on a RTX card and I really want that thing working properly if possible
It’s only a general rule. In my experience, Nvidia has kinda been all over the place on how Linux-friendly they are. Do a couple searches on the exact card you have, you might be lucky.
I hope you have fun with finding what works best for you and your hardware!
Fair enough, and that is a bit of my concern, Nvidia doesn’t seem to be associated with being Linux friendly. Thanks for the advice, I wouldnt have thought to search on the specific card. This is gonna take some experimenting I think
Don’t know how it’s going to go for you, but Mint has been going really well for me gaming-wise on an Alienware with Nvidia RTX. Pretty much all the Steam games I care about work, and all my Blizzard games through Lutris. All through simple GUIs, and if you like the Windows feel and setup, there’s a Windows 10 theme you can try out, and tutorials on how to get a Windows style mouse cursor too. Again - all up to you, but it worked really well for me and is amazingly customizable. Just… remember to do Timeshift backups regularly, just in case. You never know if you’ll need one.
Other comment made great points on MintOS and PopOS for beginning a Linux journey.
SteamOS isn’t available for a full PC release (that I am aware of), but Bazzite was made to be a full-distro alternative to SteamOS. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it has good reception from what I see.
Linux Mint is very easy to pick up, though, and I highly recommend for someone coming from Windows. It is fully functional through GUI and has several different flavors for the desktop environment. I’m a fan of KDE, but Cinnemon was also very nice. A version of KDE Plasma is what SteamOS 3.0 uses. I’m not as big of a fan of GNOME, but a lot of people love it as a mor elegant, modern desktop environment.
Bazzite is pretty good, as are Nobara and ChimeraOS. I’ve got HoloISO (SteamOS reimplementation) running and it’s pretty ok. It does what I need but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it due to the Bluetooth issues I’ve had and the on again/off again support.
Funny enough, instead of fixing the Bluetooth issues I just wrote a script a week or two ago that runs on startup. It removes btusb and btintel then reloads them. I hate janky fixes like that but I don’t have the time or energy to tinker with operating systems anymore.
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