I am going to finally switch from #Windows to #Linux for good. I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop in the past and while the experience was solid I would rather chose other distribution. From those proposed in a survey, what would you recommend for undemanding user like me (browsing web, watching movies, using Libre Office suite, Gimp, other resource light tasks)?
I mostly made my mind already, but I am curious what you folks are gonna come up with :QueerCat:
@radpanda Just a heads up, Manjaro and EndeavourOS have always somehow been less smooth and convenient than just basic Arch for me. Now that we have archinstall installing really is a breeze (less cumbersome than most other installers imo).
Honestly though I'd just go for Debian with Gnome in your usecase, and just install flatpaks if you really need the newest version of some program. That's what I'm running on my laptop and it literally just werks.
@radpanda Fedora and openSUSE are broken these days, lots of regression and just dumb function loss, see the reviews by Dedoimedo. In my view youre much better off with something like Mint or Manjaro.
@radpanda I hope you select a distribution that fits you best, not deciding on what popular replies you get. BTW Flatpak is not only available for Debian.
I think it does not matter what distribution you choose. Maybe Debian, because you already have experience with a similar distro Ubuntu. In example you can choose different Desktop Environments and the distros would feel very similar (KDE and Gnome in example).
@radpanda would suggest Silverblue as well, or MicroOS should you prefer the Suse-variant. I'm running the former and eyeing the latter myself. If inclined, check out #ublue too (https://www.ublue.it).
@radpanda EndeavourOS. Arch without having to go through the manual command line install. You get a fully functioning system as easy as any other distro, with Pacman (the greatest package manager in the world) plus yay for access to the AUR installed by default.
@krashkharma I have heard of it! It looks interesting to me, but I am not sure if I am ready for arch based distribution. My knowledge of Linux can be placed somewhere between being beginner and intermediate user, although I am looking for something that is not going to require much tinkering and problem solving to work with.
@radpanda The only thing difficult or scary about arch is installing it, and that only applies to vanilla Arch. Endeavor comes with everything any other mainstream distro is going to come with, and more. For a quick example, installing chrome literally involves typing "yay google-chrome" into the terminal, and that's it. You can install gui front ends for downloading apps if you want as well; try something more specifically advertised as noob friendly if it's more comfortable, but you're ultimately not really saving yourself any difficulty and will have a learning curve either way that's, at this point, not any better or worse on an arch based distro than a deb/Ubuntu based one. Either way, good luck! 🤘
@radpanda i see you headed off my comment whilst I wrote it. And to that I say, fair enough, and good luck on your Linux experience. I hope you enjoy it
@radpanda Insomnia has trapped me in this space, so I'm just on it lol. As far as your other options go, I have heard excellent reviews of Fedora (and disagree with the controversy surrounding metrics thats happening rn as long as its opt in).
I've heard Debian unstable is also great, but I never hear people talking about debian stable. And I know nothing of openSUSE.
I love Arch foremost, but wouldn't recommend it to someone who wants a casual desktop experience
@olgamatna I know it has. Yet both seems to follow the same UI paradigm, which doesn’t work for me that well (on a laptop with a touchpad). I am not trying to say that they are bad, it’s just me finding GNOME more suited to my needs and workflow :)
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