Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Hey, for my recommendations keep in mind I did not use Linux as a main os for some time now. It is based on me following Linux channels and news, but also my past experience and installing it on my laptop and my brother's laptop.
Linux distros are different in the packages they choose to include for their environment, use and desktop. Some distros offer different desktop environments (which are different desktop softwares, with different handling of included apps, settings and theming).
Depending on how well you know how to search online and not follow outdated advice, some different distros can be interesting :
Beginner friendly for Linux :
All desktops can be themed. Tho cinnamon I don't know how well it supports modifying the task bar.
Gnome can have extensions to do things, show a bottom task bar, start button, start menu...
For these 3 distros, the system package manager used (installer, app searcher) is apt-get (shortened to apt). It is a well k'ow package manager with plenty of tutorials online. All also include flatpak, which is a special package manager where apps Comme bundled with their own dependencies (software to make the main software work), and so reduce incompatibilities.
Ubuntu as a package manager called snap installed by default, it has the same objective as flatpak, but it is closed source, and already had issues with malware spreading through it.
Obviously all 3 package managers can have issues, as community is there to check the apps, but it may not always be safe. The safest package source is still the system one apt as packages are checked by the people maintaining the main distro repo. But many flastpaks and snaps are safe. (tho they can have some theming issues).
All of these 3 include a GUI store where you can search and install apps.
Another great distro which can work for beginner or advanced
Fedora has a pretty good documentation, but even that one seems to be a bit out of date on some things.
If you have an nvidia driver, this one doesn't have nvidia proprietary drivers installed by default nor help at the beginning on automatically installing them. You have to enable at install (or after in the store settings) the nvidia closed repo and install the nvidia driver from the store.
Kde as a desktop is pretty great, tho it can be overwhelming with all it's settings and options available to the user.
Gnome tho still requires an app to be able to control hidden settings like mouse acceleration and some other settings.
I wouldn't recommend other distros for beginner or someone who just wants to easy setup and work.
Debian is pretty stable even in its "testing" branch (Debian stable = old bur rock solid, not recommended for gaming. Testing = newish, still not breaking. Unstable = unstable) needs to have a manual install or help through someone's script.
Manajaro is a mess. On some devices it will work, on other it will just desintegrate after some months.
Or the communities are so small that packages may easily pass testing and break.
This is a great beginner friendly comment. I really appreciate you for that.
Between Mint and Pop_OS: recommendation for how to pick between them?
Coming from MacOS, haven't used Windows in a number of years.
If it would make a difference it's for a Lenovo Legion Slim 5 (Ryzen 7 7840HS; NVIDIA RTX 4060).
I want to dual boot, using the Windows side for gaming, for now, and Linux for other tasks.
However keep in mind that Pop OS is developing their own desktop to get away from gnome (the name of the desktop environment(DE) (the bunch of apps and tools making the desktop and settings work)).
That new DE will most likely not be compatible with gnome extensions. And I don't know how it will look.
For functionality, both work pretty well.
Pop os has 2 ISO : one which includes the nvidia driver, and another without the Nvidia driver, should be easy to download the right one.
Mint I don't remember exactly how it works, but it should be easy enough to download and install the proprietary nvidia driver, either through a driver tool, or through the store.
Pop os has a gnome extension which allow you to switch from integrated gpu / hybrid / nvidia "only" directly from the notification menu.
to switch in mint, you need to open the nvidia control panel.
Both need a reboot or log out to switch gpu mode.
(keep in mind, the Nvidia gpu consumes a lot more than the cpu integrated one. In hybrid, nvidia gpus canot be put to 0w sleep yet, so it will still consume some power).
Both need a special argument for app launch or steam launch arguments to launch with the nvidia gpu if you set hybrid.
For boot :
Disadvantage :
About Wayland : it's a "new" windows manager (what allows apps to be displayed, and how they interact with each other). It is a hopeful replacement for X11 (released in 198X, before Linux...) full of issues but still working well for what it has to do. Wayland wants to bring enhancements on security, gesture fluidity and many other things. However it is not yet fully developed and you shouldn't really base your decision on it yet.
For the rest. I don't really remember other disadvantages as i don't really use them anymore.
Thank you for this comprehensive answer. It brought up some new considerations, but that's a good thing — like learning about Wayland, switching to/from use of gpu (which I didn't even know was a thing), and Pop_OS moving away from gnome. I appreciate that you took the time to write this full answer!