50% of Linux is being free to choose. The other 50% is knowing what the correct choice is.
The other 50% is knowing what the correct choice* is.
* Notice: whatever choice is made, half the encountered users will say it was the wrong choice.
Math checks out.
Go with KDE unless your PC is very low-power.
In that 4th panel I’m seeing a bunch of Meeseeks.
bitch they are all the fucking same. just chill out and install one of them
Just pick Mint and get on with your life.
Yeah, if you hit a snag you can pursue other options but best just to dive into something easy to get started on.
Really wanted to try the Debian version of mint, but unfortunately it’s systemd based
That’s what I did 6 months ago. No issues so far that haven’t been solved by either a quick search or literally just waiting a few days for an update. The games I play work, I don’t depend on any Adobe software so I don’t even need Wine. Computers aren’t my hobby, Mint has let me keep it that way.
If you’re a Linux veteran and this repulses you, that’s fine. This is more for people on Windows who want to jump but are worried.
It’s the objectively correct choice, but it might draw the ire of Fedora stans.
Mint noobs : Haha entry level distro go brr
Fedora wearers : Noooo milady you have to use a version of an OS based off corporate bsRHEL is downstream from Fedora. They’re both forks of Red Hat, but Red Hat ≠ RHEL
Edit: also, since you wanna fuckin go there, Linux Mint is downstream from Ubuntu, which is corporate BS. So you’re making accusations in a mirror.
yeah, corporate bs with all the corporate bs taken out.
also, LMDE exists.
Me: At least my neighbors aren’t those inbred hicks over there
You : Actually, those people have only practiced cousin marriage, which has been socially acceptable for various centuries
Me : Yeah, the point is more that they are hicks.What the fuck? Not sure whether that’s more strawman or red herring, but either way it’s a really cheap deflection that provides a window into your mind, not mine.
Is that how you respond to everyone who points out why you’re wrong?
idk look through my history and find out.
The only reason I dislike mint is because the developers kept postponing the Wayland transition so insanely long. Once it does HDR, variable refresh rate, and fractional scaling on heterogeneous displays correctly, I’ll start recommending it again.
Enough posts about Wayland are complaints I don’t care if it ever happens. Mint works fucking great just like it is.
For some variety, I recently switched from x11 to Wayland and it fixed some problems I was having with game input.
Wayland: display server. The thing that shows the visual stuff on screen. Wayland=new and more features (features explained below). X11=old but stable and takes time to transition from without bugs.
HDR: high dynamic range. If you have a really nice TV or monitor, this gives you better color accuracy. Make sure you have good brightness levels with brightness cranked up, or it will counter intuitively look worse, like the brown filter PS3 era of video games.
VRR: variable refresh rate. When you run a game, some parts are harder to render than others due to increased detail and things happening in the screen. Thus, your frame rate will dip, making a noticeable jittery effect that is not smooth, especially if you have a high refresh rate monitor. My monitor refreshes 165 times per second to detect changes, and if the frame rate goes from 140 frames generated to 90, that is very noticeable. VRR syncs the refresh rate of your monitor to the GPU itself, so it knows exactly how many frames it will be getting. My monitor will refresh 90 times for that second that I got a frame drop instead of 165, which drastically decreases the jittery effect of the dropped frames. You can still kind of tell, but it is more smooth and responsive in terms of what is happening on screen.
Heterogeneous displays: monitors of different resolutions.
Fractional scaling: this allows you to set display zoom at different percentages on different monitors, as well as setting non-integer scaling (integer is 100% to 200%, non integer is 100% to 125%). This is important because 100% scaling is often too small on high resolutions, and 200% is comically large. Also for the multiple monitor scenario, most people have a new monitor and their old monitor as the secondary. For example, 4k will require 150% scaling at least to be readable st most screen sizes. 1080p will look too zoomed in at over 100%, and not match the look of the other monitor.
In summary, most of this is going to matter only if you are a gamer or watch HDR content like movies on your computer. Having matching monitors despite non matching resolutions is pretty nice though. But if you have matching monitors or 1 monitor it doesn’t matter either. Hence, Mint is not a good choice for a gaming or home theater situation, but its hyper focus on being stable makes everyone else like it more because they never do anything different unless it is for sure going to work. At this point though, most distros are using Wayland with no issues.
Love seeing Clone High memes in the wild.
Was just reminiscing the theme song a couple days back.
It’s the reason that while Joe Flaherty is a legend in his own right, the first thing to comes to mind when I hear his name is this:
Only?!
Are we pretending 2 years old software is a good thing?
We are not pretending. Debugged and working reliably is better than new. Being new is not automatically useful value.
what do you recommend now?
It’s better to delay it and release an immediately usable product than to break the desktop when an unexpected bug is encountered and make the computer unusable. I’ve never transitioned a desktop environment and framework to an entirely different display system, but I don’t imagine it’s as simple as flipping a switch.
It definitely takes time, and stable distros should exist. Wayland has been the clear choice moving forward for 7 years though. It feels like Mint & a few others are just stalling at this point.
HDR is like the only reason I’m on Windows 11. Already switched my entire home lab over to proxmox.
What would you recommend today if I wanted good HDR support and gaming with a Radeon GPU?
Or should I just wait for Mint to get those features?
Nixos is the objectively correct choice if anything.
Oh god, no. Are you trying to drive people away from using Linux?
objectively
I don’t think you understand meaning of that word
For me it was the objectively incorrect choice. Sound issues, display issues, slow. Whatever is up with mint, it absolutely doesn’t work with my hardware.
It’s possible to install a newer kernel in Mint using the Update Manager. This might have solved your hardware issues. Admittedly, though, this option is not very easy to find if you’re not aware of it.
It’s also kinda antithetical to what people are saying, which is that mint is great out of the box.
I do not understand why lemmy is obsessed with this distro
Its got the highest success rate with new users that are not hobbiests. And a good distro to learn Linux on because of all the Ubuntu guides.
Me either. I have tried it multiple times over the years and I did not have great luck with things “just working” as everyone claims. Plus I hate the windows style DE UIs so it seems like a weird choice that so many people will recommend it and tout it without even asking follow up questions.
Plus I hate the windows style DE UIs so it seems like a weird choice
The average user hates the changes involved in switching away from the windows distro. The thing you hate about it is an objectively good reason for recommending it to a new user.
I have tried it multiple times over the years and I did not have great luck with things “just working” as everyone claims.
I have used it for several years now (with multiple sets of hardware) with no issues. Every single Linux version is going to have something it can’t handle. Linux mint is stable and handles most stuff just fine. A bad experience is possible anywhere, so this isn’t really a good reason to not recommend it for new users.
Yeah I’m not saying it’s the worst distro, I just don’t think my multiple experiences with it remotely align with the reputation.
Regarding the UI, I think people want familiarity and even think they want something with a design like that. But in practice the similarities are only skin deep and to me if they’re already going to need to learn all the ways it differs from windows, why not put the same effort into learning something that also varies superficially from windows (just in a different way than mint)?
I think the real reason people recommend mint is, while deep down they know users will have a better time on Ubuntu, they cannot stand the idea of recommending that company’s product directly.
I think the real reason people recommend mint is, while deep down they know users will have a better time on Ubuntu, they cannot stand the idea of recommending that company’s product directly.
I have no guilt when I say Ubuntu, and their managing company, have pulled enough shit over the years that it’s not a good first choice for a new user.
But in practice the similarities are only skin deep and to me if they’re already going to need to learn all the ways it differs from windows, why not put the same effort into learning something that also varies
The average user never leaves the web browser. The average gamer never leaves the web browser and steam. Skin deep is as far as most people ever go.
This not a condemnation, but it’s important to be aware of the differences between the average user, the average gamer, and the average Linux user. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
Every single Linux version is going to have something it can’t handle. Linux mint is stable and handles most stuff just fine.
If you’d like to know that Mint can’t handle…
*raises hand*
6 monitors connected to 2 GPUs – one old Radeon and one 3090. I tried Mint and it could not handle that setup, no matter what I tried doing to it. Currently on Ubuntu, which worked with that setup right out of the box, no tweaking necessary.
Seems like you needed Wayland and GNOME, more than it being a distro issue. Especially with multi-GPU and X, it will take some manual setup and fiddeling.
that’s a very weird setup that like .001% of the pc owning population probably has though.
I’ve tried many distros. Nothing you’ve said is unique to Mint.
Just don’t use Manjaro.
I have tried it multiple times over the years and I did not have great luck with things “just working” as everyone claims.
This is why I don’t like recommending LTS distros for anything other than servers. The Linux kernel and desktop software moves fast these days, and running 2 year old kernel and DE means missing out on the fixes and improvements that the “it just works” people are talking about.
Yup. People need to understand that “stable” is not a synonym for bug-free.
As you said, DEs in particularly move so fast that the rare bug that makes it through and is subsequently quickly fixed is much less problematic than sometimes years of missing features and longstanding bugs that don’t get backported.
It’s like Windows 2000 with good software. What’s not to understand?
Its a good beginners distro. The default desktop environment is very windows 7-y. It has a great out of box experience with everything having a GUI. It’s built on Debian (um ackchyually Linux mint is based on Ubuntu unless you’re using mint Debian edition. Ignore the fact that Ubuntu is a Debian distro itself) which is incredibly stable with most updates being small bug fixes or security patches with the biggest updates being infrequent.
…then just use debian…
The answer is: It’s basic, Windows/Android-looking, and it’s not Ubuntu with snap and shit
And for me it was right. I left it after some time with it, when it served as a comfortable middleground for a Windows escapee. I needed it to feel security in my pretty extreme choice, not to bounce back in the first weeks. Only then I felt like I’m staying there and can explore different things and actually know what I’m looking for.
At first, Mint gave a relief in having a simple visual software manager (~app store) that had both regular versions and flatpacks, where I first encountered the critical difference between the ways you can install the same app and underlying mechanics of dependancies etc. Then I got to know app images, that are less android-like and more windows-like in a sense you download executable files and fire them up. Having some problems and needs I started to google around, saw frequent mentions of archwiki, AUR, pacman, etc, and it just went on.
But for a little while I feared it’d be a neverending challenge, it was comforting to know, that it would just work on the basic level, for browsing, surfing web, playing games. And that I can then pick my challenges to serve my needs. Like a safe zone where most MMOs put their newbie players at first to learn the basics.
because it works perfectly on all my hardware, it’s fast, and has keyboard shortcuts I already know.
I’ve tried popOS (lots of graphics issues, terrible shortcuts, REALLY BAD software manager (runs on 1 core only in 2026. wtf??? it’s slow as hell), and cachyOS (lots of hardware issues, no sound, keyboard shortcuts must be some weird alternate language because none of the ones I know worked).
Mint is awesome. Anyone hating on a Linux distro is a chud. Well, we can hate ubuntu for their canonical reason i suppose.
It was easy to move relatives to from windows without much effort, have done it multiple times and it ran fine for years with the only issue I had to support was cleaning up a boot partition that filled up after several years of automated updates.
I’m not seeing anything unique to mint. That reads like, “I tried it and it worked”
We’re talking linux. “It just works” is something relatively new lol
Honestly that’s a big part of the fear of changing OS. If it works why something else. Users with specific use cases are rarer.
If you are recommending a first time Linux user a distro, the goal isn’t to find the perfect one tailored for them, the goal is to get them to use Linux and not have a bad experience, putting a bunch of upfront conditions on choice is overloading
Distro hoping can happen later
I think the obsession part you are referring to isn’t their love for Mint or them regarding it as the best distro. It’s like someone asking which direction they should take to drive somewhere, there’s a sea of people responding with different routes with tiny differences and the Linux Mint response would be “Whatever the GPS decided”
Linux mint cinnamon will be the easiest possible change to make. It’s the most bland, least interesting choice out of them, and I love it for that. You can always switch later if you don’t like it or want something more adventurous.
I couldn’t stand Mint Cinnamon, it’s like Linux with all the worst parts of Windows =P
Too right. I got pushed out of the Windows ecosystem by the forced obsolescence of Win10 and after dabbling with an older version of Ubuntu in the past and iOS, Cinnamon felt like I was hanging on to what I was trying to leave. GNOME just worked for me functionally and aesthetically. I use Win11 at work and hate every minute of it.
Screen tearing goes brrrr
This is the exact same reason I ultimately gave up on Linux Mint and switched to Fedora. I could not get rid of tearing and I fragged X11 (and made my OS un-bootable) on multiple occasions trying to fix it using recommended tweaks to config files. It was looking like a Wayland based solution was what I needed so I chose to move on.
GNOME haters can put just away their knives since I am no fan boy; I just wanted to completely escape anything resembling a MicroSlop experience and Workstation gave me a clean DE, more current package releases, HDR, Variable refresh rate , and solid gaming performance with a minimal amount of fuss. CachyOS was next on my list if Fedora didn’t work and I am still considering trying it out someday. That said, there is no question that making the switch to Linux as a new user can be daunting and I would still suggest Mint for older hardware with less of a gaming focus.
gave up on Linux Mint and switched to Fedora
And that’s exactly why I think that recommending Mint to gamers is actually evil.
If you want to use any of those features exclusive to Wayland there’s no option to do that on Mint. Your only choice is to completely restart and use another distro, which I don’t think that leaves a good impression for anyone who is just starting out with Linux.
Woah, mint is still on x11? Yikes, I didn’t realize that, if that’s true.
It was at least on the version I tried and it was super annoying trying to figure out why it wouldn’t detect my GPU which was an RX 9060XT and not supported by the default Linux Kernel. Once I upgraded the Kernel, that got my AMDGPU stuff working but I could not overcome other graphics issues like persistent tearing (even with V-sync).
It’d be really funny if XFCE beat Cinnamon to official Wayland support.
GNOME is fucking great. Anyone can complain about it in a valid way, but to me it’s light-years above KDE and it’s kinda between KDE and GNOME if you want to maximize compatibility with a huge number of apps.
Just choose anything. But really, you will be disappointed unless you use KDE on NixOS
Spoiled for choice is a good thing, and it’s one reason why Linux is great. I think the community could do better at two things in this regard:
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Helping new users understand that the choice is not really a major one (relative to making the switch to Linux). Adjust whatever to your needs as you learn, or distro hop.
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Not jumping down new users’ throats if they pick Ubuntu / Mint / Fedora / whatever. Again, the freedom is a plus. A new user picking Ubuntu doesn’t make an older user need to use Ubuntu. Let the new user have that joy of discovery how they want it.
I think if we all focused on these, the community would be better off for it. I’m all for a good ribbing about distros between experienced users, but it definitely can scare newbies away.
Maybe the same reason a 2 party system does well in the US. People are not intelligent enough to make their own choices (and they get overwhelmed) and want “daddy” to tell them what to choose, much like how Windows is just “the thing you use on a PC”. People don’t even want to find their own music anymore, they want the Al Gore Rhythm to feed them everything.
That’s why when people ask me on Linux I just say Mint, use default settings. Because they won’t understand anything else and Mint will likely work fine in 98% of cases.
Read “Nudge” by Richard Thaler. Choice architecture is a real thing that has impact on whether things we want to happen actually happen. It’s not because people aren’t smart enough.
Nice work getting in a jab at the US there lol
Choice paralysis has nothing to do with intelligence. This attitude is forever pushing the year of the Linux desktop away.
I don’t understand the hate for Linux newbies using the “beginner’s” distros. Hell, I actively tell people looking to get into Linux to use a beginner distro and offer to set up their computer for them.
“Look, this is Linux mint, see how windows-y this looks and feels?”
They don’t need to know more than that, I’ll tell them if they look for installation instructions for something not in the software manager to follow the Debian or Ubuntu instructions and that they should run an update at least once a day but it isn’t painful.
I think the power users have ran into issues in the past and instead of considering the learning journey they went through, I think they say it’s better to shortcut to their solution and forgetting the longer learning process they took to get to where they are.
Options are great when you can make an informed choice. Too many similar choices lead to choice paralysis and regret, which is bad for first time users.
Not gonna lie, that’s what put me off the fediverse for so long. I was like, “fine, I’ll join mastodon or whatever”. Then I had to choose my server and I didn’t know what that meant and then when I tried creating my account, the server was full or something and I just freaked out and left 😂.
Yup. I’ve been trying to decide and install for, what how long have y’all been watching me dither three years?
Now i just have to get the backup computer working so if i fuck up, we still have a computer that can run all my wife’s work shit. That’s it after today’s errands! Guess i better put my eyes and legs on.
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100% incorrect, you just need a well maintained arch distro like Garuda or CachyOS.
I think endeavor OS could also do well. in my experience, the install process was easy, kinda like Debian (the first distro I installed). Dare I say it is easier than (or maybe slightly comparable to) Arch with
archinstall?deleted by creator
Arch is extremely easy to use for people that can and want to read documentation.
The mistake here is not just picking. This is why most people who make the switch just go for the big one. lemmy.world, piefed.social, mastodon.social.
You’re gonna have to pick. Pick a username, pick a password, pick a browser, pick between fuckin Amazon or Alibaba, idk. Using windows is also a choice. But yeah I say just use mint and move on to the next one :)
Unlike lemmy.world, ubuntu isn’t sending propaganda email to explain how Israel isn’t actually doing genocide
say what
i’ve never gotten propaganda email from lemmy. or maybe i need to check my spam filters whats this now?
Source?
Unfortunately this is not how the fediverse should work either. It’s not supposed to be “all in one” like everyone expects now. The reason google does so well is they infiltrate everything so Normie Joe only remembers their gmail login and can login to everything. This is dangerous, and we know why, but the convenience outweighs everything to Joe.
Choose random. Get something working. Then reflect on how much you do/don’t like it
Choose the DE, not the distro.
… Well also don’t take advanced distro either. Train on easy distros, then switch if you want
this one! the DE matters so much more than the distro itself
yeah the DE is honestly more important. I started on Mint, stayed on it for two weeks, then switched to CachyOS. Now I’m on NixOS and I just distrobox all the other major distros.
Either fedora and kde/gnome or Linux mint. The rest is noise.
so true
so I was tinkering the other day and I found a great example of what arch doesn’t do that makes it difficult for new users. it doesn’t make default configuration files, even when you have it up and running just fine.
so I’m like why isn’t this working as I expected, reading some Ubuntu documents showing that someone edited their config and that fixes it. i go to the directory and it’s only got a .example file. i copy it so it’s a .config and remove the # from the line that is supposed to correct the behavior and what do you know, it’s working now!
that wouldn’t be something for a new user to resolve and gave me a fresh understanding of the difference in approach and why arch shouldn’t be a newbie system
I noped out of arch during setup. It expected me to partition the drive for swap/os/usr. It’s not 1996, I’m not doing that today.
Swap is only necessary if you have low RAM or use most of your RAM in memory-heavy processes or multitasking.
If you’ve got more RAM than you’ll ever need, you don’t need swap. Although, these days maybe that means swap will become more necessary again.
Also, you don’t need a swap partition, you can make a swapfile that works just as well.
I don’t know what the point of separate partitions for OS and userspace is, but whatevs…
You need swap for hibernate.
I don’t know what the point of separate partitions for OS and userspace is, but whatevs…
Some folks like to be able to reinstall the OS while preserving /home. That’s the only reason I’ve seen for doing separate partitions. (I’m not someone who does that, but it’s the explanation I’ve seen)
That makes sense. I would personally just back up /home and then recover it after reinstalling, but if I were doing all that anyway then I guess I would partition the OS separately in case I need to do it again…
archinstall has an automatic set-up, it’s fine but if you’re concerned about hardening you want to create /tmp and /var and /home on separate partitions. Bonus of /home on its own partition is for if you want to distro hop
it depends
Please forgive my ignorance, what is a DE?
Desktop Environment, the software that controls the windows, icons, and menu.
Their comment is basically saying the experience of two distros using the same DE will be closer than the same distro using different DEs
Correct!
The Steam Deck uses Arch (btw) and KDE, so that’s what I’ll likely go for eventually since I’m most familiar with them.
Artix/Devuan: “Now choose an init system, a C library, and core utilities”
Ubuntu Gnome.
Maybe next laptop I’ll try out mint.
I think Debian got so user friendly that it made Ubuntu obsolete.
I don’t like either of those things, but I think it may be the best answer, simply due to the huge install base. Just about every step by step tutorial and help article for anything a basic user is going to do has Ubuntu based commands included.
