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IMHO Linux Mint keeps being the strongest option to recommend when the intention is a clean transition with the least amount of fiddling. It just works, it is r
by j1elo 1y ago
IMHO Linux Mint keeps being the strongest option to recommend when the intention is a clean transition with the least amount of fiddling. It just works, it is reliable, and it doesn't play games with changes of basic technologies that can only cause confusion (e.g. none of the Ubuntu shenanigans like their confusing desktop or their non-Debian packaging)
- shmerl 1y agoI wouldn't recommend Mint. Better use something with recent KDE Plasma and recent kernel and Mesa for best Wayland experience. Especially speaking of playing games, I periodically see newcomer Linux gamers hitting problems due to Mint being outdated and not having good Wayland support. Especially for any kind of recent hardware.
- nokeya 1y agoAny examples of “something with recent kde”? I have Ubuntu currently, wanted to switch to the Mint, now want to hear more opinions
- shmerl 1y agoI'd say any rolling distro. Try Debian testing or unstable if you prefer Debian distros family (choose KDE during installation). Or try Arch. KDE also started making its own Arch based distro now: https://kde.org/linux/ https://kde.org/linux/ But it's one of those immutable flavors. I prefer something more flexible.
- Alupis 1y agoFedora
- jpmattia 1y agoHow do you deal with the short lifespan until EOL? I've been using Rocky (and CentOS before that) simply to avoid dealing with EOL so often.
- Alupis 1y agoFedora makes major upgrades pretty easy - you can even do it via the GUI Software Center, then reboot. Personally I'm using Kinoite[1], an "immutable" version of Fedora that has an immutable base image, which makes it nearly impossible to break things during updates (even major upgrades). [1] - https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/ https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
- queenkjuul 1y agoI use mint's cinnamon UI on Ubuntu. It's by far my favorite desktop, but yeah Mint's main packages are too far out of date usually.
- sebtron 1y agoFor me it's the exact opposite, I had problems with Steam games on Wayland and I switched back to X11.
- shmerl 1y agoYou probably used Nvidia and some outdated distro with a bad DE on top. Not something you should be using. Using X11 is DOA anyway, so you can figure out what was wrong in your case and use better options.
- sebtron 1y agoNo, AMD. I had issues on the latest Debian, released this summer, with KDE. X11 works perfectly fine. I would be happy with wayland too, if it worked. And in fact I use it on my other device.
- shmerl 1y agoWhat kind of issues though with what GPU? I'm using Debian testing, it all works fine with AMD and KDE Plasma Wayland session. With AMD, always make sure to use latest kernel, Mesa and amdgpu firmware.
- sebtron 1y agoThe Steam main window did not open, although Steam itself did load in the background. I could work around this by disabling smooth scrolling on web view and some other GPU-related option (I forgot exactly). But then there was a strange glitch on every single game (both native and Proton-based). Periodically (e.g. every ~10 seconds on some 3D games, on every screen reload on some other) the screen turned black for about 2 seconds. Then I remembered that I had some issue when I first installed Debian 12 two years, though I forgot which issues exactly, and that I solved them by switching from Wayland to X11.
- shmerl 1y ago
- dismalaf 1y agoLinux Mint is terrible. Horribly outdated software, how are they still on X11? Both their DEs are forks which introduces problems... Like, in regular Gnome/KDE land, you have Wayland which is a huge improvement over X11, HDR works, fractional scaling works... None of that works on Mint.
- shmerl 1y agoNot sure why you are downvoted, what you said is true. Mint has some WIP to support Wayland in Cinnamon, but it's way behind other DEs and I wouldn't recommend using it.
- dare944 1y agoVoted down because the "Linux Mint is terrible" statement clearly isn't true.
- dismalaf 1y agoWhen Mint always comes up as a distro for newbies coming from Windows, then lacks all the features of a modern system, yes, it's terrible.
- shmerl 1y agoWong wording may be, but the point of the post is correct. Mint just lags behind with Wayland support and in being up to date for handling recent hardware especially. The former is Mint's specific problem, while the latter is a general problem of all long period release distros that don't take care of updating Linux kernel, Mesa and etc. to actual recent releases.
- barbs 1y agoAgreed. For people coming from Windows Linux Mint is the one I recommend. Simple, stable, minimal hassle.
- intalentive 1y agoI like Mint. I just wanted something simple that looks like Win7 I can use for work, email, browsing, and it delivers.
- someuser2345 1y agoI can't agree about the "it just works" part. About a year ago I build a new PC, and I tried installing Mint on it. I ran into two issues that I was never able to resolve: 1. The WiFi just would not work; I couldn't see any networks. 2. I have 2 monitors, and one monitor would display 80% of one screen, and 20% of the other. I suspect that it was because the monitors had different refresh rates and resolutions. I then tried installing Windows, and everything did just work.
- hedora 1y agoI’ve had good luck with Devuan. It works a bit better than Debian / Ubuntu did during their heydays. If you like systemd, then I can offer no advice that will help you. :-)