I’d rather someone’s first choice about Linux was which DE to use. This plays a way bigger part in first impressions.
The obvious choice is KDE, ofcI totally agree, that’s a way more important factor when you’re starting out with Linux.
Gotta be Gnome thoughThat’s a strange way to spell Xfce.
Maybe you misheard LXQT?
I used to be a huge Plasma evangelist. At first I hated it, the old versions I mean. You just moved the mouse pointer the wrong way and your whole DE was fucked. Too many options and settings. But KDE 5 changed my world. Stable and lighter than Gnome, but still fully configurable. Last night I switched to Debian 12, Gnome. Maybe I’m getting old, but I’m loving it. I don’t tinker with my DEs that much anymore. Just a couple Gnome extensions and I was good to go.
The arrangement of Start menu hardly matters. Virtual desktops are indispensable though. And I can restart crashed Plasma in 35 seconds.
DE? WM!
ctwm rocking along nicely since last centuryWhatever, I always say, use what you want when you want to dive into things. When you don’t want to dive into things, use either IOS when you can afford it or Windows. (As long as they don’t expect help with the last 2 ;) )
Maté is awesome
You missed the step where you tell everyone what distro you use, and that its the best.
Five minutes after you installed it and haven’t tried anything else.
I feel personally attacked lol
HaHa Same
I use Mint, btw
I use SteamOS btw
(Which is arch based meaning… I use arch btw lol)
Otherwise Debian stable is my go-to set it and forget it server OS
Needing to feel superior is meaningless. Feeling just in your distro decisions is something you can only give to yourself when you are honest. If I need to shame your decisions based on your needs, I know I am doing something wrong and I need to distro hop. I should feel self sufficient in my choices, and so should you. I encourage your distro usage and hope you master it enough to suit your needs.
Searched, not googled. Google is bad, M’kay?
Reference
Drugs are bad, M’kay? Don’t do drugs.
me and the boys out here still asking Jeeves
Fellow old fart detected.
Fellow old fart detected.
Just ddg-it
Just duck it.
Brave it
Hannah Montana Linux is the best distro! It leaves out all those newfangled things like Wayland, GNOME 3, SysVInit and gives you Hannah Montana.
newfangled… SysVInit
You mean systemd? Cause SysVInit was created in 1991 based on Unix System V from 1983. Which means it’s literally older than Miley Cyrus.
Frankly i don’t know much about Linux. I was looking for some boot programs and i thought SysVInit was one of the newer ones after systemd. My gf uses Void Linux and it has some boot program that is supposedly less bloated than systemd.
Void uses runit. Small, simple and ~20yrs old.
I’m personally a huge fan of Red Star OS.
It’s the best Linux distro and only the best OS is enough for our glorious leader Kim Jong-Un! I heard he has the nuclear launch button integrated right into GNOME 2.
What if I don’t want to use whatever I want? What if I want my distro forced upon me?
I’ve decided that you have to use Slackware
Thank you sir. May I have another?
Yes, you have to use Softlanding Linux System. You can’t go back to Slackware
Thank you sir. May I have another?
You must use all these systems as VMs under Proxmox
No
Lfs
It’s been a long time since I’ve played around with Slackware, wonder how it’s doing lately. Might need to find an extra machine to throw it on.
Lmao of all possible choices you went with that xD based
Lol, this is exactly what happened to me
Wow, 1.3 was fun, as was RedHat 4.2 (guessing,. version on infomagix nov '95 CD set, can’t find it now). Most fun though was kicking them off and dumping Debian on there early '96. (yeah,
fan boylazy admin that doesn’t want re-installs for major upgrades)
Okay, but when most people are looking for advice on which distro to use it’s because they don’t know what they want.
Yeah, this meme is mostly to poke fun at the people who genuinely think that Linux Mint is only for beginners or you have to switch to Arch or whatever else, that kind of crowd.
I’m a little bit tempted to try and make an actual flowchart with distro recommendations since I’ve used and like most of the major ones at this point, but there are better resources out there than what I could contribute.
Linux mint is the sort of distro newbies start with and long time linux users retire to after theyve explored the distro multiverse.
I was a huge distro hopper until I started using immutable distros. One thing no one tells beginners is that you do have to maintain your system more on Linux than other OSs because Linux gives you the rope to hang yourself with. I would always bloat my OS and things would get unruly, everything would slow down or become unstable and I would lose track of how I had everything set up. Immutability make things so much cleaner.
Hmm I don’t see arch on here it must’ve gotten cropped
yeah that’s my bad, here’s a corrected version
Perfection.
yeah that’s my bad, here’s a corrected version
“use Arch btw”
The two things that matter when choosing a distro - package managers and desktop environment/window manager. And even then, universal package managers like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage can provide a substitute for the package managers.
deleted by creator
Sums up what I did
Which distro should you pick? -> openSUSE tumbleweed
I literally just switched to openSUSE yesterday because I’m trying out an Intel Arc GPU for a bit and wanted more recent packages than Fedora offers to give it the best chance possible. Gotta say…it’s really good. Once I’m done testing the Intel card, I don’t think I’ll be switching back.
The distro itself is pretty good, but the repos are missing many packages, and it can get pretty frustrating.
You can use opi to install packages from packman repo and open build service. It has pretty much everything.
Mainstream choice? Raspbian it is
I was going to joke about compatibility, but apparently there is a version of Raspberry Pi OS for desktops…huh, TIL
You missed a third option;
“Just dive in you nerd.”
I started with PopOS. Didn’t like so many decisions being made for me so I started using Arch instead. Easy customization. Got tired of breaking systems. Jumped to Debian Testing. I think I’m settled.
Honestly from experience I’ve learnt that the yes answer also usually applies to the no answer because it’s important to everyone. Advanced users tend to hit advanced issues and surprise, surprise, then community size matters all the same!
So since Linux is highly customizable and the choice of e.g. desktop environment matters little (just install whatever you want on any distro, including DE), community size is the most hard-earned property and thus usually trumps all.
So I personally try to keep closest to upstream regardless experienced or less experienced users => Debian if you adore those DEB packages and management, Fedora if you love those RPM packages and management, indie ones for indie packages e.g. Alpine, Arch… If you still run into issues it’s usually you, not the distro because it’s already battle hardened. :) But no worries, then you’ll find a lot of help and the problem has usually already even been discussed and is googleable! It’s 2023, none of the huge distros are plain shit and annoying, that’s been ironed out like a decade ago. So just go with a (big) flow somewhere.
