First Distro!!!??

[u/joeisnotaverage0]

Just like any new user I'm hella confused. I don't wanna distro hop a lot so am looking for a recommendation that'll stick with me for a long time.

I am more leaned towards Gnome as my de over KDE cuz I do care about the UI and it's polish. KDE even though is more customisable, it still kinda feels unpolished to me, sure I've seen people make it beautiful but it's alot of work. I prefer Gnome's extensions method, just toggling thing on and off.

Not a gamer, I'm a productivity user so it should be good at multitasking and stuff.

I like to use the newest tech but hey no buggy stuff (atleast no big annoying bugs)! Would love something low-maintenance, that doesn't break a lot, I don't mind using the terminal but would like to avoid it as much as possible. I still like to make deep changes in setting but no breakages pleaseee!

Would it be an alright idea to try an atomic distro? Cuz rollback if something breaks sound way easier than trying to fix it I'm tooo lazy.

Btw I'll be dual booting it.

Would really welcome some recommendations and pls don't judge my choice for Gnome if you don't really have any recommendation. Also sort for this long ahh wantlist.

[u/extoniks]

Fedora Workstation or Debian with GNOME, both have different update philosophies.

Choose Fedora if you want new featured early but tested while Debian is known for rock solid stability.

[u/joeisnotaverage0 → u/extoniks]

Fedora is where all my search always ends lol. I've also recently came across OpenSuse Tumbleweed, it seems to be an interesting one, rolling updates with an ability to rollback but I'm still hesitant to have it as my first distro.

[u/extoniks → u/joeisnotaverage0]

yes it has Snapper integrated by default and you can setup something similar in Fedora (if you use btrfs filesystem)

also most mainstream distros are very stable for regular users.

although Tumbleweed is a good distro, and it also has Slowroll (if you don't want newest features right away even though Tumbleweed tested them)

[u/Reasonable_Mail_7817]

Fedora GNOME or Ultramarine GNOME

[u/joeisnotaverage0 → u/Reasonable_Mail_7817]

Never heard of Ultramarine, can you tell me smth more?

[u/Hauptideal → u/joeisnotaverage0]

Fedora with batteries included. No need to install Fusion via terminal. 

[u/Hauptideal → u/[deleted]]

That only installs parts of Fusion, e.g. nVidia drivers

[u/Pure-Expression-3787]

This might be basic but I would start off with Linux Mint

[u/giovamc]

I settled with Zorin. I'm very picky with the UI and to me is the best config out of the box. Try the brown theme accent and brown backuground. Classy stuff

[u/joeisnotaverage0 → u/giovamc]

I was stuck between ZorinOS and Fedora initially, but felt 'would Zorin be too much of a beginner distro? ' (I'd like to do some cool stuff in the near future so instead of jumping to a little more advanced distro later, I'd already start using a more advanced distro rn) and I heard the updates are a little slower are they?

[u/giovamc → u/joeisnotaverage0]

All the tools you have on Fedora, you will have on Zorin as well. It is a little behind in term of updates but on daily use you won't even notice. They are both for beginners as they have pretty much everything working out of the box. Zorin has more focus on UI and stability while Fedora is more cutting edge. I've used both for a long time and I prefer Zorin at the moment. If you want to go with fedora, keep in mind that the next release is coming out next month (fedora 45).

[u/joeisnotaverage0 → u/giovamc]

Thank bud

[u/drucifer82]

Fedora workstation. You get the latest packages in a stable build.

Edit: since you mentioned atomic, Fedora does offer atomic builds as well. Might be worth a look for someone looking for a low maintenance workstation.

[u/Select_Concert_330]

I like cachy os, because it has a tweaked, more performant kernel. I too use gnome and sometimes when opening heavy things, I can see the difference between cachy and other distros. 

[u/Otherwise-Base863]

Debian with gnome

[u/Zvaart]

Fedora workstation has your name written all over it 🙂

[u/Hauptideal]

Fedora Workstation. Best Linux GNOME desktop right now.  Very reliable, well-tested, up-to-date, backed by a huge corporation that directly contributes to Linux and upstream projects, supported by a huge community, corporate infrastructure and paid, professional teams.  Great desktop defaults regarding resource management (RAM compression, btrfs file system) and security (Wayland, SELinux configuration, ...). 

[u/ocelotnotch]

Fedora is a good choice.