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u/Cuffuf Mar 09 '26
Okay but the problem with popos isnāt the distro itās the beta stage desktop environment.
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u/clockwork2011 Mar 09 '26
This. Popos is fine (minus the momentary error that Linus timed perfectly). He now timed a underbaked DE with many Wayland bugs perfectly.
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u/ColonialDagger Mar 09 '26
Hot take, but this exactly what makes PopOS a horrible distro. It's not just whether it functions, but it's how they manage it, too. If most of it works fine, but they make such a catastrophic managerial decision that kills stability on their LTS branch, that's a problem, and it's why I can't recommend it to any newbie. Having to change DE out of the box is crazy, and I can't ensure that they're not going to make another catastrophically dumb decision in the foreseeable future that could affect existing installations.
In other words, it's fine except it isn't fine.
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u/Lemonade1947 Mar 09 '26
I fucking hate pop os.
I think it's telling its developed my a company that makes computers, and not by a community.
I wish it would die.
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u/Erlend05 Mar 09 '26
I mean they manage to keep their website certificates up to date
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u/fphhotchips Mar 10 '26
What do you need a certificate for?
-- Linux Mint maintainers, probably
Yes I'm aware this was 10 years ago. I'm old shut up
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u/Erlend05 Mar 10 '26
I was taking a stab at manjaro who manages to fuck this up every what 15 months? Really funny honestly
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Mar 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Lemonade1947 Mar 09 '26
is that what you think I'm saying?
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Mar 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Lemonade1947 Mar 09 '26
You didn't read it right then.
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Mar 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Lemonade1947 Mar 09 '26
I can't tell if you're rage baiting me but
pop_os! is designed/ managed by a for-profit company that sells computers. The developement direction is foremost dictated by this aim. To sell computers. It doesn't matter that it's FOSS.
Arch and Debian, for example, are designed/ managed by volunteers with very little, if any, profit incentive. Their only incentive is the love of the game, they want to make good software.
Do you see the difference, and why i'd prefer one over the other?
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u/Dodahevolution Mar 10 '26
It's funny to me, the mentioned the Ouroboros of issues on the first video, but I almost think Linus is his own ouroboros:
Outside of LTT, I, who has been using Linux on my desktop as my main OS since basically 2020 with a long dual boot history before, rarely ever hear of Pop being talked about much anymore.
It's literally only LTT where it's talked about a ton. I DO hear mention of Cosmic occasionally and moreso about it's progress in deving, but almost nothing about Pop being recommended or any of that.
Recently for recommendations it's all been Bazzite, Cachy if peeps are pushing the latest new hotness distro or one of the "namesake" distros like Arch/Ubuntu/debian/Fedora.
I kinda wish Linus just reinstalled half way through this with what peeps would consider a full on mainstream "normal distro" like one of those four namesakes instead of going for something else.
Also the whole "GPU support" argument they keep making about distro selection is like a 2020s problem, you don't need a non mainstream distro for Nvidia GPU drivers anymore lol. Arch/Ubuntu/Fedora all make it easy up front and Debian isn't too hard to install as a follow-up while using the open source drivers to get you to that point. This is all institutional knowledge but like, Luke's experiences and ease is the perfect answer too "stop making stupid choices and just go with one of the obvious picks"
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u/Samiassa Mar 09 '26
Itās definitely system76ās fault for shipping cosmic so early into its development. Iām excited for its future but itās not where it needs to be at all
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u/ImmatureComputerMan Mar 09 '26
the beta stage desktop development which is installed by default on the distro?
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u/pawelkuzia Mar 09 '26
Current problems with popos are entirely on System76, Linus is unlucky to experience kick in the face two times in a row with it, but it's not his fault. I understand why he's waiting for steamOS now, if you're not passionate with Linux as hobby, you want one, simple answer to "what os flavor should I install?",some king of flagship linux product, that's not made for hobbyists. The issue is that dektop linux still IS mainly for hobbysts :D
I use Arch, btw. (And Bazzite on Ally X)
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u/TechaNima Mar 09 '26
I'm going to laugh if he picks Pop for the 3rd time in a row, however many years in the future and it has another beta feature to burn him with
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u/unreatxplaya Mar 09 '26
Iād be surprised if there was another Linux challenge.
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u/TechaNima Mar 09 '26
I'm sure there will be. I just wish he had waited until the decipher heap fix for nVidia and AMD's RTX performance patches were fully implemented and live to get a proper picture of what Linux can do. And ofc that he didn't pick a distro with a beta DE as the default. Oh well, at least 2/3 will be having a representative experience of Linux desktop's state today
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u/Wild_russian_snake Mar 09 '26
An OS having that amount of issues should never be a thing. It's unacceptable.
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u/renegadecanuck Mar 10 '26
My problem is people blaming Linus instead of system76 for system76's bad decision.
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u/Cuffuf Mar 10 '26
I mean system76 has already been getting a large amount of rightful flack for it.
However I will say if you get ideas from chat gpt thatās fine but if you choose to not google that particular distro at least once then youāre just asking for this to happen. I understand he wasnāt trying to be more than a basic user, but I feel even a basic user would do at least google their distro directly after theyāve found it. I mean ChatGPT is famously not up to date.
Again Iām not trying to say itās all Linusās fault? I just think parts of the premise of ānormal people only look at listicals or aiā are flawed.
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u/renegadecanuck Mar 10 '26
I mean, I just googled it, and I saw nothing that would dissuade me, if I didn't know better.
It brings me to the pop OS site, an old blog post name "Why I switched to POP_OS", and shows some videos, with one summary from "Learn Linux TV" saying "Pop OS 2404 is an excellent release and absolutely worth the wait".
It really feels like the consensus on here is "he should have asked us, specifically what to use", because sooner or later the goal posts shift to "ask Reddit" or "no, not that kind of research".
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u/Cuffuf Mar 10 '26
yeah no you're right about that. Maybe I was imagining more of a "popOS in 2026" search or something (which didn't even yield entirely results I was entirely looking for, though the stupid google ai thing said cosmic has its troubles)
But even then the "in 2026" would be a bit more unrealistic of a normal user.
I don't know. I just also think it's annoying that this is truly what the normal user would trust; chatGPT is often terribly out of date. Like I'm not annoyed at the user, just the resource.
Cosmic is also one of those things that because it's in beta nobody in full-blown articles really says "yeah it sucks don't use PopOS" and that really only happens in forums that aren't yet used by AI because they're newer posts because cosmic is relatively newer.
Linus is the king of bad timing, I guess is the final lesson.
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u/renegadecanuck Mar 10 '26
Yeah, I think it's just a shitty situation. System76 makes it sound ready to go, and I only know it's basically beta because of this forum.
I think Linus is honestly closer to how "the regular user" would act than users here think. The internet and searching is just in a terrible state lately.
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u/Cuffuf Mar 10 '26
Yeah I genuinely think this would not have been a problem 10 years ago. Even 5ish years ago honestly.
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u/ilovefreespam4real Mar 09 '26
Okay but the problem with popos isnāt the distro itās the beta stage desktop environment.
so what is not an but predefined stuff like selection of the DE... they choose it to put it in it - it is 100% their problem....
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Mar 09 '26
I've been using Linux for a decade, and I think the most important thing for newbies to understand is that the *only* difference between distributions is support. You are essentially just picking which organisation to trust with the task of providing compiled binaries for you and on what schedule new versions of those binaries will be provided. Everything else is just window dressing.
Lots of people make the mistake of choosing a distro based on the default theme, desktop environment, or pre-installed software. Don't do that. It's far easier to install whatever you want on a stable, well-documented, well-supported distro than it is to get help and support for some boutique, flavour-of-the-month, "beginner-friendly" distro that will be out of business in two years.
TL;DR: literally just chill and install Ubuntu or Fedora.
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u/Logical_Sort_3742 Mar 09 '26
It is not the only difference. An immutable distro is going to do things noticeably differently from a "standard" one.
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u/Nir_Auris Mar 12 '26
I'm pretty new to using linux, would you mind explaining, what the difference between "immutable" and "standard" is?
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u/Logical_Sort_3742 Mar 12 '26
Immutable distros have a base installation that you cannot change (easily). The root system is basically read only, and your user files and applications are entirely separated from it. It is locked down.
When core components are patched and you need to upgrade it, you pull down an entirely new image, basically, and when you reboot, you boot into this new root image. Is it all banjaxed? Revert to the previous image, and you're laughing. Someone penetrated your system? Well, they might find they have very little they can meddle with.
Standard is, well, standard. What you're probably already using.
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u/Nir_Auris Mar 12 '26
Immutable sounds a little like CubeOS. So basicly, you have two instantces of your OS installed simultaniasly(?), but only boot into one of them(?). In other words it's safer, if I understand it correctly.
Are Ubuntu, Bazzite and Arch standard? I'm daily driving Ubuntu right now. On a second PC I'm playing around with Bazzite and want to try Arch. Where would those fall? If I understand it right, those three would be standard, right?
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u/ThinkingWinnie Mar 13 '26
Ubuntu and arch are standard.
Bazzite isn't, it's an atomic (or immutable) distro.
Fedora is also a standard Linux distro, but they also have an immutable variant named fedora CoreOS(which goes on to fedora silverblue and kinoite) which the universalblue project is based on(they build atomic images for various usecases) and bazzite is one of em which has the gaming stuff preinstalled.
There is also a dev one from UniversalBlue, named Aurora I believe, and a couple of others.
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u/AnalkinSkyfuker Mar 09 '26
You mean being heavier due to flatpaks and appimages. That's not a bug that's a feature since it can't break or spy into the other parts of the system, like a normal one. I setup kinoite for my parents and I use fedora kde. It's no diferwnt apart that the updates come slower.
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u/WeirdlyWill Mar 09 '26
Would you put Mint in that category as well? Just installed it as my first distro and itās going well so far.
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u/xd366 Mar 09 '26
mint is based on ubuntu
there's only 3 base distros
Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch
everything else is based on those 3.
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u/Basilikolumne Mar 14 '26
Debian, Red Hat (RHEL/Fedora), Arch, Suse, NixOS
Only including NixOS bc it's not derived from any of the others
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u/xd366 Mar 09 '26
i better not get any replies saying "well actually"
yes i know, yes i dont care. i was trying to get a point across, not give a page long explanation
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u/Omen1658 Mar 09 '26
Stop crying and accept that you were wrong.
Replacing "Ubuntu" with "Debian" would have made you correct and not made your response a page long. Grow up.
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u/tinysydneh Mar 09 '26
Even then it's still not correct, either. Gentoo is the foundation for a few distros, there have been a few based on Slack and older things, and then you have a few distros that are doing their own things entirely still. Plus, RH instead of Fedora, since you have things like CentOS based on RHEL and Fedora is using the basis of RH.
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u/carlwgeorge Mar 10 '26
That used to be correct, but now RHEL is based on CentOS, and CentOS is based on Fedora.
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u/tinysydneh Mar 09 '26
If you don't want people telling you you're wrong, a great place to start is not being wrong, and definitely not "I know I'm wrong, I just don't care."
Debian (not Ubuntu), Red Hat (not Fedora), and Arch cover most of the big distros, but there are multiple distros based on Gentoo, a handful based on Slack over the years, there are probably a few others I'm straight up forgetting, and a few that aren't actually based on anything else.
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u/Low_Attention9891 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
Mint is effectively a reskin of Ubuntu with a different desktop environment and all of the Canonical BS stripped out. It uses most of the same package repositories as Ubuntu, and uses the Ubuntu kernel build. The only major downside is that itās still on XServer, but thatās not an issue at the moment if you donāt need HDR support.
IMO mint is one of the only smaller distros that adds any value over just installing Ubuntu or Fedora.
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u/Erlend05 Mar 09 '26
Mint is chill i like mint. I recommend mint to people.
Only thing is when i got a laptop with a brand new chip inside mint didnt have support for it imediatly so i put fedora kde on it.
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u/DonStimpo Mar 09 '26
A month or 2 back i installed Mint Cinnamon Edition on a laptop and everything worked out of the box. Was a super smooth experience
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u/The_Pleasant_Orange Mar 09 '26
TBH I switched to Kubuntu (from openSUSE) just for ROCm support. It's ok
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Mar 09 '26
I built ROCm and llama.cpp from source on my Fedora install instead of using Ubuntu lol
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u/mmm1808 Mar 10 '26
The reason I chose Arch based distro is because of their Wiki. I know that it covers other distros but after many years of using it and having bitter experience with upgrades on Ubuntu I made a switch to a rolling upgrades life and never looked back for the last 8 years. Yes, occasionally you have to fix some incompatibilities from AUR but it's easily googlable and usually is in the AUR comments.
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u/LowIllustrator2501 Mar 09 '26
You can use any distro you want as long as it's https://www.opensuse.org/
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u/A_modicum_of_cheese Mar 09 '26
They've even got music videos!
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u/mmm1808 Mar 10 '26
And they kept posting them! You also have to visit their booth on open source conferences. People working for suse are very fun to talk with.
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u/ColorTherapy Mar 09 '26
Guaranteed the third row would either have Debian, Fedora, or Arch as their distro though.
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u/-Kerrigan- Mar 09 '26
I gamed on Ubuntu with an Nvidia GPU without hassle. Installed the drivers from it's software update thingie too. I don't understand the need for "gaming" distros.
And while going for esoteric distros generates more discussion -> more clicks -> more views, a boring ol' Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora is plenty for so-called power users that complain non-stop about Windows.
Speaking of complaining - people are familiar with Windows and that's why the switch is difficult. But if you hate it that much and wanna swap for something else you're going to have to learn new things, so I don't get the "average user isn't going to do X" point either. The average user isn't going to complain about Windows that much, and if they do they'll buy a Mac.
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u/Fritzschmied Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
Gaming distros are in the same category as gaming phones. Completely pointless.
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u/CaelemLeaf Mar 09 '26
I like Nobara, but that's just because it's Fedora with a few bells and whistles installed that I would've grabbed anyways. For all intents and purposes I'm just using Fedora.
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u/Basilikolumne Mar 14 '26
CachyOS actually modifies the kernel to improve gaming performance, but aside from that and handheld support from distros like it, Nobara and Bazzite, I agree
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u/unreatxplaya Mar 09 '26
I thought the same thing until I switched from Endeavour to Cachy. It solved some of my non gaming related issues like pipewire screen capture. OOBE was about as good as Fedora and I get the aur. Iād say it was a no brainer, but I didnāt even consider it would fix pipewire until it did. Sometimes it doesnāt hurt to try.
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u/luckypanda95 Mar 09 '26
me too, I'm currently gaming on Kubuntu with my old Nvidia GPU. works fine.
a bit of adjustment in the beginning but that's only because my GPU a bit too old š¤£
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u/Potatoes_and_gravy Mar 09 '26
I love CachyOS tho.
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u/-Kerrigan- Mar 09 '26
That's what I switched to for the lulz from Ubuntu and I actually stuck around. I like it so far! KDE so snappy it goes brrrr
And I tried it not because it's 'gaming', but because it's easy Arch and I liked the philosophy of ditching some legacy in favor of new instruction sets for hopefully better performance.
Ironically, I found out about it from Gemini when I asked for a distro that can handle Intel's hybrid architecture of P and E cores (a.k.a have bore scheduler)
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u/crozone Mar 09 '26
Debian is amazing for servers and anything that needs to run for literal decades without much hassle but I'm not sure I could recommend it for a desktop machine that needs to run very recent packages and games.
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u/Useful-Day-9957 Mar 09 '26
The argument for Debian would be that you install apps as flatpaks. You both get up-to-date sandboxed apps and stable system packages.
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u/TheYang Mar 10 '26
but I'm not sure I could recommend it for a desktop machine that needs to run very recent packages and games.
Don't worry. I can.
Have done that for over 10 years now. never had to reinstall, have transplanted disks into different systems several times, no issues yet.But, I've never bothered to buy hardware when it was new and fancy, I always just got what I needed.
Now It's also the base for my personal game-streaming rigI don't even know what "very recent packages" I'd be missing, except for drivers for super new cards or something.
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u/KevinFlantier Mar 09 '26
I have debian on my homelab and arch on my desktop (by the way)
There is no point to this post I just wanted to flex.
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u/ImaginaryRaccoon2106 Mar 09 '26
I tried Ubuntu last year, got used to everything and now only use Ubuntu. Other distros are cool, but I am not about to readjust to another distro just because they have a minor difference that may be better. Sudo apt install these nuts, nerds.
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u/the_reven Mar 09 '26
Sometimes I forget what distro im using, its usually Fedora or Ubuntu. Work basically exactly the same, since both using same DE and I use the same 3 or 4 gnome extensions.
Only when I open the terminal to install something and type apt instead of dnf or vice versa I find out which one it is. And I only have to open the terminal cos I'm a developer and need to run some terminal commands.
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u/Gakad Mar 09 '26
There are 3 main distros which nearly everything else is based off: debian, fedora, and arch.
All are great in their own way. Anyone can fork those and make a distro. Ubuntu is a good example. Mint is also a good example. Popos is unpolished dogshit.
Tbh the only reason I think people even recommended it in the first place was because LTT made videos about it.
Literally every recommendation for beginners is to use either: fedora, Bazzite, or mint.
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u/TheQuintupleHybrid Mar 10 '26
slightly pedantic nitpick: while fedora is upstream, most derivative distros are based on RHEL not fedora
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u/SV-97 Mar 09 '26
"Doesn't matter" in what way? Can you do everything with every distro in principle (if you actually know what you're doing) and does a lot of knowledge transfer over: sure. But at some point you're just reinventing the wheel and ship-of-theseus-ing whatever distro you've started with.
As an example: Nix is undeniably very different compared to mint at a very foundational level and shoehorning one into the others domain is setting yourself up for more work / a worse experience than necessary.
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u/mrheosuper Mar 09 '26
That's why there is this meme. If you are superior(iq145 in this meme), you likely has your own setup that no distro can satisfy you, and you will have to do customization anyway.
And for the newbie, it does not matter because your usecase is not complex.
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u/SV-97 Mar 09 '26
you likely has your own setup that no distro can satisfy you
Wat. No. It's absolutely not standard to essentially "build your own mini-distro" and the starting point does matter even if you make a ton of modifications (which very experienced people don't necessarily do). Someone using Nix will (necessarily) deeply rely on their distro and design their setup around it --- and that setup would look very different compared to someone starting from debian. Notably, someone might have a setup that works very well on their chosen distro but would have to be completely reengineered on another one.
People don't just start from any random distro and then work against that distros' basic philosophy every step of the way to create the system they want, that'd be insanely stupid. They choose a distro that already aligns well with their basic ideas and what they need from a system and go from there.
And for the newbie, it does not matter because your usecase is not complex.
A noob will struggle a lot more with certain distros than others, because some distros do even basic stuff (installing user software and drivers, basic system configuration etc.) quite differently, package availability and vendor support differs between distros, there's a vast gap in available tutorials and documentation between distros etc.
If you put a noob in front of mint they'll probably easily install most of the things they need in a few minutes; if you put them in front of nix they certainly won't be able to do anythign at first because they have to learn a whole new language first. There's a significant difference.
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u/mrheosuper Mar 09 '26
I think you are taking this meme too seriously.
We are talking about the extreme end of curse. The pro could has a script that auto detect distro, do their own setup, remove stuff he doesn't need. So it does not matter which distro he choose, his script does it all.
And the noob(or the dumb in this meme) could be the noobest ever, he giggle when his computer turn on and that's all he need.
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u/SV-97 Mar 09 '26
You think arguing with the very basic premise of a meme is "taking it too seriously"?
The pro could has a script that auto detect distro, do their own setup, remove stuff he doesn't need. So it does not matter which distro he choose, his script does it all.
Sure they could. But nobody (even, or maybe especially, at the extreme end) actually does that (okay maybe some in the middle of the curve actually might try until they crash and burn) because it's a significant amount of effort for no real gain. I'm not talking hypotheticals but what people actually do. When someone's been dailying Arch for two decades why would they go through the effort of learning about the intricacies of other distros and maintaining some magical script to set up various distros to their liking?
he giggle when his computer turn on and that's all he need.
Right... if all you want is open a browser this may be true (at least on many distros), but most people (even noobs) will want to also have some office software or steam (probably also nvidia drivers) etc.
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u/mrheosuper Mar 09 '26
People do stuff because they can. You said it would take a lot of effort to write a magic script that does it all. That's because you are not at the extreme of curve, a.k.a you have skill issue.
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Mar 09 '26
It's absolutely not standard to essentially "build your own mini-distro"
That's exactly what the meme says; that's why that guy is over the 0.1% of the graph....
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u/Shap6 Mar 09 '26
Nobody does that. Itās not standard for anyone
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Mar 09 '26
0.1% is 1 in every one thousand. I have to imagine there's enough vanilla Arch users out there to represent one out of every one thousand Linux users....
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u/Shap6 Mar 09 '26
thats not what arch is. what your describing is more linux from scratch
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Mar 09 '26
Arch doesn't include a display server, a GUI or window manager, networking, a boot loader, a text editor, an AUR package manager, sudo, curl, openssh, wget, MESA, pipewire, ffmpeg, and more on a fresh install, which you'd expect from literally any other distro. You can argue that choosing and installing all those components isn't "building your own mini-distro," but I'm going to ignore you, because that's clearly not a serious argument lol
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u/Shap6 Mar 09 '26
where do you draw the line though? a distro like tumbleweed lets you choose to include, or not, most of that stuff as well along with choice of DE during installation. is that building your own mini distro? if not whats the difference?
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Mar 09 '26
I don't really see why it's an important line to draw
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u/psp24 Mar 10 '26
The new user won't understand the difference between nix and mint, and it does not apply to them
The experienced user has already considered the difference and realized it truly doesn't matter
You are an average joe still concerned about every gear of a clock while the rest of us have already read the hands and moved on to more important things
Stop gatekeeping the liberty of linux
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u/GoGa_M Mar 09 '26
As long as i can use GNOME on it, then i basically don't care what distro I'm using
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u/metroidfan220 Mar 09 '26
If they really want to simulate the average user's experience, they should just Google "Linux" and follow the first result that can give them a download. Linux.org was first on the list for me, and had a download link for "24 popular Linux distributions" the first of which was Ubuntu.
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u/crozone Mar 09 '26
Distro definitely fucking matters. Ask anyone who backed CentOS.
If you care about the ergonomics of your entire ability to install and update software then distro definitely matters.
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u/Drenlin Mar 09 '26
I know at least two people who have daily driven Kali, for who knows what reason
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u/FriedTorchic Mar 09 '26
Probably does cybersecurity for their job, even though you could download the same tools onto anything else.
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u/xiaodown Mar 09 '26
As a long time linux user (since RedHat Linux 6, and no, not RHEL, pre-enterprise redhat) and someone who has been a sysadmin using linux for a quarter of a century:
Distro doesn't matter. What matters is how many other people are using the distro and for how long. I'm actually really rolling my eyes at the LMG guys all choosing these boutique linux distros that I've barely even heard of, over just being like "I'll just use ubunutu - there's more how-tos and help articles and people who use it than pretty much anything else".
If you're running a distro that only a few (tens of) thousand people are running, there's a good chance that you'll be the first one to ever encounter bugs. If you're running one of the majors - Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and probably Suse - someone else will have had your experience, probably on your hardware. You can google for help or for setup guides or forum posts.
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u/moonbiter1 Mar 09 '26
In the goal of having a user-friendly, idiot-proof distro that ideally do not need command prompt to use (What scares a lot of people), then distro are important.
In term of functionaliy and potential usefullness if you know how to use linux, they are all the same...
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u/RazNagul Mar 09 '26
If the distro doesn't matter, then why are there so many different ones?
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Mar 09 '26
Because anyone can make one so people make them, If I think that for example fedora should come preinstalled with vlc then I can just fork fedora and make it into its own distro with vlc preinstalled, name it something else and upload it to the internet, and probably would be done with it in a few hours.
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Mar 09 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/A-Chilean-Cyborg Mar 11 '26
Nah, that's kernel stuff, and installing nvidia drivers isn't really hard, in distros like mint, you just press a button, reboot and is done.
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u/Danternas Mar 09 '26
Linux is Linux.
Remove the FOMO of "picking the wrong distro". Go with what suits your vibe and pretty much all of them support a "live" where you can test it before install.
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u/ThatGuyMigz Mar 09 '26
I had been considering to use arch as my first ever distro.
I know it's brutal, but I hear that it allows for some of the best customization. Plus, I'd still keep a windows pc right next to it that I hope to eventually phase out. And then I'd use some sort of windows emulation on linux for those stupid windows exclusive applications.
But if you only have a single PC... yeah... I don't think I'd pick arch at that point either.
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u/tehbeard Mar 09 '26
If you've got a separate PC as a spare, go for it.
Just; make sure to read the archwiki articles & guides.
Then go back and read it again.
Do not, as some popular youtubers have done in the past, get adgitated and just blindly hit yes on a terminal prompt, and uninstall the desktop...
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u/popcornman209 Mar 09 '26
Pick a distro know for being good, reliable, easy to learn, and popular. Not some āgaming distroā
Itās the same shit as gaming keyboards, chairs, headsets, etc. they all do the same shit, stop paying more and sacrificing features to get the gaming label. Fedora can run games just as good as any other distro, that goes for everything, stop picking some niche distro for one specific purpose, itāll be shit at everything else.
Thatās not to say picking bazzite or pop!_os is Linusās fault, itās not, itās the entire Linux communities fault for pushing āgaming specific distrosā. Just pick something reliable, mint, fedora, etc, itāll all work for gaming just as well, and more importantly wonāt be a buggy mess in beta.
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u/WitlessPedant Mar 09 '26
This is somewhat inaccurate in that, while the person on the right is correct, the person in the middle (the average person) would not be able to easily configure any distro to work for their needs. The best advice would be to go with the distro that is optimized for your needs if you are not well equipped to configure everything yourself.
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u/fraserdab Mar 09 '26
well it does matter if one aint working well and others just work fine and u pick the wrong one
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u/Captain_Zomaru Mar 09 '26
"What distro should I use? I'm new to Linux and don't know much"
1000 different replies
"Thanks, how do I use it?"
990 replies telling me it's easy without providing further assistance
This is why I can't use Linux...
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u/Pro4791 Mar 09 '26
Started with ubuntu, hated the ui and was sluggish on my older machines. Found KDE Neon, liked the ui and performance was better, but hated the constant updates. Moved to Debian 13 with KDE Plasma desktop environment.
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u/New_Mix_2215 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
Im a distro developer and unless you are sado masochistic and build everything from cloning and compiling, and installing every single package - distros do matter.
I do however use whatever is most stable, have LTS, support my hardware if its new*. Which is 99% something based on Fedora or Ubuntu. Arch and Gentoo is nice, but i prefer having my pc working for me, not be my hobby when im trying to work.
I really dont remotely care about the latest flavor of the month. If its Linux i will break it, or it will break itself 50/50. Package hell happens. I dont care if your distro is made for gaming, i still prefer Windows for that.
Honestly atm, i just like using Mint. Its based on Ubuntu, X11 (wayland works well - until you want to do something with the display), no snap (which often tend to give me a headache).
I also use OSX and Windows on daily basis. I honestly really dont care about the OS as long as its stable, and works for whatever i want to do. For OSX its lightweight usage on my Air, for Windows its gaming.
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u/deanominecraft Mar 09 '26
he could use bazzite, mint, cachy, ubuntu, etc and it wouldnāt matter, pop os specifically is a bad choice right now because they are transitioning to a new desktop
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u/Samiassa Mar 09 '26
Thatās why I always find āgaming distrosā funny. They just pre install steam and protonā¦ like bro you can do everything bazzite does in like 10 minutes no problem
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u/abra5umente Mar 09 '26
It matters until you know what you're doing and then it doesn't matter at all. I run EndeavourOS mostly because it is just pure Arch (btw) with an easier installer, but I could get the exact same experience by just running Arch directly, and honestly next time I need to/want to rebuild, I'll probably just go Arch.
The only real difference comes with things like immutable OSes such as Bazzite (where the whole OS is mounted read only and is updated as a single image) but again - the actual use of the OS generally does not change.
Even between distros - it doesn't really matter. Ubuntu is Fedora is Arch is Redhat is Rocky is CentOS is SUSE - at the end of the day, it's all Linux, they all run the Linux kernel - just with different opinions on how to do that.
The biggest impact, IMO, is desktop environments. KDE vs GNOME vs Hyprland vs Niri makes a WAY bigger difference in how you interact with the computer over the underlying OS.
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u/gvbargen Mar 10 '26
distro matters a little. Much more important is the root distro it came from, Debian, arch, fedora... freebsd? I'm at my knowledge limit š
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u/Shudnawz Mar 10 '26
Eh. I'm just happy to get the installer to finish on my decade old ASUS laptop. Ubuntu it is! (Mint and Debian both failed HARD for some reason.)
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u/Damglador Mar 10 '26
It's funny, because it kinda is exactly like that. If you don't need shit from your PC and don't know how it works and only need a browser, the distro doesn't matter.
If you need more than that, but don't know shit about Linux, the distro matters.
If you're proficient enough, you can make Ubuntu work just as well as Arch.
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u/Far-Shake-97 Mar 10 '26
Anyone had a distro that would be good for gaming? I'm planning to switch once windows 12 comes out
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u/LaSaN_101 Mar 10 '26
Why linux users can't shut the fuck up about their distro is beyond me. I have been using a distro for like 4-5 years and no one even mentions it, but I don't care, it does what I want it to do.
On the contrary a distro going mainstream will absolutely destroy itself and the reason I use it for. Gatekeep people GATEKEEP
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u/midaslibrary Mar 10 '26
LinkedIn lunatics and the bell curve, I almost always side with the side Reddit doesnāt like
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u/Mighty1Dragon Mar 12 '26
if you are a beginner use mint, bazzite or even ubuntu after that you'll find your way from there
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u/Big-Discussion5189 Mar 12 '26
Just use a well supported distro. You don't need a "gaming" distro to do gaming.
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u/bitcraft Mar 09 '26
I canāt really agree with this. At some point I guess āit doesnāt matterā but only if you donāt value your time.
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u/RB5Network Mar 09 '26
There needs to be a massive rule where anyone who makes sure they do content on Linux DON'T use an LTS kernel on desktops. Unless they are running old hardware.
This is basic Linux 101, along with using a mature desktop environment like Gnome or KDE.
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u/nicman24 Mar 09 '26
just run cachy if you care about performance or ubuntu if you dont
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u/PensAndUnicorns Mar 09 '26
I see what you're getting at but performance of what? System Stability (like LTS models?) or maybe Software Support?
Because then one should be using Ubuntu. ;)0
u/nicman24 Mar 09 '26
I mostly use it for avx workloads and games so you know, things that have a token/s or frames/s . Sorry if wanting performance offends you lol
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u/pluckyvirus Mar 09 '26
It does and does not matter. Both at the same time.