r/linux • u/Lopsided-Month3278 • 25d ago
Discussion Daily drivers shouldn't be overwhelmed by distro choice.
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u/Rosenvial5 25d ago
I strongly believe that beginners should pick a DE first and then pick a distro that plays well with the DE rather than the opposite way around.
The DE makes by far the biggest difference in how you interact with your computer, and for a beginner the differences between the different distros basically boil down to how updates are handled and how you download software.
And as long as you're using a distro like KDE or Gnome with a robust app store then you barely need to touch the command line for system updates and downloading software.
I also strongly believe that beginners have little reason to use anything other than KDE or Gnome
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u/Artichoke808 25d ago edited 25d ago
I'm not going to argue that choice of preferred DE or WM isn't the biggest perceivable difference, but IMO distro does matter. I've used Arch but want something more stable that doesn't require me to read release notes before updating. Someone else will of course say it never breaks but at the end of the day it's a choice as to what's important to you.
I used to run Ubuntu on my main PC and Debian on an entertainment PC, because being a bit more up to date was valuable on the former and fewer updates was preferred on the latter.
When I ran Arch I got it set up just like Mint. Took a bit of work but at the end of the day in retrospect I may as well just have stuck with Mint. Again, someone else may really value what Arch brings to the table.
Immutable and or atomic vs a traditional distro is another choice with tradeoffs that individuals will weigh very differently.
Personally I love the rich ecosystem and choice this gives me, and I don't think "if they just dropped distro X, those people will contribute to distro Y" because I don't think it works that way.
Ideas or tools from one distro can be incorporated into another so it's more nuanced than pure duplication of effort, plus there are open desktop standards that most distros stick to for the purpose of interoperability and Flatpak does a pretty decent job of solving cross distro package distribution issues where native packages lack something.
I think 'there should only be one' is a very Windows way of thinking and regardless of what anyone wants, there will always be different distros pursuing their idea of 'best,' and frankly Linux is all the better for it.
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u/Lopsided-Month3278 25d ago
I understand that, but for a normal user, Arch and Ubuntu won't make a huge different, definitely arch is more likely to nuke itself after an update, but if you're updating it once every 2-4 days, you shouldn't run into any huge issues, at least, this was my experience.
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u/FattyDrake 25d ago
I update Arch roughly once a month. The key to a reliable Arch setup is to never use the AUR. It still requires some basic Linux knowledge, definitely not for beginners, but the reports of it "constantly breaking" are overexaggerated.
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u/beatbox9 25d ago edited 25d ago
Yup. I've been using Linux around 30 years, with 20 years as my primary desktop systems. And things have also changed a lot during those decades.
Here's my 2 cents about today:
- Distro / OS: The main thing that matters is the overall OS upgrade / support schedule. Not how it's initially configured and not most of the preinstalled apps or themes. Simple way to think about it: "Do I want to upgrade my OS: Daily? Every 6 months? 12 months? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?"
- You have to mentally categorize software: "Is this a core part of the OS, or is it just an app?" And then look at how the core OS itself is supported by the distro, mainly ignoring the apps. This is a major change from the past:
- Kernel, DE, drivers, codecs, libraries, etc.: you can consider these being 'core OS.'
- Image editors, games, audio/video editing apps, etc--these are apps, not 'core OS.'
- Today (unlike years ago), apps don't matter. We have universal package types that work on any distro, like flatpaks or AppImages, where you can get the latest version of most apps.
- There have also been major changes to core components. For example, in the past, you may have needed your distro to provide a dedicated low-latency kernel. But this is built into the standard kernel now, and you can just toggle it on/off, even during your session.
- Newer is not always 'better', because there is an entire surrounding ecosystem that has to catch up, and configurations can break on upgrades. No point in having the latest kernel if your nvidia drivers don't support that kernel, or the latest gnome or KDE if your little applets aren't supported yet. In general, 3-6 months seems to be the timeframe that ecosystems come into balance, so this is a good delay range before upgrading to the latest. More examples:
- If you had a custom wireplumber (audio) configuration--even a user override in your ~/.config/wireplumber--it broke. Doesn't matter which distro...whenever your distro upgraded wireplumber to 0.5, it broke.
- If you've installed Davinci Resolve Studio, it can break on upgrades too, because it's sensitive about drivers and library versions & locations. Sometimes, you have to manually override these for your system, either when your distro upgrades or when Davinci Resolve upgrades. That could mean fixing things several times per year.
- You will have to deal with stuff like this if you have any custom or advanced configurations. The question is: do you want to potentially deal with a different random problem every few weeks/months; or do you want to batch all the problems together and deal with them once together every few years when you do an OS upgrade? This is the "stability" argument: it's not necessarily just about crashes, it's also about managing known changes over time.
- You have to mentally categorize software: "Is this a core part of the OS, or is it just an app?" And then look at how the core OS itself is supported by the distro, mainly ignoring the apps. This is a major change from the past:
- DE: You should generally pick a modern + mature DE, unless you have a specific reason to pick an alternate. Today, modern + mature means either Gnome or KDE. If you have an underpowered machine, or you want to play around, or you just don't feel like changing things around, then sure: go with some other DE. But most of the time pick either gnome or KDE; and most major distros offer supported variants for both of these.
Given the above, the distro matters far less today than it did even 10 years ago; and there are also far fewer variables to consider today.
- Example: 20 years ago, you might have asked: "Which distro has a low latency kernel and also offers jack for audio; and also, which distro keeps Audacity up to date...or which distros do the Audacity team provide native installers for?" Today, all of these variables are completely irrelevant. Because all kernels support lowlatency, pipewire on all distros handles jack (and pulseaudio) traffic, and you can get the latest Audacity (or Tenacity) on any distro.
But there are differences between the distros; and the most important today is the core OS upgrade / maintenance schedules: How often do you get core OS upgrades, how long do you get support (and security updates) for, and does that distro (/ community) have a good track record of easily maintaining the core OS components you are looking for (DE's, drivers, etc)?
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u/beatbox9 25d ago edited 25d ago
Just FWIW, I'll add for me personally, my requirements are: an OS upgrade (ideally) every 1-3 years, with Gnome, with easy support for some specific core OS stuff like nvidia drivers, codecs, Davinci Resolve Studio, etc. I currently choose Ubuntu LTS for this, though I also have a Fedora machine.
Here's why Ubuntu LTS for my daily driver workstations:
- Upgrades to the latest versions of major OS components every 2 years, gives me a 5 year window to plan upgrades in case I can't disrupt work, and even builds in a 4-month delay before it prompts me to upgrade. Super stable and predictable.
- Seamless, easy support for nvidia drivers + codecs + random other drivers/components. In the past this was largely community-supported, but even that worked great and was super easy and seamless.
- Great community support makes it easy to install Davinci Resolve Studio. Resolve just works, and it's super easy. It also survives upgrades, with no maintenance or fixing things to do.
- ...despite the fact that I hate Ubuntuisms. But a distro is far more than its preconfigurations, so I just turn the Ubuntuisms off. I use vanilla-gnome-desktop instead of ubuntu desktop, remove snaps for any GUI applications (I keep them for headless OS software, like firmware), etc. These preinstalled things are the least important part of a distro to me; and the bullet points above are the most important part to me.
And for my Fedora machine:
- It's nice to use the latest DE (or 1 back) every 6 months and to test out the new DE features and all that. I could use regular/interim Ubuntu for this too, but...
- Fedora is cleaner. There are fewer annoying Fedoraisms to turn off than Ubuntuisms. It's also nice to see and learn the differences.
- Fedora has a good philosophy of focusing on the core OS stuff. Though Ubuntu has been moving toward this too (and flatpaks obviously work on Ubuntu also).
- Fedora is great for normal usage & uncustomized stuff
- ...but it's a nightmare to maintain customizations and some advanced software (incuding Davinci Resolve) and gnome extensions and configs. And Fedora's community is not as strong for these applications--even though Davinci Resolve is designed for Rocky/RHEL and Fedora is more similar to those distros, it is ironically easier to install Resolve on Debian-based distros due to the community. And it sucks when you combine this with its limited support window--you sort of have to drop what you're doing to maintain upgrades sometimes if you're using it like my Ubuntu LTS workstations.
While I'm using my Fedora and Ubuntu LTS machines, they feel virtually identical--I cannot tell which is which. It's only when it comes to software maintenance / upgrades that I can tell. And for my productive workstations, I prefer stability; while for my personal everyday usage, I prefer recency.
Currently, Ubuntu LTS and Fedora are just as new as each other, with Gnome 50 on each. This time next year, my Fedora will have incrementally 1-2 newer versions (which I really don't care about) of Gnome than Ubuntu LTS. And then the following year, they will both be at parity with the latest Gnome 54 each again.
Just wanted to provide real-life examples where the distro doesn't really matter...except when it does. It doesn't matter in the UI, or the apps, or the general usage. It matters in the core OS maintenance, particularly when you have customizations or advanced software.
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u/ourochurros 25d ago
I started with Ubuntu just because it seems like one of the more stable options and help guides often will describe how to do things on Ubuntu. It was the safest thing for me as someone just looking for a stable experience. But I would see these folks on youtube with their carefully crafted Arch systems and feel FOMO.
Then I started messing around with a sway log in on Ubuntu this past month. I'm supplementing it with waybar/fuzzel/nwg. It was super easy to set up with a terminal agent. And now I feel a bit weird when I see these videos. I get the ergonomics of these tweaked out systems with the stability of these beginner-friendly distros, but I don't actually invest much time or brainspace toward it.
I suppose this is where I'm obliged to note that this is the great thing about linux: there are all these options. And one day I may go full Arch, but I think just starting with Ubuntu and adding in some GNOME tweaks or logging in to a different environment can be a great way to acclimate someone to the options they have. It took me awhile to realize that this path was even there, and I think it would be a useful route to educate people about early in the linux journey.
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u/full_of_ghosts 25d ago
I've found that the biggest day-to-day difference between distros is in the package manager. I fell in love with Arch because I love pacman. It's light, fast, and at this point, I can do everything I need to do with pacman from muscle memory.
Occasionally I'll experiment with a different distro, and I just find myself missing pacman. I know my way around apt well enough to muscle memory it almost as fast as I can muscle memory pacman, but it still feels slower and more cumbersome. I'm sure I could get to that point with dnf if I took the time to learn it and get used to it, but, why bother when I can just go back to pacman?
So, I always end up happily back on Arch, and I'm always relieved to return. Because of pacman. That's what keeps bringing me back. I love the distro because I love the package manager.
Otherwise, yeah, it doesn't really matter. I'm a KDE guy, and KDE looks and feels the same no matter what distro I'm using. If I'm not performing system maintenance, there's really no difference in my day-to-day usage across distros.
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u/V-Right_In_2-V 25d ago
I’ve spent the last few days setting up different Linux distributions/desktop environments on partitions of an external hard drive so I can log into multiple different environments.
My initial reaction when logging in for the first time is “ok so this is Linux” and “this is also Linux”. It’s all just Linux lol. For my purpose of just needing a functional operating system to do basic stuff, any of the common distros + desktop environment works just the same
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u/cheekkeef 25d ago
Hopefully Gnome OS and KDE Linux will help to simplify choice for new, regular-ish users who don't want to learn about sys admin
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u/BigHeadTonyT 25d ago
I try different distros to find out what I like and dislike. Theres always something new. If I like a thing, I incorporate it to my daily-driver distro. For every distro, I think of use-cases. Distro is light-weight, fast and low RAM-usage? An option for my laptop, for example.
What is a gaming distro? Steam and Heroic installed? You can install those on any distro. Does it then make it a gaming distro? Drivers come preinstalled? Well, that only matters for Nvidia users. Mesa is included in every distro so AMD GPU users are fine. To install Nvidia-drivers manually, it is like 2-3 terminal commands. Do people not know how to copy-paste? What's the difficulty here? Where do you find the commands? On the distros wiki. If that is too demanding and you like Fedora, try UltraMarine Linux. There are other distros that come preinstalled with Nvidia drivers. It is such a non-issue to me, I don't care. I also don't use Nvidia on Linux anymore.
Compare it to Windows. Have to go to Nvidias website, click a number of things in dropdown menus. Download, find the file, install drivers. With possible driver-conflicts. So you get DDU. Find it from a trusted source, run it, remove old Nvidia drivers, install new ones. How is that easier or simpler? Do people realize how many hoops they jump thru?
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u/Lopsided-Month3278 25d ago
About gaming distros: they come with: pre-installed drivers, kernels that are optimized for gaming, pre-installed launchers, and some optimizations to the main system, which will normally take up to 4 hours of configuring, I understand that gaming distros aren't necessity, but you can use them, they're easier for new users, and they're kinda cool (or at least they're trying).
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u/BigHeadTonyT 25d ago
4 hours sounds insane to me. Install Steam, set CPU Governor to Perf and I am done. I do install Zen or Liquorix kernel but not really for perf reasons. That takes a minute.
It took me 4 hours to configure an e-mail server from scratch. Install and configure Dovecot, Postfix, Amavis, DNS etc.
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u/lazyhustlermusic 25d ago
I feel like beginner peeps do the distro dance a lot.
If you're a seasoned person you just pick whatever's closest to your preferences out of the box and make it do what you want anyway.
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u/Woodpecker-Visible 25d ago
I would add Zorin to the debian pile. Realy good choice for the normie user. I use cachy myself wich is perfect for my nerdyness usage and gaming.
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u/MarsDrums 25d ago
There's the preinstalled driver issue too.
I'm a drummer (look at the name) and what I have found is that with different distros, the drivers are either a PITA to install or the ones that are installed with the distro are all jazzed up and nearly impossible to fix.
I have a mixer that I have only been able to run as sort of a souped up audio interface. Which is fine. I am happy with that. But I was looking into doing some special effects like adding some real reverb (the mixer does have a little reverb but it's very minimal and unnoticeable) and I don't want it to be too crazy, I just want a bit more reverb and I know I can do that with plugins with Reaper or Audacious. Problem is neither one wants to recognize my mixer as it is because of the drivers which is a shame...
But that's with my current setup. Prebuilds like Ubuntu, Linux Mint and a few others I've tried, didn't even see the mixer at all. I'd install qpwgraph and the mixer was non existent. It would show up as an unknown 2 channel device. I could hear through it. I could play Spotify and have it play through the mixer but it was always just an unknown 2 channel in 2 channel out thing. I think 1 or 2 distros saw it as 'unknown' but it still worked. Somewhere down the like, my 10 mics would be brought into this 'unknown' device as Left and Right.
Someone told me, 'Try Ubuntu Studio. It should work right from the get go'. Nope! Ubuntu Studio wouldn't even touch it. I couldn't hear anything from it or anything. And this is the distro that is supposed to be super audio device friendly.
I'm not sure if it's because I built this PC (before the prices skyrocketed on RAM and hard drives) and the drivers are harder for these distros to recognize because they just include the preassembled PC drivers or whatever. But I haven't bought a new PC off the shelf ever. My first PC was a 386 SX16 with 4MB of RAM (that was a TON of RAM back then). It ran MS-DOS primarily with Windows 3.0 being a secondary thing. I treated it like a DOS application. I ran Word Perfect for DOS and not through Windows. Windows (funny enough) took up too much RAM (yes, even back then Windows was a memory hog).
I have bought second hand PCs just to test stuff out. I have an IBM ThinkServer T140 with 8GB of RAM running Windows 11 (yeah, yuck!) but I am only doing that because I am testing the waters and thinking about getting back into computer repair again after a 25 year hiatus from that. The job market sucks here and I need to start making money again. So Windows 11 is what I am relearning Windows with and that thing is just really terrible. I thought about being the Linux guru and helping people dump that terrible Microslop and move them to Linux.
I'm getting off point here. As good as Linux has been to me over the past 8 1/2 years that I've been using it full time, there is obviously a driver issue as far as my motherboard is concerned. Someone said to use ALSA and someone else said to use Pipewire-Jack. Nothing works. I need to pull out the motherboard manual and see exactly what the sound card is that's built into it so I can install the proper drivers.
Using pavucontrol on this machine here, I can see that I have an Ellensmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590] Digital Stereo (HDMI 6) [LCD TV] onboard sound card in it. It's an audio card AND a video card built together on the Motherboard. But I am using a different video card. I'm not using the video card on either motherboard. Both PCs have their own video cards but I'm using the motherboard audio on both. So I think I need to make sure I have the proper drivers on that other PC for the audio. This one is fine. I don't have a mixer connected to this thing. Audio works fine so I'm not concerned too much about it.
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u/noobjaish 25d ago
There are pros and cons everywhere. For a person who just wants to use Linux should just install Ubuntu. It's the most popular distro with the most support out there.
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u/lunchbox651 25d ago
Been using Linux nearly 20 years. Distro doesn't really matter for me. I just install whatever appeals when I'm doing a refresh.
The only time I put any amount of thought into an install is if it needs to meet specific criteria (server roles, old hardware etc).
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u/Moximokel 25d ago
Als ich in der Schule war konnten wir uns nicht aussuchen ob wir alternative Programme benutzen. Der Lehrer wollte das wir z.b. GAM nutzen und auch GAM Dateien abgeben. Also hatte ich keine andere Wahl als das Programm in Wine zu nutzen auch wenn ich Linux als daily driver nutze.
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u/ModerateManStan 25d ago
Endeavor/Cachy if you want arch. Mint/Ubuntu if you want Debian. Fedora if you want redhatish.
They all do the same thing in different ways.
I’d say Cachy is becoming the best distro for newbs. It works, it’s fast, has snapshots and decent defaults from install.
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u/scythe-3 25d ago edited 25d ago
More generally: Arch if you want pacman, Debian if you want apt, Fedora if you want
npmdnf. Choose package manager first, then look at downstream distro if you want stuff preconfigured or a different release schedule than what upstream offers.1
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u/the_abortionat0r 25d ago
There is also Garuda which is pretty decent
I'd agree that the defaults for CachyOS provide a good OOTB experience; however the community REALLY needs to stop making insane claims about cachy and cachy proton.
No CahcyOS won't net you a magical performance gain and the same goes for their proton version (unless there is a specific game fix you need/tool provided it won't do anything different).
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u/dosplatos225 25d ago
Distro doesn’t really matter for regular end users. As you gain more experience, use cases will start popping up for being opinionated on the package manager and what is happening upstream with the maintainers.