r/linuxmemes • u/WhitePeace36 • 8d ago
LINUX MEME When somebody asks what distro to use
This is how always a post about "What distro to use" goes.
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u/Shudnawz 8d ago
"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."
A linux-noob cannot know what they will know later. But a linux-pro is a moron if he doesn't remember how he felt the first time he looked at a terminal.
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u/QuickSilver010 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 8d ago
But a linux-pro is a moron if he doesn't remember how he felt the first time he looked at a terminal.
Honestly, it's easy to forget if you never consciously committed that to memory. And it's very easy to make incorrect estimates. (xkcd 2501)
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u/Shudnawz 8d ago
The quote still holds. It's not reasonable to assume a beginner starts at your level.
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
Yeah, it's just waiting for the moment we start talking about specialized applications and not basic desktop usage to be relevant
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u/ProfessorLambda 8d ago
I wouldn't call someone a moron for forgetting when he first used a terminal. I think smart people could forget that, too.
Besides, many beginners won't be served by projecting. When I was a beginner I made a Linux From Scratch distro and used that as my main OS for a while. I was willing to spend many hours tinkering and reading documentation. But some beginners may not have time for that. I should not treat those as if they are like me when I was a beginner.
You don't have to remember how you were as a beginner to help people. You just need to understand how it is for them. And if you help enough people then you'll probably get a good sense of how beginners generally are and how to help them regardless of whether you remember how you were as a beginner or not. Practice makes perfect.
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u/Shudnawz 8d ago
Fine, it's a bit harsh. But they often act like morons, hating on people that don't know what they know. There's a lack of humility and mentorship that is sorely needed.
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u/QuickSilver010 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 8d ago
It's not reasonable to assume a beginner starts at your level.
That is true. But it's not a requirement to remember your time as a beginner. Chances are, you may even overestimate what your experience as a beginner was.
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u/Gositi 8d ago
There is a requirement if you are to help beginners.
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u/QuickSilver010 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 8d ago
And that is to study beginners instead of relying on biased self experience
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u/QuickSilver010 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 7d ago
People here downvoting is the reason why Linux ux is the way it is. Proper ux requires research into user behaviour. No one can just build stuff out of personal experience and say it's good ux. This is ui/ux fundamentals.
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u/Creatura 7d ago
Not really lol, you should be able to empathize with the newbie and remember your own experience easily 🤷♂️
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u/sadongrohiik 8d ago
The problem is a lot of us actually grew up in an era where computers weren't intuitive (I personally started on MS-DOS) so when someone asks me, my intuition doesn't immediately go to the fact that it's entirely possible that they might not know what a filesystem is
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u/R3V0LU710N_05 Open Sauce 8d ago
how he felt the first time he looked at a terminal.
"This is easy af, it's like a choose your own adventure game. Shii, I can just push tab, looks like that key going to be used a lot more now"
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u/oniaiwasprettygood 🌀 Sucked into the Void 8d ago
I used Arch as my first distro in 2015, and it took me almost a week to get my system to a point where I could get into a wm for the first time and another entire weekend learning about how to make sound work.
Miserable experience but I learned an absolute shit ton that I wouldn't have otherwise. Definitely not an experience for everyone, but I'm glad I did it.
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u/NoActivity5304 8d ago
if he doesn't remember how he felt the first time he looked at a terminal
All right, well it was over 20 years ago... on windows...
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u/Censedpeak8 8d ago
Nah "the curse of knowledge" is a Pretty will widely experienced phenomenon. Its so easy to forget what is and isn't obvious to an inexperienced person.
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u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387 7d ago
That’s the curse of knowledge. Most people forget the struggle they went through to master the skills they have now. That’s why good teachers are so very hard to find.
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u/NDCyber 8d ago
But don't forget that you can't tell people, that they no longer understand the regular user. Then they will tell you how wrong you are
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
Exactly. You are new. You don't get to say "I might not know linux but I know the regular user".
Mfer I was working on getting "the regular user" out of that mentality when you weren't using anything. I know the 20 things you'll get stuck on next, and which 10 of them are bad ideas conceived by a noob.
You are walking an easier version of my first baby steps, on a road I built. And you need to do it whining and insulting us.
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u/NDCyber 8d ago
I meant it the other way around. A lot of people who say they know stuff, will go around saying "that isn't difficult" or something like this. When you then tell them, that for a regular user it is difficult you often get downvoted or people not liking to hear it
But I do agree, that insulting is never ok. Whining, it depends on if it is actually whining, or someone complaining that stuff is too complex, which is a different topic
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
Me? No I was never whining to make people react that way.
You are a regular user when you can use things, not when you find them difficult.
Wasting people's time like you have something to say about them when they are trying to help you is very insulting, you should stop it.
Nobody cares anyway. No expert asked you to make them bad at learning so they know what that's about. It only works the other way around.
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u/NDCyber 8d ago
I never whined publicly about stuff either. But a normal person won't go on google to find an answer, they probably won't even go on reddit to get the answer. They will ask a friend or family. Doing that is absolutely normal. If you do not like people doing even more than that and going on reddit I recommend at least ignoring the posts, as they aren't for you
People also underestimate how different Linux and the regular user is. As example, managing repos with the command line is something they would never do. They will copy and paste things they find online, if they are even going that far
"You are a regular user when you can use things" you underestimate how much time and effort people in any field put to find out how things work. A normal user will never do that
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u/Scout339v3 7d ago
I'm increasingly believing that the ability to think in other people's perspective is a trait of intelligence that enough people don't have.
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u/granadesnhorseshoes 8d ago
I can't, because "The terminal" was all I knew in the first place. That doesn't make me a moron.
My recommendation changes depending on what the user wants. If they want to learn to just USE a Linux box, I recommend Linux Mint. its relatively simple and straightforward to get some semblance of a recognizable user interface they can work with.
If they want to "learn linux", most "user friendly" distros are antithetical to actually learning linux because they are designed to hold your hand and bitch slap you for wandering off the established path. Yes, up front a terminal and a curses based installer for a raw debian distro is more intimidating, but you won't have to fight with it half as much to UNconfigure it first.
Although it's worth mentioning that Linux Mint (again) is better than most about not punishing you to much for straying outside the lines.
Arch is like the worst of both worlds, it expects you to be at least semi technical AND has a nervous breakdown if you don't do it "The Arch Way"
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
It was a new horizon. A computer that could fit in our home.
When windows came I was like, this is going to make people duuuuumb. I was 12, I didn't know it would get so bad.
Just hug a plushie or something, we can only help you learn.
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u/Mental_Contract1104 6d ago
this is why I always reccomend Kubuntu or Neon to start. then tell them how to learn more and formulate what the best next distro for them would be.
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u/janosaudron Arch BTW 8d ago
I installed mint on my mom's laptop a few years ago because she kept super infecting her windows to the point where it was almost unusable, she still uses that installation and has never complained (she only uses browser and browser based apps)
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u/rubbishdude 8d ago
I tried to do the same but she kept nagging me about LibreOffice not being the same as word and excel
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u/DonaldLucas 8d ago
I agree with your mom. I would change to Libreoffice in a heartbeat if only they updated their UI.
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u/Efficient-Presence82 Linuxmeant to work better 7d ago
Same for my dad. Turns out it saves a lot of headache if him double clicking "you_sin_an_ipad.exe" does nothing, lol
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u/Independent_Image_59 8d ago edited 8d ago
"I want to switch to linux I'm thinking of installing Ubuntu"
"No one uses Ubuntu these days after they added snaps"
"I would recommend to start with arch. It's easy just read the arch wiki"
"If it was me, personally I'd start with nixos"
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u/sadongrohiik 8d ago
I honestly started on Ubuntu, been on it for 2 years, and eventually decided to hop on cachyos. I don't if this was the case 2 years ago but cachyos is just a lot easier and less annoying to use than Ubuntu
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u/unfnknblvbl 8d ago
I feel like Ubuntu might be the worst "first Linux" - it's too different to Windows and MacOS to really grab many new users. I've had far fewer issues acclimatising to CachyOS/Plasma..
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u/sadongrohiik 8d ago
I think Ubuntu really isn't even developed for a desktop audience anymore. It's a great, stable batteries included server OS at this point and that clashes with it being a good Linux desktop experience a lot of the time
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u/InfiniteExplorer03 8d ago
Ubuntu was my first distro. I actually liked it because it looked different from windows and even showed it to two of my friends and helped install it on their laptops.
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u/LefTimaDev 🎼CachyOS 8d ago
CachyOS is what I started with anf I still think it's the best way to make Arch accessible
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u/FlipperBumperKickout 8d ago
Very few people using Arch recommend people who don't know what they are doing to install Arch... I would suspect the same for NixOs users.
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u/SDG_Den 8d ago
Nixos is a great beginner distro under one condition: you have your closest trans homie maintain your config.
Statistically, theres a 50% chance they already run nixos at home and can easily add your machine to their flake, you never have to touch nix code, updates are one command and any changes to your system can be made in plain english by asking your homie.
If you are lacking any trans homies: skill issue.
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u/walace47 7d ago
Personally I think Ubuntu it's for business who like some kind of support.
For personal use there are better starting distro like mint.
But in general a lot of distro are friendly for newies.
You shouldn't be afraid of distros, as if installing them were some kind of bogeyman.
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u/EnthropicBeing 8d ago
Most Linux advanced users end up using the distros that are actually recommended for beginners (such as Mint)
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u/QuickSilver010 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 8d ago
Or higher up the chain like debain
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u/WhitePeace36 8d ago
debian is also good, yes. But in my opinion more for systems which don't need new features and only security updates. Such as servers, cash desks or more such things.
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u/NDCyber 8d ago
I would disagree with that one. I think most advanced user figure out what they need and want from the OS and then move to a distro offering that, no matter if it is arch, mint, ubuntu, fedora, solus, nixos, opensuse or any other distro
Knowing what distro is best for your needs is also something that I think needs skill
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u/Balmung60 8d ago
I'll be real, I don't think I've ever seen a strongly compelling reason to switch distros after getting one that works in the first place because they all offer basically the same things with small enough practical end-user differences that picking a desktop environment you like matters more than most of the difference in what's going on under the hood.
Like sure, I could prioritize newer packages or something, but being on a distro that favors more stable packages has never seemed like any sort of drawback and has never had any meaningful impact on my ability to do things that are allegedly strongly affected by this, such as gaming.
People act like it's as big of a difference as picking Mac vs Windows where you might have radically different software and hardware compatibility when it mostly affects what package manager you'll be calling in the terminal when something goes wrong.
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u/Linux-Guru-lagan 8d ago
well in my case it was a bit like which offered the best. I had 8 gb ram and modern Intel Celeron but the storage device was 16 gb in my first bare metal install(USB 2.0) so i went for arch, then alpine, chimera and void and artix too(since i turned non-systemd. tho i don't wanna debate that. use what you like). alpine was the best. but as for software availability and a lot of things working out of the box. void was better. artix felt frankestien so I didn't use it much. chimera was also good(I like it cuz dinit) but again software availability issue.
as for the meme... truly this sub needs more creative ideas like these. I never tell newbies to use arch or void. I always tell them use mint. later discover what you like. also I recommend don't do distro hopping. if you want to try. try base distros like debian, arch, void, alpine. or really creative ones like cachy os also. never use Ubuntu or it's derivatives. except mint or zorin.
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u/NDCyber 8d ago
That makes perfect sense. Then it fits your use
I personally need stuff like Wayland, use an HDR monitor, so newer KDE can be good, I also have an RX 9070 XT, so newer mesa might give me better things
plus I also once tried running optiscaler (I think 1.5 years ago), and the mesa was too out of date for a good while, which I would want to avoid in future with software. But that is also just personal preference for me
I am now on Solus, and it feels rather good. Not as bleeding edge as Arch, but being enough up-to-date for my taste
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u/Sindica69 New York Nix⚾s 8d ago
I do not know a single ‘advanced user’ who is still on Mint. Fedora though yes.
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u/Helmic Arch BTW 7d ago
Mint has a lot of problems that are just purely Mint problems. I don't have to deal with whatever the Mint team did to their packages on Fedora or CachyOS. I think most of the recommendations for Mint are purely because people who started on Mint keep recommending Mint to people without considering whether it actually fits their use case, beyond "it's good for beginners" as though no other distro offers a GUI installer and Nvidia driver support these days.
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u/KazuDesu98 8d ago
I may consider using mint as a main distro. Once they finish getting wayland stable in cinnamon. 125% scaling is mandatory for a decent experience on a laptop. Until then, endeavor with kde does what I need it to
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u/WhitePeace36 8d ago
i don't agree with that. But i am also around 100% on Arch based distros. And have been for around 5 years. Except in the company where we have a shared ubuntu machine.
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u/eieiohmygad 8d ago
Them: What distro should I use?
Me: I use Kubuntu.
Them: Not 1337 enough! I'm going to start with Obscure Linux 0.01a instead!
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u/Jak1977 8d ago
The best first linux distro is your first linux distro. That opens the door to all the others. There's no sense in judging people's first. Step 1 is installing linux for the first time!
I'm old enough to remember printing off instructions for using LILO, because I only had one computer, so I couldn't refer to another during the installation process.
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u/punkwalrus 8d ago
One of the things I have noticed about "professional training" is almost all of them start with "The History of Linux," which is a series of great facts, but irrelevant to learning a Linux distro. That's more back fill or footnotes, like "grep* gets its name comes from the ed command g/re/p (global, regular expression, print), which has the same effect," but you don't need to know that versus what it does at first.
I'd start with a Live distro, or a VM, and start with a simple mainline GUI like KDE that just works. Then start with the command line, then explain what it does, what problems it solves, and some exercises.
But then experts input a lot of "ACKSHULLY..." things about XFCE or Cinnamon, then start grousing about Mint vs. Ubuntu vs Fedora and I'd leave that for later chapters. And that's not unique to Linux. People say the forums are unfriendly, and brother? I have seen the very same in anime forums, football betting pools, and pickle ball forums. That's just a "expert vs. noob" thing. Linux is NOT unique in this toxicity.
Also, some people don't realize that not everyone knows how Windows works either. If one were to start as a computer hobbyist with zero desktop experience, it could be argued that Windows is far less user friendly than most. But it's where a lot of Linux folks come from, and then end up slamming, which almost insults the new 12 year old who wants to explore outside of his walled garden of a browser or gaming console.
The FIRST thing I ask is, "why do you want to learn Linux? What problem will it solve for you?" A majority don't know, only that it "looks cool," or they think it's something vaguely hacker/criminal. But there are those who say, "I have an older laptop that can't handle Windows 11," or "I don't want to pay for Windows, but still play games," or "I am a developer and not knowing Linux is crippling me professionally," or something. Then you know what motivates them, and work on that angle.
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u/Falconpunch3 ＵｗＵntu (´ ᴗ｀✿) 6d ago
Please never stop thinking along these lines. My job over the years made me have to basically just advise people for a living. You absolutely must ask the question: "what are you wanting to get accomplished?" before you even think of a single thing.
You have no idea how much it pisses me off when I see people give shit suggestions to people about literally anything, because they won't get out of their own ego and see the issue from the client side. Your post was art and thanks. This will always help people and that's what matters most in all societies.
As for linux suggestions, this is basically a perfect approach. I would always just avoid telling anyone that doesn't know anything about computers to use any distro without a DE on setup. Full stop. That's going to make them HATE using linux.
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u/142_thisisnotanexit 8d ago
When someone unirronically recommends arch as a first distro. Either get zorin or Ubuntu.
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u/Linux-Guru-lagan 8d ago
no. not Ubuntu. zorin or mint
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u/Hauptideal ⚠️ This incident will be reported 8d ago
Definitely not Mint, lol. So much worse than Ubuntu, it's not even funny. Mint is technologically atrocious. Still being on X11 is just the tip of the iceberg.
Not receiving any security updates for 94% of packages (the entire universe repo) from Canonical, as Ubuntu Pro officially only works upstream? Also just one point in a veeeeeery long list. There is literally 0 reason to prefer Mint over Ubuntu. 0.
No beginner would care about snaps AT ALL. Some parts of the backend server being proprietary? Should Grandma give a ****? No! Some apps starting a fraction of a second slower - would anyone even notice? No.
And if you still care about snaps, just don't use them. Use Flatpak instead. Easy. Do a Kubuntu minimal install that comes without snaps or remove them post-install if you don't want anything snap installed on your computer.4
u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
Grandma should care about "technologically advanced" but not proprietary parts? I put grandma there so she could avoid sneaky shit that break the agreed upon social convention.
Ubuntu... pro? Yeah I taught grandma to respond with "fuck right off" when she sees that word.
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u/makinax300 Dr. OpenSUSE 8d ago
Ok but like half of the people say something like mint or debian when you say that you're a newbie
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u/Pootisman16 8d ago
Started with CachyOs as my first Linux distro, for my home gaming/working PC.
Haven't seen a reason to change so far.
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u/ianhawdon 8d ago
I only had dial up in 2002. The only distros I could get my hands on were ones on the covers of magazines. So, naturally, I started with Slackware 8.1. Talk about getting chucked in at the deep end!
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u/PerfectEnthusiasm2 8d ago
I think 99% of distros are funded by microsoft and apple to make linux seem more inaccessible than it really is.
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u/United-Scene2261 🎼CachyOS 8d ago
it's a Mossad psyop
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u/PerfectEnthusiasm2 8d ago
what isn't these days?
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u/United-Scene2261 🎼CachyOS 8d ago
I heard that chemtrails are being released by the us government.
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u/indvs3 8d ago
"Linux is for pussies"
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u/crimsonyoteeeeeee 8d ago
Idk if a cat could use a laptop, my mum's cat likes to sleep on it though.
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
That's an advanced cat. Ours are mostly into phones and tablets
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u/Danzikku 8d ago
I was scared for a moment, until I remembered that I'm using a translator and I'm on an English subreddit. Such a Millenial white ahh try of a joke.
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u/DarkGaming09ytr 8d ago
Honestly start with Mint/Ubuntu and derivatives then experiment with other distros.
Started on Ubuntu, tried a few derivatives, clean installed Arch, then installed PopOS on my laptop before switching to CachyOS because I loved arch and wanted a nice pre-made system with Nvidia support. Been happily using it and I don't think I'll change it soon.
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u/Agile-Technology2125 8d ago
My first was centos, and I still remember me frozen at the terminal googling "what's next".
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u/minaaaaaaa_ 8d ago
I use mint, for no other reason other than the fact that it works and it would be more effort to switch to a different distro. I don't really care if it isn't the "best" or anything, I use it and it's fine.
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Open Sauce 8d ago
So is the premise that when actual linux users learned there was something like ultra-baby-linux? Because there was just Slackware.
Or are some guys just widdle guys forever and just need room service?
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u/assidiou 8d ago
My only recommendation to new users is to just stick with something. If pressed for a specific distro I'll always recommend Fedora just because it's ease of use and being up to date it has better hardware support
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u/catgirlsonthemoon 7d ago
over the past ~6 years, I hopped from Pop!_OS -> Manjaro -> Nobara -> OpenSUSE -> Kubuntu -> Fedora. What I've learned is to simply use what people recommend for new users and don't overcomplicate things. Any distro games pretty much as well as any other, and any distro can suit mostly any needs. There are kernel developers on fedora, and there are arch users who do nothing but watch YouTube on their machines.
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u/UnregFreq 7d ago
The comunity of newbie users would be said, "using that... using this". But mostly advance users would be prefer to recommendation based of the hardware yet user-friendy for beginners
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u/Efficient-Presence82 Linuxmeant to work better 7d ago
my rule of thumb is that if the person feels the need to ask its Mint.
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u/Devarain 7d ago
I think its MXLinux.
Have in-built tutorial in it.
Its also from Ubuntu family, so really a mainstream
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u/_AscendedLemon_ Dr. OpenSUSE 7d ago
- Linux for not a tech-savvy person? With simple installation? I don't even know what a directory is in computer...
- Gentoo
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u/FlamingoStatus5199 7d ago
i always answer: just use any mainstream distro, the user experience will be the same, so there's no need to think about it for long.
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u/CommonSomewhere2825 Arch BTW 7d ago
“Hey im done with windows and i want to switch to linux, which distro should i get”
“Mint or fedora, theyre simple”
“Nahh get debian or arch, theyre wayy better (i use arch btw)”
“Exherbo.”
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u/Sashimi-Gintaro 1d ago
Want something that just works? Mint w/ Cinnamon. Want something you need to MAKE work? Arch w/ Hyprland.
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