I grew tired of shitty “Top 10 Linux distros in ${CURRENT_YEAR}” articles so I wrote a blogpost, that I would personally consider helpful when I was starting out, so I can simply link it to people when they ask my opinion on a beginner distro.
Objective criticism is welcome and encouraged.
Pop OS is my recommendation for new users who want to play games, especially those with Nvidia GPUs.
Good write up.
have you got an 88x31 button? i’d like to link to this
(no worries if you haven’t, i’ll just use a text link)
I really love actual content. It feels like the internet has become full of seo-promoted garbage and the real content have just vanished. Nice writeup!
I’d argue that while not beginner friendly, Arch’s “difficult to install” reputation is a bit of a hold-over from the past seeing as archinstall exists on the iso and guides you through everything… but I’ve also not had it work successfully for me the few times I tried it and just had to install manually instead 🤦♂️ 🤣
Archinstall is great but also the wiki itself recommends manual install and I still think for someone who never touched Linux Calamares would be better.
You’re probably right there. To me, Arch really seems like an endgame distro, for when you’ve tried enough options to know what you like and you just want to roll that without any cruft.
Which distro wont send me into the terminal every time I need something?
I’m using Pop! OS and basically I only need to use the terminal when tinkering with Wine (because I’m stubborn and don’t use Lutris), launching StableDiffusion or doing some wacky shit like trying to install a compatibility layer for android apps.
Probably Mint or ElementaryOS are your safest bets. Personally I think being able to use the Linux terminal is an advantage though, way more reliable and consistent than windows’ settings/control panel/powershell fiasco
I didn’t ask for a distro that didn’t have the terminal available.
