Thinking about making the big switch – recommend me a distro!
Thinking about making the big switch – recommend me a distro!
Hey all, I've been thinking about making the jump from Windows to Linux as my daily-driver and I've been struggling on what distro to use.
On my laptop I've been using Fedora's KDE Spin for a bit but I can't say I really like KDE all that much. I took that Distrochooser test and 9/10 of the suggestions were all Ubuntu-based or Arch-based for some reason lol.
I would prefer a distro that "just works" but I'm not scared of having to troubleshoot or fix things. I guess I'm just looking to see what everyone else uses and what you all recommend. Thanks!
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I highly recommend Fedora (just the regular Gnome version). I used to be all Ubuntu, but they’ve shoved snaps down everyone’s throats to the point that I simply cannot recommend it to anyone, especially newcomers.
Fedora has been working really well for me. You’ll probably want to play around with Gnome Tweaks to get the maximize and minimize buttons back, and install the Gnome extension “AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support” from the Gnome Extensions website. Those I would consider the essential post install steps.
After that you’ll have a rock-solid and enjoyable setup.
Pretty much anything Fedora is easy as pie.
I had to bail from Fedora when they pulled the video codecs from RPM. It may be fixed, but the threat of pulling a tool from the repository still lingers in my mind.
The video codecs are in rpmfusion, which is available as a checkbox called “Third Party Repositories” in the setup wizard.
Ah, they were being pulled from RPM fusion at one point if I recall. It didn't go through, but the fact that it was even being discussed told me all I needed to know.
There was an issue in the past where the regular mesa-* packages and the mesa-*-freeworld were out of sync which resulted in no longer working DEs for many people if they updated at the wrong time.
Is this still an issue?
(I went back to the regular drivers since I mostly use VP8/9 anyway)
I have never had that issue. I’ve been on Fedora for a year, so it’s not been an issue since at least then.