You must log in or # to comment.
Proceeds to use it exclusively for browsing the web.
How many are there?
It depends.
See, that’s not helpful. The right answer is to direct someone to this GitHub project:
https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline
The releases page contains a 3420x12488 PNG to provide a simple and concise answer.
“Simple and concise”
That picture is also hosted on Wikimedia:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg
Edit: just pasting the link now, making it into an embedded picture lagged and crashed voyager??
Ventoy and go, try a bunch.
But the correct answer is Mint with XFCE
Ventoy is one of the wonders of the modern world. That said, probably easier to use Virtual Machine Manager if they just wanna explore options.
I really wish people could get together and just agree to recommend like 1 of 3 distros to people and put their personal y preferences aside.
Once people actually switch and use Linux for some time they can figure out what is actually best for them.
I say it should be,
Mint Kubuntu Maybe bazzite (I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard it’s popular for gaming.)
I still have to make the switch, have been keeping track of these topics a bit.
Right now, the shortlist I would make is:
- Bazzite (Easy to setup, preconfigured for gaming)
- Fedora (Good allrounder, well developed)
- Arch (For those who want full control and love to tinker)
I like Fedora plasma the best personally, but the gnome version requires configuration to just get a minimize button and it also needs rpm fusion configured and codecs installed.
That is why I don’t like to recommend this for a newbie.
I can’t recommend to a newcomer a distro that can potentially break or introduce bugs or vulnerabilities with software that’s too bleeding edge. That’s why I’ll never recommend Arch or even Fedora. And Bazzite is really too gaming focused and you can only install software through flatpaks. (I know there’s other ways, but we’re talking about newbies here. We need to keep it simple.)
Flatpak and AppImage. What programs can’t be installed on Bazzite?
It’s not that they can’t be installed. But that the process is highly technical for newbies.
Yeah but like which ones? I’m using Kubuntu, but everything I need is either Flatpak or AppImage, and it’s easier than Windows
Ah sorry. I was referring to Bazzite.
Yeah but either way I’m just using Flatpak and AppImage. Is that harder in Bazzite than Kubuntu? I think Bazzite uses Discover just like Kubuntu
Only thing that matters is that you realize, none of it’s permanent. Getting your feet wet for a few weeks working from a live USB is okay too. Go as fast or as slow as you want. People get stuck on “The Paradox of Choice”.
Fucking it up is part of the fun
Not for the people who just want a working computer.
Not everyone wants OS hopping as a hobby
Exactly. The OS hopping days are behind me!
We had that consensus with Ubuntu for 15 years but haters had to hate so now we’re here. 😁
I am convinced that Ubuntu/GNOME is the main reason that Linux onboarding has taken so long and has been so slow.
I never knew KDE Plasma and other Windows-like desktop environments existed until Valve released the Steam Deck.
Kububtu (Ubuntu with KDE) has been an official Ubuntu flavour almost aince the beginning. During the Ubuntu consensus years, it was being promoted along with Ubuntu for every release.
It’s totally cool you learned about it from Valve but that doesn’t mean people were oblivious about KDE in the 2000s and 2010s.
Sure, but it hasn’t been well promoted by the community or by Canonical. Otherwise I would have seen it a long time ago.
Respectfully disagree. Have been following many Ubuntu releases over the years, Ubuntu blogs and news sites, and the official flavours have always been showcased, talked about, major features discussed and so on.
Also switching between flavours has always been trivial even post-installation. I used to test-drive KDE on Ubuntu installs and GNOME on Kubuntu installs in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Do you seriously expect new users to keep up with Ubuntu blogs, news sites and stuff like that? New users don’t even know what a flavor is. New users are not that involved in the eco system. Just because you have seen it that doesn’t mean it’s widely known.
This right here is one of the problems with old Linux users trying to recruit new users.
that’s because even people who are using ubuntu for 15 years and don’t really care that much are finally fed up and starting to look for an alternative.
“get these security updates with ubuntu pro” is the ultimate wake-up call…
Ah yes, the 10-year corporate-grade security support for communiry packages provided for free to small users. I use it on the machines I haven’t converted to Debian yet. It’s great.
You’re not wrong.
But, what about Snaps? What’s your take on these?
I use Flatpaks in Kubuntu no problem, don’t think I have any Snaps installed
I tend to prefer flatpak over snaps myself. Depends for what.
Choice is good when you can make an informed choice. Choice is bad if you are forced to make a decisions where you have no idea of the consequences.
Shhhh no choose, only Kubuntu.
Thank you, way too many people saying Ubuntu and Mint in here lol
The wrong assumption is that you have to pick the best of all possible everything the first time. People agonize less about choosing a type of car to spend $30,000 on knowing that if you sell it used its instantly worth 5000 less.
Meanwhile you can switch everything about your computer in 2 hours for free.
All you need to know is that, whatever you pick, you made the wrong choice and you will be roasted if you ever attempt to explain your decision.
Unless you use Arch, then you have chosen correctly.
You mispelt gentoo
Arch is utterly inferior because of its use of the Systemd “init” system, which is a bloated mess that completely disregards the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, and shouldn’t be forgotten for its sins and heresy. “Arch Linux” (Really Arch Gnu/Linux, or more preferably Arch Gnu+Linux (Unless you consider that Gnu runs on top of Linux, in which case it’s Linux+Gnu)) cannot be taken seriously as a minimal do it yourself distro when it hinges on an software that has ties with RedHat, which has had a history of forcing their woke Wayland Display Server (Even though Xorg worked just fine, suspicious much?), as well as their DEI onto the entire Linux space - where politics shouldn’t play any role. A WOKE company like RedHat has no place in the open source community. If you want to be a true and righteous Linux user, I recommend Either Void Linux+Gnu (What manly men like myself use) or Gentoo.
Edit: this is satire, I clearly interact with these people far too often to have done this good of a job.
Arch is utterly inferior because of its use of the Systemd “init” system, which is a bloated mess that completely disregards the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, and shouldn’t be forgotten for its sins and heresy.
So… do arch without systemd. (And not listed there, because its live-installer iso comes with systemd, is parabola linux, which does let you install with any of many init systems).
Or as you say, any of many other distros that offer init-freedom.
Though I’m not entirely sure if I’m replying to an instance of poe’s law, intended to mock those of us who see things largely like you depicted. n_n Which is fun.
PS,
history of forcing their woke Wayland Display Server (Even though Xorg worked just fine, suspicious much?),
Yes. Actively inhibiting development of Xorg. The tighter they squeeze the more of us slip through their fingers. Now there’s XLibre (a Xorg fork, to continue (otherwise actively inhibited) patching and developing), and even Pheonix (a from-scratch implementation of the X11 protocol written in zig! ~ give it a couple years). Exciting times.
Frankly I’m not even keen on the idea of pulse audio either. Funny how all this “Lennartware”'s so contemptable… from Lennart Poettering, who then went to work for Microsoft. Funny eh? Funny how it’s almost like it’s following the same ruthless dastardly insidious method of unscrupulously building a monopoly, via “embrace, extend, extinguish”. Not a fan of pulseaudio, systemd, and wayland. Much prefer free software stays closer to being in human reach, so more of us can make use of the 4 freedoms of free software. So it’s not just “free software” in name only, but in practice too.
The big advantage of Linux it’s fully customizable The big disadvantage of Linux, it’s fully customizable
OP is posting AI slop and plagiarizing other people’s work. Lead image seems a cyanide and happiness cartoon, but it’s a blatent ripoff, and they watermarked it with their own username to boot. And no communication out transparency around any of that as well
There are four main flavors
- Debian - For every day
- Red Hat - For work
- Arch - To tinker and learn
- OpenSuSe - To German
Also the additional flavours of
- Nix – whole OS determined by 1 file
- Gentoo – Arch but it takes longer
- Alpine – small and simple
- Slackware? – for old people
- Void?? – like Alpine but not small and simple
- LFS??? – like Gentoo but takes longer
- AOSP??? – not even really Linux anymore
Gentoo really has nothing to do with arch. Gentoo in my opinion is more like Debian with compiling and rolling release.
And what about Fedora? Last I checked it was wildly popular.
Gentoo is just frequently cited as the “next step up” from Arch and also funny.
And Fedora is bucketed into the Red Hat flavour.
also …
Debian - for when you want to wait two years
The popular Debian based distros are up to date. That said, core Debian stable is indeed boring, but sometimes boring and stable is what you need.
I use Kubuntu LTS for that exact reason. Even though I am an experienced Linux user for over 20 years, I don’t have time to fuck around fixing my PC when something goes wrong. It’s stable and it works. And, yes I game on my PC and it’s doing just fine with my 3070 RTX NVidia card with the drivers provided by Ubuntu through their 3rd party driver system. No hassle, no crashing, just me using my computer doing the things I need to do.
Alternatively: when you want to not worry for two years.
Definitely a brick of an operating system, boring as hell, but reliable and has been that way since ancient times.
Before the dawn of history
Look upon my server uptime and despair
You think choosing your Linux distro is bad, imagine having to choose your electricity, water, internet, phone, banking, and insurance provider as well as your local councillor, workplace, school, career, entertainment, childcare, car, house, food, etc.
This “love choice, hate choosing” is a really valuable thing to understand.
That’s why much more effort should be used to promote, towards the regular masses, Linux distros such as Linux Mint and Zorin that are built to purposely accommodate Windows(and Mac)-refugees into guiding them into the wider Linux ecosystem.
Problem is that Mint and Zorin don’t take security as seriously as they should, and so I’m worried about the risks that would pose.
Plus Zorin is a bit problematic for other reasons.
What are the “other reasons”? Thought about trying it.
They charge money for a free OS, but they don’t use that money to provide more than installation support. They don’t offer troubleshooting support or upstream improvements.
Edit it is so perfectly fitting for the Linux community to respond with mostly criticisms and negations to these flowcharts I shared without a single negative commenter actually suggesting a different similar helpful resource for newbies to Linux who feel overwhelmed or adding something productive and helpful to the conversation.
Do better y’all.
You can’t condescend these resources and pretend with a handwave like there are better ones out there, you gotta prove it. If you are going to pick apart these charts then you gotta make a new chart or link me to a better one, I don’t care about your condescending minor criticisms of the specifics of the flowcharts, that is irrelevant input unless you are going to edit a flowchart and make a new one or add something else productive.
I feel like I am inside a meme making fun of Linux users right now lol.
https://piefed.blahaj.zone/post/347408
https://lemmy.ca/post/53099450
I appreciate the effort put into this but if answering yes to “are you new to Linux?” leads to the follow up question “apt or rpm?” then there’s a problem.
Exactly. One is a package format and/or local package utility, and the other is a frontend to do downloads and updates for that local package utility.
Should be “rpm or dpkg” — assuming that we’re excluding the other options — and then if someone chooses RPM, you can start talking about the frontend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager
Front ends
Several front-ends to RPM ease the process of obtaining and installing RPMs from repositories and help in resolving their dependencies. These include:
- yum used in Fedora Linux, CentOS 5 and above, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and above, Scientific Linux, Yellow Dog Linux and Oracle Linux
- DNF, introduced in Fedora Linux 18 (default since 22), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8, and CentOS Linux 8.
- up2date used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS 3 and 4, and Oracle Linux
- Zypper used in Mer (and thus Sailfish OS), MeeGo,[16] openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise
- urpmi used in Mandriva Linux, ROSA Linux and Mageia
- apt-rpm, a port of Debian’s Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) used in Ark Linux,[17] PCLinuxOS and ALT Linux
- Smart Package Manager, used in Unity Linux, available for many distributions including Fedora Linux.
- rpmquery, a command-line utility available in (for example) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- libzypp, for Sailfish OS
Then for
dpkg, you can choose from amongaptitude,apt,apt-get/apt-query/etc, graphical frontend options likesynapticthat one may want to use in parallel with the TUI-based frontends, etc.Sure, but my point was that someone new to Linux can only answer that question with “what the fuck are those”
see heres the problem, youre doing that in the wrong order.
first figure out your DE/WM preference, THEN choose a package manager with the repos that will best support that for your use case and update cycle preferences. (the distro)
Working pc with low effort? Just use Linux Mint. Is basically an Ubuntu without bloat and less strict on packages. Also cinnamon as desktop is both super windows-familiar and customizable with close to no need for the terminal.
Gaming pc fast and updated? Catchy OS with a KDE plasma desktop. So you can say to other “I use Arch (derivate) btw”.
I wish Mint offered KDE out of the box so I could recommend it to people. Cinnamon just looks… I dunno, like the comic-sans of desktops to me.
