Yeah. “I use OpenSUSE tumbleweed, but have reasons I’ve been thinking about switching. I consistently hear that mint is a good place to start, or maybe pop!os if you’re looking to run games”
I don’t actually even say the first sentence unless the question was “what do you use?”
Sometimes, if it’s clear they’re trying to revive very old hardware I might help them search for something built around being lightweight.
I’m mostly happy with tumbleweed, except that I have the nvidia repo set up and am convinced that it’s causing issues. One of these days I’ll look into how to try the nouveau drivers and/or how to get from my current setup to dualbooting pop!os without disrupting things I need for work.
Also, an update straight up broke emacs while i was in crunch time once, but I learned to be more careful about my update timing.
That’s good to know, thanks. I don’t get asked for Linux advice that often, but I’ll just recommend mint unless there are extreme hardware restrictions (which I’m sure mint can work with, but I’ve looked for whatever modern lightweight-focused distro is when it’s a concern)
And a lot of support, especially aimed to the beginner userbase. Most basics questions a first time linux user will encounter are usually answered to by searching the forum
It even goes beyond that because if you just search how to do something in linux, you are almost guaranteed to find instructions that work on whatever random site you find. It’s pretty rare to find instructions for dnf or pacman without also having the APT instructions right there.
It depends on who’s asking. But if it’s someone who is curious about Linux, it’s always Mint.
If someone is new, show them DEs and recommend based on that
Yeah. “I use OpenSUSE tumbleweed, but have reasons I’ve been thinking about switching. I consistently hear that mint is a good place to start, or maybe pop!os if you’re looking to run games”
I don’t actually even say the first sentence unless the question was “what do you use?”
Sometimes, if it’s clear they’re trying to revive very old hardware I might help them search for something built around being lightweight.
I’m mostly happy with tumbleweed, except that I have the nvidia repo set up and am convinced that it’s causing issues. One of these days I’ll look into how to try the nouveau drivers and/or how to get from my current setup to dualbooting pop!os without disrupting things I need for work.
Also, an update straight up broke emacs while i was in crunch time once, but I learned to be more careful about my update timing.
Games run great in Linux Mint.
Mint also has a GUI driver manager that makes it really easy to see and change which nvidia driver you’re using.
That’s good to know, thanks. I don’t get asked for Linux advice that often, but I’ll just recommend mint unless there are extreme hardware restrictions (which I’m sure mint can work with, but I’ve looked for whatever modern lightweight-focused distro is when it’s a concern)
My guy just uninstall the Nvidia driver, it will fall back to the driver in the kernel, which is the Nouveau driver.
I’ll try that soon. Tbf, it’s absurdly easy to roll back with snapper if I make a change and it’s not better, I just haven’t gotten around to it.
I try to avoid telling people what I use as they will wonder why I don’t use mint if I recommend it.
I like Fedora + plasma, but I don’t want to explain rpm fusion and Fedora flatpak problems.
Would Aurora be a better recommendation these days?
https://universal-blue.org/
Not familiar with it, but one thing mint has is a long history. That’s important to me.
And a lot of support, especially aimed to the beginner userbase. Most basics questions a first time linux user will encounter are usually answered to by searching the forum
It even goes beyond that because if you just search how to do something in linux, you are almost guaranteed to find instructions that work on whatever random site you find. It’s pretty rare to find instructions for dnf or pacman without also having the APT instructions right there.
Great point! I hadn’t even considered that.