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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Recommend a distro for a 13-year-old gamer (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Couldn't find a dedicated community for distro recommendations, I hope it's ok to ask here.

A couple of years ago my wife and I built a computer and gave it to a friend's kid. We put ElementaryOS on it since that seemed pretty fool-proof, but it appears to require a re-install to upgrade major versions so it has been stuck with an old glibc and because of that he can't play Factorio.

For his 13:th birthday we bought him a SSD so it would be a good time to reinstall Linux, but is there perhaps some better choice than ElementaryOS? They live quite far away so I can't easily pop over to fix his computer if something breaks, we don't spend enough time there for me to teach him to fix things himself, and he doesn't seem very interested in learning how computers/operatings systems work either.

Hardware: Some old Intel CPU with 8GB DDR3 and a GTX1080
Usage: Gaming through Steam+Proton, Lutris and browsing.
Requirements: Games work, OS never breaks on updates. Doesn't need to be "kid proof", I don't think he touches any stuff he doesn't know what it does.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Bazzite:

Fedora based, so newer libraries
Atomic updates, therefore doesn't break on updates
Steam and Lutris are preinstalled

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I've been using Fedora KDE on my own PC for a few years, but I've had some pretty severe breakages when updating. Though I suppose most of them happened because I had Cuda SDK installed, or monitor ICC profiles, but early on I also had Plasma crash on login while testing different themes. I'll look more into Bazzite though!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

The first point of bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros is to prevent such breakages. updates aren't applied over your existing installed packages, the base read only part is updated and your layered packages come after if you even have any. A kid's computer won't need it though. Most of my installed software is flatpak, appimage, or brew. I have maybe 3 packages installed via rpm-ostree. If I ever need anything not possible this way it's not a job for my gaming pc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I use Bazzite on a laptop that's shared by family, and it's great. I never have to worry about downtime, and I know they'll always have a computer should something happen to me.

I once had a bad update, and I just used rpm-ostree rollback, and I was up and running again. Really great for anyone that wants to set it and forget it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Legacy Nvidia drivers a couple months ago? That was a fun time, lol.

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