lancalot
Don’t go straight to immutable Linux.
My first foray into Linux was through what you'd refer to as immutable Linux; shortly after the release of Fedora Kinoite. I'm literally the embodiment of the antithesis to your statement.
It is very new
This is factually true. So I can't simply deny that. But being more precise is helpful:
- Fedora Atomic, the family of distros that enable uBlue, has been in the works since 2014. This eventually culminated into the release of Fedora Atomic Workstation in 2018, which was the name of Fedora Silverblue before the name change.
- The first commit of uBlue as a project happened over three years ago.
- The 1.0 release of Bazzite happened over a year ago.
- By contrast, Linux Mint has been out since 2006.
and I don’t like the focus.
Could you be more elaborate 😜?
First step: Decide on the so-called desktop environment. A shortlist is provided below. For a new user, this should be decisive when choosing between beginner-friendly distros.
Before going over to the next (and final) step, we need to set the stage for our contenders:
- Versions of Linux Mint. Linux Mint has (rightfully so) become the face of Linux for beginners. Stand out feature would be how crazy popular it is; it's a joy to look up your problem through a search engine and find solutions for it.
- Images of uBlue. Where Linux Mint tries to smooth the rough edges of the "traditional Linux model" as nicely as possible, uBlue's images can be referred to as revolutionary by comparison. The model strikes some (re)semblance to what you might know from your phone or chromebook. These images aren't even close to reaching their full potential, but have already garnered/amassed a wide audience for how they (at least attempt to) solve some of Desktop Linux' long-standing issues. Note that finding solutions for your problems might not be as straightforward. However, documentation is decent and they've been very helpful on Discord.
Final step: Pick the distro corresponding to your preferred desktop environment. The list found below (ordered alphabetically) isn't trying to be exhaustive on desktop environments.
- Cinnamon; Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. This is their flagship and probably what people mean when referring to Linux Mint.
- GNOME; Bazzite's GNOME. If you don't intend to game, then consider Bluefin instead.
- KDE Plasma; Bazzite's KDE Plasma. If you don't intend to game, then consider Aurora instead.
- MATE; Linux Mint MATE Edition.
- Xfce; Linux Mint Xfce Edition.
Check out the random button on Distrowatch (distrowatch.com/random.php) - it's like a Linux lottery, but you always win something weird!
Great response! Much appreciated!
Interesting. Have you also tried openSUSE Aeon(/Kalpa)? Though I assume you're a KDE user and thus waiting for Kalpa to become mature before a test ride.
Could you elaborate on what you didn't like about Aurora and Bazzite; especially about how that experience made you more appreciative of openSUSE?
Thank you in advance!
What distro do you use
I daily drive secureblue.
and why?
Long story short; I love me some security. Unfortunately, My device is far from ideal for running Qubes OS. From within the remaining options, secureblue comes out on top for me.
Options include:
- Installing them through
brew; this is setup, enabled and configured correctly by default on uBlue projects like Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin. - Installing them within a container; be it though Toolbx or Distrobox. This is what Fedora Atomic initially intended (and probably still does).
- Some users got a lot of mileage from utilizing
nixto this effect. - If all else fails (or if you outright prefer it this way), you can always layer it through
rpm-ostree.
the fact that Fedora is the only (at the least that I know of) distro that has proper SELinux implementation.
AFAIK, openSUSE Aeon(/Kalpa) does as well*.
Thank you for the kind words 😊!
Though, in retrospect, I hope the recommendation for Linux Mint works out for their issues regarding ACPI power states. Perhaps a bigger departure from Ubuntu (if at all) would have been beneficial here.
Maybe PikaOS?
But, IIRC, they are not innovative like CachyOS is; CachyOS actually tries to push performance enhancements forward. PikaOS, on the other hand, only implements the improvements found by others (like CachyOS).