“support” being a vague term. Steam runs everywhere, they don’t even use Ubuntu for SteamOS. And it’s actually easier to install AMDs rocm on other distros and ofc Ubuntus drivers are outdated.
Mint is a straight swap. Knowing everything about your PC is so much work. I would rather just game and not have to be a programmer to not see ads every 5 seconds.
There are better "gaming" distros, but unless someone uses their PC exclusively for gaming, when it comes time to install other kinds of software for school or work or whatever, they're going to get thrown in the deep ends of Linux.
But guess what does have two decades of software and tutorials to set up just about everything in existence? Ubuntu, and by extension Mint.
Sure you can squeeze more out of your games with something like Bazzite, but the general platform that anything Linux-native targets is usually Ubuntu. Sure there's distrobox and stuff that's like telling the average gamer to go set up WSL. It's not hard per-se but the amount of things to learn increases very quickly.
Thus, even though Ubuntu is very average these days, it's still a safe bet for new users.
I just want to point out that even bazzite comes with the productivity basics: full libreoffice, Thunderbird, gimp and other graphics software available on installation. VSC has an official (and inofficial) app available as well.
Not saying you're wrong of course, but as someone who uses his computer to game, consume music and media, and dabble in coding and game modding I haven't missed anything so far (am very new to Linux myself). Though I'm sure that a more discerning user may find those essentials insufficient.
Probably not the best example in retrospect, since its only gotcha is that it's Fedora Atomic.
Mainly my point is if you Google "how do I install X" you'll get plenty of Ubuntu results out of the box, which when you're an overwhelmed newbie is very helpful. Like, if you start with nothing, you just kissed goodbye to your Windows 11 install, you dive head first into Bazzite and you've got Firefox, Discord and Steam going, everything feels good. Then you start looking up "how to install X on Linux", first you get a bunch of Ubuntu results, then you swap Linux for "bazzite", nothing because it's fairly new, but it's Fedora so you look into Fedora but you realize Bazzite is actually Fedora Atomic and it's a whole other way of installing things, maybe you just try running a .run or .sh file, or you give up and try to just make install from source but t̶h̴e̸ ̵f̸i̸l̸e̷s̸y̶s̷t̸e̶m̴ ̴i̶s̸ ̷r̷e̴a̴d̴o̷n̶l̷y̷ a̴n̵d̸w̷̪͊h̵̟̏y̴̻͛ ̸͉̒i̶͖͆s̸̪̎ ̸̗̏Ḷ̴͌i̶̞͑n̶̫͂u̵̯͋x̴͓͋ ̵͈̀ŝ̴̗o̴̱̒ ̴̭̎d̸̨͊a̷͙̽m̵̘̈ṇ̸̐ c̷͓͝ò̵̙m̵̲͛p̷̖̓ĺ̴̰ĭ̵̥c̵̰̽ă̸̩t̷͗ͅe̵͈̍d̵̻̃.
I would argue Ubuntu kinda sucks, but it sucks in a familiar windows-y kind of way where pretty much everyone knows how to fix it or make it work usually by blindly executing stuff. Not great, but it works, and it doesn't require much thinking. Ubuntu is pretty much the only distro you can find your way without caring what a distro is just by the pile of tutorials for Ubuntu or assuming Ubuntu. Case in point: Linus from LTT when he tried to apt install steam on Manjaro, after nuking his entire DE on Pop_OS using the same command. It's entirely his fault, but that's still a common and frustrating experience and they add up.
Same reason sometimes I just tell people honestly, just stick with Windows. Linux would be a good fit, it would be way better, but they're not willing or accepting of the learning curve. Sometimes you're just better sticking with what most people use, so everyone knows how to fix your problems.
I'm fairly tech-savvy and have double-booted Arch in the past, but I'm still having headaches trying to understand how my new Atomic Fedora (Aurora) install works. I love the idea but a little documentation wouldn't hurt.
Debian. Same base, no extra bs. Rock solid and reliable. Outdated packages are a non-issue for a casual user. Gaming needs a bit of configuration but it perfectly doable. Installation is apparently difficult but... I don't know where that comes from. It may not be Calameres-smooth but it's perfectly understandable even to a novice.
Mint and Ubuntu are easy to setup, and will generally work well out of the box, so great recommendations for people who have to ask.
Personally I use Manjaro, which also works out of the box, and I like the rolling release scheme, my wife uses Debian and both work great for games.
My wife had some initial problems with Debian and PipeWire sound system but it works fine now, and in fairness she is a musician and uses some weird audiosystem that can record 8/16 channels. So I bet "normal" systems wouldn't have noticed any problems.
I still use pulse audio because I'm lazy, and if it works don't fix it.
Microsoft has been radicalizing me more and more these days.
I have an i7-12700k and an RTX 3080. I heard Nvidia is tricky because of drivers, but any issues with using intel CPUs with Linux?
Where should I, a complete noob, begin? I’m intermediately technical, moderate/semi-intermediate with command line, etc. Is Mint the best way to go?
I tried pop_OS! a few years ago but my computer couldn’t run it well for some reason - lots of lag despite having an i7 7700k at the time and installing it on a separate spare SSD. Reinstalled it twice but still had issues with noticeable lag in the OS. My specs were great, but that OS turned me off unless it has substantially improved since then.
that OS turned me off unless it has substantially improved since then
That was my experience with Pop!_OS too. I tried switching to it after finding that Ubuntu has a lot of bloat.
In the end, I went back to Ubuntu, because it works right out of the box - even with my Nvidia graphics card! (only from 20.04 onwards; 18.04 and older versions were problematic)
When I reinstalled Ubuntu, I chose the custom / minimal installation option, and that cut out most of the bloat.
I'm personally not a fan of Mint - tried it for a month or so. My impression is that if it works with your muscle memory, it works well. If not... then even Windows ends up more user-friendly.
I'm particularly not a fan of the "start menu" because you don't really get a lot of space for pinned apps, and there's no way to really modify that. I ended up liking KDE quite a lot more. It takes a bit longer to set it up to what you like, but its customization means that while there's a bigger upfront cost to setup, it's much smoother once it is set up.
I'm using KDE Neon (Ubuntu + KDE), which I'm pretty happy with. But I'm also debating whether to switch to Kubuntu (also Ubuntu + KDE for some reason)
not so much as Mint being the “best way”, but Mint being a safe, friendly starting point – once you get your feet wet, you can start looking around at the other options (which can be pretty overwhelming initially) – and just as a lot of people use Mint as a jumping off point, a lot of people also stay with Mint
and yes, despite distro-hopping being a running joke, it exists because Linux distros make it relatively easy to do
the biggest change to keep an eye on is the development of atomic (“immutable”) distros – anything that makes it harder to bork your system and easier to recover afterwards (including recovering all of your configurations and customizations) is getting a lot of attention
They're simple to get into for anyone with an introductory interest in Linux, although I haven't liked Ubuntu in ages. My Mint setup took a bit of effort but it does game pretty well. Fedora could be a good recommendation too, I liked that when I tried it out. There's some gaming focused distros like Bazzite or Nobara, but I feel like I can get a "normal" distro working to a similar state for games, and I don't have to hope that a small team doesn't fold and my distro loses updates support.
I'm trying out OpenSUSE Tumbleweed this week, wanna see if it's a good alternative to Fedora.
I don't dare try Arch yet, and thus I also wouldn't recommend it to any new user.
I switched to Tumbleweed from Mint a few months ago (having toyed with many distros over the years, and recently Nobara and Manjaro).
I like Tumbleweed - it's a good mix of up to date packages, system stability (so far, I accept rolling release is inherently always going to be risky) and a good ecosystem. I find it very user friendly thanks to Yast, but with lots of freedom for power use.
I also like that it's a an offshoot of a European Linux company rather than a big tech company like IBM. I'm not a fan of the direction redhat has taken and the impact some of its priorities seem to have on Fedora. I'm sure SuSE impacts a lot on OpenSuSE but of the big enterprise Linux ecosystems I currently prefer it over Ubuntu and Redhat.
people asking for those recommendations are newcomers to Linux and Ubuntu and Mint (especially) are both very newcomer friendly with large support communities when any questions come up
once they become more familiar with their system, they can turn to the Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Handbook as they fine-tune things
but neither Mint nor Ubuntu are going to hit you with any big surprises – unsupervised access to AUR in Arch, long compilation times in Gentoo, obscure (and semi-documented) programming language in Nix, or dealing with commands that are a little bit different in BusyBox, musl, or OpenRC systems …
I made the switch to Linux just some days ago, and landed on bazzite. It is fairly idiot proof with an option to roll back the entire system and is generally focused on gaming and ease of use.
So far i am having a blast, almost everything works right out of the box, and the things that didn't were very minor and fixable with a bit of web search or asking on a relevant discord. I didn't have to use the dreaded CLI much either yet - maybe 4-5 times - and when I did, I just followed a step by step guide to do something.
My personal recommendation would be choosing gnome as the DE, going with plasma seems more logical coming from windows, but I find it a lot simpler getting used to the differences by using an entirely different ui than windows. Forming new mental pathways is easier than adjusting something practiced a particular way for years.
For reference: bazzite.gg
E: meant to reply to the guy asking for better choices
That's fair, although personally I would still recommend KDE. KDE is only superficially windows like - it's highly customisable so you can switch the GUI up. The windows GUI is also successful for a reason so it's good to have it as one option - you don't have to sacrifice a basically good GUI when you leave windows. (Microsoft constantly seems to want to tinker with it but then has to reintroduce the basics as that's what people like - such as the latest nonsense with Windows 11). But with KDE you can also recreate other GUIs with relative ease (even most of Gnome).
Personally I find GNOME too rigid and inflexible - it has a clear design philosophy which is good, but if you're not on board with that philosophy then it can be frustrating to use as they're so focused on that design philosophy. It's a take it or leave it DE in many ways, while KDE (and many other DEs) offers more choice and flexibility.
All good points, I also read somewhere that KDE has slightly better performance. Maybe I'll make the switch eventually too, but for now I am very happy and am discovering desktop computers all over again. Perhaps gnome is a good starting point for linux, with fewer, more streamlined options. And the new ui factor I mentioned, which was ultimately the deciding point for me
When it comes to gaming I've found them to be mid at best, but I think that's exactly why they get recommended a lot. Stability (as in using old but not too old drivers) and a broad and easily accessible knowledge base in term of tutorials and answered newbie questions.
I've been using Pop for a few months as my daily driver to replace Windows. It had been a few years since I'd used Linux and I wanted something stable for Nvidia drivers. I've had next to no issues with it.
Mint lets you install Nvidia drivers pretty easily nowadays. My surfacebook 2 has a 1050 mobile built in and it couldn't have been easier to get the drivers installed.
Ubuntu I don't recommend, nor Pop_OS simply due to Snaps. Where as flatpak is the standard built into Mint.
I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. Up to date packages but with relatively good stability due to how they're tested. Rolling release distros are always more risky, but for gaming you probably do want up to date packages to ensure graphics drivers and bleeding edge versions of Proton, Vulkan and even Wine work as expected. I think that's most true for newer games and those where you may need to use Proton Experimental. Its also a good broad distro for other uses, rather than solely focused on one element like gaming.
Steam Deck is based on Arch; it's not quite rolling release but they do relatively frequent updates to their version of Linux so a rolling release distro is probably going to be closer to it than most annual release and certainly LTS released linuxes.
Nobara is also a good distro to consider. It's made by the guy who game up with Proton-GE and is gaming focused. It's also rolling released and optimised more for gaming including the kernel. I use it on a living room PC for the past 5-6 months and like it so far.
Reposting my answer from a similar thread. TLDR: I took the plunge on OLED TV in 2021 as a primary monitor and it's been incredible
I've been using an LG C1 48" OLED TV as my sole monitor for my full-time job, my photography, and gaming since the start of 2021. I think it's at around 3000 4500 hours of screen time. It averages over 10 hours of on time per weekday
It typically stays around 40 brightness because that's all I need, being fairly close to my face the size. All of the burn-in protection features are on (auto dimming , burn-in protection, pixel rotation) but I have Windows set to never sleep for work reasons.
Burn in has not been a thing. Sometimes, I leave it on with a spreadsheet open or a photo being edited overnight because I'm dumb. High brightness and high contrast areas might leave a spot visible in certain greys but by then, the TV will ask me to "refresh pixels" and it'll be gone when I next turn the TV on. The task bar has not burned in.
Experience for work, reading, dev: 8/10
Pros: screen real estate. One 48" monitor is roughly four 1080p 22" monitors tiled.The ergonomics are great. Text readability is very good especially in dark mode.
cons: sharing my full screen is annoying to others because it's so big. Video camera has to be placed a bit higher than ideal so I'm at a slightly too high angle for video conferences.
This is categorically a better working monitor than my previous cheap dual 4k setup but text sharpness is not as good as a high end LCD with retina-like density because 1) the density and 2) the subpixel configuration on OLED is not as good for text rendering. This has never been an issue for my working life.
Experience with photo and video editing: 10/10
Outside of dedicated professional monitors which are extremely expensive, there is no better option for color reproduction and contrast. From what I've seen in the consumer sector, maybe Apple monitors are at this level but the price is 4 or 5x.
Gaming: 10/10
2160p120hz HDR with 3ms lag, perfect contrast and extremely good color reproduction.
FPSs feel really good.
Anything dark/horror pops
A lot of real estate for RTSs
Maybe flight sim would have benefited from dusk monitor setup?
I've never had anything but a good gaming experience. I did have a 144hz monitor before and going to 120 IS marginally noticable for me but I don't think it's detrimental at the level I play (suck)
Reviewers had mentioned that it's good for consoles too though I never bothered
Movies and TV: 10/10
4K HDR is better than theaters' picture quality in a dark room. Everything I've thrown on it has been great.
Final notes/recommendations
This is my third LG OLED and I've seen the picture quality dramatically increase over the years. Burn-in used to be a real issue and grays were trashed on my first OLED after about 1000 hours.
Unfortunately, I have to turn the TV on from the remote every time. It does automatically turn off from no signal after the computers screen sleep timer, which is a good feature.
There are open source programs which get around this.
This TV has never been connected to the Internet... I've learned my lesson with previous LG TVs. They spy, they get ads, they have horrendous privacy policies, and they have updates which kill performance or features... Just don't. Get a streaming box.
You need space for it, width and depth wise.
The price is high (around 1k USD on sale) but not compared with gaming monitors and especially compared with 2 gaming monitors.
Pixel rotation is noticeable when the entire screen shifts over a pixel two. It also will mess with you if you have reference pixels at the edge of the screen. This can be turned off.
Burn in protection is also noticable on mostly static images. I wiggle my window if it gets in my way. This can also be turned off.
I have an Alienware AW3423DWF since about a year now with about 4000 hours on it. Very happy with it, won't be going back to anything else until another technology with per-pixel lighting comes along. I also have a Dell with VA panel as second monitor and it looks like 90s technology compared to the OLED panel.
The only bad thing I can say about the monitor or OLED in general is that the dimming is fairly aggressive, i.e. on bright scenes you will not even get close to the advertised brightness. Makes the OLED monitors pretty much unusable in HDR for desktop usage. Mostly unnoticable in gaming and movies.
There also is some text fuzzing with high contrast text, not distracting for me but might be for others.
but how is the current compatability with Linux these days?
No issues here on Linux. With Plasma 6 you can even do HDR properly. Many games work with the latest Proton-TKG on Wayland and the HDR layer, some still need gamescope to properly work. mpv does movies/shows in HDR with the HDR layer, no issues.
Always check out rtings.com for their monitor ratings, they do the most thorough tests of all:
Download the latest Proton-TKG (Wine master) from ProtonUp-QT
Start the game you want to launch with it at least once
Search for it with protontricks and take note of the APPID: protontricks -s NAME
Set the registry entry: protontricks -c 'wine reg.exe add HKCU\\Software\\Wine\\Drivers /v Graphics /d x11,wayland' APPID
Set the launch arguments in Steam to: ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 DXVK_HDR=1 DISPLAY= %command%
Switch the Proton version to the Proton-TKG you just downloaded
Enable HDR in KDE settings and launch the game
Some games crash on start, anti-cheat does not work and some games don't look right. So make sure to check that everything looks good once you're ingame.
Thanks! I managed to get it working in some games and it seems to output HDR. Sadly it doesn't seem to support fractional scaling (at least with two monitors), and since I use 175% scale that messes it up. Gamescope seems to work pretty well though, both for HDR and for fractional scaling.
I have a Mini-LED HDR monitor (Acer XV275K P3) and it looks great. It gets super bright with black blacks. I didn't want to risk burn-in, it covers the full 1000 nits that most HDR content expects, and it was only $550 which was quite a steal. There's occasionally a little blooming in dark scenes in movies, but in games it never gets that dark and there's mostly very bright things instead.
I have HDR working on Plasma 6 with an AMD gpu on NixOS, although recently Gamescope/Steam has been a bit bugged. MPV still plays movies perfectly though. I even set up inverse tone mapping so SDR videos get converted into HDR, which looks a bit better than normal SDR imo.
Woah I’ve never heard of inverse tone mapping. I always assumed HDR metadata was burned into the file, didn’t realize it could be “faked.” Fascinating. What settings do you use if you don’t mind me asking?
My current MPV config is here (in the NixOS syntax but it should be understandable). The profile is what applies the SDR->HDR effect, only if the video is in SDR.
I have target-peak set to 550 nits which seems okay, but I have control + scroll wheel bound to turn it up and down. If you go to 200 or below it seems to disable the effect, which is good for 2D animated content. I also generally turn the saturation up to like 15 or 30 or something since it can look washed out. Gamma looks best at 0 generally, but in dark scenes to combat blooming I might turn it up to like 5 or 10. I haven't messed too much with the tone mapping curve but I'm using what the documentation says is recommended so it seems good.
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