Mint was my “gateway distro” to get away from windows as a daily driver. It still is my daily driver and it’s given me enough guardrails to not screw it up too badly and learn.
I’m looking to go further up stream towards Debian. I’ve looked at arch and “arch that’s not allowed to be called arch because it has a gui installer”, but I’m not ready/able/“risk-tolerant-enough” to keep that stable as my daily driver. Fedora dormant seem quite right for me.
I really like mint, it meets my needs, has treated me well.
From experience, ignore your instincts and give pure Arch a try. It’s a lot more stable than you’d think, and their wiki has very thorough instructions for everything.
It’s a bit of a trial by fire on your terminal knowledge, but you’ll learn a ton in the process. Worst case, you get fed up trying and just go to Fedora or something after.
i dont have the energy or patience to go to a wiki for my OS, i just want it to work and not be proprietary. besides setting up wine staging and pipewire it’s generally been smooth sailing
I’m with you here, sometimes I’m really lazy and don’t want to mess with it. Other times I’m hell-bent on doing something I know how to do in a GUI through terminal.
Mint has let me keep my system OS rock solid, and I’m not afraid to try about anything in the vm. Reinstall when time permits or just roll back to a snapshot.
I’ve got time shift installed, but I use my computer for work, so there’s some draw to stability and having everything just work.
I would echo that but suggest going to EndevourOS. EOS is a lot easier to install for normal people. What you get is insanely close to pure Arch.
I agree that running Arch is easier than people think. It is very stable. Also, because everything you could want is in the repositories ( and up-to-date ) it does not become a spaghetti like mess over time. No more third-party repos. No more PPAs.
I’m sure it’d be fine, I’m probably not willing to put in the right amount of effort. I think a big fear for me is I use the computer for work, and while I have others, I prefer this one. I may not have the 15-30min to research and resolve something I did to myself.
I also try not to be the person who asks for help on the same question for the 17th time.
So far I’ve always been able to find answers in documentation or communities. Turns out I’m not so unique. ;).
Has to be Manjaro or EndeavourOS. If they’re just getting their teeth in, my guess is on the former.
I looked at Manjaro VERY briefly, and I played with Endeavor a bit. I installed several distros as VMs just to poke around. I found Debian familiar which is likely the main reason I find myself leaning that way.
Thanks for this recommendation as it’s potentially a logical step. I’ve thought about this but not researched it enough, yet. I don’t understand enough about the differences yet. Hypothetically, do I need or want Mint on Debian, or do I just want to get the real deal? Not posing the question to you, just what I’ve yet to research further. Mint is currently working fine for me, so there’s no rush.
Going straight to Debian isn’t hard. LMDE might have newer packages, IDK. I used Debian 12 for a bit and still use it on my server. Mint offers a great stock experience but Debian has a hard to explain vanilla coolness if you will. I would also recommend considering OpenSUSE if you haven’t looked at it.
