So all I know that the Linux mascot is a penguin and Arch users meme about using Arch. Jokes aside I’m planning on making to the jump to Linux as I’m planning on getting a tower PC. I recently got a steam deck and that kinda demystified the (unrealistic) expectation I had of Linux was all command line stuff and techno babble. This all very future oriented questions* as I haven’t even picked out hardware (probably gonna go prebuilt since I do not trust me) and there’s also the matter of saving up the money for a new PC.
As for my use case (cus I know some software is wonky on Linux compared to windows) it’s mostly between games running on steam, which most of my games play fine on the steam deck, and essays and note taking for my college classes, which I use libre office and obsidian (with excalidraw to hand write my notes) saved to my proton drive and also sync those documents between my surface laptop and home laptop
My ideal OS would be plug it in, let it do… things… and it’s ready to be a PC to install steam and stuff
But first question, as someone who isn’t tech inclined and tinkering is pretty much just a few VERY basic settings in the settings app on windows, so is there a Linux… idk what to call it, type? OS? Thing??? that runs out of the box without me having to install additional software manually or at least automatic setup wizards because like hardware, I do not trust me with setting it up. As for installing it after I wipe whatever computer I choose I assume I’m gonna have some OS installer on a USB and let it work its magic.
Second question, is there any specific hardware that works easier with Linux, I can’t really think of any examples cus with installers and updaters I just the computer handle it, like updating Nvidia stuff in the GeForce app for all I know it’s genuinely performing dark magic during the automated updates
Anyways I probably have way more questions that I have no idea I had, but to wrap up I’m not super tech inclined since I let automated stuff do its thang on windows (if the computer can manage and install it I’m gonna let it do that) and my pc mostly just plays games and do documents on libre office and obsidian
Generally, Linuxmint is the go to distro if you want something that holds your hand, but due to your limited needs outside of gaming and already having a Steam deck you should take a look at Bazzite, which is basically the desktop mode of the Steam deck for PCs.
As for hardware, one thing that can be annoying is NVIDIA (drivers), but that shouldn’t be a major problem with these distros as mint has a built in manager that does everything for you and with Bazzite you just need to specify your GPU when downloading and don’t have to do anything.
My recommendation is download the distros you want to try, get Rufus put them on a USB and then play around with them in demo mode, make sure everything works (graphic card, printers) and if you like the distro then start the installer. If you don’t like it you can just unplug the USB and reboot without anything persisting.
Super happy with Bazzite as a gaming PC. I think only a power user might find the “immutableness” of it annoying. You can still install OS packages, it’s just highly discouraged. 90% of the time you’d just be running Flatpaks (a mostly self-contained app that is easy to install and remove). I’m using it with an old-ish NVIDIA card and at first it was troublesome but I think it worked itself out after a few updates. AMD has better compatibility from what I understand.
The difference between NVIDIA and AMD/Intel is that Linux has a different way of handling drivers compared to windows (all drivers are part of the Kernel). AMD/Intel respect this. NVIDIA develop there drivers like on windows even though Linux is not designed this way. Also sometimes a new standard is made (eg Wayland) but NVIDIA has little to no support for a long time. Additionally there drivers are proprietary which limits how distros can/want to ship them.
Yeah I was gonna check out bazzite first then Linux mint
Another comment said that mint will wipe the windows install if I “run” it from an external usb so would I just boot windows like normal
Also does bazzite do the same thing cus I’m probably gonna use that first
As for that Rufus tool is the demo mode something I would use on the new pc
If you start the demo mode there will be no changes to disk until you open the installer for both distros. Most distros will boot into the demo mode directly from the USB and then have a shortcut to start installing. Once you have created a bootable USB it will work with any device so you can test the distros out now with your current machined and when you get the new one you can just plug it in there and see if there are any hardware specific issues
Try Bazzite:
It will give you an experience that’s familiar compared to the Steam Deck, and everything will “just work” out of the box.
It already has Steam installed and is a great desktop for general use.
Bazzite is probably the best recommendation out of everything I’ve seen so far. It is meant to like the Steam Deck experience on any machine, and if OP is already familiar with that, why not transition easily?
Couple the familiarity along with Bazzite being an immutable distro, OP can just roll back if they break something.
So what does immutable mean?
But I’ve seen it’s similar to the decks desktop mode from some other comments as well so that seems nice
I haven’t really interacted with desktop mode outside setting up emudeck (mostly DS and switch games)
So what does immutable mean?
The easiest explanation is: You can’t screw it up :)
That’s the reason I use it. It means that the system areas are read-only, and as a user you can’t “wreck” anything by mistake.
what does immutable mean?
Strictly speaking, ‘immutable’ means unchanging. For Linux distros, this means that (at least some part of) the OS is read-only.
On any distro, you could invoke the chattr +i path/to/file_or_directory command to make a file or directory of your choosing immutable. Thus preventing you or anyone else from changing that until it’s revoked.
The so-called ‘immutable’ distros employ this at the OS-level. However, their implementations (and the implications thereof) may vary significantly amongst them, unless they share some ‘heritage’.
Going over the many different implementations and their implications is out of scope for what this comment intends. Especially as the ‘immutable Linux landscape’ is fast moving. Thus, potentially making it outdated the very next landscape-defining change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX0f_vyV06k
This video explains it well
Yeah I’ve seen bazzite pop in a few steam deck discussions, some other comments recommend Mint how do they compare/differ
But like I said in another comment I’m not looking to tweak much, if anything at all, so I think it might be a good fit, definitely gonna take a look at that link when I’m off work
I completely agree, cannot recommend Bazzite enough. Installed it a year ago, first time linux, has been just smooth sailing
Linux mint is a common recommendation but I think a bad one (for beginners anyway), I highly recommend bazzite with kde, I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to do infinite troubleshooting if you add me on matrix (which is on my profile) I’ve onboarded many people and this is my experience with beginners
in short, linux mint is bad vs bazzite with kde for 3 reasons
kde is much more well supported and developed than cinnamon, it’s not even close especially if you care about security
immutable distros are much more forgiving for new people, immutable means that the core OS can’t be modified.
and finally bazzite has more up to date software, linux mint is a “stable” distro, stable in the linux context means unchanging, not unbuggy
if you don’t know what any of that means, go bazzite over mint, you’ll have an easier time.
So I think another comment talked about this but I’m having a brain fart so mint or bazzite (the distro) is like the os but how does plasma the desktop environment fit in?
Since the other replies don’t seem too beginner friendly I’ll try another way:
The desktop environment determines how your taskbar looks and your start menu. Also the edges windows and the buttons to close and minimize windows. Also some basic programs like the system settings.
Mint and bazzite are distributions. They bundle software, test it and sometimes develop it further (like the mint guys do with their desktop environment cinnamon). Also they provide the package manager and the packages and their versions that can be installed through it. (Others can always be installed through other means but a lot is available through it)
the simplest way to think about is the distro is your app store
what versions of apps available and how many as well as when they’re updated are determined by distro
the desktop environment is the thing you interact with aside from the installation of software, the entire gui
The desktop environment is just the graphical interface. The OS doesn’t handle the GUI(not directly), some people run Linux without a GUI at all, opting for life in the command line. (Don’t do that) Plasma is just a flavor of it that looks more windows like (but customizable beyond a windows user’s wildest imagination). Gnome looks more Mac like.
You might run across the term Compositor, this sits between the OS and the DE. IT handles graphical input(mouse, game controllers) and display. Wayland is newer with modern features, Xorg is technically more reliable but legacy and missing some modern elements. You don’t have to worry about this unless it comes up in a prompt when you install your distro. If it does, go with the suggested option in the prompt. Otherwise default to Wayland.
A whole bunch of software goes into making a distro a distro, and the desktop environment is a major component.
If you were to compare, say, Kubuntu to Fedora KDE edition, they would look fairly similar because both are using the KDE Plasma desktop environment. On Kubuntu you’d have the APT package manager, on Fedora you have the DNF package manager.
In a lot of cases, a distro will have their underlying tech, “We use this package manager and this feature and that feature, and we publish versions with the Gnome desktop, KDE desktop, xfce desktop and i3 window manager.” Or some combination thereof. Linux Mint for example offers their own Cinnamon desktop, MATE, and xfce.
If you’ve ever used an Android phone and swapped out the launcher, it’s kinda that.
As for you android analogy I’m locked on iPhone since I’m not the one paying the phone bill lol
As for the rest of the stuff I feel like that’s gonna make more sense once I actually use Linux cus I see the concept of ideas here lol
imo kde will give a bad impression of linux as it’s quite buggy and the taskbar is way too easy to fuck up completely
i have given linux to many many people at this point and neither of these things have been problems, when’s the last time you used kde?
I distrohop quite often, last time a couple of weeks ago. I tried nobara, fedora kde, and kubuntu. kubuntu was probably the best but some older games wouldn’t run, animations stutter so bad I had to disable them, themes didn’t work and some settings reset on every reboot. others had more serious issues, including constant crashing. I could blame it on nvidia, but cinnamon works just fine (except for one bug that took me over half a year to find a workaround).
and the taskbar… any time I try and resize it or move any item, it completely borks and it’s quite hard to fix.
I really like fedora out of the box but if you’re used to windows some will recommend Linux mint. In fedora there are a lot of packages installable via the software store as well as downloading app images and RPM files.
Mint vs fedora is completely irrelevant here. GNOME vs KDE is more important and fedora supports both.
Which packages can be installed is also completely irrelevant since you can use nix and distrobox and flatpaks on all distros. Package availability is no reason to choose one distro over another.
Distro - System level stuff. A “type” of linux. Mint, Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu etc.
DE (Desktop environment) - Surface level stuff, i.e. how it looks, behaves, and often what default apps you use for basic stuff like text editing. Gnome, KDE, etc.
Distros have a default DE but often provide different versions using others for people who prefer them.
You likely won’t need to interact with any of that other stuff except flatpaks. Just think of it as a form of distributing and running software.
The difference between distros are the package manager and choice of default software and settings.
E.g. Debian has no wifi enabled. Hence, ubuntu (which is like debian) is much easier because it’s user friendly. Ubuntu uses a disliked packaging format, snap, which is not used by mint. That’s why people love mint, becaus it’s as easy as ubuntu and has no snaps. Blablabla
Whenever you want to know some linux thing, read the arch wiki and you’ll know more about it.
Distrobox is like a vm, you spin up a distro within your OS with no overhead and can use arch on debian. Or ubuntu on arch. Or fedora on opensuse, or all at the same time because why not?
I’d try https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/ or https://vanillaos.org/ and install most apps as flatpaks. Vanilla is like ubuntu but you don’t mess with the underlying system. Atomic fedora is “the same” but with fedora style. Problems arise at the dev level, not the user level. It should be good to go on your system
Some distro’s still require you to setup those things yourself and in the terminal.
So bazzite and mint seem to be recurring themes here for my needs of something that works out of the box, do those need any set up or stuff? I don’t really know exactly what I’m asking here :/
Agreed here. On CPU side, don’t go with Intel 13th or 14 th gen, mostly due to the manufacturing defects, check gamers nexus on YouTube if you want to catch back up to speed, the new Intel stuff is fine manufacturing wise, terrible performance, check if the prices are good. GPU, NVIDIA usually has kinkier/ more annoying drivers, but if you want to play with AI or anything like that, NVIDIA is still better.
So I think I’ll look at mint then considering I have no idea what you mean by RPM files but app images ring a bell when I was getting yuzu set up on my steam deck
I second the recommendations for Mint. It should work out of the box. You can download the .iso file from their website and use a program called Rufus to write it to a USB stick. You should be able to plug it in, shut down windows, boot from the USB (may have to go into the boot menu in the UEFI), and it will install linux for you. This will be the same process for most linux distributions.
For installing software on Linux, there is an important difference between Windows and Linux; on windows you typically download an installer .exe and use that to install a program. On Linux, each distro has its own “package manager” which functions a lot like an app store on a phone. The package manager will install the program for you and take care of keeping everything updated for you, so if your GPU drivers, steam, or whatever else needs updating, just run an update on the package manager and it will do everything for you. Some will support automatic updates, so you may need to google how to turn that on for any given distribution’s package manager.
In terms of what hardware works better, most folks will tell you to use AMD graphics cards over Nvidia, but that is about it. Nvidia still has proprietary drivers which don’t always play nice with linux, but as an nvidia user myself, the problems seem to be getting fewer and fewer.
