Which Linux distro should I use?

[Luca Rallis]

Hey guys!

 

So I am currently a Windows 10 user and I'm considering switching to Linux. I'm really not happy with Windows at all. Right now I'm trying to decide which distro I should use if I choose to make the switch. There are so many options, it's making the decision hard. I was hoping you guys could help me.

 

I'm looking for something that:

• has a modern/sleek design.
• is decent for gaming.
• offers a decent amount of customizability.

 

Also, is there anything I should know before I switch?

 

Thanks!

[Radium_Angel]

8 minutes ago, Luca Rallis said:

Hey guys!

 

So I am currently a Windows 10 user and I'm considering switching to Linux. I'm really not happy with Windows at all. Right now I'm trying to decide which distro I should use if I choose to make the switch. There are so many options, it's making the decision hard. I was hoping you guys could help me.

 

I'm looking for something that:

• has a modern/sleek design.
• is decent for gaming.
• offers a decent amount of customizability.

 

Also, is there anything I should know before I switch?

 

Thanks!

There are two main cores:

 

Debian and RedHat.

Anything else is an offshoot of those two, or you get minor distros like Arch, but for now we'll concentrate on Debian and RedHat.

 

I use Ubuntu because the software I need is programmed for Debian (Ubuntu is a Distro of Debian) 

For gaming, Steam exists, but you get a fraction of games that have been ported over from their Windows counterparts.

 

So, before you make the switch, have you looked to see if the games you like even exist?

[manikyath]

12 minutes ago, Luca Rallis said:

•  
• is decent for gaming.

from experience, being brutally honest, none.

 

ubuntu or one of its close derivatives would be your best bet, because its got the biggest resource of people explaining how to do things, or people troubleshooting issues that were encountered.

[Radium_Angel]

15 minutes ago, manikyath said:

from experience, being brutally honest, none.

Now now, if it's on Steam it mostly works 

TBH, I've had good luck doing a direct compare between a few games that are cross-platform, but if Steam has 10,000 games for Windows, *nix has 1,000, with 90% of those being "visual novels"

 

[TopHatProductions115]

Manjaro Linux is nice...

[vorticalbox]

7 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Now now, if it's on Steam it mostly works 

TBH, I've had good luck doing a direct compare between a few games that are cross-platform, but if Steam has 10,000 games for Windows, *nix has 1,000, with 90% of those being "visual novels"

 

Linux has Minecraft and dungeon defenders what more do you need? 

[manikyath]

8 hours ago, TopHatProductions115 said:

Manjaro Linux is nice...

i've had manjaro for a good while, the issue with manjaro is that you're left sipping off of arch linux documentation for support, and past that are basicly on your own.

[NelizMastr]

10 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

There are two main cores:

 

Debian and RedHat.

....and SUSE

 

10 hours ago, Luca Rallis said:

I'm looking for something that:

• has a modern/sleek design.
• is decent for gaming.
• offers a decent amount of customizability.

As a newbie, any Debian derived distro is a decent choice. I personally like Mint a lot, which leans greatly on Ubuntu for packages. 

Customization wise, any distro will do as you can choose the Desktop Environment you like (such as KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, LXDE, Unity (RIP)) and you can customize those to your liking as well. 

 

Gaming is a mixed bag. If you depend on AAA titles, Linux is a shit show. Don't bother if you want something like say BF1, PUBG, Fortnite, CoD etc.

[Linus_torvalds]

On 6/25/2018 at 10:24 AM, manikyath said:

i've had manjaro for a good while, the issue with manjaro is that you're left sipping off of arch linux documentation for support, and past that are basicly on your own.

But you do not need anything past that When you search support for linux you end up in archwiki. That's last hope for every linux user.

Also arch users are more advanced then let's say ubuntu users. And they can help you much better thet ubuntu/mint users.

Manjaro linux is the best in my opinion for begginers. And arch is the best for advanced users. I use arch i'm not supposed to say that i am advanced user but i can fix my systemd no matter what. For about 4 years i do not remember time when i had to reinstall linux no matter what i did

8 years ago when i started with ubuntu i broke it frequently and tried to recover but usually i had to reinstall. This is how i learned linux and i am still learning

[manikyath]

4 hours ago, mate_mate91 said:

But you do not need anything past that When you search support for linux you end up in archwiki. That's last hope for every linux user.

Also arch users are more advanced then let's say ubuntu users. And they can help you much better thet ubuntu/mint users.

you've clearly never had some of the issues i had..

 

and as for the more advanced users.. yes, completely agree, but in all honesty the arch userbase is so full of elitist jackasses i honestly dont even want to read half of the posts they produce.. and being told you're a moron for having more than 1000 packages installed doesnt help if you're just trying to get google chrome to play nice.

 

i've dealt with the arch userbase before, i love using arch, but when it comes down to it going for a *buntu derivative just makes my life so much easier. and last time i checked, computers were invented to make stuff easier

[jde3]

On 6/24/2018 at 1:44 PM, Luca Rallis said:

Hey guys!

 

So I am currently a Windows 10 user and I'm considering switching to Linux. I'm really not happy with Windows at all. Right now I'm trying to decide which distro I should use if I choose to make the switch. There are so many options, it's making the decision hard. I was hoping you guys could help me.

 

I'm looking for something that:

• has a modern/sleek design.
• is decent for gaming.
• offers a decent amount of customizability.

 

Also, is there anything I should know before I switch?

 

Thanks!

You can use whatever you like best. The power of Linux is choice. I've used Linux since oooh.. 1996~ about? So I know quite a lot about it and for most of that time it's been used as my primary desktop.

 

Some Distro's I like. Gentoo/Funtoo (probably too hard for a beginner), Sabayon, OpenSUSE, Red Core. (So yes.. pretty much in the Gentoo camp because I like a lot of system flexibility.) Intel has a very very fast distro called Clear Linux that isn't just for Intel hardware. I also like a lot of the BSD and you might take a look at GhostBSD (though this is more for servers)

 

Environments I like. Gnome, XFCE, KDE, LXQt .. Gnome and XFCE have the least amount of problems but aren't perfect.. KDE is ok.. but resource hungry.

 

Any Linux distro can game pretty much. Almost all support Steam and there are a surprisingly large amount of tipple A titles on steam for it. Linux is very good at emulation so all your retro game emulators will run fine. And... you can do windows games with Wine.. Wine is kind of a funny boat as it often slow or buggy but can be very fast (even faster than windows native) .. it takes a lot of tuning and practice an easy way to get into Wine is the app PlayOnLinux.

 

Your performance in games is going to depend a lot on the drivers, Linux tends to get new drivers later than Windows. Both AMD and Nvidia have pretty decent drivers though. Windows usually pushes more raw frame rates on a wide range of titles, however Ubuntu has been shown to run faster that Windows in some benchmarks when everything is equal. (Linux tends to have a faster scheduler than Windows). Vulkan is very fast on Linux. DirectX is still the most popular library though and it's Windows only (sometimes Linux ports pass DirectX calls to OpenGL making them slower)

 

One thing to note.. a lot of people say "Linux has no software" and that is just not true. You can do just about anything on it you can do with Windows (and sometimes more) the trick is figuring out what app to use and what apps are good. Look around for app reviews sadly there are not enough of them but I'm delighted every time I find a new one that is great. Most of the Linux software stores are bad so you'll have to re-learn how to find new software. The process is different than windows and that throws a lot of people off and leads them to the false conclusion there just isn't any software.

 

By in large Linux apps tend to be very clean and free of nagging ad's or bundled software.. and almost all of them are sinkable and match your desktop theme. Some nice themes to look for are Numix (of course), Faba / Moka, Pop, Paper, Papyrus and Ark. Nice fonts are Noto Sans and Droid.

[newgeneral10]

Ubuntu is going to be the easiest to get up and running.  They have great documentation and try to make everything as user-friendly as possible.  Ubuntu is basically made for new Linux people.

 

Arch has some of the best performance for gaming and stuff, but it's very complicated.  Arch is not recommended for new users, but they do have excellent documentation.

 

Fedora is my distro of choice and is sort of between the two.  Installing Fedora is as easy as Ubuntu but there are some tricky things if you want to use DRM stuff (took me a while to watch twitch videos).  Fedora is mostly geared towards developers but I play games on it just fine.  There's no reason to be scared of Fedora.

[Wild Penquin]

Well, a lot of your points do not really depend on the distro. More specifically:

 

On 27.6.2018 at 11:27 AM, jde3 said:

I'm looking for something that:

• has a modern/sleek design.

The design depends on the DE, not on the distribution per se. Popular DEs are: Gnome, Unity, KDE. Popular lightweight DEs are: Mate, XFCE, Cinnamon (and this is by no means conclusive list(s)!). Usually a distribution can install a multitude of these, but sometimes one of them is a primary one and they have polished it's packages more than the others (while in some distributions, one of them is just a default and others work just as fine after installation).

 

On 27.6.2018 at 11:27 AM, jde3 said:

• is decent for gaming.

Gaming on Linux can be a bit rough around the edges, because of many reasons which I will not dwell here (what do you mean by "decent"? Depending on the definition, it is not entirely unreasonable to answer "none" here).

 

Don't install base Debian (but a derivative with newer packages), or any LTS distribution (I'd also steer away from Fedora). It's not a question of the distribution chosen but more of the choice of GPU; go with a NVidia GPU, or feeling adventurous (and preferentially using a rolling-release, but less stable / user-friendly distribution like Arch) and go with an AMD GPU.

 

On 27.6.2018 at 11:27 AM, jde3 said:

• offers a decent amount of customizability.

What do you want to customize? Generally distributions do not differ in this regard. If it is the DE, then KDE is often quoted as most easily customizeable (also, personally I'd recommend KDE to any newcomer to Linux DEs). If you are technically inclined, can program and want to dwell into the source code, it can be done in any distribution. Some make it more easy to incorporate your own source code patches (well, Gentoo - others don't offer tools to automatize this that much).

 

[manikyath]

3 hours ago, Wild Penquin said:

Gaming on Linux can be a bit rough around the edges,

i like you, you're an optimist.

[wasab]

On 6/25/2018 at 4:07 AM, NelizMastr said:

....and SUSE

 

As a newbie, any Debian derived distro is a decent choice. I personally like Mint a lot, which leans greatly on Ubuntu for packages. 

Customization wise, any distro will do as you can choose the Desktop Environment you like (such as KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, LXDE, Unity (RIP)) and you can customize those to your liking as well. 

 

Gaming is a mixed bag. If you depend on AAA titles, Linux is a shit show. Don't bother if you want something like say BF1, PUBG, Fortnite, CoD etc.

Hey, why don't you sudo and WINE it up?

[vorticalbox]

3 hours ago, wasab said:

Hey, why don't you sudo and WINE it up?

As much as wine wants to tell you it's not an emulator, it is and it isn't great for newer games running dx12.

 

Under wine I've had Photoshop running but it crashes when editing large amounts of raws. 

 

I believe the best way is to run a virtualised environment and pass through the gpu. I've seen a video where this was done to play GTA V.

[wasab]

7 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

As much as wine wants to tell you it's not an emulator, it is and it isn't great for newer games running dx12.

 

Under wine I've had Photoshop running but it crashes when editing large amounts of raws. 

 

I believe the best way is to run a virtualised environment and pass through the gpu. I've seen a video where this was done to play GTA V.

if it is indeed an emulator, then it should be able to run everything without crash, abeit at an abysmal performance. the fact it doesn't clearly tells you it is not an emulator. 

[Wild Penquin]

6 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

As much as wine wants to tell you it's not an emulator, --

Well, we're getting into semantics here, but by the usual definition of an emulator, wine is not an emulator:

 

Quote

In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the host) to behave like another computer system (called the guest).

 

(from Wikipedia)

 

Wine is a collection of libraries that implement the functionality of Windows libraries on top of a compatible OS and GUI (usually Linux and X.org or OS X). It is a compatibility layer. It only runs on hardware / architectures that could run Windows. It can not (and does not) emulate a whole computer, and as such can not run on architectures (non-x86) which can not run Windows, and does not (in fact) emulate a full-blown computer system. The difference might seem subtle, but actually isn't and is quite significant.

[kokakolia]

It’s Mint Cinnamon for me. It’s not the most prettiest distro. But it looks OK. At the very least everything works and the software centre has most of the key apps. Ubuntu is a close second for me, but not everything works as well as it does on Mint. The other Ubuntu flavours are overhyped garbage (IMO). 

 

With other Linux distros you’ll have to learn how to use the terminal to install various package installers that don’t come built in. And then you have to go through different repositories...Maybe it’s not as complicated. 

[Giganthrax]

For gaming?

 

None.

 

Windows is THE gaming OS.

 

Linux is better only if you need a more lightweight OS for a media machine (watching video, music, surfing the net, etc.) or you're a programmer and/or you need it for a server and/or something specialized like that. 

[kirashi]

On 6/24/2018 at 2:44 PM, Luca Rallis said:

• has a modern/sleek design.
• is decent for gaming.
• offers a decent amount of customizability.

• Out of the box? Elemental OS. or Ubuntu. But with enough time and effort, ANY distro can be made "modern and sleek".
• Ubuntu or bust, only because it's what SteamOS is using as its' base. If not Ubuntu, Debian, since that's what it's based on.
• All distros offer customizability. You just have to learn how the Terminal works.  

[Dat Guy]

"Decent for gaming" -> use Windows. You won't be happy with anything else.

[Filthyscum]

On 6/24/2018 at 11:44 PM, Luca Rallis said:

Hey guys!

 

So I am currently a Windows 10 user and I'm considering switching to Linux. I'm really not happy with Windows at all. Right now I'm trying to decide which distro I should use if I choose to make the switch. There are so many options, it's making the decision hard. I was hoping you guys could help me.

 

I'm looking for something that:

• has a modern/sleek design.
• is decent for gaming.
• offers a decent amount of customizability.

 

Also, is there anything I should know before I switch?

 

Thanks!

Solus, their Steam integration is good

[wasab]

On 7/9/2018 at 2:43 PM, Giganthrax said:

For gaming?

 

None.

 

Windows is THE gaming OS.

 

Linux is better only if you need a more lightweight OS for a media machine (watching video, music, surfing the net, etc.) or you're a programmer and/or you need it for a server and/or something specialized like that. 

Ps4 runs on bsd and Android runs on Linux. Both platforms are more than sufficient for gaming needs. 

 

Even a lite Linux distro is sufficient for gaming needs.  In fact, any platform can be sufficient for gaming needs if developers develop for them. Linux has enough developer support nowadays to be a serious gaming platform thanks to steam.