What distro would you recommend for a beginner?

[wasab]

3 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Dude, most mainstream desktops are on Windows. How is quantity relevant if you want a working system?

The fact I see no real life reason to see it not working and I don't like to fabricate any such reasons out of thin air. 

[Dat Guy]

Please consult the relevant social media for an approximate number of systems that failed to boot with ridiculous systemd error messages.

[wasab]

5 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Please consult the relevant social media for an approximate number of systems that failed to boot with ridiculous systemd error messages.

I also see a similar amount of boot errors on system without systemd. Your point?

[Dat Guy]

My point is that SysV init was much more reliable and never decided to break anyone's network.

[Nettly_]

Imma end this right here right now: systemmd is meh, but it works a good chunk of the time. Yes, systemmd has a lotta problems that need fixing. Yes SysV is more reliable but reliable doesn't always mean better. I actually do not know much about either, i am still learning, but can we talk about distros again? not this? Take this to DM's if you wanna continue fighting

[Dat Guy]

2 hours ago, SafyreLyons-5LT said:

can we talk about distros again?

Better not, that will inevitably lead to distribution wars again...

[reniat]

In an attempt to get back on topic, i'm in the debian/*buntu camp. Mint was my first exposure to linux (before their big security fiasco), and whenever friends/family want to try linux I point them to ubuntu as it just seems very easy for people used to windows environments. You don't need any terminal use out of the box if you dont want to. I'm not saying ubuntu/debian is the best, or the easiest, i'm just saying it's a popular option thats mainstream enough that people who aren't as tech savvy can usually get help through googling without having to learn way more than they wanted to.

 

The linux distro that I personally have used most recently is WSL on windows. Can that count as a distro now that it's got a real linux kernel in it (as of WSL 2)?  

 

Unfortunately I've never tinkered with LFS so I don't have any input there.

[Infrid]

On 5/5/2019 at 5:29 PM, SafyreLyons-5LT said:

If you know me, you know I am asking out of curiosity to see what people think are good distributions. If any questions on why me, a very much experienced Linux user, would ask this question DM me.

 

Now I want to also see some reasoning (eg. "because this distro's GUI is simple to navigate and folders are not set up like a drunk *COUGH COUGH* SAFYRE!!!" In which if you do say that I will reply "HOW DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT OS I MADE!?!?!?!?" (see I am tired but curious))

GNU/Linux has fundamental on political movement and idealism, you'll find any sort of believing, ideas and trade-off for resolving problems.

You will often find some people arguing on systemd, tgz/xz and any sort of movable part, but very few have the balls, experience and time to improve such tech.

 

I would recommend OpenSuse leap, because is a neat system and has a very good panel (yast) for system configuration.

Some people will prefer to configure everything by cli and conf files, and it's actually fun to be honest, but today's system are so complex that a little help would not take the fun away.

 

When you feel confident you can move to Fedora, it has a very solid package manager (with real transactions in case something goes wrong) and if really start to like the political/philosophic aspect of GNU/Linux try Debian based distro and check why repositories are organised in free and non-free.

 

Don't forget to read around why we have such system, read about the GNU project and its political movement and the minds behind a system we give too much for granted today.

[Dat Guy]

1 minute ago, Infrid said:

very few have the balls, experience and time to improve such tech.

The systemd project leaders are known for not accepting even bug reports - don't even think about trying to contribute code to fix what you consider a bug, they won't take it anyway.

[Infrid]

It's more complex than that, you can send your pull requests and patches to the project and file bug reports. Like every other big software project, especially for such critical parts, makes people busy and you need to be good to manage people too and trust me it's hard. Eventually you can always fork or propose your alternatives.

[Dat Guy]

I doubt that forking systemd would make life easier for Linux users. Previous attempts to do so have not really revolutionized Linux.

[Infrid]

any software projects can fail for various reasons, it's not just I have an idea