I need a safe, stable Linux distro for use in a shared living room to do tasks listed below

[IR76]

I have been using arch Linux for a bit now on the shared pc that is used by myself and my less tech literate family member and operating it has been fine but it's constantly got issues.

 

I've reached a breaking point and I've had enough of the instability of arch (at least with my knowledge for fixes)

 

I just need a stable safe out of the box distro to do the following:

 

YouTube and streaming services in a browser.

 

A bit of gaming.

 

And other browser based tasks.

 

The specs of the machine are:

Intel core i5-7400 CPU 3.00Ghz

 

8gb of the RAM

 

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050

 

If you have any questions please ask.

 

I have used Ubuntu and Mint in the past but I would like an overall opinion on which is best for my use case in terms of stability and ease of use for myself and my less tech litterate family.

 

Thank you.

 

 

[Needfuldoer]

I'd just default to whichever variety of Ubuntu LTS comes with the desktop environment you've been running on Arch. (That way they don't have to re-learn everything from scratch again.)

[IR76]

3 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

I'd just default to whichever variety of Ubuntu LTS comes with the desktop environment you've been running on Arch. (That way they don't have to re-learn everything from scratch again.)

I've been using KDE Plasma and after a quick search it seems I need Kubuntu.

 

Am I alright to download this? 

 

https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

[Needfuldoer]

1 minute ago, IR76 said:

I've been using KDE Plasma and after a quick search it seems I need Kubuntu.

 

Am I alright to download this? 

 

https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

Yeah, go with 24.04 LTS unless you like upgrading everything every 6 months. 

[IR76]

Just now, Needfuldoer said:

Yeah, go with 24.04 LTS unless you like upgrading everything every 6 months. 

Got it thank you very much I highly appreciate the suggestion.

[xAcid9]

25 minutes ago, IR76 said:

I have been using arch Linux for a bit now on the shared pc that is used by myself and my less tech literate family member and operating it has been fine but it's constantly got issues.

What kind of issues? 

[IR76]

1 minute ago, xAcid9 said:

What kind of issues? 

The issues I ran into were stuff like this:

 

Sometimes the shutdown process would break with the TMP directory requiring a force shut down.

 

If you turn on the pc then the TV it won't output until you hit the power button which shows the terminal for shutdown.

 

The apps sometimes broke.

 

On my first install I did open source GPU drivers which didn't let me run 4k 60 hertz so I did a fresh install again with proprietary drivers which worked.

 

Other issues too so I will now switch to Kubuntu for stability but the same UI as Needfuldoer recommended which I agree with.

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, IR76 said:

On my first install I did open source GPU drivers which didn't let me run 4k 60 hertz so I did a fresh install again with proprietary drivers which worked.

I hope you dont intend on doing 4K on most paid streaming services. Because they have heavy restrictions on how to do it on PC. Even with the proper setup you have to stand on your head to get it to work. Thats part of the reason HTPC's have fallen out of favor, because remember, all PC users are dirty little pirates according to these media companies. 

 

3 hours ago, IR76 said:

If you turn on the pc then the TV it won't output until you hit the power button which shows the terminal for shutdown.

Sometimes TV's act funny when they are used as PC monitors, from personal experience as well as things I have read.