What I love the most from bazzite team, is their work with distrobox . Install the distribution you love, follow their tutorial, boom, you get access to the AUR, and it has a minimal impact on your system.
Bazzite felt great to me, but too slow on my computer to enjoy it, so I hopped. But still, I love what they do.
7 months distro hopping sober here ! All thanks to CachyOS.
The installation is seamless thanks to calamares, there are some graphic tools that can help for beginners on arch. Their kernel might be one of the most optimised one to have a smooth experience while gaming. I do not play ressources hungry games, so I can not really tell.
After setting snapshots, I decided to experience it totally blind folded, just to see how long I can last on it. I update the system around 2 times a week, never read any changelog, just like any of the other distro I used… And for now, I’ve never had any trouble.
My system seems to be way smoother and more responsive than with fedora or tumbleweed.
I use my computer mostly for steam, heroic, librewolf and LibreOffice.
I use lawnchair as a replacement of the launcher from /e/OS. It is fast and customisable and has a more android type look. Fossify could be another option, maybe lighter than lawnchair.
The original one is smooth, but I do not like IOS launcher and icons type.
I use /e/OS on my OP7.
For the drawbacks :
It’s all I have in mind at this moment.
When I’ll change for a fairphone, before turning to /e/OS, I’ll probably try iodé OS. It seems they have similar privacy /anti-ad features but the OS might be less bloated and the system app are not rebranded, they keep their original name and icons.
Vanilla gnome isn’t for me so I used to install some extensions when I used it.
After a few hopping, I stopped using Gnome, because I find that painful to :
On KDE, I just have to set it as I need it.
If you do not change distributions everyday, then it’s not a big issue I guess.
But it might be troublesome for beginners trying distributions that have vanilla-close gnome to know that extensions exist. My needs are not complicated, so I only used extensions that allow me to have a dock on both of my screens, and to have the minimize button.
Go to settings;
type "build number " in the search bar;
click on the build number until you’re a dev.
Go into developer options;
type “background process limit”;
Choose the maximum number of applications you want to have in background.
Profit
What an horror ! What are you gonna do ? Use your working system ? That’s sad…
Linux has been the biggest rabbit hole I’ve been in. There are too many distribution for me to choose one without testing as much as I can. It made me change what I wanted/needed. I went from “I don’t want to use CLI at all” to “man, GUI is too slow for that”.
I tried many Debian children and grand children distributions, Fedora based ones (Nobara, atomics bases,…), Opensuse, NixOS, Solus, arch based distributions…
Now, I’m on cachyOS, that seems to be the good balance I need (for now), between GUI/already configured and “I can do it the way I want”.
One year after starting using Linux, I’ve switched from a 3060ti to a 6700xt, just because it made hopping easier.
If you exclude me not being able to settle down on a distro, Linux is a funny experience to me. My needs are not that big, as I just play some games, have a light need of an office suite. I can do anything I used to to in windows, but without Microsoft and his friends looking above my shoulder.
KDE : it’s the only DE where I can have 2 identical panels (app pined+ full system tray) on each of my 2 screens without installing extensions.
KDE can do what I want without having to look for extensions. Breeze theme is good enough for me, I don’t need to look for something else. So far it’s the best out of the box experience I had.
I prefer Gnome look, but I distr’hop too often to have the courage to setup the desktop every time.
GNOME with dash to panel. It allow you to clone it I guess. dash to dock allow you to copy the dock, so only the applications, not the systray.
KDE allows you to create panels on every screen, with the systray. You’ll have to replicate them manually (pin the applications or whatever you put on your first panel).
Others DE I tried had flaws for that :
Cinnamon cannot have all the systray on the second panel.
Budgie doesn’t allow you to have a panel on the second screen (but you can clone the panel on the same screen).
Mint is far better, I usually recommand it. But Ubuntu is still more popular.
I didn’t use Manjaro in many years, so I can’t judge it. The biggest problem I see with Manjaro is that it has access to AUR.
Manjaro has its own repos, and they take more time to release packages than Arch, which can be a good thing stability wise. But if you have applications from AUR installed then you might have conflicts with the dependencies needed and the dependencies used by the system.
As I said, I didn’t use Manjaro in a while, so I don’t know if it still a problem. If it is, then it’s a shame that the biggest advantage of Arch, the AUR, become that much a risk for the system.
I’ve seen a video where the guy installed steam on Ubuntu 24.04. Of course it was the snap. The guy usually tests distro to see of it’s easy to game on it. If the drivers are easy to install, etc…
He usually launches steam, then tests Valheim, Overwatch, Tomb Raider and cyberpunk.
Overwatch didn’t launch, cyberpunk neither. Valheim reported that a service didn’t launch. Tomb raider was OK.
Then he uninstalled the steam snap and installed the .deb one. Everything worked.
Enforcing packages is already something that people don’t appreciate on Linux, enforcing packages that don’t work is surprisingly hated.
Ubuntu is supposed to be a distro for beginners, how am I supposed to recommand a distro when I have no confidence the applications will work ?
It is on izzyOnDroid repo :).
It depends on the DE you use. I only know about 3 of them :
KDE can put as many panel as you want with all the system tray you want. You’ll have to pine the applications on each panel individually.
On Gnome, you’ll have to install extensions as dash to panel to have a panel that can be cloned.
On Cinnamon, you’ll be able to create a panel on the second screen, pine applications on it, but not all of system tray can be duplicate. There is a ticket opened for that : https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/9889
there are a few options to make gog/epic games works with heroic, if it doesn’t work out of the box :
I’ve seen that a protondb user posted about cyberpunk 2077 working on heroic launcher. I hope you’ll manage to have it too.
It depends of your definition of “hassle”.
I have 2 screens, I like to have the same panel on each screen, so when I use one in fullscreen, I can use the other one. So far, the only Desktop Environment that can give me that without too much difficulties, is KDE (even if I had to do it manually).
If you have the same use, maybe Kubuntu is a great choice. Tuxedo OS would be the same as Kubuntu, but you don’t have to change the priority of the package manager, because the snaps are already disabled. ( they got another load of malicious softwares in the snapstore recently, and some snap might not be as good as .deb or flatpak).
If not, Linux Mint is an out of the box distribution. If your hardware is the most recent one, they have a “edge iso”.
I would stick to basic recommendations and go from easiest to more and more advanced distribution, to avoid scaring beginners :
graphical installation + easy to setup (nvidia + codec )+stable : basically Ubuntu based distribution (but not Ubuntu, some snaps, i.e. steams, are more bugged than the flatpak and the .deb . I wouldn’t recommand a distribution that force bugged app for beginners ) + others
graphical installation : user will have to install nvidia drivers, codec or other useful things manually. The distribution can have several update a week with more risk to break, but is still considered solid and has a preconfigured way to roll back (snapshot) or more lightweigth and stable depending of the choice : fedora, opensuse tumbleweed, Debian+ others…
do it yourself distributions : for advanced users or motivated people that want to learn it the hard way. Distributions are up to date and have either a risk to break or user has to manually configure about everything (or both ) : arch, void Linux, gentoo, …
“Gaming” distributions could be placed between the 2 first categories as they are a kind of out of the box distribution but more up to date than the stable distributions.
Low ram/CPU consumption could be a side option at every step (easy, mid, hard)
I didn’t tried immutable distributions in a while, so I don’t know how to place them. My experience one year ago (kinoite, silver blue, blend os), was that it was more complicated than a regular distribution to do what I needed, but it was 1 year ago, so I wouldn’t know where to place it.
I’m quite a beginner in Linux, I love to test distributions to see how far I can go without using the terminal, and without breaking the distribution. So my vision can be quite narrow comparing to more experienced users.
I’m looking for a stable rolling too. But since yesterday, I’ve quit tumbleweed for fedora.
I left tumbleweed because I wasn’t able to find/install/update non flatpak application. The bug is only for KDE (gnome last ISO works fine, but not the KDE ISO). It was not much of a problem since everything else worked for me, but I find it weird to not fix that kind of bug, even on a ISO.
I guess void Linux would be the answer, but it requires a bit of work to set it up. Maybe, when I’ll have time to learn a bit more about it.
Slow roll would be another option I guess : 1 month slower than Tumbleweed, but it is still flagged as experimental by suse.
Solus has been revived last year. I tested their first iso from 2023. I found it laggy and didn’t liked the package manager, but 1 year can make big changes on Linux.
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Listen to “lady of the dark” from Sabaton, you’ll automatically create a woman character named Milunka whatever gender you are.
You’ll be fully immersed and you’ll feel Serbian even if you’re from another country !