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New to Linux? Ubuntu Isn’t Your Only Option

Ubuntu’s popularity often makes it the default choice for new Linux users. But there are tons of other Linux operating systems that deserve your attention. As such, I’ve highlighted some Ubuntu alternatives so you can choose based on your needs and requirements—because conformity is boring.

AceFuzzLord ,

I can’t say I can fully complain about Ubuntu when Mint came about because of it. Also because I have no other choice than to use a Ubuntu server distro for one of my classes.

The funny part about that is our instructor had us install a GUI and didn’t choose gnome because he doesn’t like it. He said it’s a pain to use, which I don’t have an opinion on either way since I’ve only ever used it for a combined total of less than a year.

dog_ ,

Ubuntu isn’t your only option

Thumbnail shows Pop!_OS which is a fork of Ubuntu.

caseyweederman , (edited )

For now. They’re switching to Debian.
Edit: I think I was thinking of Linux Mint?
Edit again: I was wrong twice, it was Vanilla.
https://linuxiac.com/vanilla-os-announces-major-shift-moving-from-ubuntu-to-debian/

kautau ,

New article: Debian isn’t your only option

caseyweederman ,

Yeah but it’s the best one

brax ,

Step 1: install Debian
Step 2: install a bunch of packages essentially making it Ubuntu

princessnorah ,
@princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Step 3: Don’t install Snap & have a better time

brax ,

Very true. Snaps are the worst. I don’t even get why Canonical hasn’t decided to just drop them already

princessnorah ,
@princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Sunk cost fallacy?

conciselyverbose ,

Because they want control.

brax ,

Then they need to make apt not work lol

conciselyverbose ,

They don't need to make it impossible to do anything else. They just need to make their shitty proprietary solution the lowest friction.

malo ,
@malo@lemmy.world avatar

You are doing it wrong, then.

Buffer3304 ,

I was looking for some information on this but couldn’t find anything. Do you have a link or any more info on them moving to a Debian base?

caseyweederman , (edited )

Hm. I don’t think I dreamed it, but now all I can find is a Reddit post where mmstick says the next version will be based on Ubuntu 24.04.

Maybe I was conflating it with Linux Mint.

I was thinking of Vanilla. Thanks for the callout, I was lined up to be very confused at the next Pop OS release.

Arello ,

Linux Mint already has an alternative Debian edition maintained.

Buffer3304 ,

Ah that makes sense. I didn’t know about Vanilla so thanks for updating that.

I know Pop is updating with their own DE “soon” and thinking they were changing their base as well would have been quite an undertaking

caseyweederman ,

Cosmic does look really nice.

dog_ ,

I thought the DE was already out.

caseyweederman ,

They’re making their own from scratch because modifying Gnome became too much of a pain. It’s got the same name, which is confusing.
This is probably why I had it in my head that they were doing the Vanilla thing, in that they are both departing from their long-standing fork.

dog_ ,

I mean I get that, but I could’ve sworn cosmic was already out.

caseyweederman ,

Yes, Cosmic, the fork of Gnome, is out. However, Cosmic, the ground-up rewrite, is still in development.
Cosmic is dead, long live Cosmic.

dog_ ,

Ohhhh I see. I had the assumption that the ground-up rewrite was already out. Thanks for saying this.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ubuntu used to have the mission of being Linux For The Masses. Their marketing material used to include a bunch of trendy diverse young people standing on their logo. I’m pretty sure they’ve completely abandoned that cause in favor of trying to out-corporate RHEL. Their present-day web page has more corporate logos on it than the starting grid at a NASCAR race, and I challenge you to find the link to download “Normal Ubuntu for normal desktops.”

JubilantJaguar ,

How much did The Masses pay for what they were using?

Comradesexual ,
@Comradesexual@lemmygrad.ml avatar

ZorinOS was my first. I highly recommend it to people who want a GUI and a good looking distro.

openSUSE Tumbleweed if you want super up to date with GUI.

Fedora sucks imo. I know many people love it, but I always had issues with it and had to look stuff up online, which I never had to do with other distros.

EndeavourOS ended my distro hopping. I just don’t need anything. It’s perfect for me.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

The problem with going for alternatives is support.

Imagine picking a random Linux flavor, then trying to figure out how to change settings, only to get either hundreds of different answers.

FrostyPolicy ,
@FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi avatar

Depends on the alternative. E.g. Fedora and OpenSuse have very active communities and lots of help available.

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

You’re not going to get a telephone number you can call, but the documentation maintained by Arch is far superior to that offered by Ubuntu. If support is your biggest concern, you’re far better served by Arch.

nooneshere ,

Lol I chuckled at that telephone number part

Specal ,

That’s fine for someone willing to read documentation, the average user would rather read a forum post, which Ubuntu has a shit load of posts about using and fixing it.

Facebones ,

What are good dual boot friendly options? I still game too much to ditch windows and dual booted Ubuntu but meh Ubuntu lol

captainjaneway ,
@captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

Linux Mint is a popular alternative.

But all options can be dual booted as far as I know!

Facebones ,

Some don’t play nice with dual booting. I’m honestly not familiar with the “why” but a couple of distros I looked at (one was one of the gaming forward ones, forget which) are outright like "don’t dual boot this and if you do don’t come crying to us.

I’m guessing they struggle seeing other file system types but I have no idea.

captainjaneway ,
@captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

Oh that is news to me. I always assumed a partition was all it needed.

Facebones ,

I honestly don’t know what the issue is, but if the distro page is like “don’t fuckin do it” I just believe them 😂

conciselyverbose ,

It could just be that windows is obnoxious and likes to do its best to break shit, and they don't want to deal with helping people figure out how to repair it in limited dev time.

474D ,

Mint sets up the entire dual boot and partitioning during the install. You just choose how much space for Mint. Very easy and intuitive.

f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4 ,

I consider Linux Mint Debian Edition to be the starter distro that Ubuntu was, >10 years ago.

Facebones ,

Would you recommend something different for someone who doesn’t need a “starter” but still wants to dual boot? I’m not super unfamiliar, I just haven’t bothered for a long time

Gutek8134 ,
@Gutek8134@lemmy.world avatar

I’m using Pop OS, pretty good IMO

Facebones ,

Flashing pop onto a USB now, let’s give it a go! Any tips on gaming tools? I think I read about some newer compatibility thing but can’t remember what it was called lol.

Gutek8134 ,
@Gutek8134@lemmy.world avatar

I’m using it mainly for development, keeping all the gaming to windows

IrritableOcelot ,

I mean anything but the atomic distros will dual boot just fine. GRUB is GRUB. I have the most experience with Debian-based distros, but they all dual-boot just fine.

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

Is Garuda Linux really that good for gamers?

PainInTheAES ,

It ships with some gaming stuff, uses zen kernel, has some performance mods (I guess), and a theme as ugly as sin. But you can make any distro do what it does. I’m sure it’s in the same territory as Nobara.

smileyhead ,

It’s Arch Linux with preinstalled stuff right from the install. I won’t recommend it, you still would need a good amount of knowleadge first to drive an Arch based system.

Imagine a Windows modification with some gaming tools preinstalled and scripts for one-click install things that usuallu take five clicks. Great, but only to speed up things you do often.

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

Thanks for the heads up. I lost interest with “good amount of knowledge” (which I have almost none)

aarRJaay ,
@aarRJaay@lemmy.world avatar

Anyone else notice that the first three are Ubuntu?

No_Eponym ,
@No_Eponym@lemmy.ca avatar

Corporate wants you to find the difference…

aarRJaay ,
@aarRJaay@lemmy.world avatar

“They’re the same picture” Pam from The Office

TheGrandNagus ,

Imagine putting Manjaro as reliable and cutting edge over, say, Fedora.

lemmyvore ,

I mean, why not? Manjaro has recent packages and actively focuses on a user-friendly experience. Which includes things like a nice installer, good automatic support for hardware out of the box, a nice GUI for the package manager, GUI managers for drivers and kernel versions, it’s based on the stable Arch branch and it comes with the LTS kernel etc.

Back a few years ago when I was looking to move my desktop away (from Ubuntu, ironically) I downloaded a bunch of distro ISOs (the usual suspects, we all know them, Pop, Mint etc.) and tried the live version to see how it goes. I picked Manjaro because it was the only one that did everything perfectly. Recognized all my peripherals, network shares, played all videos and music, printer, whatever.

(I know the usual arguments against it, btw, but it’s mostly unrelated stuff or outright false.)

giacomo ,

People lose their shit about Manjaro pretty frequently. It’s pretty much a meme at this point.

anon232 ,

There’s a huge hate bandwagon for Manjaro and I don’t really understand it. I don’t consider myself a linux expert and maybe that’s why but I felt like Manjaro was very accessible to someone new to Linux who wanted to use Arch. You have the ability to install what you need while also having a relatively stable system. I enjoyed that it came with software that I would normally be using but I know there’s a lot of diehards who want just Linux and to install things themselves, in that case they should just use plain Arch or Endeavor, but I think for others Manjaro is perfectly fine.

nooneshere ,

Manjaro Xfce was the chosen one that managed to attain my trust for Linux. I’ve been running manjaro for 1.5 years. Not a single unexpected breakage to count

PainInTheAES ,

Do you have proof of Manjaros usual arguments being unrelated or false? The things I’ve read over the years seem like valid criticism.

lemmyvore ,

There’s generally three “arguments” that keep being quoted.

  1. There’s the criticism about them messing up their website or the bug that DDoS’ed the AUR. While valid, it has nothing to do with the stability of the distro.
  2. There’s the people who claim it “just broke” on them. This is people new to Linux who get bad advice and do things like switch to unstable, use non-LTS kernels, install drivers from AUR etc. and of course it breaks, as would any distro where you do foolish things. And if you said “it just broke” about any distro you’d get asked things like “what did you do” or “this kind of stuff is not for newbies”. But it’s cool to say it about Manjaro.
  3. There’s the argument that Manjaro holding back Arch packages for 2 weeks breaks AUR, because when you try to compile an AUR package it might not find the super-new version of a library it needs. While this is technically possible, the chances of it happening are super small. AUR packages are often not that recent, some are years-old. Secondly, if this were such a common problem it would affect everybody on any Arch distro who didn’t upgrade in 2 weeks – and it just doesn’t.
PainInTheAES ,

I think it does. If you make the choice to poorly manage your distro’s tools/website it shows that you aren’t responsible enough to manage the distro. They also had the laptop purchasing issue.

I’m not saying every distro needs to be super organized and testing shit but they should be before I recommend it to someone. Especially when there are other Arch based distros that don’t have the issues.

The newbie stuff is fair enough. I do think they get extra flak here because the distro was marked as Arch for noobs.

I don’t think that would be the case. The AUR helper would pull the updated dependencies from the Arch repos which would not be available in Manjaro’s repos

They’re valid arguments and people should be informed about it mainly because of how it was recommended a lot for beginners.

Rossphorus ,

During my six month usage of Manjaro (my introduction to Arch-based distros), my desktop broke four times and booted me to the terminal. Almost once a month. I told myself this was the price you paid for living on the edge, using a rolling release. I switched to EndeavourOS and have not had a broken desktop in two whole years.

Manjaro’s handling of AUR packages is fundamentally wrong and with their design decisions it cannot be fixed. You either give up the AUR entirely, or resign yourself to constantly breaking AUR packages and having to try and fix them.

Manjaro’s handling of kernels via a GUI sounds good until you realise it’s entirely manual and if you don’t keep checking you will end up running an unsupported, out of date kernel with Arch packages that expect a newer one. Again, Manjaro violates Arch’s golden rule of avoiding partial upgrades by holding your kernels back until you manually update them in their GUI. If you’re running an Arch-based distro 99% of the time you want the latest kernel and an LTS kernel as a backup, but these are already in Arch as packages (and are thus updated in lockstep with your packages, as designed) so you don’t need Manjaro’s special GUI. Now if you wanted a particular kernel for some reason then sure, but Manjaro’s GUI doesn’t even let you pick the exact version you want anyway! All you can pick is the latest version of each major release.

If you’re anything like I was at the time, you think you like Manjaro but what you actually like is Arch. Manjaro just gets in the way.

lemmyvore ,

my desktop broke four times and booted me to the terminal

How did it break? It never broke for me once in the last 4 years.

You either give up the AUR entirely, or resign yourself to constantly breaking AUR packages and having to try and fix them.

I constantly have dozens of AUR packages installed. I have 70 right now. They don’t break. Everything you’re writing here is false.

Sometimes dynamic linking fails for an AUR package over 6 months or more but that’s because I don’t update them automatically (because none of them are critical). A simple rebuild fixes that.

Manjaro violates Arch’s golden rule of avoiding partial upgrades by holding your kernels back until you manually update them in their GUI.

It’s not holding kernels back. The version you select receives updates. It’s not bumping major versions of that’s what you mean, but that’s exactly how I want it. I don’t want the distro doing that for me. I do not need the latest kernel.

you think you like Manjaro but what you actually like is Arch. Manjaro just gets in the way.

Wrong again. I do not like several decisions in Arch and it requires more attention than Manjaro. Manjaro attempts to offer stability and low maintenance and actually does a good job of it.

I’m an experienced Linux user but I’m lazy and I want my cake and to eat it too. I want recent packages but I don’t want the risks associated with bleeding edge everything. Manjaro gives me that. You can call it “Arch for lazy people”, I don’t mind, it’s true.

Rossphorus ,

My DE broke because Manjaro added untested/beta patches from upstream, sometimes even against the developer’s word. This is something that Manjaro is known for. Guess who inspired dont-ship.it?

Also I would appreciate you not calling my statements on the AUR false. I have personal experience on the matter so we can play my experiences against yours if you like, or we can listen to the official Manjaro maintainers reccommending that it not be used, as it is incompatible with the Manjaro repos. By design Manjaro holds back Arch packages, which means AUR package dependencies often do not match what is expected. This is not false. Can you use the AUR? Sure, but you must keep in mind that Manjaro was not designed for it and it will break AUR packages sometimes. Sometimes it’s as simple as waiting a couple weeks for Manjaro to let new packages through, but sometimes you can’t just wait several weeks and you need to fix it yourself.

And yes, Manjaro does hold kernels back because you have to specify when you want to move off a major release. You can accidentally be using an unsupported kernel and not even notice. Ask me how I know. Manjaro literally requires more maintenance than Arch on this front.

I can’t comment on what maintenance Arch requires that Manjaro doesn’t, as I run EndeavourOS. I’ve found it to be everything Manjaro wishes it was - a thin, user-friendly wrapper around Arch.

Just remember that Manjaro’s official response to them forgetting to update their SSL certs was to roll back your clock, putting everyone at risk of accepting invalid certs in the process.

lemmyvore ,

My DE broke because Manjaro added untested/beta patches from upstream, sometimes even against the developer’s word.

What DE? What patches? And isn’t Arch the upstream for Manjaro?

By design Manjaro holds back Arch packages, which means AUR package dependencies often do not match what is expected. This is not false.

The possibility that AUR dependencies may not be met is not false. What is false is the claim that it’s a common problem. The chances of it happening are tiny. If it did happen to you please mention what AUR package(s).

It’s very hard to argue with people who claim “it broke” but never give concrete examples of what broke. They make these outrageous claims and put the burden on you to prove them wrong. It’s either disingenuous or done by spiteful, clueless people who genuinely don’t know what they did wrong but then shouldn’t go around throwing mud.

And yes, Manjaro does hold kernels back because you have to specify when you want to move off a major release.

That’s a feature, not a bug. I’ve already explained that I dislike any distro that forces major kernel changes on me. Forcing people to switch major kernel versions is dumb and dangerous. That’s high maintenance for me, waking up one day to find out I’m on a different kernel and that shit doesn’t work.

everything Manjaro wishes it was - a thin, user-friendly wrapper around Arch.

That is not what Manjaro is nor wishes to be. It’s a derivate distro with its own goals and I find it unbelievable how much some people can hate that. It’s not the first distro in history that’s downstream of another, Debian has dozens of distros using it as a base and you don’t see this kind of extreme reactions. I’m baffled by it.

Manjaro’s official response to them forgetting to update their SSL certs was to roll back your clock, putting everyone at risk of accepting invalid certs in the process.

Ah there’s the old chestnut. Thank God this irrelevant fact exists; what would people bring up otherwise when all else fails.

Rossphorus ,

When I say upstream that’s technically upstream of upstream - I mean the application repositories. Manjaro has in the past applied their own patches on top and broken functionality. The example that comes to mind is the most heinous one where a Manjaro maintainer patched in three pull requests (including CLOSED ones) and pushed the result to their stable repo: source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/…/986 source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/…/1035 source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/…/1060 forum.manjaro.org/t/…/11 . Applying patches to upstream is not unheard of, but you don’t do it without contacting the developer, because they are the ones going to get the bug reports. Manjaro did not notify the developers. It’s this recurring trend of unprofessionalism which has tainted Manjaro’s reputation, whether it’s letting their SSL cert expire FOUR separate times (once, maybe twice is understandable, but more speaks to underlying issues in structure), or applying patches to applications without developer’s knowledge and shipping it to users, or the two separate times they DDoSed the AUR servers with a poorly thought out pamac feature, etc…

I give no concrete examples because this all occurred almost two years ago for me at this point. I’m not out to capsize Manjaro or bring about it’s demise, so I don’t write down every package that breaks for use as ammunition in internet debates. I just want a distro that works for me. Manjaro wasn’t that for me so I moved on. You asked why some people don’t like Manjaro and I’m simply explaining why.

The AUR issue happened often enough for me to consider it frequent. It happened most often with niche packages, like the various MSP430 toolchain packages which I often needed, but I explicitly remember it happening at least once on fairly mainline packages like cemu (or was it yuzu?).

The problem is not that Manjaro allows you to pick whichever major release kernel you like, but rather that it doesn’t account for this in the packaging system. You could be running kernel 6.4 (i.e. not officially supported anymore) and update your packages, resulting in a broken system with no warning. By decoupling the kernel version from the package system Manjaro unleashes a whole new failure mode. This would be fine if they accounted for this in their packaging model, but they don’t (because Arch doesn’t and it would be too much work to implement and support it themselves, presumably. It sounds quite tough). This tool, which is designed to make the system more stable as you say, actually can make it less stable!

Manjaro was sold to me as ‘Beginner Arch’, so I don’t know what to tell you on that front. I don’t think this is at all related to why people dislike Manjaro though: Nobody hates Ubuntu because it’s based on Debian, they hate it because of their decisions, like Snaps. Likewise nobody hates Manjaro because it’s Arch based, they hate it because of the decisions they’ve made. Manjaro isn’t the only distro getting hate, but it is probably the lowest hanging fruit due to all of the administative fumbles.

nooneshere ,

On a side note there’s no stable branch of Arch

Telodzrum ,

People love to bag on Manjaro, but I know a fair number of people who use it as their primary OS. Hell, I used it as mine for almost a year and a half; I only moved to Arch because I was super bored one weekend.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

I’m not saying don’t use it, I’ve used it in the past and they get some stuff right. The included programs are generally good choices, their customisations on the DEs differentiate Manjaro from others, the GUI app that lets you trivially install different kernels with the click of a button is great. Unfortunately it ended up causing breakages a couple of times, so I moved on.

I’m saying if I were to pick a word to describe it certainly wouldn’t be “reliable”, due to their whole holding back Arch packages but not AUR ones, leading to dependency conflicts.

I honestly don’t know why they don’t hold back AUR ones as well (or don’t hold back a week, a-la EndeavourOS). That’d solve IMO the biggest issue with the distro

1000069305

Plus the whole repeatedly not updating expired security certificates and telling people to just roll back their clocks to “fix” it.

If it happened only once, I’d chalk it up as an embarrassing albeit understandable mistake. But it’s happened, what, 3 times now? It’s an issue in itself, but it also brings into question what other stuff they’re messing up behind the scenes due to poor processes.

Telodzrum ,

That’s fair.

nooneshere ,

Aur is explicitly stated to be unsupported on Manjaro. I don’t think you can hate on them for this

wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository

TheGrandNagus ,

They should probably have big warnings when you actually try to go install something, then, rather than as a note in their wiki that very very few people will read.

corsicanguppy ,

“People I know” has never been a suitable equivalent to actual data, Mr Trump.

Telodzrum ,

The only data in this exchange is the anecdotal data I provided, get your head out of your ass.

nooneshere ,

Lol I agree

possiblylinux127 ,

Small complaint but the article is decent as a whole

TheGrandNagus ,

Agreed

kameecoding ,

Imagine putting Manjaro in the article instead of EndeavorOs

Owljfien ,

Manjaro was one of my first distros when I was still learning, when I installed it, it made Wayland my default but didn’t put in the required nvidia kernel parameters and I couldn’t boot. I didn’t even know what Wayland was to know why I couldn’t boot

ShortN0te ,

Manjaro: Reliable and Cutting-Edge Features

Rarly laughed that hard. Reliably is by defenition wrong. Manjaro delays packages a few days in their main compared to Arch this can cause issues and makes them not compatible with the AUR which one of the most advertised and enabled by default feature.

You can read more about other problems here, github.com/kruug/manjarno

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Yeah, that one made me chuckle as well. But I guess the article ‘had to be written’ for reasons & it does actually have some overview value & nice pics … which I guess is what new users have to go on before they actually dive in.

darkphotonstudio ,

I like that they hold the updates back. Manjaro is as reliable as any other desktop Linux I’ve used.

nooneshere ,

AUR is unsupported on Manjaro. Go back to Arch if you want that without issues

wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository

ProtonBadger ,

I tried out Arch for a while. The AUR is a bit of a wild west and at least I found it important to vet packages before installing them. It was a hassle. The same reason I only use one package from the OBS on Tumbleweed now.

oscardejarjayes ,
@oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net avatar

Manjaro? nah, don’t

panned_cakes ,
@panned_cakes@hexbear.net avatar

nice color scheme tho

Pantherina ,

Ubuntu is not even good in my opinion. At least not as a normie Distro.

Yes they have lots of docs online but “it is good because people think it is good” is not a good argument.

If you dont like GNOME I guess you will have a harder life anyways, as Distros with KDE are just a really hard task. Like anything stable is not a good idea, I at least reported 30 bugs that will never get backported fixes.

The fact that appimages are broken on Ubuntu is like the only thing that I completely understand and dont care about. Appimages needs to get their stuff together.

I hope many projects will convert from Appimage to Flatpak

github.com/…/Appimage-To-Flatpak

survivalmachine ,

I hope many projects will convert from Appimage to Flatpak

They seem like different projects with different goals. Appimages are portable executables.

Flatpak, to me, is something you install on a system and run with a flatpak runtime that is installed on your PC. I think its a fantastic way to sandbox programs with differing dependencies, but you still install programs and run them on your PC.

Appimage, on the other hand, is a wholly-contained executable. It is less efficient than flatpak in every way if you are installing apps on a system, but it is more portable. I can throw a handful of appimages on a USB stick and carry them from machine to machine (or mount an ISO in the case of VMs). I can plug in my “troubleshooting and development” stick to an otherwise barebones server at my datacenter, fix an issue with a comfortable set of useful apps, then unplug and leave the machine untouched.

Appimage is not a replacement for flatpak, but it has its own purpose. Snap is more similar to flatpak, but inferior in every single way. If we must get rid of one, can we phase that one out?

Pantherina ,

I mean, in theory you could also put flatpaks onto a usb stick and symlink the directories. But nobody really does that.

But really, I think this could be a cool GTK app.

You would copy selected apps to the stick and include a program, maybe even with a GUI, that can then symlink those apps to the system you are currently using.

ProtonBadger ,

Just be careful about trying to run your AppImages on a distro with for example only FUSEv3, because there are system dependencies.

Montagge ,
@Montagge@kbin.earth avatar

Weird as my AppImages work fine on Ubuntu 22.04LTS

PotatoesFall ,

why are distros with KDE a really hard task? users who want customizations will have a horrible time with gnome

Pantherina ,

That are two unrelated or even contradictory scentences.

Gnome is waaay more reduced, so it has less bugs. It will work way better on stable Distros.

Also because of some things (KDE 4.0?) GNOME became the default Desktop, and Distros orient at its release cycles.

KDE has so many bugs and fixes that I think calling 5.27 “stable” is misleading.

PotatoesFall ,

KDE is default on some distros and is supported directly as a variant on most major distros so I wouldn’t say GNOME is the default.

But my point is that at least some of the appeal of desktop linux is customization, and GNOME will be a disappointment for the users looking for that.

Otherwise I agree vanilla GNOME is rock solid and great for new users!

Pantherina , (edited )

I meant “shipping a KDE Distro is a hard task”, that should be more clear. For sure, KDE forever. GNOME is either CLI-only (even for basic settings) or install tons of apps that only do one thing (ThE UnIx pHiLoSoPhY) or dont change anything.

cypherpunks ,
@cypherpunks@lemmy.ml avatar

Disappointed Cricket Fan meme with Debian and Slackware logos, underneath screenshot of linked article saying that Ubuntu was one of the first Linux-based operating systems

qaz ,

one of the first

cypherpunks ,
@cypherpunks@lemmy.ml avatar

there were dozens of others in the 11 years between the first and ubuntu

prettybunnys ,

“Targeted at regular desktop users”

cypherpunks ,
@cypherpunks@lemmy.ml avatar

foundation.gnome.org/1999/…/gnome-1-0-released/

prettybunnys ,

I really feel like you’re missing the idea of that sentence deliberately.

What Linux distribution came before Ubuntu that was specifically designed to be user friendly for a non-technical user?

cypherpunks , (edited )
@cypherpunks@lemmy.ml avatar

What Linux distribution came before Ubuntu that was specifically designed to be user friendly for a non-technical user?

There were a bunch of distros advertising ease of use; several were even sold in physical boxes (which was the style at the time) and marketed to consumers at retail stores like BestBuy years before Ubuntu started.

Here are four pictures of the physical packaging for three of those pre-ubuntu desktop distros designed to be user friendly and marketed to the general public:

Photo of the cardboard packaging for Caldera OpenLinux Another Caldera box Packaging of SuSE 8.1 Mandrake 7.2 packaging

Ubuntu was better than what came before it in many ways, and it deserves credit for advancing desktop Linux adoption both then and now, but it was not “one of the first” by any stretch.

vzq ,

Yeah, no.

It was one of the first that didn’t make you to want to tear your hair out, I’ll give them that.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

That’s what I interpreted from the “targeted at regular desktop users” part.

Certainly not one of the first distros. But one of the first that almost any normal person would actually be able to install and use? Absolutely.

There were multiple before it that claimed to be easy for anybody to use, but most of them still weren’t by a long stretch.

TheGrandNagus ,

I don’t think that’s particularly wrong, tbh.

The key words being targeted at regular desktop users.

Obviously far from being one of the first distros, or distros with a GUI. But targeted at regular desktop users - i.e. “normies”? Absolutely.

People need to remember how crappy and janky the desktop was before Canonical spearheaded a lot of usability improvements.

If only they had continued along that path :/

lemmyvore ,

There were lots of distros that tried to target regular users before it. Mandrake/Conectiva/Mandriva, Corel, Mepis, Lindows, Linspire etc. just off the top of my head.

Hell, Lindows came preinstalled on Walmart PCs at some point.

corsicanguppy ,

Mandrake/Conectiva/Mandriva

That’s two.

(And hey, thank suse for killing Conectiva)

survivalmachine ,

targeted at regular desktop users

While Slackware and Debian are the oldest still-maintained Linux distros, I don’t think either had a desktop-first approach.

cypherpunks ,
@cypherpunks@lemmy.ml avatar

I considered putting logos of some of the many more user-friendly pre-ubuntu distros in the meme but was lazy.

Debian was intended to be for regular desktop users back then too, though.

ethd , (edited )

…Except Debian wasn’t even user-friendly when I used it two years after Ubuntu’s release. Red Hat Linux (not RHEL, which came later) was the only distro I’m aware of before Ubuntu that was more UX-focused.

Edit: I forgot about a few others — SUSE, Corel Linux, Lindows/Linspire, and others. Buuuuuuut most of those distros don’t exist anymore. I still stand by that Debian didn’t used to be as noob-friendly as it is these days.

philpo ,

SUSE?

ethd ,

I forgot about Corel Linux and Lindows as well now that I think on it.

1993_toyota_camry ,
@1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org avatar

Mandrake is another

nooneshere ,

Slackware is a garbage distro purely because it doesn’t have a functional package manager supporting dependency resolution

z3rOR0ne ,

Well as a psychopath, I always recommend beginners start with Gentoo. Guaranteed they won’t go back to Mac or Windows. /s

cbarrick ,

By starting the switch to Gentoo, they either learn Linux well enough to never want to go back, or they fubar their system so bad that they can’t go back.

possiblylinux127 ,

It would of been funnier if you left out the /s

bunjix ,
@bunjix@lemmy.world avatar

Back in early 2000s I ran Gentoo as daily driver for a year, while almost a Linux noob, but eager to learn. Installation instructions were long, but excellent.

It was fun, and worked well, but in the end the long compilation times got the better of me. Now I heard they are including binary packages, so the itch is coming back.

Right now running opensuse tumbleweed, which works fine, sometimes too smoothly.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Right? I’ve been on Tumbleweed a few years - never actually expected it rolling so effortlessly.

WeAreAllOne ,

No one ever recommends OpenSuse…

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

I am kind of afraid of the corporate influence on OpenSUSE. Same for the relationship between Ubuntu and Canonical

drndramrndra , (edited )

Is any popular stable distro free from corporate influence aside from Debian?

Adanisi ,
@Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

Not that I’m aware of. Debian is really an outlier, it’s strong community and motivation for software freedom is what makes Debian, Debian.

nooneshere ,

It also makes it more resilient in the face of hard times. Point to be noted

Kualk ,

It is not bad, but slow after Arch.

drndramrndra ,

Tumbleweed is recommended often here.

I occasionally try out Opensuse since like 2007, but I always find the alternatives better. Why Tumbleweed over Arch, why Leap over Fedora/Debian, why suse over RHEL?

atzanteol ,

Correct.

possiblylinux127 ,

It is problematic in my experience. I think it comes down to Suse as a company lacking direction

nelov ,

Yeah exactly this. Not only lacking direction but the Upstream SUSE recently decided to move away from traditional desktop. Instead, they now offer ALP, which stands for adoptable linux platform. So OpenSuse has no real dekstop products to build of, and the community has to do much more work in order to produce a stable desktop distribution. I was a happy user for a almost 2 years, but in that time the community had discussion about many “small” things, many of which were about “principles”. This made ne very uncomfortable in using it, since it felt that every moment the “community” would decide something that would significantly change everything.

2xsaiko ,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

openSuSE is cool. It was the first distro I installed way back around 2010 and still the one I would recommend to new people.

Sina , (edited )

There is a shill on YT called Linuxcast. (I like his content, but he is defo a Suse shill) Personally i’d rather fix some arch fuckups, then to not have the AUR. (or if I don’t have the AUR, then just use Debian)

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