Xfce might be the choice here, since most of benefits of Wayland won’t really apply to this machine (from an end user perspective) and it is relatively lightweight.
KDE currently. Modern GNOME drives me somewhat insane - too “streamlined”. I used WindowMaker for a long time and somewhat miss it, but I’ve had problems with compatibility with some software (Steam).
No desktop environment. suckless dwm. xmonad breaks all the time, i3wm is a nightmare with its config and status bar that sucks. dwm has problems, it’s not the easiest to customise and stuff.
It’s fast though, dmenu is the best launcher objectively, the status bar is something you literally just pass a string to via a script in xprofile.
I switched to just using a window manager two years ago, and I haven’t looked back since. Currently using qtile (WM written and configured in python) and it was pretty straight forward to install/configure. This is the video that made me want to try it out.
How does loading up a game through steam work with that? I’m a big fan of Sway (and i3) but I don’t use them on gaming focused systems at all, so I’m curious.
Mostly just fine with i3 my experience. Sometimes I have to move the game window to a different workspace if I want to interact directly with steam, or whatever else I have in the same workspace that I launched the game in, because it keeps forcing it self exclusive/full screen. In some instances, depending on the game, that might mess things up (crash, freeze, missing/stuck mouse cursor), but most of the time it works just fine.
Nobara has been an absolute pleasure and “works out of the box” experience. Mainly due to having things preinstalled or prompting for installation of gaming dependencies and software up front.
My “get into Linux gaming” distro was Pop. Solid distro tho and having isos depending on your hardware is super helpful and cuts down on a lot of issues you may encounter with other distros. You can’t go wrong either way. If you are looking for a “do it for me/minimal tinkering and installing” go for Nobara. If you are looking to “possibly tinker/install a bit more up front” go for Pop.
Edit: Forgot to mention my specs are somewhat the same as your. i5 with 16gbs of RAM, 1080ti and 1tb ssd. Both Pop and Nobara run smoothly with heavy games like Cyberpunk as an example.
I wasn’t familiar with Nobara before your comment but now I’m really intrigued. I loved Fedora generally, but getting it to work with my older mobile nvidia card was a nightmare. I might give Nobara a spin based on your recommendation. Thanks.
It is indeed. Just remember normal sysadmin/security stuff still applies just like any other OS/distro. For example, update regularly, backups, test your backups every now and then, etc.
Honestly you learn most by doing it yourself. Where to start depends on how versed you are with system administration, Linux, self hosting, etc. If you are an absolute beginner then start with Linux sysadmin videos (for example, what are the top most important things to do to a new Linux server, how to secure a Linux servers, etc). Once you have a list of “you should do x” then dive deeper into each topic to make sure you understand why and how.
Just don’t run random commands that you don’t understand what it does. You said you were learning right? Then take that command and learn why and what you are running.
I can help further if you have specific topics you need help with. This community is also amazing but some times a search on the community yields exactly or close to what you are looking for so leverage that too!
I’m using WMs for 10 years now. Started with Openbox, currently running Bspwm for quite some time. Eyeing on River but not switching to Wayland yet thanks to Nvidia.
Not trying to start an argument, just curious on your perspective. What makes gnome seem like windows? I really can’t see it myself. For me KDE Neon feels pretty much the same as windows 10 but with more control and customization. Gnome feels kinda more like Android - everything hidden and big ol icons and doesn’t use the whole nested window configuration system
It just seemed to me like the most familiar looking at the preview screenshots on the download page. This and the fact that cinnamon is the most supported by Mint out of the 3.
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