Debian is just old unless you go into the unstable branches, and I don't use that as an insult because Debian is obviously supposed to be stable. I have literally never heard of Alma or Rocky, and Ubuntu is just shit and has Snap as well as a very unfamiliar desktop layout. Cinnamon or KDE will be much better entries for people coming from Windows.
Arch is of course just a stupid suggestion for Linux newbies and I honestly can't take people like you serious for doing so unironically.
GRUB was a nightmare for me when things went wrong (EndeavourOS / Arch). I think you can say that to a lot of critical Linux system components though. Mint is generally one of the more stable distros out there though and generally considered to be the better Ubuntu.
Alma/Rocky - I wouldn’t particularly push fresh converts to RHEL/CentOS based distros, but maybe that’s just me…
Debian - sure… given they can figure out the slightly less intuitive installer and non-free stuff
Ubuntu - Canonical has been making some weird decisions lately. With them dropping Unity, then Mir… I wouldn’t bet on snaps while the rest of the world settled on flatpak
Jesting apart, it’s admittedly a solid option. Sticking to a mainstream distro is typically what I recommend, regardless of which one. Most of the debates surrounding distros are pretty silly to begin with, IMHO, considering most differences boil down to which package manager and init system they use, and their set of default software and configurations.
Personally I would pick Mint over Alma/Rocky as I am less familiar with RPM based distros than DEB based distros, I would recommend Mint over Debian as it is easier to get working with gaming, Ubuntu is great, but I won’t recommend snaps to a new user.
Dunno. I’m not convinced the “year of Linux desktop” will ever happen. Granted, I now mostly use it for work, so I’m not up to date on the latest, but……
Common distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, etc have extremely clunky upgrade system
Microsoft Office. I’m sorry, libreoffice will not be a replacement.
I heard this has improved, but Wayland used to be terrible.
I tried. I finally wanted to switch away from Windows and installed mint. Spent about 3 hours trying to get my headphone jacks to work with some mildly obscure tools and commands but no dice. Then I managed to destroy one of my partitions by trying to Mount it but it gave me an obscure error. Searched the forums and found NTFS fix, well turns out I accidentally had turned the partition dynamic when moving it to a larger drive. NTFS fix didn’t like that and promptly destroyed the file table. I lost a buch of data. So back to the cruddy Windows then…I’m not tech savvy enough, which is sad.
If you’ve never, ever used Linux before and are not confident about its tools, it’s almost always better to use a fresh machine. NTFS and Linux really don’t mix well, for example.
It’s been a few years since I used Mint, but I enjoyed it. Most of the Debian-based distros are very similar, actually. All are decent for beginners. If not Mint, Pop is another good option.
Yes, all the important stuff was backed up naturally. Still lost some, I’d say “nostalgic old files” It just happens when you have large drives you can’t just back it up without paying lots.
mint will be stuck on xorg for the foreseeable future.
Mint will use xorg as the default session until 2026, where it is projected that wayland will solve most if not all of its showstoppers.
Mint’s cinnamon DE is built off of Mutter, GNOME’s compositor, so all it means is that Mint will be doing the same thing that it has always done, been what GNOME could have been if it hadn’t reinvented itself.
Mint is a workflow extremely similar to what most users have experienced on Windows and specifically caters to Windows users or users coming from proprietary operating systems.
It is, but Mint has always prided itself on adopting new technology late once all the dust has settled. Besides, it’s just for Wayland being the default (and most likely deprecating the X11 session), a usable wayland session for cinnamon will most likely be available come 2025.
There’s always POP!_OS going in hot with their COSMIC compositor, so people who want to adopt wayland can do so when POP!_OS does and still have that “Ubuntu™ experience minus Canonical” distro.
If you want to see a hell of a wait, you should check out RHEL’s deprecation timeline.
It doesn’t need new features and I’m pretty sure any bugs, vulnerabilities will still get ironed out. We both know Wayland will kill x11. The point is, considering we are both using x11, why should a new person from Windows need it now?
In a few years, my position would be different, but for now, mileage varies and many face use cases it doesn’t yet cover. X11 is mature and mostly just works.
No one is going all in, and once distros retire it, it’s dead. Jumping before distros because you have a rush of blood to the head isn’t particularly helpful.
My hardware has no Nvidia, but getting screen recording on Wayland was a royal pain in the backside. Functionally, x11 just works better for me right now. When they iron this stuff out and make it effortless, great, but until then, the software still needs maturing.
my point is that this kind of issue will be ironed out anyway and its looking like its gonna be sooner rather than later.
i dont mind if you are already invested in using xorg and its working out for you (hey, i do too). i just dont see much reason to go into linux for the first time as a noob with it in mind at all.
They don’t need to think about display servers. Just update and it will resolve itself. You’re overcomplicating things and scaring people away from Linux.
it needs bits and bobs to keep working as is. last commit is an indicator but not a great one by itself.
it aint getting new support, and security patches are taking their sweet damn time. compare that with projects that support wayland. also take a look at what a lot of xorg devs have been working on.
my point this whole time is that a distro stuck on it will start to reflect that.
i feel like this isnt going anywhere so have a nice day.
I game exclusively on Linux these days. I haven’t had an issue that I couldn’t solve so far aside from shitty anti cheat software that doesn’t play nice.
I play single player almost exclusively, so that isn’t much of a problem for me.
I think my hardware might have had something to do with it, was trying on a somewhat older laptop. Most games would not launch even with Proton and even most Linux native games did not work even after a fair bit of troubleshooting. I get that some people might not have problems but I believe problems still remain widespread.
I’d rather not have to upgrade hardware that can run the games I want to play perfectly fine, hoping for improved support (or at the very least a straightforward way to tell specifically what the problem is). Though once Win10 ends it’s not like there’s going to be an alternative to Linux anyway since Win11 has strict requirements for new stuff.
Windows 7 was okay, but I still can’t fathom how Windows 8 and 8.1 came to be. In the computer companies I’ve worked for, I don’t think they have a single product that runs on Windows 8 or Windows Vista. The OS progression was XP to 7 to 10. Now, they’re all working towards Windows 11 support.
Some obscure title will surely have weird driver, hardware and OS quirks. For example Crazy Machines 2’s physics break down and the fixes didn’t work for me. They use PhysX for their physics engine, before Nvidia acquired it, and it was heavily updated of course and now the puzzles don’t work anymore. Maybe somebody found another solution to it by now, but I haven’t checked it.
Child of light, a Ubisoft game, I couldn’t get working on windows 10. Forums say it hasn’t been patched since vista… Even if I copy the files over locally I don’t think I’ll have much luck getting uplay to run. Thanks DRM.
“It was an asset flip that got too popular for its own good. Instead of being able to slowly trickle sales over the course of a few months, it got mass purchased and effectively forced their hand.”
The idea being that if it hadn’t gotten so popular, it would have just been an asset flip to trickle in sales with no long term support or updates. Instead it got so big that and with no real team (dunno about this) there was no way for them to abandon it without this scenario. So better to close for optics than close for a step away from fraud lol.
If that was the intent, then yeah it was a scam regardless. And if it wasn’t the intent, then I don’t understand their reasoning. I would guess that if it got really popular and sales were coming in, that would incentivize them to continue it rather than closing shop?
That entirely depends on the game. Some games, like Terraria, can connect to the same servers regardless of whether it was bough on Steam or GOG. Others could rely on Steam's API for matchmaking and online play on the Steam version, and will likely be incompatible with GOG versions. And then there are games that may not be designed for online play, but still can be played online using methods like Steam Remote Play.
If I see on the store page that the game has Steam API, just forget about getting the GOG version because I won’t be able to play with the steam players?
Mostly you have to look it up on a per game basis. Probably just Google the game name and “supports cross play between” whatever platforms you want and someone will know
I really love co-op games but I don’t have many gamer friends and playing with randos who quit mid-game or constantly throw out insults isn’t much fun…
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