this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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I don't know about you but I was just waiting for an excuse. I ain't ever going back. It's a brave new world for me, part of shifting my whole suite to FOSS. Leaving the old internet behind me.
In 2022 I was Windows + Twitter + Reddit. In 2023 I'm full-time Linux + Mastodon + Lemmy.
I've rid myself of reddit (never used Twitter thank God) but I'm still on windows. I just got a steam deck though and I'm loving the Linux desktop mode. What branch of Linux does the deck use? I know I could do a quick Google to find out but damn I love how well it runs. Linux isn't nearly as scary as I thought
I'll disagree with Taiyang about Manjaro; I think it diverges too much form Arch and much prefer EndeavourOS (which is what I'm using at the moment).
With that said, I wouldn't recommend anything Arch-based for a first timer. Quick sidebar: in Linux the "distribution" (the OS, basically - the variant of Linux) is separate from the desktop environment (the GUI). SteamOS uses the KDE desktop. If you like that, I think I'd recommend Kubuntu as a good Linux distro to start with. It's Ubuntu with KDE instead of the default Ubuntu desktop, so there's a ton of documentation and pretty much every app will work on it.
[email protected] is very active and a great place to ask questions and/or read up, or feel free to DM me!
I personally wouldn't push anyone away from Arch towards Ubuntu. Ubuntu broke with every major update and you always are running older "stable" versions of software unless you add a bunch of PPAs that are disabled on major updates and left to the user to sort out. And I'm not even going to get into the joy of Snaps. =(
IMHO something like EndeavorOS or CachyOS would far and away be both more stable, and a better noob experience. Or if you're just gaming, install SteamOS, because if you haven't broken it on your deck you probably wouldn't be breaking on your desktop either.
I love EOS, but it would be a lot to take in at once for someone new to Linux - learning KDE, the terminal, plus everything else (flatpaks, the AUR, and so on) is a lot. At least Kubuntu still has the familiar (to them) KDE but has a GUI app store and never needs to use the terminal. It depends how generally tech-savvy the person is I guess.
That is why I see Ubuntu as a non-starter unless you are prepared to deal with it's crippled usage by default, because adding anything is a surefire way to have it implode on version upgrade. Meanwhile, on a rolling release, baring things that break for most everyone, you just upgrade when convenient and go about your day. I just don't see Ubuntu as anything that should be suggested to anyone w/out command line knowledge and strong Google-fu, because it's not if - but when will your system implode with Ubuntu.
I would absolutely recommend KDE Neon distribution as it comes with current, stable KDE. https://neon.kde.org . It is a Ubuntu LTS as well.
Like taiyang said, SteamOS is based on Arch which is super not newbie friendly, but the desktop modes "desktop environment" is KDE which available on pretty much any Linux distro, including beginner friendly ones like (K)Ubuntu and Fedora (although I'm not sure how beginner friendly Fedora is, regarding proprietary drivers and codecs)
Oh, you're like me! I did the dive into Linux, SteamOS is a fork of Arch Linux which is super not newbie friendly.
Manjaro is a good Arch Linux fork that works well for gamers, though. Still not idiot proof, as I can atest to breaking it several times, but that's the deal when you remove the training wheels off your OS.
Lucky it's easy to reinstall from a USB. A little less if you insist on a duel boot like me, but that's mostly Windows being a jerk.
It is SteamOS based on Gentoo.
Steamos 3 (the steam deck) is based on arch. They moved off of gentoo
Steam deck runs SteamOS, a custom distro built by steam specifically. You can download it here
Try manjaro, and hear me out here:
Manjaro is actually the only distro that I would recommend to a beginner, actual beginner in this case is someone that should not be running a single terminal command to get their system to work (which is what people are expecting to do when they tell you to use Endevour or CachyOS lol)
WIth ubuntu/debian based distros you will either have to deal with installing flatpaks/snaps, which come with their own set of issues like not following the system theme, using the wrong system font, issues accesing the internet, issues accesing the home directory (yeah steam flatpak can't be placed in the home directory lol).
You could try adding PPAs which is not something I would recommend a beginner to do.
Also some games like BeamNG hate having irqbalance, which usually comes by default on debian based distros.
On the other hand Manjaro already ships with pamac which is their GUI store that supports everything, including Aur packages which means 0 issues having to deal with broken permissions or theming if you want to install apps that are usually not found in the official repos.
Their own official repo even includes brave-browser and fastfetch, two apps that I use that are usually very hard to find in other distros.
AUR isnt widely recommended in manjaro
As long as you only keep the Manjaro repos in your system, it is like using it on Arch, which even you Arch the Aur isn't perfect.
Because the Manjaro repos don't sync at the same time with the Arch repos, you might not be able to install/update some Aur packages as the version of X dependency might not match during that time.
But literary, Manjaro has been the most stable distro I've run, even more stable than Arch that recently broke on my system and required manual intervention because of their recent changes on their repo migration.
Nice change you made!!
Linux is a hell of a drug
I ditched Windows because I could not stand them restarting my PC without my permission after an update. And ads! Fucking ads on my start menu.
welcome home
Same
Same, I didn't know which server suited me so I created three accounts on various Lemmy servers and also one on kbin, but now I'm exclusively using just this account.
I wasn't really looking for a replacement, just wanted to break my reddit addiction which was hampering my productivity. Lemmy isn't a replacement in the sense, but a nice change and something new to try.
Same. I adopted a google account a long time ago, but I've finally hit my limit on what they've been doing with youtube and everything. Free and open source alternatives are the way to go, it may take a while to catch on or may never fully, but who cares. Switching to linux recently was the best thing I've ever done.
Same here
Well said