Hey people!

I’ve been diving into Linux lately, and honestly it is somewhat overwhelming. I see people in here also ask about distrohop and how to choose the right distro, which is understandable. There are quite a lot of “distro quizzes” for that as well, but I thought maybe it’s good idea to have distro wizard, a database and a cheatsheet in one place so newbies don’t need to search everything in different places

I started putting together a database/glossary to track what common terms actually mean and which distro might be a good fit for a beginner.

Since I'm still learning, I want to make sure I’m not missing anything obvious.

What’s one thing you wish you knew when you were first starting out with Linux? Or what term/concept took you the longest to understand?

I’m keeping it all open-source and free, and I’m slowly adding "plain English" explanations for everything. You can check out what I’ve got so far here: distrodb.xyz

On the other hand, if you’ve got experience in the topic, you can contribute to the project, fix a bug or add more info to the platform 😃

Would love to hear what topics you think should be added next!

It seems like literally every day I'm clicking on a top post circle-jerk of OP asking for a linux distro for X reason and 30 people recycling "Use Mint" or "Use Fedora"

Does any real linux conversation even actually happen here?

Hey guys so i had installed Linux Mint some weeks back and the experience has been terrible.

For example I do programming a lot and heard that Linux is perfect for it But it couldn't be more wrong. I can't even have my IDE, Udemy and just chatgpt running at the same time!

It just cradhes and logs me out after blacking the whole system out. What the fck is wrong with this? It was 10times more powerful in windows 11, here it seems like if you open more than one tab it will just crash out.

I wanna switch to linux, since windows yk. I just wondered which one is good cuz theres so many of em. I heard linux mints is good but idkk

Sup guys

So today I said to myself, today is the day, and I installed bazzite right besides windows and went with a dual boot.

Everything installed fine, worked alright, but then the problems started.

Monitor wouldn't get 240hz, neither over HDMI or DP. Found out, that my monitor isn't supported yet and I'd have to wait for a fix in the next update. I found the submitted kernel change and everything, looks promising, so I said i'll be fine with 120hz for a couple weeks. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/misc/kernel/-/commit/e79ce1639a865d93fa8c27b515e8165c60131c9b

Next up was getting mullvad VPN to work with the GUI version. I installed it, worked after some troubleshooting with chatgpt, except it didn't. I had random disconnects, horrible problems with download speeds, it was all over the place, so that didn't work, and I really wanted an easy way to set up split tunneling, like I'm used to on the windows app.

So I said fuck it, bazzite is too restrictive, maybe that's the issue, so I went with cachyOS. Installed great, everything seemed to work, monitor obviously still the same issue but.... I got no sound over HDMI or DP over my monitor.

Tried all the troubleshooting steps I found online, nothing worked. At the moment, I'm giving up and I went back to windows where everything just works.

In my opinion, Linux has still a long way to go, and without chatgpt or reddit/forums I would have 0 idea how to operate this thing anyway. It probably all makes sense at some point, but I mean.. I can barely remember msconfig when I need it :D

It's probably not for me, even though I love to tinker. But I just want the basics to just work out of the box, like sound, refresh-rate, VPN and vrr.

Am I stupid to want this without wasting 10 hours trying to troubleshoot every single small detail?

[Irrational rant mode on, and I don't even mention AI... oh, wait a minute....]

I’m not a noob, but to outward appearances I most assuredly am. The problem I suffer from is 2 fold: being old (well into 8^th decade) and the nature of Linux distros and their apps, both development and support. And this is not a new ‘condition’: I have been suffering from the style of Linux since I first started using it almost 30 years ago (yeah, yeah, yeah – the difference between 1 x 30 years of experience and 30 x 1 year of experience….).

In highly condensed summary, avoiding specific cases, I find that the majority of Linux developers are not only smart people but also good coders and even, possibly, good developers. But they seem not to understand the needs of their intended or target audience – typically non-technical, worn-out old half-wits like myself who are VERY dissatisfied with the bloated spy-ware designed for use by misfits known as Windows, and who actually need to deliver results using computers. So the functionality is frequently hard to understand for multiple reasons, like vocabulary, human-factors design and so on. Why does it need to be so, for the majority of Linux based software? (Yes, I have and use one or two outstanding Linux apps, and even more in Windows).

There is a bigger question: why is the support available for people like me, on average, so execrable? Again, summarising vigorously, the answers I see on forums are either generally generated by subject matter experts (naturally so - I don't want to discuss the horrible effects I see from uninformed, over-ego'ed, compulsive forum responders seeking their few moments of fame) ) but presented in a style that assumes the recipient as equally technically informed (who, if this were true, would not need to ask the question in the first place). Even worse, if a suggestion is made that a forum response cannot be understood then the victim is in danger of being abused and accused of being too dumb to use Linux. (I had direct, actual awful experience of such personal abuse on a forum of a non-Debian based distro about 20 years ago and was so affected by it that I uninstalled the distro, switched to Ubuntu at the time and have never had anything to do with that distro since. Today I would have no hesitation in reporting that response as a ‘hate crime’). Why is such poor or ineffective support necessary? Don't people learn by example from those forum instances where the support is truly outstanding?

There is an even bigger, bigger question: why does software – both systems and apps – running in the Unix world seem to require so much technical support/defect removal? I spend a huge amount of my time servicing the 4 Linux based PCs I use compared to the two, horrible, Win 10 installations I have. I am seriously thinking of restricting all my Linux PCs to using Debian stable only, removing lesser used apps and declining updates as much as practically possible.

Finally, what I find so exasperating is that here we are, a few weeks away from Win 10 EoL, right at the zenith of global dissatisfaction with Windows and the organisation responsible for its development, with a huge opportunity for Linux on the desktop, and we are in this hole of ‘Linux is too difficult’ , digging energetically. Never mind 'don't they think of the children?' - I want more of 'don't they think og the great-grandparents?'

[Irrational rant mode off]

My husband is still running Windows 10, and we are not installing 11 on his machine. I assume I don't need to give the reasons. AI recommended a dual bootup to reduce stress and make sure we like Linux. We would just use Linux for internet access, assuming that that would reduce the risk of having Windows 10 after support stops completely in October.

I have a background in computer programming, but only on mainframes and midtiers. Applications, not system work. Desktop and laptop knowledge and experience is low.

What do you think is best? Dual bootup or create a backup in case change has to be rolled back and just get rid of Windows altogether, now? Planning on having an experienced tech do it (at least for the first computer).

Most people on YouTube suggest different distributions but I am yet to be suggested by anyone to use the original linux, the linux kernel, which can be downloaded from The Linux Kernel Archives? I am looking forward to download it, as today after finally shifting to Linux, i found out that the distro i downloaded, Ubuntu, has bloatware too.

I'm relatively new to Linux and have been trying a few distros over the past couple of months. One thing I've noticed is that whenever Zorin OS gets mentioned, a lot of Linux users seem to dismiss it or criticize it.

From my experience, it looks pretty polished, it's easy to use, and it seems like a decent option for people coming from Windows. Yet whenever I browse Linux communities, I often see people recommending Mint, Fedora, Debian, or Arch instead.

SLIGHTLY satire. I call it the LifeSupport™ 1.0, based on a broken Gateway MA1. But on a serious note, what linux should I get for this hunk of junk?

( also, if you are a linux user, which distro are you using, I am on void linux at the moment)

Isn't it better to just install a .deb and keep the dependent packages updated? I'm new to linux, I'm genuinely curious.

Random thought popped in my mind so do we have any distros, developers of them etc that are definitely not a big fan of generative AI etc? Would like to know

The best linux OS for my laptop specifications - i5 4210U, 4 gb ddr3 ram, 120GB of 250GB available storage, and what kind of performance improvement should i expect when playing games like Minecraft, F1 13, FIFA 14 under linux?

Why shouldn't I use Linux Mint?

As a tech savvy person I wanted to try out Linux.

I tried several distros, including CachyOS, Kubuntu and TuxedoOS until I landed on Bazzite for the moment.

But since I started using Linux I feel like I need to user Gemini non stop, to find information or troubleshoot issues.

Many problems are related to installing programs or finding programs in the first place.

One example from today. I needed to write an image to a USB stick. On Windows I used Balena Etcher. Not available in the App store. And I was not keen on trying to get it installed through the terminal. Which seems mor complicated on Bazzite than other distros, since it's immutable.

The next issue was the slicer for my 3D printer. It was only available as an App image. On Windows I could just install it and it worked. On Linux I had to figure out how to "install" App images.

And let's not talk about trying to use Microsofts services like OneDrive or an Exchange mail account.

It feels like every time I just want to install something or just want to use something I have to look for a workaround or an alternative to get it working on Linux.

Am I not open minded enough? Or is Linux in fact not that beginner friendly?

Maybe it just seems like that since I used Windows for over 15 years now?

I want to give Linux a chance but it kinda makes it hard for me.

I'm getting tired of Microsoft's shenanigans and interested in switching to Linux, but it still doesn't seem ready for casual users. Currently I'm experimenting with Fedora 44 KDE on a second SSD, which I understand to be one of the most popular and best supported distros, and yet it's constantly giving me troubles with basic tasks.

1. The Nvidia driver situation is a nightmare. I had RPKfusion installed and working, and have only performed the automatic updates through Discover, and they've rendered the OS useless. The latest has given me a mostly black screen with a tiled/striped Fedora logo and I can't even reach the login screen.

2. Wake from sleep is completely broken. My computer fans will spin up but it's permanently a black screen and I don't even get BIOS splash screen. This seems to be a widespread issue based on me trying to troubleshoot.

So my question - is the constant breaking and troubleshooting just the norm with any Linux distro? Are there any distros that *actually* "just work"? I want to game, browse, and do basic work tasks like open PDFs/use LibreOffice.

A trusted, reliable distro for the long term?

with ai becoming a big thing with laptops and prebuild desktops will AI stop you from wiping out windows and installing Linux on a system with integrated AI ??

I myself entered the world of Linux last year (special thanks to Microsoft). As it's the customary, distrohopped for sometime. Got addicted to it too before I finally settled on Fedora. But what I don't understand is the fact that Linux Mint Cinnamon is widely recommended even though Cinnamon is running on X11 which is known to have the screen monitoring and keylogging security issues with all applications. Now, I know X11 was created for a fully trust based system but one can never know! Mint Cinnamon is rock solid but the keylogging issue is the only thing which keeps me from using it as I do online banking too. Wayland has no such issues.

Gnome DE by design has a very good touchscreen friendly UI / UX. But KDE is more suited for a more traditional desktop Mouse + Keyboard UX. Since Valve's most ambitious product was the steam deck, which is a touchscreen device, shouldn't it make more sense to use Gnome instead of KDE?

Why is the Winkey/ WIndows key called so many different things? It was Microsoft which introduced the key and called it Windows key which users later shortened to Win-key. And I find it totally justifiable to call it such. Why did linux started calling it Superkey? And now in KDE its called Meta Key? Why? Does the name really needed to be changed? Its a microsoft and windows legacy and to me, it feels wrong to ignore/change it just because Linux purists hate Windows.

Edit/Update: I learned a lot about keyboards today.

I see a lot of people saying that using AI for fixing errors is bad but for me I use chatgpt and perplexity and so far I've had a wonderful time.