My current rig is featuring an I7 10th gen and a nvidia 4070ti. Is there a distro that you recommend me to use as a linux beginner that is also good for gaming and streaming, that will work with my pc parts? Because I heard that intel and nvidia are famous for causing issues on Linux.
My feeling is that might be a lack of choice here. So, just my 0.00002 cents, to supply you with a few more options:
- Just use Debian. It is boring but it will work.
- Or, Tumleweed has been named. But it is not maximally stable. Better, use Tumbleweed in a VM on top of OpenSuSE leap. That way, you have both superb stability and a very current system.
- You could also sell your nvidia card (let’s be honest, it probavly will only bring you grief), and get a AMD radeon which is fully supported by a libre kernel. Then, you can install Guix on it. Then you have a truly reproducible, very lean and organized system.
- If dropping the nvidia card sounds too extreme for you, you can also install Debian, and install Guix as a package manager on top of it. That will work because the Debian kernel supports the hardware. But don’t forget that NVidia is a nuisance, often. Well, you might have luck.
- Let’s say you are short on money and you don’t want a system that consumes too much RAM, since that has gotten expensive, man. So, you could get Debian with XFce as Desktop environment. Or, even leaner, you could get ICeWM.
- Or in case you want a very fast Lisp-based window manager with very fast, manual tiling, try StumpWM, say, on Debian.
- Or, if you want an automatic tiling WM, give i3wm or sway a try. Or GNOME with paperWM extension.
- GNOME would also run on Ubuntu, or on Mint. Actually, it is all Debian under the hood, mostly. Just easier to install.
- Or you want a privacy-focused Distro. Try Trisquel.
- Or, you just want to keep it simple, perhaps. In that case, I’d recommend Debian. Or, perhaps for the start, Debian-derived distro that is easy to install. There are plenty.
- But when you want to have it even simpler, get rid of the nvidia card. This really simplifies things.
My first distro was Mint. It’s great for beginner Linux users, and it’s pretty stable. It also avoids the Snap problem Ubuntu forces upon their users.
If you’re looking for a more bleeding edge solution, I recommend Garuda Linux. It’s Arch-based, and it has a bunch of game-related stuff already installed. It might be a tad less stable due to the Arch underbelly, but I personally like the package system (pacman) a lot more than apt. Also, you get the unmatched power of the Arch wiki when you’re in trouble.
Haven’t had a problem on Bazzite. Intel i9 and nvidia 3060.
First pick a desktop environment, currently KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon are the best.
- Gnome: Opinionated design like apple
- KDE: tons of options.
- Cinnamon: A bit fewer options than KDE but still a lot.
All of them are very robust and have a massive user base.
Then pick a base to operate on. Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint are all good options.
- Fedora and Ubuntu are good for newer hardware and 99% of the time just works.
- Mint just works all the except for newer hardware.
Nvidia GPUs are not a big issue but you have to install the proprietary driver yourself for best performance and fewest bugs.
My pick for you is something your friend uses if you have a friend on Linux otherwise Fedora KDE or Kubuntu.
Any and all advice anyone gives you is going to be heavily weighted by their personal experiences, which is not bad, but also may not be your experience. Truly the best thing to do, if you are willing, is to try a bunch.
Download several different distributions. Get as many USB sticks as you reasonably can. Flash a different distro to each drive. Boot to them one at a time, and try them out. See what you like about one versus another. Hopefully you find one that just “clicks” for you, and then you actually install it to the computer. From there, if everything works, great - enjoy your computer. However, if you immediately run into problems, just go install your number 2 favorite and see if those problems exist there. There’s a reasonable chance they won’t.
Good places to start:
- Mint
- Debian
- PopOS
- Fedora (check out their “spins”, there are a lot of flavors of Fedora)
- Bazzite
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
- Cachy
- Endeavor
- Garuda
(There is a thing called Ventoy which kinda lets you use several distros from one usb stick, but I’ve also seen several distro’s instructions warn against using it so maybe it isn’t the best choice for a new convert). Also, obligatory stay away from Manjaro. It isn’t worth it as a new convert…
This should be the answer to all these questions!
There’s a lot of info in these comments and a ton of it is good.
I will say that the best advice is to boot from a USB and try out a system for a bit. You can easily swap around that way without a commitment.
I will also say that my opinion is to start with Mint. It’s similar enough to windows in layout/workflow to feel familiar and is “boring” in a stable, easy to use way.
Use it and learn Linux. I say learn, because it doesn’t matter what the OS looks like as much as how it works, and Linux (any flavor) works differently than windows. Learn those idiosyncrasies and then of you decide you want to try something else then you’re up to speed to move on and judge a different system with a baseline.
Just use Fedora.
Fedora Atomic! Kinoite rocks
I went straight to uBlue Aurora and I’m very happy with this distro.
any modern distro should work so if you want þe go to beginner distro try mint!
I have similar specs and use pop!_os with no problems. I’ve found it to be great for gaming.
I had very few issues with a GTX 970 and i7-4790k. The only issues I hear about with either any more is the linux kernel not supporting some of the features of newer GPUs (e.g. I know ray-tracing was a pain-point at one point).
I don’t like recommending distros based on such a general use case, mainly because every distro can be tweaked and configured to exactly what you want. Instead, you should research the different mainline distros that have been around for decades—Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Guix, NixOS, OpenSuse, Slackware—and see what they’re about, what sets them apart from others, what the maintainers’ philosophies are, and what kind of package management system they work with. Once one sounds better than the others, look into it and try it out.
#Dos and Don’ts:
Don’t try a niche distro. They are harder to troubleshoot and less likely to be actively maintained.
Don’t use Ubuntu. It’s just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.
Don’t dual-boot with windows. This just solidifies your reliance on windows, especially if you’re the type to give up on problem-solving issues that you didn’t have in Windows. It also can cause issues with making Linux unbootable.
Do try a live usb with persistence before you commit entirely. It’s not exactly the same as a complete install, but it’s close enough to let you know how the OS feels and what hardware will or won’t work with it. Some people say try a VM first, but that won’t have direct hardware access.
Do problem solve the little things. Anything that irks you or bothers you or just slows down your workflow. It doesn’t have to be an actual bug or glitch, just anything that could be better. This not only solidifies the feeling of ownership over your OS—you no longer have to settle for anyone else’s lousy design choices—it teaches you the resources for troubleshooting larger issues.
Do plan around things not being plug and play at first. Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working. This won’t always be the case, but it will irk you a lot less when it is if you expect it. The more you make time for solving these issues now, the less time they’ll take up in the future (either they’ll be gone, or you’ll immediately know how to fix them, or your troubleshooting will be more streamlined).
Do set aside time to learn about Linux “under the hood.” You don’t have to become a computer scientist, but it will save you a lot of headaches, show you cool things you can do, and make your computer a smoother experience. It especially helps if you take the time to learn as they come up: e.g. installer asks you what “bootloader” you want, but you’re not sure what that is, what it does, or why it’s necessary? Now’s the best time to take a little learning detour.
Do ask questions on forums.
Don’t listen to the people who shame you for asking.
Do listen to the people who try to show you a better way of doing things, even if it’s not your way.
Don’t use Ubuntu. It’s just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.
As a reasonably new Linux user, who’s merrily used Kubuntu for the past year, what makes Ubuntu sucky? Aside from dabbling in Asahi and a little bit of Arch, just to see why everyone loves it (I don’t think my use-case is advanced enough to really tell the difference), my only real experience with Linux has been Mint and Kubuntu, both of which have been fine for me.
This isn’t a bad-faith query, btw, I’m genuinely interested in what the actual differences are between Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora.
There’s nothing I can say to convince you Ubuntu is sucky if you don’t personally experience problems with it/have the occasional “I wish I could do this, but I guess it’s not possible” thoughts—spoiler: it’s usually possible, just not with that distro; this is true for all distros though, there will always be things they cannot do that others can.
That being said, my biggest gripe with Ubuntu, besides canonical’s geologic-paced attempts to make it profit-driven (which was what I was thinking of when I mentioned user-friendliness), is Snaps. I understand the motivation behind them, but the implementation was just sucky for many nitpicky reasons that I don’t really care to enumerate rn.
I also just don’t see much value in downstream for my needs. I can basically turn Debian into a Ubuntu clone if I want to, and my packages will still largely be supported by upstream maintainers. For bespoke distros it makes sense, but those are usually ill-maintained or hobby projects that update at glacial speeds.
I’m not saying that Debian >>>>> Ubuntu. It’s better just enough that I’d recommend Debian before I would recommend Ubuntu.
For what it’s worth, I was planning on reinstalling my home server because I put Mint on it a year ago and I kinda feel like I’ve outgrown it. So it’s now running Debian.
It obviously feels a lot more useful than Mint, but feels basically the same as my Kubuntu machine, largely because they’re both running Plasma.
People don’t like Ubuntu because they’re(Ubuntu) trying to make money with it. For end users, it’s can be a non issue because “pro” is free for 5 computers. But seeing the paywall for some is really off putting to some (myself included).
Snap really sucks and is Ubuntu’s attempt at a private garden. I hate it so much.
But yet I still use Ubuntu because it works, and if it doesn’t work there’s a post somewhere with details on how to fix it.
I’ve been using Linux off and on since Red Hat 5.2 ish era. I can handle the tech geek stuff. I just don’t want to.
+1
Hate pro, but more than that - hate Snap! Switched to Mint and couldn’t be happier, it was seamless. I already only use none of Ubuntu defaults, so switching to mint and copying my dotfiles was almost as if I didn’t even do anything. On my other machine, I just uninstalled Snap, which is close, but I feel like switching to Mint entirely would be even better. I just can’t bring myself to backup everything to do a fresh install.
I just deal with snap and don’t use it unless I have to. The pro thing is kind of stupid. I have 6 computers and vms on pro. There is no actual check preventing it from working. They have some bug where it appears like your have double the computers checking in sometimes. So when I had 5, it’d show 10 sometimes. So now it just shows 6 or 12.
Everything works fine. I’m ignoring it for now.
Someday I’ll switch, but until that day, I’m chillin’.
Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working.
Alternately, install Linux Mint. Search the software store for Steam. Click Install. Let Steam do it’s first run install stuff. Sign into Steam. Click the little Penguin icon to see which games should run fine on Linux. Install some by clicking on them. Enjoy games.
It usually is this simple for any distro anymore. My advice is mostly tailored to worst-case scenarios so that people don’t get overly pissy when things don’t Just Work™
Yes. Great point. I do try to give each game a test run before I schedule a group of friends to play it together. I guess I did that on Windows, as well.
When I was a big windows gamer the result tended to just be it works or it doesn’t, on my current hardware. But maybe that’s just gaming today. I think we have better optimization options, in general, now.
I’m not sure when things changed, as my journey was Windows PC Gamer to console gamer to SteamDeck to Linux PC gamer.
I think PC gaming, in general, got much nicer while I was only playing consoles.
I started with a Steam Deck. Now I’m running PopOS on my Framework 13 and Bazzite on a home theatre PC. I’ve had far fewer issues with them than any flavor of Windows.
I can’t go back. I won’t.
Stay away from the “bandwagon” distros for your first time. Bazzite, Pop_OS, Cachy, etc. There’s nothing wrong with them, but a lot more people use and have been using the more established distros such as Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc. So if you run into any weird edge case issues it’s much more likely that someone else has already been there and discovered solutions. Once you’re comfortable with Linux you can start exploring the more niche distros that are better tailored to you. Have fun!
I’m not sure about this. I’m my experience, 90-99% of the solutions originally for Ubuntu worked for me in Pop.
Yeah, and since System76 supports Nvidia cards in their hardware, the drivers tend to work out of the box.
90-99% of the solutions originally for Ubuntu worked for me in Pop.
Yes. When I’m running Debian, Mint, or various other Debian variants, the vast majority of “Ubuntu” recipes just work.
Sometimes on Debian, itself, an Ubuntu recipe doesn’t work because some feature hasn’t made it into “Debian stable” yet. But usually it’s fine if the Ubuntu article is at least a year old.
I’m not sure I agree totally. In particular for CachyOS, since it’s Arch based, most solutions for Arch also apply. The Arch wiki is a great resource, and is often the place fixes are found even when not on Arch. Also, CachyOS (and others, like Garuda) are set up to run on modern gaming hardware. They are more likely to work for Nvidia and Intel hardware I believe. Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc are great if you’re using it for an old laptop or something, but I think gamers, in particular, are likely better served by these other distros.
if you run into any weird edge case issues it’s much more likely that someone else has already been there and discovered solutions
While that is true, the amount of those weird edge cases that you’ll get varies wildly between distros. In my experience so far on a somewhat comparable rig to OP, Bazzite has been the only one that actually just worked out of the box and had not a single hickup, while any other distro I’ve tried (Pop, Fedora and Arch) all had several issues that required troubleshooting.
So, I guess, for someone willing to actually understand Linux, learn, and troubleshoot issues themselves, your advice is the way to go, but for the relative who wants their system to just work and would call me anyway at any sign of trouble, I’m recommending Bazzite (or Aurora, I guess) all the way
The desktop environment you choose is really down to what you prefer:
Like trackpads? Gnome
Like the Windows desktop (and/or like customization)? KDE
Like windows XP flat UI or brutally simple UI? Cinnamon/XFCE
Want to dive into the unknown cutting edge? Cosmic
Check https://bazzite.gg/
My oldish Nvidia 4xxx GPU worked immediately and automatically on Linux Mint.
Your mileage may vary.
Edit: To be clear, I didn’t do any command line, or even change a setting. Mint just automatically detected my Nvidia GPU and got it working during the install while I looked at pretty pictures and new user tips.
(Disclaimer: Folks here have warned me this was some combination of luck and my Nvidia GPU being a few years old.)
When my Mint install finished, I searched for “Steam” in the Mint software center and clicked “Install”.
A few minutes later I was playing a game from my Steam library without any issues, without any config changes, and without any command line use.
Edit 2: On Linux, there’s a little Penguin icon in the Steam library filters. Click that, and it’ll only show your games that Valve is pretty confident will run without any issue.
It took me a few clicks to realize it did anything, at all. Very few of my games were filtered out. None of my games that were filtered out happened to fit in the first page of search results.
So at first it looked like penguin filter button did nothing.
+1 for LM, no issues so far with my gaming laptop
That’s pretty awesome, I bought an old used laptop, not a gaming laptop to practice and I’m new in the Cybersecurity field so I’m a little behind layman stage of using Linux. I installed Ubuntu on that laptop and it’s been a pleasure to use. I was gonna partition my gaming PC’s main drive and try Linux Mint on it. Even if my Nvidia card might not work out of the box, there’s a whole open source community who make compatible drivers independently. I love the open source community. Bunch of people who do what they love without demanding anything for it, just wow.
I was gonna partition my gaming PC’s main drive and try Linux Mint on it.
Nice!
If you can afford it, I lately recommend getting a separate harddrive, and physically taking the Windows drive out, and putting a blank drive in, to run Linux on.
Windows has never liked to share, and has gotten worse (more aggressive preventing other operating systems from booting) with various integrations into BIOS for secure boot.
Also, either way, be sure to back everything up while Windows is still installed. It is much easier to lose data today, due to secure boot and full disk encryption being the default.
(Putting the Windows drive back in and resetting any BIOS settings should be enough, but it is possible that Windows will decide it wants the full disk encryption (FDE) password. I believe I have found my FDE password on the web through Microsoft account, but there’s just more that can go wrong, today. So I prefer to just have my files backed up so I can relax.)
(And be aware that it may not be possible to backup files directly from a removed Windows drive, if full disk encryption was enabled. There’s probably a utility for it, as long as you have the FDE password. But again, it’s much less effort to just make backups before pulling the Windows drive out.)
I’ve had the best experience booting to a fresh blank harddrive and installing Linux Mint on it, and throwing the Windows drive into a drawer until I find I want the extra drive space more than I want a retreat path to Windows.
I highly appreciate your advice on this. I was reading up on it earlier and what I found was being alarmist about it and I remember from many years ago that it wasn’t supposed to be this tedious but you seem to verify that it kinda is tedious these days. Thanks
