Obviously this is somewhat subjective, but I’ve had a lot of problems in my previous attempts to switch to Linux, so I’d like to create a list of distros to try out, and see what works for me. I’m mostly expecting to be doing basic office work and light gaming via Steam.

  • SecondComingOfPheusie
    121·
    7 days ago

    Shortlist of traditional distros, ordered roughly in descending order:

    Shortlist of Only[5] recommendation for atomic distros:

    As for deciding between a traditional or atomic distro, I’d personally suggest to try out Bazzite first. And refer to their documentation whenever something comes up during initial setup. If at any point, you’re not able to get it to work even with the help of its community —[7] be it through their Discord, Discourse or subreddit — then simply pivot to the traditional distros.

    1. Attracts most noobs and is probs the most popular out of these; no-brainer. Lack of proper Wayland support and not offering (!) a (semi-)rolling release model are the only reasons why the others deserve to be on this list. Otherwise this would sweep clean. ↩︎

    2. If you want something slow-moving, but still need/want Wayland. ↩︎

    3. Arch-based distro, but comes with very sane defaults. Recommended if you’re on very new hardware. ↩︎

    4. Relatively bare-bones. Especially compared to all the other distros found on this list. But, if you want a more minimalist approach while preserving excellent defaults, then this is definitely it. ↩︎

    5. Technically, any of uBlue’s distros qualifies. But Bazzite is a lot more popular than the others. Hence you’ll have an easier time finding resources for it. ↩︎

    6. This probs deserves a footnote of its own in which I elaborate, but I got tired. Here, have a flower; 💮. ↩︎

    7. I know using the em dash here makes me look sus AF, but I can assure the reader that no LLMs were used in the creation of this writing. ↩︎

      • SecondComingOfPheusie
        6·
        6 days ago

        what is wayland

        Basically, whenever an app has a GUI it wants to display, it communicates that to ‘the system’ with all the necessary details. After which ‘the system’ does the rendering and whatnot. Wayland is a protocol that defines a set of rules on how this interaction should take place. Hence, technically, it is only (the defining) part of the modern solution.

        how important is it?

        Very. Basically, either it or its ‘predecessor’[1] X11 is involved whenever you want to display/render anything[2] on desktop Linux. As X11 has been abandoned in favor of Wayland, some modern features like HDR or VRR are only found on the latter. On the other hand, I believe Wayland was never meant to offer full feature-parity with X11. Hence, some unsupported edge cases may continue to exist indefinitely. Thankfully, it has come a long way. What remains are some concerns related to accessibility AND the adjustment[3] of the surrounding ecosystem.

        1. The term is used loosely here, because there’s a very big difference between the two. ↩︎

        2. Which, to be clear, happens literally all the time. Unless your display needs don’t go beyond what was already available on MS-DOS*. ↩︎

        3. Like, how only very recently Electron got to become proper Wayland-native. Note that Xwayland is included with Wayland as a compatibility layer whenever something is not Wayland-native yet. ↩︎

        • classic@fedia.io
          2·
          6 days ago

          Thank you for the intro, that helped. Sounds like Mint not having it is relevant

          • SecondComingOfPheusie
            2·
            4 days ago

            Thank you for the intro, that helped.

            Glad to hear it was helpful.

            Sounds like Mint not having it is relevant

            Yup. FWIW, there’s also the security argument; I.e. X11 makes keylogging trivial, while Wayland provides protection against it by default. Having said that, there is experimental support for Wayland in Linux Mint. But, ideally, it needs more time to cook.

      • ChristerMLB@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Not very. X11 is still widely used and works fine. Wayland is the future, but you’ll probably be fine either way.

        I copied this table from here: https://www.linuxteck.com/x11-vs-wayland/

        Feature X11 Wayland
        Architecture Multi-program chain (X Server + WM + Compositor) Single unified Compositor handles everything
        Render Method RAM multi-copy — pixels duplicated per frame Zero-copy GPU — same buffer start to finish
        Security Model Open trust — any app sees all input and screen Isolated by design — apps see only their own window
        Screen Tearing Common — vsync not guaranteed by protocol Eliminated — compositor controls frame delivery
        HiDPI / Fractional Scaling Inconsistent — requires per-app configuration Per-display — clean scaling built into protocol
        Multi-Monitor HDR Limited — retrofitted support only Full support — designed from the ground up
        SSH Remote Display Native — X forwarding works out of the box Needs external tools (e.g. Xwayland, RDP)
        GUI Automation Tools Rich ecosystem — xdotool, wmctrl, AutoKey Limited — protocol restricts cross-app access
        Legacy App Support Full native support XWayland compatibility bridge
        NVIDIA Driver Support Stable — long-established Good — driver series 495 and above
        Battery Efficiency Higher overhead — extra RAM copies per frame Lower overhead — GPU buffer reuse
        Development Status Maintenance-only since 2024 Actively developed — expanding scope
      • moxymarauder@thelemmy.club
        1·
        6 days ago

        display manager. it’ll cause issues with switching applications and rendering and such. Wayland is the direction everyone is going.