Comment on Desktop Linux distros similar to Steam OS?
wolre@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I generally think the most important thing when you’re not yet very experienced with Linux is to just pick a distro that is relatively popular, since these are usually very googleable.
My personal favorite is probably still Fedora. Pick Fedora Workstation Gnome if you want something that has the most online support and Fedora KDE if you want something with a similar workflow as Windows.
I also generally think that using a normal Linux Distro is a better choice if you don’t want to do only gaming and nothing else, since Steam OS actually makes some things a lot more difficult (you cannot easily install many programs due to its immutable nature, it only has AMD GPU support, doesn’t include even basic things like print functionality, the installation process is not the easiest, …) These things will be pretty big hurdles to overcome for a newcomer. The only real thing that is probably easier on Steam OS is that Steam is already pre-installed, but considering that you can literally install Steam on Fedora without using the terminal probably less than 10 mouse clicks, I wouldn’t consider this a very big advantage.
If you do end up going for a normal distro (like Fedora), I would btw highly recommend installing Steam not as a flatpak but as a “normal” application. This is not very difficult and will provide a much more stable experience than if you just use the Flatpak (which may be the first thing you come across in the software store). There are short tutorials available for: Fedora, Ubuntu, …
Cool, that is very helpful, and yes one main reason for this is I can’t install Adobe, and Blender3D has no GPU rendering support. I have yet to come across the lack of printing, lol.
This and Kubuntu are sounding good, and probably better than Bazzite for everyday and art stuff.
don’t do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software… among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don’t.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 day ago
Note you should probably switch to recommending aurora because it’s identical with some tweaks for beginners, for example on stock fedora twitch doesn’t work because redhat is an american company that respects patents that aren’t enforced elsewhere and you have to manually install an ffmpeg version that’s a whole annoying process. It’s essentially identical.