Hello guys i have a qustion about which distro i should use?
I want to dual boot windows and linux
I just want a safe place away from microsoft eyes to do edit and drawing and other hobbies on my pc. And playing some games like cs2 & 2d games Also the distro run my wallpaper engine Should be popular distro so if i have a problem i can ask about it
Please dont tell me linux mint because i tried it 3 times and everytime i do anything simple the distro goes off and i should re install i won’t give it anymore chances thank you 😖
Edit: thank you guys for typing your suggests. after some search i will give bazzite try and if won’t work like i want. I will go with the other suggests I really enjoyed reading all your suggests
Try Manjaro. It will be the easiest to set up and find software that hasn’t been deliberately packaged for your setup.
Clearly this comment is unpopular but it sure would be handy if anyone took the time to say why
(I used to be a Manjaro user)
Let’s say Manjaro has a bad history and a lot of people don’t take them seriously anymore and trust them even less.
At the very least it is quite a messy distro to use.
It’s 2025, if you’ve got the space to dual boot, you’ve got space for snapshots. There’s no reason not to set them up. Btrfs, ZFS, LVM, pick your poison. Disk is cheap, your time isn’t.
And if “simple stuff” is breaking your system, that tells me three things:
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You’re still using apt-get instead of apt
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You’re ignoring dependency warnings
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You’re probably not fully understanding the commands you’re running — so RTFM
So yeah, I will be telling you to use Mint, with at LEAST daily snapshots.
Well no i really use everyting on the newest version and i check two times on everyting i put or press even when downloading anything simple like discord or browser i search first then do but it just somewho goes off and now i spent more than 15 hours on bazzite to just download it. i am learning first then act after doing everyting things right and checking i said to myself this time i won’t mess with the termnal for 2 days to not make my system broke and guess what after downloading steam and brave and wallpaper engine and dis i was looking at my downloaded wallpapers changing them then the screen goes black and the desktop dosent response i can search inside the system and open taps but the desktop broke and now i am looking for soultion i didn’t even put a single command or play with the system i was just changing my wallpapers and that also happened in mint not the wallpaper issue but with other simple things like download one app form the software manger
Sounds more like a hardware issue. Screen black, like it goes off no output? Any visual glitching first? Desktop doesn’t respond? How do you know, is it sounds stop or make funny noise?
Search inside the system? Open taps? Not sure what this means
Can you restart the computer? Or will the distro not boot after this?
And this doesn’t happen in Windows?
If his drive is failing, and has bad sectors, windows will automatically repair damaged system files on boot. Also sounds like he’s having an issue with hibernation with the window server not starting back up after suspension.
Okay, assuming you’re being honest, it sounds like a hardware issue. Either your RAM is corrupting, or your hard drive is prone to errors. The good news is that you have options to daily drive Linux without ending up in a situation where you have to reinstall everything from scratch.
Like I mentioned earlier, you absolutely need to be making snapshots. I’m currently running Manjiro, and I’ve completely borked my system like 10 times already. But when I set up my system, I made sure my main partition was BTRFS, which has allowed me to roll back easily through both the UI and in grub rescue mode.
I would also recommend that if you are going to continue to dual boot windows, make sure they’re on two separate physical drives. And don’t share stuff like your steam library, because windows likes to screw shit up, and steam will throw a fit if you make it read an NTFS drive on Linux.
Just don’t give up, keep posting questions, and maybe even come back and post stuff like specific crash reports and system info so we can help you better. :)
I fix the problem it was just the plugn who read wallpaper engine i think glitched after reading a unSubscribed wallpaper so i just had to go delete the plugn and all my wallpapers and re install after some reboot and changing the wallpapers settings it fixed dont ask me how the wallpaper was unSubscribed and there in the same time i really dont know 😂
I’m not sure how you’re getting wallpaper engine to work on Linux because it’s not supported on anything other than windows.
Are you using Wallpaper Engine? If so you are likely going to keep having issues with your screen blanking while you try and use it, as it’s not supported on Linux.
Wow, good job tracking that down
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Something listed in the top 10 or so on https://distrowatch.com/. Personally I like one of the Debian based distros.
Currently we use Ubuntu and Debian. Ubuntu would be the better of the two for beginners.
The distrowatch beginners list is: https://distrowatch.com/search-mobile.php?category=Beginners#simple
Why would Ubuntu be better for beginners?
Because Canonical put a lot of effort into usability. Pretty much all of the popular recommended beginner distributions are Ubuntu based. Examples: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin, Elementary.
People will recommend other stuff, often that are loved by varioius enthusiasts but these may or may not be that suitable for beginners. Call me skeptical.
I use and recommend Ubuntu because it is easy to install, use, and just works. It is also widely supported and very popular. The one thing I do not like about it is the Snap focus. I would love to recommend Linux Mint but last time I used it major distribution upgrades from the GUI were not supported. Have no idea if they fixed that. Ubuntu upgrades are the click of a button. In my family there are nontechnical users and they have used it for almost 20 years just fine without much help from me.
On the other hand I use Debian if I intend to custom configure something and want a minimal install to start from. Major upgrades on Debian are not a click of a button. On the other hand Debian is not Snap based. My workstation and VPS are Debian for example.
How exactly does canonical make their distribution more usable than Debian?
On the other hand I use Debian if I intend to custom configure something and want minimal a install to start from.
Why?
Major upgrades on Debian are not a click of a button.
They’re the exact same as in Ubuntu…
On the other hand Debian is not Snap based.
Which is a benefit to new users. They shouldn’t be conditioned to be using snaps, anyways.
More usable. Better installer, better desktop configs, better eye candy, better upgrade tools, wider 3rd party support.
Upgrades. To do a major upgrade on Debian you go into the command line. You first adjust the appropriate files in /etc/apt. Then you run a bunch of apt commands.
Ubuntu you are asked if you want to upgrade to a new release and just say yes.
I used Mint on my previous system but currently rolling CachyOS personally. Bazzite was a close contender for me.
I just installed Nobara in a similar setup for similar reasons a few days ago after having several bad experiences with Pop, Ubuntu, and Mint. I wanted to move away from Ubuntu-based distros and Nobara seems like it’s focused on gaming (frequent updates, etc). It’s been… I dunno if great is the right word, but pretty good. I run into difficulties of some variety with almost everything I do (can’t install battle.net in lutris because it hangs at 45%, lutris can’t log into epic games store, etc), but I’ve also found solutions for them without too much trouble and the games that I have managed to install run great.
Yeh I don’t think Nobara is beginner friendly. I’d say my experience was the same as yours. Difficulties with lots of things, but could find solutions. Given it wasn’t my primary PC, and I don’t have time for that - gone for mint (needed some stale stale kernl)
To be fair that was also my experience with PopOS which is designed to be user-friendly. The answer to questions like ‘how do I take a screenshot of a region and copy it to clipboard without spamming files’ or ‘how do I switch audio devices between speakers and headset’ just tends to be ‘run this long-ass command you would never have figured out on your own’ or ‘Write a shell script full of such commands to do it for you and call it with a shortcut key’. I think this is a linux problem, not a distro problem, because it was the same way when I was using redhat 15 years ago or slackware 30 years ago.
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My only gripe is the default cursor. I hate it
I personally don’t see much value of Mint or Ubuntu over Debian.
They all suffer from the same issue: lack of a user repository. This means any layman is going to immediately be turned off by the distro and the whole Linux experience as soon as they want to install something that isn’t in their distro’s repository.
Neither derivative distro can be considered ‘easier’ because of this. Might as well just go with Debian and cut out the middlemen.
Probably because it’s easy to get used to.
As for the looks, I’d say it looks better than Mac, Ubuntu looks best, but that’s so subjective and fairly easy to change anyway.
Thank you! When switching it has to work better and look better. Mint does not look better. Zorin is very simple, includes Wine and has Zorin Connect.
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Mint is always recommended because it just works, it looks windows-like, it’s legit fine no it doesn’t look dated or ugly. Cinammon is hot.
I have spent so much time professionally in Windows over the years that when I decided to switch it had to look nothing like it. So Mint is out. Kde as a whole really. Vanilla gnome looks kinda sterile to me. So I ended up with Pop!_OS and have been happy so far.
It feels dated and ugly
Weird, mine came with Cinnamon, not Plasma
I think my first distro was Ubuntu ( but that was because everyone around me was using it only) before I finally migrated to Debian less than a year later. Mint and Ubuntu both use Debian as their base. (Mint technically uses Ubuntu as it’s base but has a Debian edition as well for backup reasons).
I know Debian’s problem is it’s software repos(Debian Stable can be filled with older versions of software). But it can’t be denied that it is rock solid (for most part), has a comparatively decent set of software in its repos and a large set of distros use it as their base.
Thing is. Mint is for the most part a just works distro. Based on Ubuntu it is very easy to find help for it. Combine that with a load of sane defaults like disabling snaps. The default UI and theme could defiantly use a facelift
Fedora
I suggest BazziteOS. I have it installed on 2 of my computers for about a year and it works great. It runs KDE and it looks similar to Windows but is much better. Also, I believe it has support for Wallpaper Engine, though I haven’t tried it.
It is Fedora based and Fedora also has a sizeable community for any questions and tutorials you may have.
The reason why I recommend Bazziteos is because it comes out of the box ready for gaming, you would have steam, wine, lutris, etc installed almost instantly and ready to play.
I just finished downloading bazzite and now creating a backup on flash for both bazzite and windows using ventoy because i know myself i will do something stupid to make me re install systems
Chances are that, if you do break something, it’ll be on the Windows side.
Bazzite is very solid for new users as it’s very convoluted to access and modify anything system related.
Having said that, if you have any intention to learn how to use Linux distros, and eventually remove Microsoft from your life, immutable distros like Bazzite will limit you dramatically, so I suggest you start with a regular “mutable” distro. Now, if your intention is just to have something that works, scape Windows every now and then, and come back to Windows, it’s hard to beat an immutable distro.
I’m pretty sure you can also advance with Bazzite. I haven’t done anything too advanced, but I can imagine one can learn a lot simply by learning the ujust commands as they would apt.
Absolutely. Maybe I’m a bit biased. I can’t stick to anything immutable (other than my Steam Deck, and believe me, I’ve tried many times), and always come back to distros I can have absolute control over.
However, I have all my employees running Silverblue (mostly because none of them even know what CLI means 🤣).
So… do it?
Now to the question which distro, honestly it does not matter YET!
You probably don’t even know what a distro is (no offense) but what you did highlight clearly are the needs, namely :
- playing games
- popular
- not Mint because somehow it breaks (would be VERY important to understand why though)
… so that actually narrows things down quite a bit.
The most popular distribution are the easiet to find (I’m on Debian and SteamOS so I use Arch BTW) and that’s a safe choice indeed. Playing games does not narrow things down much as most distro, if not all, do not prevent against playing game and IMHO the optimization specific to gaming are pretty much pointless in most cases.
Your edit point that you are trying a distribution already so yes, please, do go for it. I do suggest though that WHEN things go wrong, like it did with Mint, you take the time to understand WHY. This in itself will help you to either switch to another distribution and arguably more importantly what even is a distribution and finally which one of the remaining ones (if you do actually switch rather than fix) are more appropriate for you.
Finally my last recommendation is to back up your data. That’s what IMHO make the difference between having fun distro hopping versus pulling hair out stressing that your last game save, or work notebooks, will not be deleted.
Have fun learning!
Your last point i learn it in the hard why and for the post i just wanted to see people suggests because everyone i asked near me says linux mint and i really hate it because what happened with me i already said what happened in the comments so i won’t again
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Bro now i half broke bazzite the desktop dosent response to me anymore i didn’t even used the termnal 😖
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I fix it already
I’m not sure that you can get wallpaper engine running. Maybe someone else can say otherwise, but I wouldn’t trust second hand.
There is a project that can run some backgrounds, but is very experimental and IMHO not suited for running constantly as a desktop background. WPE is way too deep in specific windows features to be able to run on linux smoothly.
A nice alternative for Linux on Wayland might be swww: https://github.com/LGFae/swww
I dunno, I started with Debian and then many months later learned that it was one of the harder distributions given the outdated packages.
Glad I chose Debian because Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, PureOS, etc are all derivatives of it.
Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.
If your computer can’t handle Linux Mint, then either you do something wrong, or your computer is really unstable. I won’t ask you to use Mint, but I will say, that I use it on three different computers, and not a single problem anywhere. Dual-boot is notoriously unstable - mostly due to MS… So my advice is, to use a computer for Linux by it self…
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ZorinOS maybe ?
Bazzite is great for gaming !
Nobara too.
I suggest you to check out Linux Mint Cinnamon edition. I have been using it for years without any problems. I also have dual boot with Windows, but I think I will delete Windows soon and use only Linux.
My name is none of your business, and I approve this suggestion.
For most of us using Linux distros for years, we already have a preferred distro that is highly unlikely to be Ubuntu or even Debian based, but for first-timers, I honestly believe Mint is the way to go. But seeing how mint has been a flop for you (as another poster said, it’d be great to know what went wrong) an immutable distro (like Bazzite) would fit your current needs better, but these distros are not the best way to start learning about Linux and eventually migrate from Windows entirely.
