Thanks, That is really helpful, I am planning to use it for home and everyday use on my laptop. I think that arch is a bit too complex for my needs, Mint will probably give me the smoother transition and looks nicer from stock compared to debian which I am more familiar with however.
On Sat, 8 Mar 2025 at 09:18, Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> wrote: > Hello James, > > I've seen you've popped up on the IRC channel when the few of us that > linger there have been ‘away from keyboard’ so it's nice to finally talk > to you. > > > At some point in the future I am planning on switching from windows 11 > > to linux but I am not sure what distro to go for. > > I'm most familiar with debian, through raspberry pi os, but also > > either mint or ubuntu are also on the table. > > I think the answers from Tim, Rhys, and Terry nicely cover some > different things to consider, and having used Raspberry Pi's Debian > spin-off you'll be familiar with some of them, but they were a bit > implicit, so I'll list them. > > - Unlike Microsoft Windows, a Linux distro tends to have a lot more > swappable parts. Three interesting layers are: > > - The kernel which marshals the hardware and arbitrates requests to > access it from the programs above. Most users don't find > sufficient here to distinguish one distro from another, though > some more unusual bits of hardware may need a particular kernel > module for support. > > - The distro's preperation of software for easy install of a new > program as a ‘package’, and the other packages it depends on. > Then keeping installed packages up to date with upgrades. > > The two main flavours of package managers are APT, from Debian, > and DNF, from Fedora. I'm not sure there's much to choose between > them as competition worked its magic. > > - The graphical desktop interface is the key one in many users' > eyes. Terry uses the Kubuntu distro which is the KDE desktop on > Ubuntu. There are many desktop environments, and they can each be > installed as a package at the same time, at the cost of disk > space. The graphical log-in prompt for username and password > normally provides a menu of the available ones to choose from for > that one session. > > So don't think plain Ubuntu with its default of the GNOME desktop > means KDE is out of reach. Or the lightweight XFCE, or a tiling > window manager like i3 plus other parts of your choosing. You can > experiment with different desktops without switching distro as > most provide all the main ones. > > - Hardware compatibility used to be a significant hurdle in Linux's > earlier days, and can still cause more minor problems like getting the > audio working, etc., as new chips are continuously arriving on the > market. A ‘live’ version of a distro lets you boot from a USB drive > to check how much of the hardware works before installation. > > Searching for your model of PC or motherboard along with ‘Linux > compatibility’ may also show up those who have walked the same path > before you. The program ‘inxi’ run from a live distro can summarise > the hardware. > > - The philosophy of the distribution. Not just whether they're zealots > for an aspect of licensing, but what's their approach to releasing > updates. Is it every six months on schedule, or when volunteer effort > means it's ready, or is it a rolling release where they're keen to get > an upstream release of a single program into their users' hands? > > - The level of activity in the project. Some have paid staff, others > are volunteer efforts, and some a mixture. Do they have a means of > community you like: mailing list, IRC, web forum, ... Is it active > enough: are others getting a thread of replies going to their > question? > > ✻ ✻ ✻ > > Separate from all that, there's what do you want to use the distro for? > Something you can forget about? Or something to play, experiment, and > learn through? You've the mainstream ones, split by Debian or Fedora > ancestry, and then the others like Arch Linux and its spin-offs. > > Pure ‘Arch’ has a very manual installation process where you're left at > the shell prompt of a root user and you work your way through setting up > the network configuration, then installing just the packages you want > using their ‘Pacman’ package manager: neither APT or DNF. This may > appeal if you like to learn how things are put together. You can have > a skim of the instructions without thinking of installing Arch. > https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide > > I use Arch Linux at home. On remote servers, especially for clients, > where I want to ‘install and forget’, I go for Debian. I'd be happy to > use Ubuntu or Fedora if it was the client's wish. > > Hope that helps. Tell us what you decide and how you get on. Feel free > to ask this list questions. > > -- > Cheers, Ralph. > -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2025-04-01 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... https://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
