I don’t really know a bunch of distros, but I helped convert some normies so here’s a list of pain points I rather not have as a first experience
No rolling distro. While some people may never see an issue in their life, some may see it right away. Bad first impression (Someone insisted on starting on fedora, then noticed the hard way that the current Nvidia drivers were incompatible with the shipped kernel)
easy Nvidia driver install (only for gamers on Nvidia)
Has a gui app store
has a common package manager that is often shown in tutorials (like apt. You always see exemple apt commands)
sudo is configured
doesn’t have a DE that tries to revolutionize UX
New users are dumb, so it needs to be easy for them
Yeah, vanilla Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome flavors, with good hardware support and a large community. For noobies, a good, familiarish desktop environment and comprehensive hardware support are really the most important things for them not to immediately bounce off.
Arch can be great and you can install whatever desktop environment you like, but there are just too many concepts for the average new user. Making a USB install stick is “difficult” enough to make a lot of people give up.
Debian is great, and my personal preference but it tends to be a bit behind on the latest hardware support, particularly for laptops. It’s easy enough to install whatever drivers you need, but again that can be just one thing too many for a new user.
That’s pretty much it. The most obvious difference between Debian and Fedora is that Debian uses apt with deb files for package management, while Fedora uses dnf and rpm files.
This but new Linux users. They get attracted to the worse newbies distros every time
What’s the best one, apart from Mint?
Min- oh.
I don’t really know a bunch of distros, but I helped convert some normies so here’s a list of pain points I rather not have as a first experience
New users are dumb, so it needs to be easy for them
Sudo is configured in the Debian installer, if you click the “root not allowed to log in” checkbox. So it literally checks all your boxes.
Oh? Didn’t know about that. Thanks
The typical advice is:
really? I haven’t touched regular fedora, how is the “vanilla” version different to derivities and other “vanilla” distros like debian or arch?
Yeah, vanilla Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome flavors, with good hardware support and a large community. For noobies, a good, familiarish desktop environment and comprehensive hardware support are really the most important things for them not to immediately bounce off.
I have never installed Arch, but I guess it doesn’t; but debian does come with various DEs , including KDE and Gnome.
Arch can be great and you can install whatever desktop environment you like, but there are just too many concepts for the average new user. Making a USB install stick is “difficult” enough to make a lot of people give up.
Debian is great, and my personal preference but it tends to be a bit behind on the latest hardware support, particularly for laptops. It’s easy enough to install whatever drivers you need, but again that can be just one thing too many for a new user.
ah ok, so fedora is generic and more up to date for new hardware, but debian lacks … cutting edge support, otherwise, it’s just as good for newbies.
And arch is still wiki based to install, even if you use archinstall.
That’s pretty much it. The most obvious difference between Debian and Fedora is that Debian uses apt with deb files for package management, while Fedora uses dnf and rpm files.
Just use nyarch /s