Stop Recommending Niche Linux Distros!

50 thoughts on “Stop Recommending Niche Linux Distros!”

• Honestly the only distros I'll ever recommend for newbies to install themselves are the corporate sponsored but still open distros: Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu. And for Fedora and openSUSE the immutable versions are the best by far. If I were to install a distro on my grandma's machine I'd install Debian stable, set up flatpak, maybe add dash to dock and not give her user sudo privileges lol. Anything else is for tinkerers, not normal users IMO.

• I don't recommend any Linux distro to anyone. Every beginner distro hops for a few years anyways lol.

• Hannah Montana Linux

• As a linux user since November the problem I'm having with Fedora is that it works so well I'm not learning much.

• I will CONTINUE to recommend people to use UwUntu, brodie, and there is nothing you can do to stop me!

• Usually, the most important consideration for novices is system stability. If they just want a basic office machine / web browser, it's hard to go wrong with debian stable or LMDE. If they want more cutting edge, including steam and games and what not, mint or pop! are decent choices. These distros are fine if you update them regularly. If you want a system that is stable even when it only gets security updates for a year, and then tries to jump to the current of everything, Gentoo without weird USE flags is basically impossible to beat.

  The most common reason for an install of some distro to implode is an ABI mismatch (real, or imagined). This causes the package manager to wedge, unable to roll back and unwilling to press on because it cannot satisfy its required constraints. In the extreme case, you get Linus Sebastian's issue with installing Steam nuking X11 off his machine. Because Gentoo only requires packages to have API compatibility, not ABI compatibility, this means your system will stay stable across a much wider set of package versions.

• There was time I installed regolith, the i3-on-gnome thing, onto my debian. It was for Ubuntu then, but I wanted to use it and 'it's like the same thing right' so I updated system, hacked ubuntu repos for one installation, reverted and it worked lmao , actually quite a miracle this dependency hell didn't crap itself.
  (and now debian's supported so I got arch problems now lol)

• Just simplify to either Debian or Arch Linux.

• Wait there is a WINDOW THERE? My brain just always assumed there was a wall behind the curtain

• Real linux users run puppylinux

• To get people off M$ Windows, something user friendly like Mint. I am switching to LMDE at the moment.

  It would help if distro and app developers would conform to a UX standard. The "Crazy Keys" as I call it, is not helpful to new Linux users. For example – Full Screen

  App 1 – F11 (good)
  App 2 – Ctrl + Shft + J (what) (F11 unused btw)
  App 3 – (Kodi) !

  I have to keep switching my mind where one app is ctrl+c for copy, another app is ctrl+shft+c for copy, this is in the same session, same workspace, apps side by side !

  Is there a UX standard, if not I think I'll write one.

  There should be installable, select-able key maps for the OS, then for the app which can use the OS map + the app key map. The app key map can override the mappings from the OS map, but should really try not to. It should be the same for all WM's Gnome, KDE or whatever, and all apps.
  There are many other things like this I would like to see. All of which would make for a more consistent / usable user experience.

• If you want to try Linux for the first time, I say use Ubuntu. Ain't no shame in it. It's just like using a Mac. Some people may say to use Mint, but Ubuntu comes with a lot of pre-baked features that make it pretty fully functional for just about any equipment — like the wifi driver for the old intel macs, for example. If you want to understand Linux as a whole better, use Arch, and don't install using Archinstall — install it manually a few times. If you want to ratchet up the challenge and add security, encrypt your drives with luks2 encryption.

• SimpleOS it is then!

• I've been recommending Zorin OS for years for people new to linux. Its a very well polished distro based off of Debian and is designed in mind for people coming from other operating systems. The biggest point in its favour though is weirdly enough that the full 'Pro' edition costs money. You'd be surprised how many people do not trust free software because of perceived value.

• After a couple false starts in escaping the windows ecosystem over the years through a handful of common distros, I got Garuda and literally that was that. It's my daily driver and I don't think that has even a remote chance of changing unless something crazy happens behind the scenes or it stops getting developed… So much for Arch being exclusively for technical users…

• Just use debian

• NixOS is a solution to a problem almost no one has

• I’m a tech guy but hate overly complicated processes. I’ve installed and deleted like 5 different distros trying to get into Linux because of how many hoops come up shortly after installing. I’ve been having a lot of fun with Bazzite/KDE.
  I don’t have a steamdeck anymore but that is what got me to dip my toes into Linux and bazzite feels so good. The nvidia drivers along with Steam and most things I would want or need were installed right out of the box and I haven’t had any fears of breaking the OS.
  Hopping into Reddit groups and things like that, it blows my mind how many people think that opening a konsole and running command lines is a normal thing that the general population should just know.
  I think it’s an issue of people not realizing that they’re in a bubble.

• I spent the first 20 years of my life learning Dos and then the Windows workflow. I've spent the next 20 years getting fed up with Microsoft, occasionally trying Linux, and being continually disappointed with the lack of user friendliness. I just want something I can feel comfortable with, and get away from the "always online" and "non-ownership" of today's Windows.

• Yes, but NixOS video when??? WHEN!!!

• If you are new; just use mint or fedora.

• Niche Sucks….Only the Strong survive

• I see NixOS recommended a lot in the comments.
  As a previous fan of NixOS, I cannot recommend it anymore, as the company that "owns"/manages it recently committed Community-Management-Sudoku with a complete tone-deaf blogpost not addressing any criticism.

  To anyone who wants more details, I recommend the blogpost from Xe Iaso, a person who heavily recommended NixOS in the past. (Title of Blogpost: Much ado about "nothing")

• I did not use Arch as my first distro, because Arch did not exist when I started using Linux 😉 I did use Slackware, manual dependency management FTW.

• the biggest difference between mainline distros and the rest are simply… the ability to update the system without jumping through a circus hoop.

• I disagree with you as a general principle (i.e., I have no specific cases to trot out). But here's the bottom line: the masses are stupid. "Popular opinion" is the most horrendous possible way to make a decision, unless your only goal is to minimize cost (because, economies of scale). It is extremely common to find the "best solution" to a problem existing in a niche, totally overlooked as "everyone" goes yammering out to grab whatever has generated the most buzz.

  You see this everywhere. The best programming language isn't the most popular one. The best actors aren't the most popular ones. The best books aren't the most popular ones. The best calculators aren't the most popular ones. You have to go out and DIG to find the real jewels.

  Standardization is for lemmings. And BTW, they usually wind up running right off of a cliff. What you're basically saying is "Just be content with the garbage that everyone else is using – don't go try to find something better." By that logic we should all be using Windows. And Dells. 😐

  And just so you know, the best programming language is Forth. And the best calculators are RPN.

• I thought we had agreed by now to just suggest Ubuntu or Mint and nothing else, but it seems that's not the case.

• I think the best option for new users is Fedora. Ubuntu also has a great community for beginners, but the aggressive push for snap packages tends to cause confusion as some packages tend to misbehave; for example Fireshot, where changing the screenshots directory was/is a pain.

  Linux Mint has been my recommended distro for a long time, but I have become a bit biased. I am a developer of the pipewire-screenaudio extension and we are getting bug reports from Mint users, as it still (as of 21.3) ships PulseAudio, instead of PipeWire.

• Can we talk about MX Linux, that's always at the top of distrowatch, but somehow I never met anybody using it, there are never in phoronix news, even as a last proof of how fake their first position is, their subreddit is completely weak compared to key distros…

• Manjaro was my third distro and I liked it.

• Shout out to Opensuse
  Great distro yast is underrated.

• At least his outer was recorded during the time people touch grass usually

• 1 DAY ASKING FOR A REVIEW OF:
  – YAZU (FILE MANAGER>RANGER,VIFM,NNN,LF)
  – WEZTERM (TERMINAL)

• So you're saying it's a google-fu skill issue? 😛

• I have tried tumble weed manjaro, but my go to is Ubuntu , I’m using tuxedo os2 on my desktop pc. I am still a newb to Linux and find understanding things a little difficult.. I did try arch, but way over my head

• Oh, there's actually a window.

• "How to choose a distro as a beginner?"
  Step 1: Do not search this in Google
  Step 2: Do a 10-minute research to find a popular distro and start with it.

• Arch is not a mainstream distro.

• IDK man, friends don't let friends use Ubuntu.

• I like most of your videos though I don't agree with most of them – but it's your channel, you do you.

  This one makes you look like a hypocrite and I don't think you realise it.

  Linux is about choice – if you want to, you can make a distro your way, I can make a distro my way and we can all be happy doing our own thing.

  You choosing to tell others to not recommend niche distros is you denying them their choice – and there's the hypocrisy, right there.

  I do agree with you on Gentoo – as a 21 year veteran of it, it's probably the only distro I will ever use by choice from this point on. But if a newbie comes to me asking for a Linux recommendation, it will probably be Ubuntu or Mint, with some free help from me thrown in, because I'm a nice guy but not a Gentoo zealot who wants to give newbies pain.

  And if a newbie asks me about Gentoo, the first thing I tell them is "get ready to deal with a steep learning curve for maybe a year or two but if you get over that then that's when you get the rewards". I am both pragmatist and engineer.

  And only ever install Gentoo on a spare machine – because I don't want you whining at me and blaming Gentoo when you've dual booted it on your Windows PC and you're waiting for a compilation to finish so you can get to your email. Much better to leave some rusty old Pentium 4 compiling to itself in the corner of the room while you do your "spiffing stuff" on your Windows rig.

  "Them's the breaks" as we old folks sometimes say.

• Looking at you, obnoxious OG CrunchBang#! Linux evangelists. <_<

  Thank Cthulhu your OS is dead.

• You're right. Gentoo is well-known, will recommend.

• This has been a constant uphill battle "but arch works fine" they say. And i ask, ok where's the support? How does an end user who wants to make documents and check email recover from a botched kernel upgrade? Who do they even ask?

  The bottom line is, if it doesn't have official support channels and a large community don't recommend it to lay users.

  Chat here, are not lay users.

• Clearly RebeccaBlackOS is the superior first distro because of the early move to Wayland.

  /s

• Forever on Slackware, will recommend forever.

• Here is a distro called "Why did that open?"

• Ubuntu is sus lately because Canonical pushing Snap a bit too hard. Like Ubuntu do you want snap packages or .deb packages? And what about flatpaks? New users should not be worrying about those thing. So I won't be recommending Ubuntu to new users that's for sure.

• Valve uses Ubuntu in their recommended section, I recommend Ubuntu first & if they run into wifi issues, on 15yo laptops, I'd recommend Mint after W10 dies.
  WiFi on laptops always seems like a problem and it perplexes me.

• I have a different view, Dont recommend fork distros, so if you are a beginner – just use debian. and theb arch or gentoo if you are ready.

• This best advice ever.

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