My go to back in The Day was just Ubuntu because I was lazy. We’re talking the 14.04/16.04 days. Ubuntu was simple and mostly just worked. I now find myself needing to de-spywareify as the coming administration is likely to force Microsoft into tracking “dissidents” so need to get back into weaning myself off the Windows teat.
I recently dualbooted my main desktop with Ubuntu 24.04 and have been… entirely underwhelmed. The whole separation between APT and snap packages doesn’t work well together and is really the big problem I have, as a lot of standard deb packages just refuse to install properly now. the UI is hard to use and doesn’t make me happy, and it’s not been playing nice with my Zen 4 desktop when it comes to ACPI power states (no sleep, doesn’t reliably turn the power off when i ask it to turn off, etc). So overall, I am just not terribly interested in using Ubuntu anymore.
What I primarily want is the sort of “mostly just works” like old 16.04 but still gave you the full ability to monkey under the hood- and is also something based on a normal distro that most people write guides for because I am a smoothbrain. Should I just head to using basic plain jane Debian or something?
The short rant:
- You don’t need to ask which distro, ask which mint version
- The answer to #1 is MATE or xfce.
The longer rant:
I’ve been using xubuntu a bit, for guest OS in desktop VM, but I don’t really know if I like it enough to recommend it. It’s less rough than Arch, but so is 24 grit sandpaper.
Like others have said, there are many contenders for your use case, but mint stands out. I’m probably gonna go with mint once windows 10 stops getting updates. Mint or parrot. But TBH I don’t want to daily drive parrot either.
Which version of mint then? That’s really the question to ask. And if you ask me then I don’t care for all the bells and whistles, I don’t need animations or semi transparent windows. And when Ubuntu went with unity back in the day I walked. So I guess I want my GUI to stay the same. So I’d go with MATE or xfce.
Sadly I can’t recommand pop-os. In 2 years, the updates broke twice on me.
The resolutions where simple enough if you can use the command line to run
sudo apt update,sudo apt upgrade. But the GUI shop updater just crashed on me without the apt error message visible.It is a nice distro overall with which you can even try tiled windows without commiting to it.
-> pop-os is nice but it may break from times to times. So if (like me or most dev) you are ok with the CLI and just a bit of fixes from times to times then go for it. But if you are affraid of the CLI or never want to fix anything, then some other distro may be a better choice.
I’ve heard good things about Fedora. It seems to be mostly set-it-and-forget-it while still being flexible enough for power users.
Bazzite is the new Ubuntu without snaps etc, give it a try
My go to back in The Day was just Ubuntu because I was lazy.
So we have a bias towards Debian-based distros.
it’s not been playing nice with my Zen 4 desktop when it comes to ACPI power states (no sleep, doesn’t reliably turn the power off when i ask it to turn off, etc).
However, a newer kernel is definitely preferred.
is also something based on a normal distro that most people write guides for because I am a smoothbrain.
And finally, healthy access to documentation.
Based on the above, I would not pick:
- Debian Stable or any distro based on it. They ship with the 6.1 kernel, which launched only a couple months (January 2023) after the launch of Zen 4 (September 2022). I’m aware that access to newer kernels is possible. However, at that point, why even bother with Debian Stable to begin with?
- While both of Debian’s Testing and Sid/Unstable branches have access to newer kernels from the get-go, distros that ship the latest kernel by default (e.g. Arch, Fedora, openSUSE Tumbleweed and their derivatives) are simply better for offering an end-user product.
- Arch, Fedora, openSUSE Tumbleweed and their derivatives are primarily dismissed for not being based on Debian. Though, the fact that they’re more towards the rolling release side of things does play a minor role as well. By their very nature, they will change. Hence it’s less ideal for “set-and-forget” setups.
- Pop_OS!’ team seems to be primarily focused on delivering their upcoming COSMIC DE. For this reason, the distro has been in relative limbo. Therefore, I can’t recommend it.
- TUXEDO OS is dismissed for being relatively unpopular. Lots of other Debian(/Ubuntu) derivatives are dismissed for various reasons.
Let’s get to the actual recommendation, Linux Mint seems to be tailor-made for your use case:
- Based on Ubuntu, but without Snaps. While you can choose to use Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) instead, that one doesn’t come with the latest kernel. So the recommendation is for (standard/vanilla) Linux Mint.
- Their forums are full with up-to-date and (relatively) well-written guides; while the excellent ArchWiki is arguably better, Linux Mint isn’t a slouch either. Furthermore, as Linux Mint is very popular, you can simply expect to find solutions to most things that might come up.
👏👏👏
Great response. You didn’t just recommend your favourite but considered the requester’s input, explained why options were filtered out, and narrowed it down to an option with a great description.
I hope OP agrees, but this is what’d be considered stellar customer service if OP were a customer.
Thank you for the kind words 😊!
Though, in retrospect, I hope the recommendation for Linux Mint works out for their issues regarding ACPI power states. Perhaps a bigger departure from Ubuntu (if at all) would have been beneficial here.
Tbh you’re probably right if you want something straight forward just stay with Debian. If your feeling adventurous and don’t do any gaming try FreeBSD
Any major distro should do it imo. Personally I run Fedora because I tried it out years ago and I’m past the distro hopping phase. It just works™ (most of the time, as every distro).
PopOS is getting traction, and I think it’s deserved. I only use it on my gaming rig and never had major problems. Based on Ubuntu if I recall so the majority of Ubuntu tutos should be compatible.
I tried ZorinOS as well. It’s paid (10 bucks per major version if I recall), but it’s surprisingly stable and well fleshed out. It aims to mimic Windows or MacOS design out of the box, for people that migrate to Linux. They have a free lite version. Based on Ubuntu as well. The only reason it’s not my main OS is because Fedora is already installed on my main rig and I’m lazy.
As suggested, Debian is still its old self, and it’s a good thing. The stability thing although means that you won’t get the latest bells and whistles. On the other end of the spectrum there’s Arch but it’s far less “set and forget” than the other distros. At least it’s longer to set, harder to forget. I would rather go with Manjaro, with which I had a really good experience years ago, never any major struggle. But It still needs a bit of minimal maintaining.
Years ago, when Ubuntu started their Unity and Amazon partnering bullshit, I switched to Linux Mint. I don’t know how it is today, but at the time it was the go-to replacement for Ubuntu: all the advantages without any of the inconvenient.
Honestly, just pick one of the major ones, try it in a live environment to be sure the defaults suit you, and you should be good to go for years.
There was another post on here about Manjaro taking about going opt out on some things that to me is a deal breaker. EndeavorOS has been mentioned a decent amount for a more user friendly Arch based distro. I can’t personally speak about it, but just a little extra but for others going through here.
The Manjaro maintainers are a bunch of clowns. Constantly letting TLS certificates expire, enabling an indev, broken driver on Macs without asking the asahi devs why it was disabled in the first place… literally clowns
Eh, didn’t know that. I can’t remember any drama when I was a user, but maybe I just wasn’t following the news and didn’t fall into any of the userbase that suffered from a mishap. But good to know.
Manjaro might have been my first step into Linux last year, but it was brief and I switched to Arch. It was brief enough that I didn’t remember if that’s what it was. Glad I made the switch, but a non GUI installation is not for most people.
Edit: Nvm, I used Garuda. I was reminded in another comment. A good stepping stone to experience Arch and KDE.
Or Garuda. Sure, the theme it applies to KDE by default is pretty garish but nothing keeps you from just going to System Settings and seeing a different theme. Other than that it’s basically just Arch with a bunch of stuff preinstalled and some convenience scripts.
Yes. I did use Harris for a little bit before switch to Arch. It was a good easy for me to test before jumping all in.
I was worried about that with Arch, and yes the setup takes longer, but other than that for me it’s just been “run ‘pacman -Syu’ every few weeks” and otherwise forget, been running like that for a few years. So I’d still say it’s set and forget tbh, just that the set part is a bit more work.
I’ve had Fedora on several computers, and everything worked for quite a while while. Eventually though, things just began to break randomly - probably a sign of me not doing much maintenance.
The most common issue was Gnome Software center failing to update anything. I just ignored that app, and continued to upgrade through the CLI for a while. Eventually, I just got tired of that, and installed Debian on my HTPC.
Now I can finally treat that computer the way I want. Just install, watch videos, update when needed, and ignore the rest. I have another computer for satisfying my tinkering desires, so this one is just for the videos and very light browsing, but not much else. Therefore, Debian is the perfect distro for this kind of use.
I have had lots of issues with the Software Center in the past as well. I just blamed it on Gnome and used the CLI anyway, as I’m more comfortable seeing what exactly happens in case it goes wrong. But it seems it has been fixed now because it’s been month (maybe even a year or two, I couldn’t say) that I’ve not had to complain.
(But yeah, to each their own, in the end it’s not really important)
Should I just head to using basic plain jane Debian or something?
Every time I try a new distro I end up back on Debian. It just works.
Same. I can barely even tell what “good” Ubuntu brings to the table other than the task bar icons, which I just add in with am extension.
The whole separation between APT and snap packages doesn’t work well together and is really the big problem I have, as a lot of standard deb packages just refuse to install properly now.
since you are mention deb packages, I would consider these
- Linux Mint
- PopOS
- Rhino Linux (somekind of rolling release distro based on ubuntu)
- LMDE
I’m in a similar situation. I’ve used Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) for more than a decade now, and it has mostly worked beautifully. Over the years, memorable problems were a few issues with GPU drivers, GRUB shenanigans and the occasional amateurish KDE UX fuckup. But in general I found the whole experience much better than what I saw on Windows during the time.
However, for a while now Ubuntu is breaking my #1 rule of software products: Do not annoy your users. Every update they are trying to push (and fix) their useless Snap architecture a bit more, and every updates makes things effectively worse. Examples: displaying annoying popups to tell you that Snap app x needs to be updated and that the app has to be closed for that, but not updating it when closing the app, trying to fix that in the latest version by auto installing the latest snap with a popup and progress bar when closing the app (making me wait to turn off my computer till it’s finished - I just finished my work and want to go home please), numerous interoperability issues because snap apps run in some kind of sandbox and don’t play nice with regular (Debian and Linux) mechanisms, and so on. It’s an absolute shitshow, and I think they have now annoyed me, personally, long enough. I need to find something better.
Ah. I just needed that off my chest. Maybe I should give Mint a try
I’m a Kubuntu enjoyer, but I started with a minimal install. I think that is “de-snapified”?
Could be snapless in a minimal install, but if you need Firefox, Chromium, Thunderbird or a bunch of other useful stuff they all come as a snap package
I just checked. I don’t have
snapor residuals of it on my Kubuntu image from the initial minimal install. I remember putting on LibreWolf (Firefox flavor) viawgetandsudo dpkg -i <librewolfInstallFile>.deb. Also, made installbashscripts for a couple useful other starting apps on my laptop. I haven’t used asnappackage once since my re-imaging of my SSD for 24.04 LTS, for what it’s worth.they also come as flatpak after you enable that repo
Linux Mint and PopOS are usually listed as friendly distros and are derivatives of Ubuntu without Ubuntu controversies like Snap. Mint even has an alternative direct Debian base skipping some Ubuntu packages, so might be ironically closer to old Ubuntu in that flavor.
If you’re open to going non-debian, Manjaro is often sold as the more user friendly Arch. (Edit - a recent Manjaro controversy has people recommending EndeavorOS instead for an Arch wrapper. I’ve not tried that one myself).
Debian or Arch aren’t bad to use directly either and are far more newbie friendly than they were a decade ago even if not as out of the box opinionated as their derivatives.
If you’re used to Debian based distros, Linux Mint. I personally use OpenSuse if you want to check something different.
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I think OP wants something that also minimizes the "set“ part. Arch is for enthusiasts who like to put a lot of effort into creating their own perfect Linux system. I’ve tried it once and to be perfectly honest I don‘t want to fiddle around with basic settings if there is no need to. I’m pretty busy with other things in my life and want stuff to work out of the box with sane defaults if possible. It’s essential that stuff can easily be customized afterwards though.
Arch is very good for people who want to invest time into learning what goes on under the hood. Perfectly valid use case, but probably not for OP.
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Considering your previous experience with Ubuntu, I would recommend Debian. Just make sure to get the right ISO for what you want.
Since you’re complaining about Ubuntu not working with ACPI power states, my next recommendation would be Endeavour to be more up to date and get fixes and stuff sooner. It’s pre-configured Arch.
