My objective is to ditch windows & utilize my triple monitor desktop as a cockpit style dashboard for my homeserver & lan devices along with always open widgets like music, calculator, etc.
There was another post yesterday about this and the community recommended Mint & Pop OS the most. However, I am not looking for windows-like. I want a new & fresh experience like using a smartphone for the first time or switching from ios to android.
Distrochooser.de recommended kubuntu to me.
So I have some questions:
-
What are the building blocks of a distro? Things that separate distros from each other. Like I know 2 - Desktop Env & Package Managers. Are there others, what are they or where do I find a list? I would like to compare these blocks and make it a shopping experience and then pick the distro that matches my list. Is this approach even valid?
-
How do I find and compare whats missing from which distro? For eg. if I install mint, what would I be potentially missing out that may be a feature on another distro? How do I go about finding these things?
-
What are some programs/ widgets/ others that are must haves for you? For eg. some particular task manager
-
What are the first steps after installing linux? For eg. In Windows, its drivers, then debloat and then install programs like vlc, rar, etc.
-
I read on some post, a user was saying that they want to avoid installing qt libraries. Why would someone potentially want that? I have never thought of my computer in such terms. I have always installed whatever whenever. The comment stuck with me. Is this something I should be concerned about?
-
Should I not worry about all of the above and just pick from mint, pop and kubuntu?
We really need a sticky or something for all these switching posts. It’s like 99% of the content here.
Helping people to switch to Linux, then trolling them to run rm -rf /* is the essence of most Linux communities.
I’m too lazy to reply to all of those questions, but if you don’t want it to be “windows-like” don’t pick a distro using KDE or Cinnamon by default (kubuntu and mint are very windows like UI out of the box)
Pop_os, fedora, anything using Gnome feels nothing like windows. To touch on question 4, once you’re installed assuming your hardware all works, you just need to install software you want from the distros package manager. There’s nothing to debloat, until you better understand the OS and your personal use case.
-
The only other things that stick out to me are distro philosophy and release schedule. Like, do you want a completely community oriented distro, a corporate one, one with LTS-style releases, or rolling releases? These things may or may not make a difference.
-
The best way imo is to install Ventoy to a USB drive, then load it up with ISOs from distros you are interested in. Then you can boot into their live sessions and test drive them. But ultimately, you can almost always get Linux software running on any distro. The differences are whether a distro comes with something out of the box, or if it even has your desired apps in its official repos.
-
btop, Steam, Discord, Firefox. These are all available on all distros. Things like the file system browser - I don’t care as much and just use what the distro provides by default.
-
Run a package update then install whatever other apps you want. For me, also set up auto mount of a couple network drives provided by my NAS.
-
You should not be concerned about this unless you are building things from source.
-
Probably… I used and gamed on Kubuntu for 2 years and had an excellent experience.
-
The other building blocks are like the two you know. In Linux there’s usually at least two ways to do everything, so a distro’s maintainers pick the ones that match their preferences. This guy might like a fast file system, so he picks one without journaling. That guy might like the fact that journaled file systems can often recover corrupted files on their own, so he picks one with. This guy wants software updates available the moment they’re released so he goes with a rolling release schedule. That guy prefers updates to be thoroughly tested before he installs them so he goes with Long Term Support.
-
I think Distrowatch is useful for comparing options. Pick a distro and it’ll tell you what goes into it.
-
I use Mint and I like the out of the box experience, so the only thing I’ve added is a desktop widget that shows me how much space I have left on my SSD. I’ve just gotten into gaming on my Linux partition using Proton, so I need to be aware of that. The widget comes with Mint and just needs to be enabled.
-
If you google “10 things to do after installing [distro]”, you’ll find everything you need. I decreased the swappiness of my SSD to reduce wear and enabled a firewall, but I don’t know if you still need to do those things.
-
You don’t really need to be concerned. Just realise that as you use Linux you too will develop Strong Opinions about the Right Way to do things. ;)
-
Those are all good choices. They’ll all give you a good experience without needing to dig into the technical details. You should try all three out using live USB and pick the one you find most comfortable.
You are correct that the Desktop Environment and Package Manager are the most important part of any distro. Of those, the Desktop Environment is the most important. Switching between Ubuntu with KDE Plasma and Arch with KDE Plasma is less visible of a change than switching from KDE Plasma to Gnome in any distro.
Most distros include all the major Desktop Environments: Mate, Gnome, KDE Plasma, and probably several more.
The biggest missing feature between Mint/Ubuntu/Debian is Container-based package management. This is an additional installation method, for “application”-like programs, usually proprietary. Debian has the infrastructure to run these, but you have to find or make the containers yourself. Mint has more support, in the form of a graphical package manager installed by default.
There’s really not much difference in the feature set of distros. Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint have a lot more in common than they have differences.
Desktop environments usually include a full set of these. I just use whichever comes with it.
Linux usually has the drivers already set up right away on first boot. You shouldn’t need to install any drivers. There’s very little bloat. Any superfluous packages are likely consuming no CPU time, just drive space. Every default installation comes with a media player and file archiver, but you can install VLC or RAR if you like them better.
They probably had a bad experience with one or more qt-based programs, or got a negative response when they filed a bug report to a qt program or library. Or, they were using some weird mix of old and new software, and ended up in a weird dependency loop that blocked a large set of packages on their system.
Probably. The most common distros will have the most community support.
Spend most of your effort choosing a Desktop Environment. Fortunately, this can be changed after installation.
