I’m over tinkering with my OS. So I’m looking for a distro that “just works” out of the box for my laptop. Also I want to test an “easy” distro I can install for my grandpa.
I don’t care for immutability, declarative config, being fully FOSS or having the newest stuff. I don’t want snaps, or a software center that relies on them. So no Ubuntu.
What I do want (ideally out of the box):
Important:
- as few annoying visible bugs and crashes as possible (looking at you, Ubuntu)
- Wayland support
- good package selection, so no independent fringe distro
- fluid YouTube videos, streaming, pre-installed codecs
Less important:
- ideally with Gnome
- encrypting the hard drive from within the GUI installer
- nice font rendering (used to be a problem, but I guess not anymore)
- installing Steam with a button press
- pre-installed sane-airprint and sane-airscan (automatic setup of my networked printer-scanner-combo)
You get the idea. The usual stuff (low-end gaming, browsing, streaming, printing, scanning) should just work. I don’t have any hardware that poses a problem.
From what I’ve read, Mint doesn’t yet support Wayland and doesn’t ship with video codecs anymore. (Or am I wrong?)
What are the other options? Is Zorin king of the block now? Is Manjaro good now?
Thanks for any and all input.
What’s wrong with Debian?
Hmm, now that I think about it…not a whole lot. I’ve been running it stripped down to the bones for so long I just got used to it being like that, but by default it does tick all the boxes.
I may have over-thought this one.
Yeah Debian meets all those requirements except that I don’t know about sane.
I’ve gone rogue at work and formated my windows laptop with Debian which I’m also extremely comfortable in with stripped down servers. Running Wayland and using Microsoft teams and tools via the edge browser (mandated) has been absolutely pleasant. There are still initial headaches initially setting everything up and getting the drivers to work and thunderbolt docks to work but now its awsome. Best part is the 10 second shut down time when I run between meetings.
So you’re calling for Fedora
I didn’t consider Fedora cause last time I used it it did have a strong FOSS focus and put barriers in your way if you wanted non-free software.
Is that not the case anymore? Does it come with a GUI software center for rpm and flatpak? I’ve been on Debian and Arch so long my knowledge of other desktop distros is severely outdated.
Fedora comes with Gnome, so it has Gnome Software Center installed by default. Mostly of packages from Fedora is also Flatpaks from Red Hat’s server (not Flathub). They also has Flathub enabled by default
About RPM, I don’t know if Gnome Software Center is able to handle it, cause I don’t use Fedora myself. But at least you may try and see
Mostly of packages from Fedora is also Flatpaks from Red Hat’s server (not Flathub)
That’s not true. Fedora used to have a Fedora flatpak repo but now they simply ship with flathub enabled by default.
About RPM, I don’t know if Gnome Software Center is able to handle it
Yes, it can
lubuntu… or mint….
Manjaro is great.
Does it have automatic updates, or do you have to manually update often like with Arch?
I’ve run Manjaro for various relatives with zero issues for about 5 years now. Most of them just hit the Update button in the notification tray when it shows up, or if I’m visiting I’ll update it, but it might go months without updates and just keeps working. But if you ingrain in your dad to just hit the button when he sees it, it’ll be fine.
I quite like Manjaro overall. Lots of usability tweaks and low maintenance because it’s curated and not completely cutting edge on the latest packages. It works.
I really like Manjaro. I’ve been running it on my personal computer for many years now, however, I would not recommend it for grandma’s computer. Their “delayed and curated” release strategy mostly just works but when it doesn’t it doesn’t. As someone mentioned elsewhere in the comments I would lean towards Red Hat or Debian for more mindless distros. I’ve administered thousands of Debian package updates and distro upgrades and it’s so stable. We don’t deserve Debian.
I’ve had a pretty good experience with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, with a pretty similar use case / criteria.
I’ve done my share of tinkering, and while I learned a lot, and enjoyed Gentoo, Arch, Debian, NixOS, and others (Mandrake, Ubuntu), I sometimes I just want get my work done…
With Tumbleweed, there are a few packages that you’d need to install for codecs, but that’s easily done via the CLI zypper package manager with a single command.
I’d definitely recommend checking it out - its been a solid daily driver for almost 3-years now with very few issues, and lets me focus on getting stuff done. I wonder if this is due to their QA build process (OBS)?
Anyway, good luck & have fun whatever you choose!
When I tried it a year ago, printer setup failed with a permission error until I disabled the firewall, and I had to install a community repo by a random person and manually edit a text file to get airprint and airscan working. Half the YaST modules didn’t seem to do anything or work correctly, or duplicated KDE settings. That’s what I consider to be “annoying visible bugs”.
I also find their software selection to be limited (without said random community repos), and you can only update Tumbleweed from the command line. It felt like an unfinished mod of their flagship LEAP distro.
I just switched to tumbleweed with gnome and I was shown firmware updates, package updates, and flatpak updates all from gnome software. Also there’s a whole gui in yast for searching and installing packages. I haven’t needed to print anything yet but i haven’t run into any difficulties elsewhere.
