I need some advice regarding which distro to choose. I tried installing fedora workstation on my laptop as test and it seemed quite annoying to get the user interface right.
I dont mind the technical differences, in fact i’m looking forward to them as linux is more secure and better designed.
The problem i’m having is that i want the good things from windows desktop. for example; tray icons, being able to control filesystem easily with gui, shortcuts on desktop.
Every distro i have tried or seen has been really basic regarding this out of the box with very little customization options. I prefer not having to download million extensions for every little feature that might stop working at every major update or if developer doesnt feel like continuing.
I also would like to be able to easily backup customization settings so i dont have to do everything again if i need to reinstall. I like being able to easily customize everything so having a lot of settings is good thing for me.
I read somewhere about kde plasma and screenshots seemed promising and downloaded kde fedora. Haven’t installed it yet but am I on the right track for what i’m looking for? Are there other even better choices? I’d like to nail this from the start so I dont have to reinstall later. I really dont want to wade through every possible distro.
Thank you all, you have been big help
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Just to reinforce the previous replies, KDE Plasma is the desktop environment you are looking for. Is the most similar interface to the Windows desktop. They recently got huge donations and is in the uprising in developement compared to the Gnome desktop environment which unfortunately had some layoffs and funding has decreased.
And as for the distribution you would want something that supoorts your hardware well and packages the software you need/want(you can always fill the gaps with flatpaks). I can only recommend for you to check their respective packaging information.
My guess is that Debian with KDE Plasma as your desktop should suffice your all needs.
(Coming from a guy who has used Ubuntu, Debian, Manjaro, Void, EndeavorOS, Manjaro, Arch and most desktop environments.)
Endeavor OS w/ KDE Plasma. Use btrfs file system and set up timeshift and timeshift auto snap
Incredible distro!
What you’re looking for is not about distro, but desktop environment.
Since you want tray icons and an environment that isn’t just basic, avoid GNOME.
You are on the right track in considering KDE Plasma. It’s good, rich in features, and very customizable. A few distros use it by default, and most will let you install it as an alternative to (or replacement for) whatever they use by default.
the kde website has bunch of distributions. opensuse, neon, fedora, manjaro, kubuntu. Does it matter which I pick? I chose fedora mostly on a whim. I have understood that plasma is something separate to this and probably included in anything kde related…? What is the fundamendal difference between these?
+1 for the fedora KDE spin. Fedora has been rock solid for me. (Though I am currently using workstation with GNOME)
Fedora is an incredibly well run distro. By default it only ships foss software so remember to enable the non foss repo if you can’t find an app.
Look for Fedora kde on their website
The difference isn’t very significant. Software is packaged slightly differently, and there might be slight philosophical opinion design differences in the system, but for the most part it doesn’t matter.
Fedora is fine. Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, same thing with a different interface) is fine. They’re very common choices so there will be plenty of community support.
Plasma is largely plasma, regardless of where you get it from. Distro wise, the biggest difference tends to be theming and default settings. All things you should easily be able to change yourself to make it work the same no matter where it’s from. The only real gripe I have with plasma. Is distributions that enable the global menu by default. No easy way to turn it back off. And while I don’t mind the global menus. It’s the inconsistency of the global menus that’s that issue. Any plasma or QT application works fine generally that anything gtk or otherwise and it gets to be a mess. Not Plasma’s fault.
But in general it doesn’t matter what distribution it comes from
Plasma is just the name of the latest KDE release, I believe. Might I suggest Kubuntu? Ubuntu is the most popular distro in general, and Kubuntu is the KDE/Plasma Version of it.
Because Ubuntu is so popular, it is easy to find support online. I had my husband try Kubuntu, and so far he’s loving it. He has a bit less Linux experience than I do.
You can always change your distro again later!
kubuntu seems nice based on descriptions. I’m mostly torn between that and fedora now. I have always been a little anxious about malware and cyberattacks. But to temper my “paranoia” i’m also a bit lazy or rather want to avoid needless work. Is it easier to make kubuntu as secure as fedora than make fedora as easy to use as kubuntu? I even asked the ai about it and it said fedora might require more manual configuration. Then there is also the perspective of threat actors which would likely rather target the most popular choice. I fear that might become more relevant in the future as world is going to shit.
if you’re worried about security that much, I’d go with fedora. Or maybe go with a distro based on Ubuntu without the snaps, like Linux Mint? I’m far from an expert, but the main thing the enthusiasts around here complain about with Ubuntu is the use of snaps. I think they’re less secure?
Linux Mint IS the current top distro on distrowatch. It uses “cinnamon” instead of Gnome. Cinnamon is forked from an older version of Gnome from before gnome started looking all weird and touchscreen-y.
I haven’t used cinnamon, so I can’t say anything about it really.
But, ultimately, if you’re worried about cyber attacks and malware then ANY distro of Linux is very safe. Hackers mostly target Windows. The people who use Linux are harder to dupe! Also, because of the fragmented nature of Linux (all the different distros), it is much harder to design malware that works on all of them.
I like Debian-based distros, so I usually suggest Linux Mint or Linux Mint Debian Edition to beginners.
Regarding the ones you mentioned: Fedora has a strong following, so you would probably find plenty of community around it, if you’re okay with a distro so closely linked to Red Hat corporate decisions. (I am not.) Kubuntu conveniently uses KDE Plasma by default, so you wouldn’t have to install it yourself, but recent Ubuntu variants impose some controversial things like Snap packaging; it’s a matter of preference. Manjaro and Neon have relatively poor track records in the stability department. I don’t have any experience with openSUSE.
It doesn’t matter very much which one you pick, because you can always install a different one later if the first one you try doesn’t suit you. The only way to get a feel for that is to try them.
When people say “KDE”, they generally mean KDE Plasma, which is the desktop environment that was originally just called KDE. (Kool Desktop Environment.) It was renamed somewhat recently, I think so that “KDE” could refer to the organization that also develops applications and other software.
why do some consider the snap thing bad?
The reasons vary from person to person. Some of the complaints I’ve seen:
- Its repository (app store) is controlled exclusively by Canonical.
- It was released in a premature state, with problems like bad performance and polluting the user’s home directory with a mandatory “snap” folder.
- It was forced upon existing Ubuntu users, not only through installing Snap by default, but also by replacing important and well-established native packages with fake ones that quietly installed a Snap of that software when upgraded. Firefox was a notable example.
- It’s an unnecessary extra packaging system in a distro that already has a native one.
- For people who actually want a container-based cross-distro packaging system in addition to native packages, Flatpak has done a better job of meeting peoples needs/desires, and is a more open system.
In Snap’s defense, its design looked potentially better than Flatpak at sandboxing when I investigated them both a couple years ago. Unfortunately, it was pushed out with too many rough edges to feel like a better choice for most users, and the closed app store is a deal-breaker for many of us.
That sounds quite bad, I dont want to switch from one oppressor to another. Do you think they will try locking things down at some point so people cant work around their bullshit? I think i might be able to live with it if i have option of using something else too but I dont want to have to move again if things become unbearable, like with windows now.
Both Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat (Fedora/CentOS) have a history of pushing their own stuff on people and locking it in when they have the opportunity to do so. This is no surprise, since both are trying to walk the fine line of being profitable business system/service providers using open-source software. I expect they will do more of this in the future.
They can only do it so much, though, since they don’t have unlimited resources and don’t want to alienate too many users. Some people find one or both of them tolerable. Some don’t even notice the changes, since most of that stuff is just behind-the-scenes plumbing to a typical desktop user.
If you want to reduce the chances of having your setup disrupted by some future obligatory change, I think Linux Mint would put you in a good place. The regular edition is based on Ubuntu, but Mint insulates its users from nonsense like the Firefox Snap (providing a native package instead), and the maintainers have a Debian edition as an exit strategy in case Canonical ever goes off the rails. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so migrating Linux Mint from an Ubuntu base to a Debian base would be fairly painless.
Tip for installation time: Consider putting the /home directory on its own partition. This will allow swapping distros in the future without having to mess with backup/restore cycles to preserve your files and user settings.
As others have said, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, and Fedora are probably going to be your big three, though I would include openSUSE. All three are very well established and mostly stable (not Debian stable, but they all strike a good balance between stability and not running 2-year old releases!). All 4 of these will have extensive support communities, the SUSE is mainly popular in Europe if that matters. All of them are relatively user friendly for new users, too.
Personally, I prefer Fedora, but that’s mainly because most of my professional work is in Red Hat and it’s related distros. Finding a distro that suits you is part of learning Linux. Pick one and use it for awhile. Like others have said, separate out your home directory to its own partition so you can easily reinstall and keep your files. Distro-hopping is a time-honored tradition in the community! It’s unlikely that any distro will be “perfect” for you out of the box. You’ll have to make it your own, and that’s the beauty of it all: You can!
The problem i’m having is that i want the good things from windows desktop. for example; tray icons, being able to control filesystem easily with gui, shortcuts on desktop.
KDE uses a system tray for various status indicators, so that’s probably what you’re looking for. You should know that on Linux the OS and the desktop environment are modular components. You can have multiple DEs and choose which one you want to log into. You can try different DEs, in parallel, without reinstalling your entire OS. It will still be the same OS/file system underneath. All you have to do is find and install the corresponding desktop environment packages in your package manager.
KDE is probably the most feature-rich DE, though depending on the specific distro it may not have the entire range of KDE applications installed by default. Your distro should have KDE group packages like “kdebase”, “kdegames”, “kdeutils”, etc, which provided groups of applications based on functional areas. I recommend these over installing every application individually, and you can always trim down later if there are things you don’t need.
There are other DEs, like XFCE and LXQt, but most of them are geared around minimalism or creating a specific look/feel and don’t have the feature depth of KDE.
GUI file manager should be no problem in any DE/distro, though you will be limited in what you can edit from your user account (please don’t run as root for normal use).
As far as desktop icons, most DEs favor an organized application launcher over icons. Do you use desktop icons more for launching applications or for opening files?
As for retaining your settings, my recommendation would be to create
/homeas a separate partition from/(root) when you do your OS install. All of your user configuration and your files will be in /home, which gives you the freedom to reformat and reinstall the OS in / without affecting your user files (when you run the OS installer, you’ll need to manually configure the partitions, then tell it to use the existing /home but not format it). This also adds some safety for your personal files in case you are making changes to the OS and you end up breaking it - you can just replace it without losing your stuff.Also if you’re considering running multiple distros (Fedora, Debian, Arch, w/e), you can give each of them a separate root partition and have them all use the same /home partition, so your files will be available in all of them. In this case I recommend also making a separate /boot partition, which would be shared across all distros.
I use gui more for file management. I dont like using the terminal for that since I have to remember everything constantly.
Why isnt the /home separate from /root by default? Frankly I dont see any benefits from it being in there.
Also, what is your opinion on kubuntu vs fedora regarding this? I’m quite torn between them, kubuntu seems nice and easy to use but I fear its developers might do stupid decisions if they are already annoying people with the snaps. Fedora seems more secure but it might require a lot of tinkering to get things to work and might be more prone to problems that need troubleshooting.
I use gui more for file management. I dont like using the terminal for that since I have to remember everything constantly.
Well of course. The only time terminal is really useful for file management is when you want to do mass operations (e.g. find all filenames that match a pattern and rename them with another pattern) or when you’re managing a remote/headless system.
Why isnt the /home separate from /root by default? Frankly I dont see any benefits from it being in there.
It complicates the setup process to make multiple partitions. Generally speaking I wouldn’t want an automated process to mess with partitioning a drive for me, I would either be satisfied with the basic single-partition setup or else set up the partitions manually.
If you do set up your partitions manually, make sure you create a swap partition of at minimum 2GB, though if you plan to use hibernation you’ll need enough swap to store your entire RAM contents, plus additional space for the swap itself.
Your OS partition doesn’t need to be all that big, Linux tends to be pretty efficient. 30GB is probably enough to provide room for growth.
Also, what is your opinion on kubuntu vs fedora regarding this?
I used Kubuntu for many years, but I don’t really like the recent changes in Ubuntu, especially the move away from standard repository package management in favor of snaps.
Fedora is a solid choice, and may be particularly useful if you plan to do anything career-wise with Linux. There’s a lot of RedHat/Fedora/CentOS in industrial and enterprise computing.
Personally I’ve recently started using EndeavourOS, and I’m pretty happy with it so far. It’s an Arch variant, but designed to be useful out-of-the-box. The only thing I miss occasionally is Synaptic, there really isn’t anything comparably competent for any of the non-Debian distros unfortunately.
Why isnt the /home separate from /root by default?
Because then you either waste free space for root or completely fill it up and can’t install any native packages easily.
Linux Mint is quite popular amongst beginners. But the main thing I want to say is: I recommend you to try the KDE desktop if you’re used to MS Windows. It has a tray, start menu, icons, scortcuts and everything. And it looks kind of familiar to Windows users.
For Mint and Windows users, Cinnamon is a pretty smooth transition too.
I switched from Windows to LMDE and Cinnamon a bit more than a year ago, and I enjoy it.
Yeah as a new penguin Cinnamon Mint has been dirt easy to get used to. I’m thinking about trying other DEs for the fun of it but Mint has worked great out of the box.
I second Mint. (This is aimed at OP, not you, Hendrik). Not because I like it, myself, but because it’s a really easy transition from Windows.
I saw someone recommending Nix. That must have been a troll, because they may as well have suggested starting with Linux From Scratch. Don’t start with Arch, either - not even the EndeavorOS flavor. Arch is my preferred distro, but I’ve been running Linux since the late 90’s and it doesn’t feel like Linux to me if there’s nothing I have to fuss with by hand.
Just start with Mint. It’ll give you a really easy, mostly familiar environment with few surprises and - most importantly - everything will just work out of the box. It’s stable and solid. You can always change later after you get comfortable with The Linux Way - or not! I gave my octogenarian dad a laptop with Mint on it 5 years ago; earlier this year he bought himself a new laptop and - without booting into Windows - installed Mint by himself, with me on the phone for moral support. He’s perfectly happy with it.
Major desktop environments are KDE as you mentioned and Gnome.
Arch wiki is a good resource even if not running arch. You may want to look into their dotfiles page to back up your settings: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dotfiles.
NixOS ended up being my distro of choice for reproducible installs but it has a high learning curve and poor documentation so I wouldn’t recommend to start with. That said you can still use Nix on other distros with home manager to manage dotfiles and install non-system apps.
Distros just pick the default things to install. You can always use the package manager to install something else like a better file manager.
A lot of choices are simply subjective so its hard to recommend any one distro. Mint is close to windows, based on Ubuntu and uses Gnome. Ubuntu based on Debian I find to be user friendly. Not used a Fedora based distro in ages but there is also Silverblue I’ve heard mentioned positively.
Distros like Arch and NixOS are more design your own system setups. Pick what you want. I used arch for a bit, but got annoyed at keeping all my systems in sync. Had a huge wiki of all the tweaks I made. Then scripts to automate some of it. I started looking at automation tooling like ansible when I found nix.
Zorin is a good transition point from Windows to Linux, since it’s an easy distro to install and it’s pretty Windows-like from a UX perspective.
Here’s a more general recommendation: start off by installing a VM platform (VirtualBox or similar) on your Windows system and spinning up a few VMs, each one with a different beginner-friendly distro on it (Zorin, Mint, etc). That way you can play around with them, get more comfortable, and choose the one you like best, before you go all in.
Sounds like you tried Linux distros that use Gnome as desktop environment (very little customization out of the box, no desktop icons, unfamiliar interface).
What you’re looking for is really KDE Plasma Desktop. Yes, Fedora KDE is a good option.
