Back again haha, I asked a little while ago about making the switch from Windows to Linux and general consensus was maybe don’t, as I use my PC for work doing voice acting, music production, and digital art.
Anyway, my PC has been crashing lately so I may be at the point soon of re-installing my OS, so I may as well bite the bullet if/when that happens. Right now I’m making some backups, making a list of Linux programs I’ll need, and just trying to get my ducks in a row so I’m not scrambling if I wake up one morning and have to do the thing. Which brings me to Distros.
I’ve done some research into it but already but there are a bunch of options (thinking maybe Bazzite or Fedora?), and I’d rather know what I’m going with if my PC dies so I don’t have to waste time trying to figure it out then. My PC specs are:
Processor 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-11400F @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.9 GB usable)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
Obviously the priority is to get up and running but I’d really like to use a distro that I can learn some as well. I’ve installed Mint on an old laptop (recommended for being similar to Windows) but ideally I’d like a distro that’s a bit more Linux-y. I’m ok taking some extra time getting up and running, though I’m not at a point for something like Arch yet haha.
EDIT: Wow, lots of comments, thanks! I think I’ve been overthinking it overall based on these responses. I have Mint on my old laptop and it works well, but had issues on my main laptop (Samsung Book3 Ultra) which I’ve read has to do with Samsung in general. I also had some issues with Nvidia on it but that may have been a Samsung issue more than anything else. My main PC uses Nvidia so I was under the impression that some distros just don’t play well with it and wanted to make sure I used one that worked well with that graphics card.
Bottom line, I’ve been looking into Linux over the past few weeks and there’s still distros mentioned here that I’ve never heard of haha. It seems really intimidating (hence why I asked) but I’m getting the impression that, at least for now, I’ll just go Fedora to start when I bite the bullet. Arch looks really interesting but again, seems intimidating coming from Windows.
There’s nothing you can do in the more “advanced” distros that you can’t do in Mint. It is fully-fledged Linux with a beginner-friendly wrapper.
Except install a newer base system
Why? Mint has a reasonable upgrade path.
If you want bleeding edge packages it just doesn’t have it
Agreed, for this you’ll want something more “Fedora-ish”.
That was posted 3hours ago. By now you could have installed at least 1 “normal” distribution (i.e. pretty much anything that allow you to download packages for your architecture, not LFS) and have some of your work files either copied on
/homeor better mounted as a directory that is safely on another partition or even disk.Don’t like whatever you installed? Explain us WHY then we can better help you narrow down what you need.
Overall software availability and performances are pretty much NOT distribution specific.
It is rare that a specific feature is not available as driver that can not be installed somehow, same for state of the art software, e.g. something coming right of the repository rather than a built package.
I recommend Nobara OS nvidia version. This comes with drivers during initial installation so no need to follow wiki guides and spend additional time carefully installing stuff. The biggest “plus” is that (assuming you are using discord), they have a pretty large discord server where you can ask questions and stuff.
Even though its just a spin on fedora, I think this community and distro is good for newcomers who also game.
Linux Mint, Nobara, Bazzite. Just try them. Worried? Then try them in a virtual machine.
Thanks for all the responses, I really appreciate it! I’ve editing my post rather than respond to each one. Just wanna say that while Linux seems intimidating, I’m realizing I was being overly cautious and thought each distro was like it’s own OS instead of just a variation. You guys really come out to help out newbies, so thank you!
Fedora (Gnome or KDE versions) is going to be the most straightforward without a bunch of “extras” to be aware of if you’re looking for a desktop. Immutable distros have extra hoops, and anything Ubuntu based has Snap, which you should avoid like the plague.
in your shoes: i would go with a distro that already includes proprietary multimedia support like elive, but only after asking others who already do multimedia work on linux like veronica explains.
Garuda does will with Nvidia too.
