Hey all,

I used to use Linux for a few years. Distro-hopped a bit, used Manjaro, Kubuntu, Mint, and Debian. I want to go back, but what I want is stability. I want to be able to do my regular day-to-day tasks without any sacrifices to my regular performance and stability on Windows 10.

Using Linux, I had the following issues:

  • Manjaro - for a first-timer, I think the problems here were pretty self-explanatory

  • Kubuntu - worked like a charm, up until I needed to update to the latest version, which it refused to do no matter what I did, causing me to swap to Mint. Reinstalled at a later date only for the entire distro to crash every so often with simple tasks like minimising and maximising windows, opening browser tabs, etc.

  • Mint - worked, but disliked the layout, swapped to Debian

  • Debian - Most in line with values, but could not for the life of me figure out how to install the Nvidia drivers. I reinstalled the distro multiple times after following the official tutorial to install the drivers to a tee… which would brick the distro entirely each time. Also had same issue with simple tasks like minimising and maximising windows, navigating browser tabs, etc. crashing my system.

I want to enjoy Linux, but I also want basic functionality. For all the crap I rightfully give Windows, it’s never crashed on me, whereas with the two distros I mainly used, it would crash probably once or twice a day. I’m not a AAA gamer, and I don’t feel it’s a hard ask to play a game like osu! without constant stuttering when it runs effortlessly on Windows.

I went back to Windows because I simply couldn’t deal with the issues anymore, I had to get a whole new computer and I feel that the constant issues with stability I had and needing to constantly manually turn the power on and off because of the crashes, and reinstalling distros for mundane reasons wore out my SSD much sooner than it should have.

If anybody can help me find something that I can be confident in to simply work without major issues, I would greatly appreciate it. I feel trapped, I want to ditch Windows, but also don’t want to deal with those nonstop issues all over again.

  • Owl@mander.xyz
    12·
    2 days ago

    Fedora kinoite/ Fedora Silverblue/ Any Fedora Atomic with a desktop flavour that strikes your fancy

    These are immutable, basically unbreakable distros.

  • zewm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    3 days ago

    Fedora or Bazzite imo. I’m currently using. Bazzite and it just works for me. If you’re unfamiliar with immutable distros and don’t want to read the docs, I would just go with Fedora. It’s a stable up to date distro, no frills.

    Make sure to get KDE as it’s the closest thing to what you’re used to and will make for easier transition. It’s very familiar like Windows 10 interface.

  • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
    161·
    2 days ago

    Any of the ~15 most used distros is stable when you learn how to not fuck it up.

    As an anecdote:

    my Ubuntu and Debian installs used to break twice a year on dist upgrade back then (started with Linux when Ubuntu 12 came out, got it in a magazine). It would cost me a weekend of trying to fix it before giving up and reinstalling the whole dammn thing and re-doing my setup from scratch …

    Then I switched and my arch install has been the same for the past ~10 years with only minor fixes maybe once a year. It outlived the hardware it was on twice.

    But every time people keep saying Debian and Ubuntu are stable and Arch is unstable 🤷‍♂️

    • _cryptagion [he/him]@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      Any of the ~15 most used distros is stable when you learn how to not fuck it up.

      Yeah, well if they’re new then they don’t know how to not fuck it up, now do they? Besides, in this day and age, you shouldn’t have to tip-toe around an OS to stay on its good side, it should just work.

      • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
        3·
        2 days ago

        Usually the problem is that new users go out of their way to fuck things up.

        I don’t see anything wrong with that. Most of us did that and that’s how we learned. But really, all mainstream distros are good out of the box unless you have an unusual hardware configuration. Specially now with flatpaks, appimages and Snaps.

        Of course if you want to tweak and twist KDE or install extensions on Gnome or PPAs from who know where on Ubuntu or overuse the AUR in arch you need to know what you are doing.

        However, it’s no different in Windows but for different reasons. The most common way to fuck windows up is to start installing software from non reputable sources. I think many of us have had to clean windows installations from friends and family when it becomes unusable.

    • snikta@programming.dev
      3·
      2 days ago

      If one wants rolling, I would suggest NixOS, Guix System or Tumbleweed. Or something container based like Silverblue or openSUSE micro.

      But rolling doesn’t really make sense. Just go with Debian/Leap and then use Flatpak, podman, Nix and/or Guix on top of that. For Desktop.

    • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      2 days ago

      Same here, dist-upgrades where always hit or miss. I am on EndeavourOS now and would always chose a distro with rolling releases.

    • communism@lemmy.ml
      2·
      2 days ago

      Similar experience. Non rolling release are always so volatile with version upgrades. Never had a major regression from rolling release if I update regularly.

  • snikta@programming.dev
    12·
    2 days ago

    When did you try Debian? Nvidia should be quite painless since they added the official non free repo. But make sure to install a backports version of the kernel and firmware. And modern apps should be installed with flatpak.

    Anyway. I suggest that you try Debian again. There is nothing better out there.

    • Binzy_Boi@piefed.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Probably had start of last year or end of 2023. Memory is fuzzy admittedly.

      Thanks for the suggestion.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
      5·
      2 days ago

      Agreed, I installed Trixie the other day and it’s been pretty much smooth sailing.

  • entwine@programming.dev
    114·
    2 days ago

    Bazzite. Every other recommendation is wrong.

    Bazzite is “immutable”. What that basically means is that you won’t be able to break it even if you try. And if it does break somehow (for example, because of a bad update), you can fix it by doing a rollback, which is literally a one-line command: sudo rpm-ostree rollback

    Sure, there are other immutable distros out there, but Bazzite is probably the most popular right now, and it ships with Nvidia drivers so it’s ready to go for 99% of people with no changes necessary.

    • Binzy_Boi@piefed.caOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Looks neat, will consider it. I don’t do a crazy amount of gaming though as I don’t do anything AAA or such.

  • Victor@lemmy.world
    15·
    3 days ago

    What on earth kinda PC you got that crashes when minimizing windows 💀 Sorry, I’m not being helpful.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    In defense of distros, the Nvidia nonfree drivers being absolute hell to install is not really the distro’s fault. It has ALWAYS been a hellfest on every single distro I’ve ever touched. The only one it even remotely installs smoothly on is Ubuntu, and even then, not that well.

    • Binzy_Boi@piefed.caOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Been meaning to replace my GPU with an equivalent by AMD. Only thing keeping me back is cost, and knowing if an AMD equivalent would be compatible with my motherboard.

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
    10·
    3 days ago

    Zorin, OpenSUSE Leap seem solid choices. Even Tumbleweed, because openSUSE has a snapshotting feature built in, so even if an update were to break something you just rollback.

    Don’t follow online tutorial for adding nVidia to SUSE as the hard steps that still linger out there. Just add the nvidia repo that is specific to OoenSUSE Leap. Nvidia hosts it, but its described in one setup page on the openSUSE website.

    • cRazi_man@europe.pub
      5·
      2 days ago
      • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

      Rock solid for a rolling release. Roll back in case of problems. This was such a great beginner distro that finally got me hooked on Linux permanently.

      • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        2 days ago

        There’s also Slowroll based on tumbleweed. Gets updates every 2-3 months, bugfixes faster end security patches immediately.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        2·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, people suggest Mint a lot, and I can see why, but having any distro with rollback makes sense for new users.

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    Fedora KDE, or Nobara which is a game/editing pre-optimized version of Fedora that has nVidia built in with extra tweaks.

  • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
    4·
    2 days ago

    You don’t mention the specifics of your hardware and that’s an important consideration.

    I was a mint user for more than 10 years. It never crashed. It became my fail back when I moved to Fedora/Gnome. It’s very crashed, but my laptop (ThinkPad X1 carbon) supports Fedora out of the box.

    People keep saying “a DE you can customize…” While I love KDE, the amount of configuration available means that’s it’s easy to screw things up.

    I suggest Gnome because it has a modern workflow and it’s otherwise out of your way. Of course, you can install extensions. Just don’t go crazy because extensions may not be as stable as the core.

    The GNOME workflow becomes natural after a few minutes.

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    81·
    3 days ago

    I’d recommend MX Linux KDE edition. The new version based on Debian 13 should be released this month.

    It’s basically just Debian with some added convenience utilities to make life easier, one of which was an nvidia driver installer that works a treat. Great little distro.

  • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    81·
    3 days ago

    I’d recommend to try Mint again. What didn’t you like about the layout? You can run KDE on Mint and it shouldn’t make a difference to other distros.

    Other distros to look at as a beginner are Fedora or SuSE.

      • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        2 days ago

        Yeah I somehow misremembered that part, I thought Mint would ship with different options for desktop environment.

    • Binzy_Boi@piefed.caOPEnglish
      21·
      2 days ago

      Not huge into Cinnamon (I think that’s Mint’s default desktop environment). No idea why people hate on Windows 10 in terms of the layout of the desktop environment because it’s just about perfect for me. KDE was like the layout of Windows 10 if it was outright perfect. Kubuntu was incredible as a starter after the mess I had with Manjaro, which was so long ago I can’t even remember what happened there.

      KDE for me is an absolute necessity in a distro in terms of desktop environment. Remember having it with Debian.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      KDE on mint is a little jank. It doesn’t integrate well with the mint tray utilities, and is using a fairly old version of KDE 5.

    • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 days ago

      When OP says “layout” I think he means the old as windows 3.1 layout and workflow. It was good in the 90’s. Now it feels cumbersome and dated.

      Don’t get me wrong. I know that’s the main selling point of Mint: Familiarity and stability. I settled on it for 19 years after I got tired of distro hoping. I’ve contributed financially to it every month for years.

      However, it’s that cumbersome workflow which got me back into Gnome where I use only two extensions: transparent task bar and window autotile.

      Gnome on a laptop flows naturally and out of the way.

  • Hanrahan@slrpnk.netEnglish
    6·
    3 days ago

    PopOS ? LMDE ? Fedora ?

    I run LMDE have had zero stability issue’s, running AMD.