Linux admin with 20 years experience, looking for "beginner" distro [Solved, the real beginner distro was the Debian I've used along the way]

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.

53 comments

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.

Debian ticks all of these boxes.
Stable release
Wayland or X Server
It's Debian, so literally everything is built for it, except maybe some obscure arch packages
Has options for any DE you want
Steam can be installed via Flatpak
Only thing I'm not sure about is your air print stuff. I'm sure there is a package that a quick apt install would get, though.
- The print stuff does work.
- I think "cups, just cups" pulls in enough to do airprint as is.
- Yes Debian and use Flatpak for any app you need with a recent version. You can also use a Distrobox with Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Debian Testing if you need system packages that are more modern.
  I dont know if Debian Testing is rolling, but Distrobox basically doesnt work with release distros if they need to system upgrade via a reboot, like Fedora. So Fedora Rawhide (dont) or Tumbleweed, Arch etc. are best.

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.

Fedora atomic GNOME (silverblue) or a ublue variant
- Which parts of those immutable distros are actually immutable?
  To be more specific, on Debian I usually copy the Android Universal Debloater and other bins from Github into /usr/local/bin so they're in my PATH. Can I still do that on those distros?
  
  Yes. You can read about it here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/technical-information/#filesystem-layout
  
  You may want to uninstall firefox and install it as a flatpak to have codecs out of the box. Or use a ublue variant which ships with flatpak forefox. if you're into gaming, look into bazzite.
  You can add any path to your PATH variable in your .bashrc or whatever you use anyway.
  There are live USBs. It's usually best to check it out yourself.

You are literally just describing fedora. So yeah, give that a try.

Fedora might be a good option, but it might require more setup with an Nvidea GPU. They use Wayland now, are a Gnome based distro, support full disk encryption. For me the package mangar has been fine, and they do support flatpak. It is a very large distro with backing from RedHat. So it should generally be stable.
Pop_OS! Seems to be the great distro if you just want to game and watch videos without any issues arround setting up the drivers. It has been a quite stable distro for me and it is quite similar to Ubuntu. Unfortunately this distro doesn’t have Wayland yet.
Manjaro is an Arch based distro, but it had some issues with using packages from the AUR. They do run Gnome on Wayland by default.
- [Fedora] might require more setup with an Nvidia GPU
  https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA
  I only needed 3 Ctrl-Shift-V's for that. Multimedia codecs are also about the same difficulty.

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 asks you to enable third party non-foss repos like Steam and Chrome, but still you have to manually enable rpmfusion. Plus idk if new install of Fedora ships codecs pre-installed.
  
  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

Could we know what was your distro?
- Debian. I had run such a stripped-down version for many years, I forgot it now has everything a beginner distro needs in the default install.
  
  Glad to hear

Pop os, ticks all your boxes and nicer than debian

Dont go for Mint, Zorin or Manjaro. Old stuff. Keep it to Fedora, Opensuse, Ubuntu or Endeavour.
- bro literraly said no ubuntu you canonical shill
- Why would mint be considered old but not ubuntu?
  
  Technologies implementation like Pipewire, Wayland etc.

And that's how I decided to install Debian as my next Linux VM (just got back into VMs in the past week with Proxmox). We'll see how it does replacing my former favorite, CentOS, now that IBM / Red Shat have borked things up on that end.

I got my start with Ubuntu and feel its still quite solid. Many say that Mint is a better Ubuntu than Ubuntu these days. Personally running popOS as I have their hardware.

I know Gnome is in your less important list, but Wayland is in your important list, so I’ll recommend KDE Neon. It’s Ubuntu without snaps and moronic auto updates, so it really just feels like a more desktop-ready Debian

Out of curiosity why do you not want snaps? I consider myself a beginner with Linux and would love to know what makes you not want to use them.
- Performance issues/bloated disk usage and their forced use within Ubuntu.
  The performance issues come from the fact that they run via virtualization. Similar to running a game on an emulator. This helps with compatibility, ie being able to run a Snap on an ARM computer when the native version isn't available, but again, performance can take a hit.
  Bloated disk usage is a result of each Snap including all dependancies with the base package. For example, if two Snaps rely on the same font, you get two copies of that font. If two native packages rely on the same font, you get one copy, and they share.
  The forced usage literally boils down to this; on Ubuntu, typing "apt install example-package" actually runs the command "snap install example-package" (Edit: I should note this isn't the case with all packages, but there are some pretty high profile ones on the list, ie Thunderbird). Canonical A; isn't up front about this, therefor leading users into believing they are getting native packages when this isn't the case, and B; make it frustratingly difficult to disable this behaviour and get only native packages
  IMO if a company creates a product and then feels the need to force and trick their users into adopting it, that alone is enough to discourage me from ever choosing it over the alternatives.
- I don't have personal experience with them, but I keep hearing they're very slow to start.
  And I dislike them on principle, because Canonical tries to push snaps as the main distro-agnostic way of installing software, but they are hard-coded to only work with Canonical's servers. It reminds me of the embrace-extend-extinguish strategy of Microsoft.
  
  I'm far from an enjoyer of snaps BUT snaps do support other custom stores and aren't tied to the snap store, contrary to popular belief.
  Also, the fix for making snap startup times has been developed and released but most existing snaps haven't patched their snaps to support it (last I heard, the only notable exception (aka the only known snap to have good startup times) is the Firefox snap).
  
  Snaps aren't that slow anymore. They closed the gap a couple of months ago. (I still dislike snaps and ubuntu for pushing them)

I usually do Arch myself these days and spent many years with Gentoo. So I'm not too terrified of breakage!
I am putting together a Linux distro strategy for my company. I am the MD of a very small IT company in the SW of England. I already have my office manager asking me to liberate her from Windows! I recently had a techie asking me to help his transition! This is organic stuff and not pushed down by me. The techie is a dyed in the wool Azure lover.
I am used to being patient. It took me roughly five years to get a helicopter company that I worked for back in the day (late 1990s) to use DHCP properly - ie let them "roam free" and let DDNS pin them down. Sounds a bit ridiculous until you encounter "enterprise" grade nonsense.
I have set up laptops with most of the usual suspects and tried them out. However, I have to comply with Cyber Essentials Plus which is a UK standard. It is fine but rather Windows n that 'centric. That means I need full disc encryption and anti virus (AV) and Secure Boot. I got away with ClamAV in the past but ideally I get cross platform and that means ESET for AV/web etc. I use the usual Linux FDE.
I also need to join an Active Directory until I have got rid of AD! Oh and there is Exchange.
https://cid-doc.github.io/ - AD and Evolution with the EWS addon for Exchange.
So I dive in with Kubuntu after trying Rawhide and all sorts. Ubuntu is flexible enough whilst being stable enough for me. For example, Kerberos is screwed for the Firefox snap. I need Kerb for auth to my corp websites such as our wiki. Mozilla does a PPA - I dump the built in FF snap and use the Mozilla blessed PPA. All documented and all controllable in an enterprise sense.
Closed In Directory (CID) is a configuration for Linux boxes joining into the MS world. Its a super piece of work, getting Samba, krb etc all working together well, and with a GUI. You can run scripts from your DC for that GPO feel with it.
My needs are a bit more corp than your gaming shenanigans but my notes might help you decide what you want, what you really (really) want (zigazig ... ahhhh!)
Ubuntu PPAs are a bit like the AUR for Arch ... well you have to decide what you really want. You could start from scratch: https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
- Interesting info but I think they were not relevant at all

Literally Debian

lubuntu… or mint….
- Neither use GNOME.
  
  ...or support Wayland.

Manjaro is great.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  It uses pamac/pacman for packages like Arch. I believe pamac has automatic updates, if turned on.

53 comments