I just need wine/proton, steam and a dumb app i need for work, and then I can drop x11 entirely.

We’re so close.

https://wiki.openjdk.org/display/wakefield/Pure+Wayland+toolkit+prototype

it’s coming!

Okay, full list appears to be steam, mangohud, lutris, vkbasalt, and latencyflex. Go with aurora, then, it’s the same thing but without those.

Nothing, that’s also a perfectly valid choice.

It’s literally just steam. That’s it.

uninstalling steam from bazzite is much easier than adding the fixes to fedora

Pretty much no reason to not just use bazzite instead of fedora though, just fedora with some QoL improvements around patents and other small things.

It’s not for the same thing as krita, this is for quick edits, it’s like an enhanced ms paint

https://element.io/

it’s essentially a federated messenger, just like lemmy is a federated reddit.

It’s likely you can get that proprietary software working, if you want to try.

My username is on my profile!

Honestly, your usage of linux since 1999 is why I don’t trust you know what’s best for beginners. I give tons of people linux, mostly the elderly, cinnamon has been an absolutely terrible experience for them. You’re highly experienced and used to something that works for you, the best choice for beginners changes more than you do.

but what it does, it does well.

Can you not say this about fedora/bazzite?

The same can not be said about other distros in conjunction to care-free users.

The very purpose of an immutable distro is to stop carefree users from doing exactly that, until mint makes an immutable distro, it simply isn’t the best choice for beginners.

Do they not care about mixed refresh rate displays, mixed dpi displays, the security issues involved in x11, etc? I think they will prefer if those things just work. Mint doesn’t have that, sure what works works well, but that’s true for fedora/bazzite too… and more works.

i don’t trust them either but from what i have seen most don’t care

They get this benefit for free on KDE. Even if they don’t care, it’s still better for them.

this is a bit of a stretch

I don’t see how it’s a stretch, someone was posting with basically this exact problem on one of the linux forums on lemmy like, last week. I don’t feel like digging up the post but this happens sometimes.

i don’t agree on everything and maybe you’re right i still don’t get why they dropped support for kde but still support MATE

Makes absolutely no sense for a beginner distro.

but i don’t think that this is a big problem for most for now since our user base is small so there is much less malware and targeted attacks (well as long as you are not a high profile employee at a company with vast data access privileges )

Security is not as huge of a problem on linux as it is on windows for sure. But EVERY SINGLE proprietary app you use can snoop on EVERYTHING. and I do not trust proprietary apps, beginners especially will use a ton of proprietary software. Remember that we’re recommending to a beginner, not a linux evangelist who is willing to do anything to make linux/foss work for them.

i don’t understand what you mean exactly by performance when talking about a DE ( responsiveness, ram and cpu usage ? …). in terms of cpu and ram usage i’m pretty sure that kde consumes more and in terms responsiveness i would assume that kde is better but how much ( a difference between 5 s and 2 s is huge but from let’s say 80 nanosecond to 60 is just for benchmarks and won’t be noticed in real world usage)

If you use KDE on a laptop from like 2002 it will be a HORRIBLE experience, they use way too much ram, way too much rendering (with animations and whatnot), absolute cpu and gpu hogs for a machine from back then. that’s pretty much the reason xfce and lxde exist. It’ll also be real bad on cinnamon. Maybe this is better now, I haven’t tried in a while.

The only reason I see for a beginner not to choose KDE over xfce is if they have a laptop from the 32 bit era. Elsewise, KDE if you use windows, Gnome if you use macos. The development speed alone and the fact that they have proper funding means in 20 years they’ll probably still be around, cinnamon development is nearly dead by comparison, we shouldn’t be encouraging people to use significantly less supported software unless there’s a compelling reason, and for cinnamon, there really just isn’t. People won’t want to relearn everything when cinnamon breaks for them, might as well start on the most well supported stuff for all hardware.

I personally don’t use KDE, but I don’t think we should be recommending anything but KDE/Gnome to beginners without very good reason. Sure, use whatever you want, but that isn’t a valid course of action for someone who doesn’t even know where to start, and the obvious answer for where to start is KDE.

I think many people here have been linux users for so long that they forget their solution isn’t the best choice for beginners.

Yeah but there’s so many more reasons to choose kde over cinnamon, there is a massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:

1. Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
2. Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
3. Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.

and in the future the disparity will only go up, just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs https://github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, https://github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.

I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues. Also mixed dpi displays are extremely common, many people have 1 4k and 1 1080p screen, for example, or maybe they plug into a tv… it’s much more common than you think.

In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.

I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

Mint

I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brother-cups-wrapper-ac this might help you if regular cups doesn’t work!

Again, infinite free troubleshooting if you run into any issues, feel free to message me! I’ve given a bunch of people bazzite at this point, and can run you through just about anything.

Make sure not to accidentally choose “steam gaming mode”, on the download since that’ll turn it into basically a steam-deck interface.

Bazzite works around the issues with american patents, if that’s the problem.

If your problem is american control over your computer, I assure you, they have extremely limited control, at best, they own the package manager, which only runs if you tell it to.

I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows.

So is KDE, that’s why I recommend it over cinnamon and not gnome.

Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on.

That has (mostly) nothing to do with your desktop environment!

Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup.

Just because you’re familiar with it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for beginners. People want HDR, mixed refresh rates, and mixed DPI displays to work properly, they do on KDE, they possibly never will on cinnamon. Just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs https://github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, https://github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.

That’s not even going into the massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:

1. Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
2. Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
3. Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.

Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.

Windows does have it… actually, it only has it. UAC already prevents you from modifying system files. There’s no way to turn it off without mucking about in the console. And it’s not a personal preference thing at all, it’s objectively superior for a beginner, and anything you can do with a normal distro can still be done with an immutable one assuming you have root access.

Reminder that just because something works for you, doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for a beginner. Try all the options extensively before you make a suggestion, you might not have made the right choice for everyone just because you have made the right choice for yourself. I make these suggestions after YEARS of extensive testing with many people as my guinea pigs.

I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues.

In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.

Manjaro is legitimately a terrible choice and should not be recommended, https://github.com/arindas/manjarno

If it works for you, that’s great, but you’re lucky so far and it’s a ticking timebomb.

I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:

normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.

This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.

If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.