Good morning everyone. I've got the age old question of what distro should I use. I got started with Ubuntu and eventually moved to Linux Mint Cinnamon. I'm pretty happy with using it as a daily driver, and it's worked reasonably well with my NVIDIA graphics card. I enjoy a bit of the "it just works" I've experienced here, though there's been a few things I've had to address with light usage of the terminal; using the right audio out by default, and disabling HDMI video sources I'll never use. I'd say I'm probably somewhere in the beginner-moderate capability for use of terminal.
I've got Fedora, Debian, Majaro, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and Kali (not a daily driver) installed in virtualbox as VMs. Linux will be used as my daily driver and must accommodate occasional steam gaming. I don't want dual boot windows on my machine, it living in a VM is adequate for any one-off needs.
I think I'm going between Debian and Fedora, though I think Debian might be the way I'm leaning, as I want to get further upstream in the communities. I don't know how to explain it, but I feel a bit "bored" with mint. I think I'm eyeballing some of the fun stuff that exists in KDE.
This machine is my daily driver and used for work, so as long as I can get the basics in place to connect to my work VM through Horizion I'm OK. I do have a backup device to use for work in a pinch.
Laptop/setup overview:
- 9th gen intel I7 processor
- 64GB RAM
- NVIDIA GForce RTX-2060
- Generic style USB3.0 DisplayLink docking station
- Secondary display link device
- I'm running two 34" 4k monitors (3440x1440) side by side, another output on an HDMI duplicator running a 27" and a 55" 4k tv (,1920x1080) and the laptop display (1920x1080) is the 5th screen) so far working as intended, but I can't get only the built in display to run at 125% scale without affecting the others.
Should I be looking at ways to better customize Mint, or am I on the right path looking at Debian and Fedora? Are there other disros I should be evaluating?
EDIT: I think what I'm wanting is something that gets new features more frequently, yet doesn't become unstable. I feel drawn to the desktop eye-candy that I see getting featured with KDE desktops. I seem to believe I'm missing out on something, but can't directly state what.
Ultimately, I think I simply want to move to a more core/upstream version of Linux so that I get new functionality faster. I'm trying to find what I desperately need but never knew it existed.
EDIT2: Thanks everyone I really appreciate all the info and it's given me a better perspective on what to do next on my learning journey. It's fun, because there's so much to choose from and each has its own sprit.
EndeavorOS has been installed as a VM, and Fedora's KDE Spin in progress!
Most of what you can do with Debian and Fedora, you can also do with Mint. You can even install KDE on Mint, and configure it however you want. Debian is a bit nicer to customize, though, because it's extremely stable and most of its apps keep their "vanilla" configurations, or at least a configuration unlikely to cause bugs.
Personally, I'd advice against this as KDE is not supported on Linux Mint. While this doesn't have to mean much, it does mean a lack of polish and sophistication you might expect on Kubuntu or Fedora's KDE Spin or openSUSE (on which KDE is the default DE). This might result in some edge-case bugs and other mishaps that might trample your experience; thus giving you the wrong idea about KDE. Instead; consider booting into a Live USB of any distro that comes with KDE by default.
Thank you for calling this out in advance. I likely would have encountered this as I try to take the approach of research, then do.
This is the first time I've ever posted for Linux help/or guidance. Searching forums has historically lead me to an answer close enough to resolve my not-so unique issue.
Props to you mate 👏 ! That's the way 😉 .
Thankfully the community is very helpful in general, so you're in good company :blush: !
Yeah lol, we've all been there 🤣 .
Thanks, I'll give this a try with Mint, and I'll bet if I experiment in a VM first, I'll enjoy life a lot more when tying to do so to my core install. I don't know why I never really thought about putting a different DE on Mint, but it seems obvious once mentioned. It might be the easiest way to get a fresh feel in a baby-steps approach.