linuxmemes

TL;DR: I'm a true Linux noob, and now love and appreciate Linux thanks to openSUSE Tumbleweed. :)

In all seriousness, as a Linux noob, openSUSE Tumbleweed made me actually start to really enjoy using Linux as my main OS. I've fucked up plenty of times, and at that point I would've had to reinstall most other distros, but Snapper came in and saved the day. I'm sure there are plenty of other distros that do snapshots just as well, but this is coming from someone who last tried running Linux 5-6 years ago, and was still fucking my shit up somehow. I've never had the best of luck with Linux, which is why I always stayed on Windows.

Then came Microsoft's ever increasing enshittification, and I saw openSUSE Tumbleweed on the distrowatch website, downloaded it, and here we are 8 months later, and openSUSE has remained my main OS. I only got a desktop for gaming, and it fit the bill almost perfectly. I had to learn some things, that's for sure, but what got me to stay was the stability! I had never used a Linux distro up until that point that made BTRFS and system snapshots the default. This was crucial for someone like me who only dabbled in Linux because I love the idea behind it, I could just never get too far into using it before fucking my shit up!

There are plenty of options that are similar, or maybe even better than openSUSE, but they won my interest and respect for getting a noob like me to truly envelope themselves into Linux.

I'm still nowhere near anything that might resemble your common Linux user, but damn do I really love my computer again now. It's like when I was kid again, and first started using computers, fascinated by what I could do.

I consider myself to be 'techie' for lack of a better word. I have custom janky solutions for everything. I have in the past written down a blue screen and troubleshooted it to give the IT team notes... Hell, I used to be the guy IT would call if they received a ticket from my office (anyone in my office) because I could give them more details and such... So, I like computers and shit, right?

And holy fuck I don't get the Linux world. I used Mint back in '13ish and it was fine but in a different place back then. I use Pop_OS! on my laptop and I like it just fine. I use Ubuntu on my secondary computer and I like it just fine. I don't get what I'm supposed to prefer about all these different distros/environments. I can't wrap my head around it. Do y'all change OSes that often? Am I missing out on something? Am I wrong or are y'all the kids who are wrong?

Mint users make it sound like the distro will literally suck your dick. It's a cult at this point. Forums are filled with issues (which is normal obviously) but nope, "it just works". When it doesn't then that's too bad because as easy as it is to find a vocal Mint user it's much harder to find one who knows anything about Linux.

They should have named Fedora something like "red hat personal" or anything else that doesn't sound like only smelly neckbeards use it and maybe that would be more popular but here we are.

Using pop OS for 5 years. Never tried any other, never seen the need to. I picked at mostly random and don't really understand the differences.

linux Mint

Ewbuntu

Mint, because Ubuntu Cinnamon sucks

I actually wanted to run Ubuntu and then Fedora, but they both kept breaking out of nowhere. I don't know get why people have a more stable experience than I do with these, I don't even fucking tinker and fuck with shit.

Legitimate question as I'm gonna move from Windows 10 within the next couple months. Is there something wrong with Bazzite or Nobara? I had narrowed my decision down to those two since they seem to be an easy transition, they do the things I need, and they're popular enough that I can probably find fixes to any issues I experience. I pushed off my plan to build a desktop, but I still have an aging laptop that is losing security support in a couple of months.

Also, my wife needs Excel specifically for school. Can Excel work on these distros or are there just good alternatives? She might need to keep a Windows 10 partition just for Excel stuff if she can't run it in Bazzite or whatever she picks.

Edit:
Thanks everybody for responses! School is not flexible about using Excel specifically, and she has to share her screen during exams to show that she's just using regular Excel. It's not a hill we're willing to die on lol.
We aren't super interested in doing anything beyond gaming and basic browsing type stuff with our computers, so I'm not sure that Bazzite being immutable really means anything to us. There were some good tips like a /home partition to easily swap distros when needed without losing everything, plus some people pointed out that some of these distros come and go over time so it would be harder to find fixes and continue getting updates if we get too entrenched in something that won't be around much longer.
Overall, I don't think we'll be too picky. We just want a pretty simple process to get something that's like an unbloated Windows, and we don't want to rip our hair out looking for a new distro and starting over every six months. Most people are not power users. I can do pretty much all of my computer stuff on my phone and all of my gaming on my PlayStation, so I really won't notice the difference between most of these recommendations probably.

Same but with plain Fedora on each side.

Never Ubuntu. Kubuntu is as close as I am willing to get, and even then I'd rather go for Mint or Debian.

Ubuntu. The only distro I was able to kernel panic. Multiple times. It just doesn’t like power users.

This meme but with Mint Cinnamon IMO.

But then I'd have to deal with snap.

Any rolling release will do, doesnt actually matter the flavor.

Steam has been investing into Arch (btw) which is nice but really all you want is quick updates. Graphics drivers on other distros may not be updated quickly enough for you to enjoy the newest releases.

I mean, LMDE is working out pretty nuke proof for my (humble) gaming rig.