Wow! That’s big news! Congrats on the Arch team!

Pro tip : you can also uninstall Windows by installing Linux over it.

I’ve been looking into Timeshift, the gui tool to set up scheduled snapshots. I wonder if it’s possible to make it take snapshots and save them to an external drive?

EDIT:

So reading more into BTRFS, making snapshots on an external drive isn’t exactly what I need. However, snapshots are an amazing tool to have. Snapshots are light and fast and allow you to roll back changes almost like a version control system. I can see a lot of advantages of using this filesystem especially if you’re using a more bleeding edge distro that’s prone to breakage. You can easily rollback if something breaks or if you mess up playing with settings or system files.

I know I’ll be using this on my upcoming install on my home desktop PC. Especially with the Timeshift app which makes it all the easier.

Meh. It’s just one downvote. No big dick.

Yes I have to revisit this. I may have some bad preconceptions about immutable distros.

Absolutely.

• It’s desktop environment is very light on resource usage and very easy to use. It’s great for new Linux users.
• It’s package repository includes Ubuntu’s which is rich with great up to date and stable and secure packages. Plus Mint adds it’s own to allow the user to avoid using Snap packages. (You can ask if you’re not sure what that is. I don’t know your level of experience in Linux.)
• Because it’s based on Ubuntu you also have the little added features that allow you to install 3rd party audio/video codecs to play proprietary formats and to install and manage proprietary graphics drivers as well. (Nvidia for example).
• There’s great hardware support for PC hardware and gaming devices.
• There’s a huge community and lots of documentation for Ubuntu and Mint.

It’s a great no hassle OS for both gaming and productivity.

For your desktop apps that need 3D acceleration, I’ve been using Bottles. It’s such a great tool for Wine.

I’ve configured Wine environments for 3D accelerated apps and even some pirated games just to see if they worked

You can select what Wine you want, Proton, Soda, etc. Set environment variables, override DLLs and much more.

Ah? Oh yeah! Hey thanks for the clarification.

You know what? I’m taking back what I said. Debian might just be what I’m looking for after all.

Uses .deb packages with APT, which I am very comfortable with. And thanks to Ubuntu using the same package system, I can easily add any PPMs or other repos that Ubuntu uses.

Its stable releases are the most stable out there and with a 2 year release cycle on average, that’s pretty similar to Ubuntu’s and is totally acceptable.

People complaining that the packages are older, that’s really not a problem for me. I’m patient. I can wait. Worst case I’ll use a flatpak for a desktop app or compile from source. I’ve done it before. It’s not that hard. And for my purposes, that doesn’t happen very often. Or there’s the option of using backports as well.

Hardware support is solid. All the drivers I need are provided as .deb packages or through 3rd party repos provided by the manufacturer. (NVidia) And media codecs are available now so that’s not an issue either.

Debian is the next best thing to Ubuntu IMO. A pretty solid choice I think.

I revisited it yesterday and this is definitely a distro I would recommend to my relatives and anyone non-technical. It’s solid. The desktop is clean and has a lot of nice configs without going overboard. Its closest competitor would be Ubuntu Budgie, but it includes snaps.

Yeah definitely a great no-hassle distro. But, I really, really like my KDE and I don’t know if I’d be happy with Mint in the long run. Plus, like MATE, they’re playing catch-up with GTK based apps all the time as soon as a new GTK comes out. It’s a tough decision not gonna lie.

I’ll check it out! Thanks :)

Someone else mentioned it in this thread. But I don’t know if I want to install a fringe distro instead of something that’s established and stable with long term support from a solid community or company. But who knows.

Like on my system I compile dxvk and various wine nvidia libs myself since Ubuntu doesn’t package them.

Huh?? I’m using Kubuntu 24.04 right now and didn’t have to jump through these hoops. That’s weird.

but packaging things/compiling software that isn’t in the repositories is a huge pain.

I don’t know. I’m a developer that’s been using Ubuntu distros for 20 years and never ran into such issues.

Thank you for your feedback. I agree with you. In hindsight, Nobara doesn’t bring that big of an advantage. And I further discovered that it’s a one-man project. So that’s not so great for long term support and continuity.

I think I’ll have to make another post about my findings or write a guide or something. I’ve learned a lot, especially because of everyone in this thread. I really opened my eyes and broke down some preconceptions I had about certain distros.

Great reply! Thank you for the clarification.

What’s your opinion on Canonical’s behavior with snaps? Like having Mozilla software exclusively as snaps? Are people making too much of a big deal?

Thanks for your feedback! Yeah thankfully they use RPM and it’s a very popular packaging system. I love how OpenSuse’s YaST allows you to easily configure your sources. It’s a very basic looking app but is straight to the point with a lot of very nice admin features.

Thanks for the advice, but I want to avoid dual-booting altogether. I would prefer to install and forget. Then upgrade when new stable releases come around.

Yeah I don’t know if I want to “deal” with anything. I just want to install it and forget it. I might be steering towards more stable established distros.

Hi! Yeah upon further reading thanks to the great replies I received here, I’ve reconsidered using Nobara. The one guy’s project aspect of it scares me in terms of long term support. This needs to become an official Fedora project or even community project supported by a community at least.

I was really thinking of Endeavour OS rather than Manjaro. But I’ve never used an Arch based distro before. Been on Ubuntu flavors for the past 20 years. I mean there’s probably people on here that replied that weren’t even born when I started using it lol!!! (Fuck I’m old)

Reading about AUR gives me a feeling of insecurity. It sounds like a repo of packages that anyone can push and distribute.

Also, I remember there being some issues with Arch, among other distros, being too bleeding edge and receiving packages with security problems. Something about a backdoor in SSH. Maybe being too bleeding edge is a double “edged” sword.

Yeah! That’s what I heard! Apparently they don’t follow the Arch standards at all and kind of do their own thing which messes everything up.

No, I was actually thinking of Endeavor OS. I got it mixed up with Manjaro in my head. BIG difference!

I won’t consider Manjaro at all. Don’t worry. But thanks a lot for the warning! 😁

I hear a lot of people say that you need bleeding edge distros for gaming. But the Steam Deck uses and old Debian release and it works just fine. Granted they have their own proprietary drivers and all.

Gaming on Ubuntu works just fine. Others reported using Debian stable too and it’s fine. I don’t think you need to be bleeding edge. In fact, I think it might bring instability. You gotta make a compromise between the two in my opinion.

I have to add, regarding Canonical’s walled garden, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the vast majority of people out there. It might even be a big advantage, espeically for non-tech people.

I’ve enjoyed Ubuntu distros for 20 years. But it’s Canonical’s attitude that’s off putting.

By the way, I’ve tried Bazzite and it’s too bloated with too much stuff OOTB. But it’s great though otherwise. I’m a bit skeptical about immutable distros however.