Hey, so my friend asked me which distro i can recommend for him. He basically used Windows his whole life. The recent developments of Microsoft though seems to worry him, so he want to give Linux a try.

I myself use Linux since around one year, so i’m definitely far from being an expert and i don’t really feel i have enough expertise to give him an appropriate answer. I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and love it, but i suppose it’s not a good distro for him since he is not that tech affine and i suppose getting used to the terminal is a bit much too ask and could scare him away from the Linux experience.

So what im looking for is a distro, that is easy to use (for beginners & non techies; also not a rolling release) but is also good for Gaming (NVIDIA) and lightly everyday stuff. He uses his computer only for free time, not for his work.

I hope some people here have some helpful recommendations. I was thinking of maybe recommend Mint or Ubuntu, but i only used Ubuntu for a few days and don’t really know much about it.

  • VoytrekkEnglish
    15•2 years ago

    As other’s have suggested, PopOS is pretty good. I would also consider Nobara as well. It’s based on Fedora with plenty of tweaks that makes it much better for gaming. It also has the ability to quickly install NVIDIA drivers. after the first login.

  • ÁdámEnglish
    10•2 years ago

    Pop os is great for gaming and it comes with nvidia drivers installed

  • @MangoKangaroo@beehaw.org
    5•2 years ago

    I’ve used Mint Cinnamon as recently as a few months ago for a machine with a 3060Ti. The experience was great. Pop!_OS also touts native NVIDIA support, as others have mentioned, but I have less experience with it.

    • @vettnerk@lemmy.ml
      2•2 years ago

      Seconding mint. Been using it on my gaming PCs since 2015 or so, including my brand new one.

    • Aatube
      1•2 years ago

      You can install pamac for a GUI for the package manager. Do yay to search for any package and install it; do yay (nothing else) to upgrade everything, and yay -Rcns to remove stuff and all their unused dependencies. I also recommend chaoticAUR

      For the DE I recommend MATE but you can select any of the major ones in the installer

      Get synapse for a spotlight-like search; it uses the alt+space keybind by default

      The arch wiki is amazing

  • @Holzkohlen@feddit.de
    3•2 years ago

    I use Garuda and it is great. Lots of DEs to choose from and it’s super easy. It is rolling release mind you, but the most beginner friendly one there is. It’s also gaming focused and it got a lot of different additional little applications specifically so you don’t have to use the terminal. My favorite distro for gaming and also my favorite distro period. I am using it for 1-2 months now for work and gaming :)

    Other than that Mint is a great choice too.

  • @Sentau@feddit.de
    3•2 years ago

    Pop!_OS seems like it would suit this use case. Especially since I hear that a recent update to the pop shop has made it much more responsive. Also it has nvidia drivers pre-installed and you can update the nvidia drivers through the pop shop. Literally everything can be done through with a GUI

  • @NGC2346@sh.itjust.works
    2•2 years ago

    Arch Linux or EndeavourOS has been really good for me. Make sure to get ProtonUp-qt to get and manage bleeding edge versions of Proton