this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are "mainstream" "beginner friendly" distros, right? I don't want anything too advanced, right?

Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had "no signal"). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.

Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I'm used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything "just work" flawlessly, but it's so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!

Credit where it's due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I'd never strayed from Gnome because I'm not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it's "simple" and "customizable" but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only "simple" in that it doesn't allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).

The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the "beginner" distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!

edit: i am DYING at the number of "you're using it wrong" comments here. never change people.

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[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Back when I moved over to linux I wanted to get away from the mainstream. Fedora/Red Hat were too mainstream for me at the time but I have never had any real objections to it. I eventually ended up settling on Debian and ever since then i've stuck with descendants of that distro because having the same toolchains of software as Debian makes transitioning distros slightly easier.

[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Your second monitor was not broken by Ubuntu. Your second monitor was no longer receiving a signal. The distinction is that the second monitor was functional but not compatible.

[–] flork@lemy.lol 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It worked perfectly with Ubuntu until recently. It worked perfectly with Windows and Macintosh. It worked perfectly with Fedora.

It didn't work with a fresh install of Ubuntu and several other distros in the same family.

Now I know what you're about to say- you're about to say it could have worked if I had only X Y or Z. But that's not my point.

My point is that newbies don't want to troubleshoot everything.

[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

You don't seem to understand the distinction. You monitor isn't "broken." It wasn't rendered inoperable by Ubuntu. It simply wasn't compatible with the way you set it up.

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[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

the ubuntu installer has always been the key difference for me specially with zfs and multi-monitor/fractional scaling/nvidia setups that it has configured well over the years where other installers leave you with a lot still to do

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[–] Cube6392@beehaw.org 0 points 5 months ago

Its not a good noob distro. Its a test bed development distro. There are going to be things in Fedora that are broken on account of those things being in development. I believe there's a rolling release now which improves the lack of long term releases, but for a long time trying to auto upgrade between point releases was a fast track to the very worst time of your life.

Then there's the question of whether or not its association with Redhat and IBM makes it a safe choice long term given that they've gone full hostile. I just don't see the benefit to going with Fedora as a noob instead of something designed for noobs like LMDE

[–] mryessir@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Never have I ever successfully updated a fedora system. It was always a reinstall.

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[–] element@masto.es 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

@flork I would say the main reason is that the best of Fedora is under the hood, and goes completely unnoticed by the general public. Beginners don't care how and when Wayland, PipeWire, zram or SELinux were implemented.

Other reasons:
- The system requires manual intervention after the initial installation (e.g. RPMFusion)
- Some choices, such as firewalld and Anaconda, are not so good for beginners
- Bad marketing

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Fedora has one of the more confusing installers, it requires you to know some technical things such as repos and Flathub to set it up, and package names are different to the standard. It's just not targeted to beginners so why recommend it to beginners? There are better options out there to show them the full power of Linux user friendliness.

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[–] blaine@lemmy.ml -5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

No Nvidia driver support. Dealbreaker for most folks folks wanting to run games.

[–] simonced@lemmy.one 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I am not sure what do you mean. I use fedora with Nvidia (it's a different repo to activate) and my main rig is for gaming... No problem what so ever. Using Fedora since 37, what a smooth ride.

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