A friend might let me install Linux on his secondary laptop he uses for university. He’s not a tinkerer and wants something that just works.

Linux Mint is known for being very user-friendly and stable. Also easy to get help online.

However, in my opinion Mint seems rather outdated, both with its Windows-like workflow, default icons and look and also Xorg. When I tried it I had some screen stuttering I couldn’t resolve, probably due to Xorg.

Instead, Fedora with GNOME is very elegant and always uses the newest technologies. It feels and looks actually nice and not outdated. But I’d have to install media codecs via terminal first which suggests that Fedora is for experienced users. Also university wifi eduroam doesn’t work on Fedora for me because legacy TLS connection is not supported in Fedora (at least I couldn’t get it to work). I’m at a different uni than him tho, so it might work there. In general, less help on the web for Fedora than Mint.

What do you think? (Btw, KDE is too convoluted in my opinion. Manjaro too, it breaks too often. I will not consider it.)

EDIT: From what I’ve gathered so far, I should probably install Mint. He can try Fedora with a live usb or on my laptop. If he prefers that then I can warn him that this may be less stable and ask what he wants.

I’ve only tried Ubuntu-based Mint, but LMDE is more future-proof so it will probably be that.

  • @woelkchen@lemmy.world
    4•8 months ago

    generally I’m turned off by some decisions Canonical makes

    Those decision will trickle down to Ubuntu remixes like Mint eventually. Canonical’s plan is to replace as much as technically possible with Snaps. They just barely delayed shipping CUPS itself as Snap but it will come, so even a basic task like printing will rely on Snap. I don’t see Mint having manpower to package everything on their own, even if it’s “just” about porting Debian packages. Might just as well use LMDE right now.

    • ares35
      7•8 months ago

      that’s the whole reasoning behind having LMDE. seems a little redundant today; but within a release or two mint may very well be only based on debian itself, with the way canonical is steering ubuntu.

      • @woelkchen@lemmy.world
        4•8 months ago

        within a release or two mint may very well be only based on debian itself, with the way canonical is steering ubuntu.

        I expect Canonical going hard in the Snap direction leading up to 26.04. They are desperate given the fact that Flathub got a huge popularity boost thanks to SteamOS. I don’t think Ubuntu remixes will come out unscathed.