My current rig is featuring an I7 10th gen and a nvidia 4070ti. Is there a distro that you recommend me to use as a linux beginner that is also good for gaming and streaming, that will work with my pc parts? Because I heard that intel and nvidia are famous for causing issues on Linux.

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
    6·
    6 days ago

    First pick a desktop environment, currently KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon are the best.

    • Gnome: Opinionated design like apple
    • KDE: tons of options.
    • Cinnamon: A bit fewer options than KDE but still a lot.

    All of them are very robust and have a massive user base.

    Then pick a base to operate on. Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint are all good options.

    • Fedora and Ubuntu are good for newer hardware and 99% of the time just works.
    • Mint just works all the except for newer hardware.

    Nvidia GPUs are not a big issue but you have to install the proprietary driver yourself for best performance and fewest bugs.

    My pick for you is something your friend uses if you have a friend on Linux otherwise Fedora KDE or Kubuntu.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
    1·
    4 days ago

    My feeling is that might be a lack of choice here. So, just my 0.00002 cents, to supply you with a few more options:

    • Just use Debian. It is boring but it will work.
    • Or, Tumleweed has been named. But it is not maximally stable. Better, use Tumbleweed in a VM on top of OpenSuSE leap. That way, you have both superb stability and a very current system.
    • You could also sell your nvidia card (let’s be honest, it probavly will only bring you grief), and get a AMD radeon which is fully supported by a libre kernel. Then, you can install Guix on it. Then you have a truly reproducible, very lean and organized system.
    • If dropping the nvidia card sounds too extreme for you, you can also install Debian, and install Guix as a package manager on top of it. That will work because the Debian kernel supports the hardware. But don’t forget that NVidia is a nuisance, often. Well, you might have luck.
    • Let’s say you are short on money and you don’t want a system that consumes too much RAM, since that has gotten expensive, man. So, you could get Debian with XFce as Desktop environment. Or, even leaner, you could get ICeWM.
    • Or in case you want a very fast Lisp-based window manager with very fast, manual tiling, try StumpWM, say, on Debian.
    • Or, if you want an automatic tiling WM, give i3wm or sway a try. Or GNOME with paperWM extension.
    • GNOME would also run on Ubuntu, or on Mint. Actually, it is all Debian under the hood, mostly. Just easier to install.
    • Or you want a privacy-focused Distro. Try Trisquel.
    • Or, you just want to keep it simple, perhaps. In that case, I’d recommend Debian. Or, perhaps for the start, Debian-derived distro that is easy to install. There are plenty.
    • But when you want to have it even simpler, get rid of the nvidia card. This really simplifies things.
  • KrispeeIguana@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    My first distro was Mint. It’s great for beginner Linux users, and it’s pretty stable. It also avoids the Snap problem Ubuntu forces upon their users.

    If you’re looking for a more bleeding edge solution, I recommend Garuda Linux. It’s Arch-based, and it has a bunch of game-related stuff already installed. It might be a tad less stable due to the Arch underbelly, but I personally like the package system (pacman) a lot more than apt. Also, you get the unmatched power of the Arch wiki when you’re in trouble.

  • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    Any and all advice anyone gives you is going to be heavily weighted by their personal experiences, which is not bad, but also may not be your experience. Truly the best thing to do, if you are willing, is to try a bunch.

    Download several different distributions. Get as many USB sticks as you reasonably can. Flash a different distro to each drive. Boot to them one at a time, and try them out. See what you like about one versus another. Hopefully you find one that just “clicks” for you, and then you actually install it to the computer. From there, if everything works, great - enjoy your computer. However, if you immediately run into problems, just go install your number 2 favorite and see if those problems exist there. There’s a reasonable chance they won’t.

    Good places to start:

    • Mint
    • Debian
    • PopOS
    • Fedora (check out their “spins”, there are a lot of flavors of Fedora)
    • Bazzite
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
    • Cachy
    • Endeavor
    • Garuda

    (There is a thing called Ventoy which kinda lets you use several distros from one usb stick, but I’ve also seen several distro’s instructions warn against using it so maybe it isn’t the best choice for a new convert). Also, obligatory stay away from Manjaro. It isn’t worth it as a new convert…

  • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
    8·
    7 days ago

    My oldish Nvidia 4xxx GPU worked immediately and automatically on Linux Mint.

    Your mileage may vary.

    Edit: To be clear, I didn’t do any command line, or even change a setting. Mint just automatically detected my Nvidia GPU and got it working during the install while I looked at pretty pictures and new user tips.

    (Disclaimer: Folks here have warned me this may have been some combination of luck and my Nvidia GPU being a few years old.)

    When my Mint install finished, I searched for “Steam” in the Mint software center and clicked “Install”.

    A few minutes later I was playing a game from my Steam library without any issues, without any config changes, and without any command line use.

    Edit 2: On Linux, there’s a little Penguin icon in the Steam library filters. Click that, and it’ll only show your games that Valve is pretty confident will run without any issue.

    It took me a few clicks to realize it did anything, at all. Very few of my games were filtered out. None of my games that were filtered out happened to fit in the first page of search results.

    So at first it looked like penguin filter button did nothing.

    • Etzello@midwest.social
      2·
      6 days ago

      That’s pretty awesome, I bought an old used laptop, not a gaming laptop to practice and I’m new in the Cybersecurity field so I’m a little behind layman stage of using Linux. I installed Ubuntu on that laptop and it’s been a pleasure to use. I was gonna partition my gaming PC’s main drive and try Linux Mint on it. Even if my Nvidia card might not work out of the box, there’s a whole open source community who make compatible drivers independently. I love the open source community. Bunch of people who do what they love without demanding anything for it, just wow.

      • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
        2·
        6 days ago

        I was gonna partition my gaming PC’s main drive and try Linux Mint on it.

        Nice!

        If you can afford it, I lately recommend getting a separate harddrive, and physically taking the Windows drive out, and putting a blank drive in, to run Linux on.

        Windows has never liked to share, and has gotten worse (more aggressive preventing other operating systems from booting) with various integrations into BIOS for secure boot.

        Also, either way, be sure to back everything up while Windows is still installed. It is much easier to lose data today, due to secure boot and full disk encryption being the default.

        (Putting the Windows drive back in and resetting any BIOS settings should be enough, but it is possible that Windows will decide it wants the full disk encryption (FDE) password. I believe I have found my FDE password on the web through Microsoft account, but there’s just more that can go wrong, today. So I prefer to just have my files backed up so I can relax.)

        (And be aware that it may not be possible to backup files directly from a removed Windows drive, if full disk encryption was enabled. There’s probably a utility for it, as long as you have the FDE password. But again, it’s much less effort to just make backups before pulling the Windows drive out.)

        I’ve had the best experience booting to a fresh blank harddrive and installing Linux Mint on it, and throwing the Windows drive into a drawer until I find I want the extra drive space more than I want a retreat path to Windows.

        • Etzello@midwest.social
          2·
          6 days ago

          I highly appreciate your advice on this. I was reading up on it earlier and what I found was being alarmist about it and I remember from many years ago that it wasn’t supposed to be this tedious but you seem to verify that it kinda is tedious these days. Thanks

  • Broken@lemmy.ml
    3·
    6 days ago

    There’s a lot of info in these comments and a ton of it is good.

    I will say that the best advice is to boot from a USB and try out a system for a bit. You can easily swap around that way without a commitment.

    I will also say that my opinion is to start with Mint. It’s similar enough to windows in layout/workflow to feel familiar and is “boring” in a stable, easy to use way.

    Use it and learn Linux. I say learn, because it doesn’t matter what the OS looks like as much as how it works, and Linux (any flavor) works differently than windows. Learn those idiosyncrasies and then of you decide you want to try something else then you’re up to speed to move on and judge a different system with a baseline.

  • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
    4·
    6 days ago

    I started with a Steam Deck. Now I’m running PopOS on my Framework 13 and Bazzite on a home theatre PC. I’ve had far fewer issues with them than any flavor of Windows.

    I can’t go back. I won’t.

  • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    From my experience running a setup with a RTX 3080, I recommend CachyOS. It has all the latest Nvidia drivers out of the box and you can download additional gaming packages in the “Hello” window. You can try other OSs but I found this one to be the most capable and versatile for me. As long as you make backups regularly and customize your experience with caution you’ll have a good time.

  • Lets_Disco@retrolemmy.com
    2·
    6 days ago

    Since you specifically mentioned gaming and streaming, a great option for you as a beginner is Nobara.

    It is built specifically for gaming and streaming and has many of the tools pre-installed and makes DaVinci Resolve setup really easy (is a challenge otherwise lol). It’s based on Fedora, heavily modified kernel for performance and makes Fedora ready for gaming out of the box (which is why I discourage Fedora for gaming as a beginner, that takes a lot of set up for gaming and nvidia).

    Nobara is also great for beginners because it comes with some brilliant GUI options - apps that let you click onto the specific drivers, packages you might need and the Welcome app includes options step by step of what to install. You will mostly use such an app for updates, so it takes away a lot of the fear of the terminal (but you can still use no problem). It also includes some great options for streaming apps you’ll need.

    Also comes with KDE as its main suggestion (Nobara version of it or pure KDE, very little difference, basically the same with a few extra Nobara icons added i think). KDE is a fantastic DE, the workflow is similar to Windows out of the box and you won’t be unfamiliar with it, great one to start with. Plus its so customisable so you can get it looking very different from windows if you wish (which i did with mine).

    They have a great Discord too if you wanna ask any questions about specific games or issues. It’s basically Fedora but gentler learning curve and everything you need ready to go out of the box