.ml, hexbear and grad up left

Rest down left

Gonna be the most boring one :D

Thanks!

Yep, works

Oh, didn’t know, thanks for sharing on the Firefox side!

As a KDE fan, I had some bugs on some devices (like on one of the laptops, wallpapers did not install correctly and the setting to always show battery charge didn’t work) even on Debian 12.

XFCE is well-known for stability, but seems to be increasingly irrelevant for the average/newbie user because the interface looks outdated and configuring is relatively complicated.

Interesting you mentioned Firefox ESR - iirc, even at release the version shipped with Debian 12 was considered very old, prompting many to install Firefox as a flatpak. Two years later, it’s two years older.

Flatpaks are good and suitable options for many tasks - no argument here! But some things are just better installed natively, and there Debian just…shows.

Steam is a godsend, but there are many non-Steam games and, importantly, programs out there, and launching them through Steam often feels like yet another bloated and slow workaround; besides, you cannot choose Wine over Proton, and sometimes (granted: rarely) you may want to use Wine specifically.

To conclude - it’s alright to choose Debian anyway, it is good! But I just feel like newbies and casual users could save a lot of trouble and frustration simply going with something that doesn’t require all that - say, Fedora (non-atomic), or OpenSUSE, and then go from there to whatever they like. There are plenty of distributions that are stable, reliable, but without the tradeoffs Debian sets.

If you feel like stability is your absolutely biggest priority ever, and you have experience managing Linux systems - by all means, go Debian. But by that point you’ll already know what you want.

Thanks for this! I guess the point is, people don’t want to dig deep into the system built with different approach as a base.

But you made me interested

Lol, this is borderline evil advice

But yeah, it works!

Sure, no rush there!

As someone who ran Debian Stable for a while, this is not a distro for “99.99%”.

First, Debian, while very stable in its core, commonly has same random issues within DE’s and even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along.

Second, a release cycle of 2 years is actually a giant and incredibly noticeable lag. You may love your system when it just releases, but over time, you will realize your system is old, like, very damn old. It will look old, it will act old, and the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date.

This isn’t just programs. It is your desktop environment. It is Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks like Bottles, which will feel like insane workaround you wouldn’t have to have with a better fitting distro).

It is the damn kernel, so you may not even be able to install Debian on newest hardware without unsupported and potentially unstable backporting tricks.

Don’t get me wrong, Debian is absolutely great in what it does, and that is providing a rock solid environment where nothing changes. But recommending it for everyone? Nope.

Should be within your DE’s settings, might just be the default there.

Or, if you want all the same features without immutability, just go with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed!

(Aeon is an OpenSUSE project, too)

You can combine any desktop environments, really. Just choose which one you want when you’re on a login screen

99% of screenshot is just wallpaper lol

But it’s a good one! Mind sharing original file?

Btw

As someone who used both Arch and Fedora: no need to fomo, Fedora is great and delivers everything you may ever need from Arch without the headache.

The only strong side of Arch here is AUR, but then again, I’ve never found anything I would need that wouldn’t be available in Fedora.

So, you’re golden.

Isn’t GUIX based on Linux-libre?

This must complicate installing nonfree software, including nonfree drivers if your computer needs any.

Honestly, having tried both atomic and regular Fedora, I ended up with regular, as it allows you to do all the same things without limiting you to them.

Install flatpak? Sure. Use Distrobox? Of course. But if you have to use native package, you can simply install it without jumping through the hoops with rpm-ostree (which doesn’t even always work properly).

Fedora itself is great, though - a healthy release cycle, high stability, and mature base.

You should certainly try OpenSUSE, it’s as good as it says on the tin

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed/Slowroll

Tumbleweed is the only bleeding-edge rolling release distribution that just works and never fails and is super easy to install and manage without any expertise. And it is massively underrated and forgotten for no good reason.

All Tumbleweed packages go through extensive and to this day unrivaled automatic system testing that ensures no package is ever gonna bork itself or your system.

If you’re still worried about stability, there is Slowroll - currently testing, but in my experience very stable distribution. It makes rolling release updates…a bit slower, so that they’re only pushed after Tumbleweed users absolutely ensure everything is great and stable (not that it’s ever otherwise). It does the same job as Manjaro, but this time around it actually works without a hitch.

Both deliver great experience and will suit novice users.

Makes sense, thought about this.

Ocean travel us very fuel efficient, and also bananas don’t seem to have the same effect despite also coming from afar.