After years of distro hopping, I had one to many updates which borked some driver & realized what I’m really looking for is my laptop should be boring stable appliance. Incredibly happy with it so far.

  • humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Oooooo I’m so close to trying it but I’m a total tech clown. I’m on the spec step to see if I can dual boot. I only looked at Ubuntu and Mint only because they are for beginners. Where does Debian fall in that list? Note: I’m planning on doing this on my brothers PC which only for gaming. Cuz fuck Bill Gates

    • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
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      2 days ago

      Mint is super nice. It installs and just runs and Cinnamon is a lovely desktop environment. I’m an absolute casual who has yet to open the terminal.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      There is a Mint Debian Edition that is based on Debian but with the Mint feel. Debian is a bit “lower” on the baseline, meaning more needing to understand Linux. But it’s not Arch or Slackware.

      • Jayb151@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Wait, there’s what now? How have e not known this? I’m gonna go spin it up on my proxmox server now!

    • Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip
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      2 days ago

      Debian is fairly straight forward I think, I’d think maybe a half step behind Ubuntu and mint for being easy and accessible, but mint and Ubuntu both have communities that have a reputation of being extremely friendly to new folks just figuring things out

      Just depends on what you need :) like the other reply said, mint debian edition is a great choice built by the mint folks to be very user friendly and with the mint community. Just keep in mind debian gets updates very slowly, so I’d expect mint debian edition to also get slow updates (maybe someone more familiar with it can chime in), which may or may not mater for you. But as a result it has a reputation of being absolutely rock solid (though so does mint. And regular mint is based on ubuntu. All the versions of mint ought to be extremely reliable)

      Personally if you like one of Mint’s interfaces (desktop environments) I’d probably just start with regular Mint. There are a lot of good options available though :)

      • ApplyingAutomation@lemmy.worldOP
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        2 days ago

        People do often site the slow updates, but to be honest that’s not been an issue because you can just install the newer version.

        For example, I needed to update Pipewire for my audio out through HDMI to work properly. No issues so far 🤷

        • Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip
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          1 day ago

          Do you mean like getting packages from the testing repos? I’ve heard of that but don’t know much about it. Though it seems potentially like something best left to somewhat more confident users moreso that folks that just switched

          • forestbeasts@pawb.social
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            2 hours ago

            yeah, mixing stable and testing is something you’ve gotta be really careful with.

            Now, running entirely testing, or well, more likely testing+unstable? Way less likely to break. So if you want the Rolling Debian Experience, just upgrade to testing. :3

            – Frost

    • iamthetot@piefed.ca
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      2 days ago

      Go with Mint. It will be better set up out of the box for gaming. Also, don’t dual boot. It will make it more complicated and scarier. Save any important files to a backup location, and rip off the bandaid by completely ditching Windows. You won’t miss it.

    • SharkWeek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      Mint isn’t necessarily for beginners, for people who want to get stuff done it’s ideal.

      Source: been fiddling with Linux since the '90s. My laptop runs Mint. I use it for stuff.