Debian gets feature updates significantly slower than other distros, instead it focuses on insuring stability and security. It’s rock solid.

Linux Mint is actually based on Ubuntu (which itself is derived from Debian), so for the most part the two are fairly similar. There are a few key differences but for someone learning Linux you don’t need to worry about them. Pick one of them, get your feet wet, and then google the differences to see if you want to switch.

After all, endless Distro hopping is a right of passage for all fledgling Linux users! :)

I want to learn a Distro for fun.

Are you just using this laptop to dip your toes into Linux and see if you like it? I would recommend Debian + XFCE. It’s lightweight, it prioritizes stability over new features, and it’s a fairly easy UI for a newbie to understand. Alternatively Linux Mint MATE Edition might be worth a try. It’s also lightweight but is a bit more “up to date” than Debian feature wise.

Oh they finally fixed the bloody dock. I used it ages ago when it was still oval and those square icons looked terrible on it. This is much better.

Have they given any updates on HDR support? I remember them mentioning years back that they planned it for the final release but I’ve not heard anything since.

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I never got to run BeOS (well…when it was modern), but it’s really depressing just how insanely better it was than the competition. Ditto Amiga.

I like how they show a thin sliver of something that looks like a standard terminal output instead of a screenshot of what this actually looks like on your desktop.

Debian XFCE or Xubuntu LTS.

xfce is stubbornly slow at introducing new features, but it is absolutely rock-solid. Hell I don’t think they’ve changed their icon set in some 20 years.

Debian and *buntu LTS are also likewise slow feature updaters that focus on stability.

So, any distro to any other distro?

• Installs Fedora Silverblue
• Rebases to Bazzite

Jobs done chief!

I tried openSUSE a few months back because I wanted to be more closely associated with SUSE than Red Hat (I had to update to a new RHEL release at work about a year ago and really hated some of the shit they were pulling).

Here’s a list of issues I had:

• Was forced to not encrypt my system because for some reason the unlock screen rarely recognized my keyboard was connected and I couldn’t input the password. I would have to turn on the computer, then reboot at least once to get it to work.
• The absolute confusion surrounding YaST when I tried it out. The community made it sound like the best thing about openSUSE, but also don’t use it because it’s terrible. Apparently it’s being depreciated now. Don’t want to learn an entire system just for it to be removed.
• I didn’t experience any issues with this but it makes me nervous: Rolling Release + Required (for me) Community Repos. Meanwhile the standard release is slower than Fedora
• This one is a big “first world problem” but it really annoyed me. zypper, it’s one of the longest package manager names, and i can’t tab to autocomplete because there are other packages with similar names.

Now, all of these I problems I could probably fix. But it just wasn’t really worth the effort when my main issue was: “The downstream company associated with my Distro did some dumb shit that doesn’t really impact my system.”