this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025

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Former Linux user looking for stable distro (piefed.ca)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca to c/linux@programming.dev

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Hey all,

I used to use Linux for a few years. Distro-hopped a bit, used Manjaro, Kubuntu, Mint, and Debian. I want to go back, but what I want is stability. I want to be able to do my regular day-to-day tasks without any sacrifices to my regular performance and stability on Windows 10.

Using Linux, I had the following issues:

Manjaro - for a first-timer, I think the problems here were pretty self-explanatory
Kubuntu - worked like a charm, up until I needed to update to the latest version, which it refused to do no matter what I did, causing me to swap to Mint. Reinstalled at a later date only for the entire distro to crash every so often with simple tasks like minimising and maximising windows, opening browser tabs, etc.
Mint - worked, but disliked the layout, swapped to Debian
Debian - Most in line with values, but could not for the life of me figure out how to install the Nvidia drivers. I reinstalled the distro multiple times after following the official tutorial to install the drivers to a tee... which would brick the distro entirely each time. Also had same issue with simple tasks like minimising and maximising windows, navigating browser tabs, etc. crashing my system.

I want to enjoy Linux, but I also want basic functionality. For all the crap I rightfully give Windows, it's never crashed on me, whereas with the two distros I mainly used, it would crash probably once or twice a day. I'm not a AAA gamer, and I don't feel it's a hard ask to play a game like osu! without constant stuttering when it runs effortlessly on Windows.

I went back to Windows because I simply couldn't deal with the issues anymore, I had to get a whole new computer and I feel that the constant issues with stability I had and needing to constantly manually turn the power on and off because of the crashes, and reinstalling distros for mundane reasons wore out my SSD much sooner than it should have.

If anybody can help me find something that I can be confident in to simply work without major issues, I would greatly appreciate it. I feel trapped, I want to ditch Windows, but also don't want to deal with those nonstop issues all over again.

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[–] AmanitaCaesarea@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

Zorin or Garuda. Cachy is also nice

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fedora kinoite/ Fedora Silverblue/ Any Fedora Atomic with a desktop flavour that strikes your fancy

These are immutable, basically unbreakable distros.

[–] Blubber28@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

To tag on, check out Bazzite if you want nvidea deivers included and some QoL things for gamers

[–] eruchitanda@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Mint with Gnome/KDE/other DE?

[–] zewm@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Fedora or Bazzite imo. I’m currently using. Bazzite and it just works for me. If you’re unfamiliar with immutable distros and don’t want to read the docs, I would just go with Fedora. It’s a stable up to date distro, no frills.

Make sure to get KDE as it’s the closest thing to what you’re used to and will make for easier transition. It’s very familiar like Windows 10 interface.

[–] Mihies@programming.dev 11 points 2 days ago

Another vote for Fedora KDE.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm also gonna recommend immutable here, though since OP's not a AAA gamer I think Bazzite would be overkill. There is Aurora in the same fashion without all the gaming related things.

[–] _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 1 points 2 days ago

There’s no such thing as overkill.

[–] entwine@programming.dev 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Bazzite. Every other recommendation is wrong.

Bazzite is "immutable". What that basically means is that you won't be able to break it even if you try. And if it does break somehow (for example, because of a bad update), you can fix it by doing a rollback, which is literally a one-line command: sudo rpm-ostree rollback

Sure, there are other immutable distros out there, but Bazzite is probably the most popular right now, and it ships with Nvidia drivers so it's ready to go for 99% of people with no changes necessary.

[–] Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Looks neat, will consider it. I don't do a crazy amount of gaming though as I don't do anything AAA or such.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago

It's still great either way, there's a lot of work into making it easier to use and less hassle.

[–] snikta@programming.dev 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

When did you try Debian? Nvidia should be quite painless since they added the official non free repo. But make sure to install a backports version of the kernel and firmware. And modern apps should be installed with flatpak.

Anyway. I suggest that you try Debian again. There is nothing better out there.

[–] Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Probably had start of last year or end of 2023. Memory is fuzzy admittedly.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

Agreed, I installed Trixie the other day and it's been pretty much smooth sailing.

[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Any of the ~15 most used distros is stable when you learn how to not fuck it up.

As an anecdote:

my Ubuntu and Debian installs used to break twice a year on dist upgrade back then (started with Linux when Ubuntu 12 came out, got it in a magazine). It would cost me a weekend of trying to fix it before giving up and reinstalling the whole dammn thing and re-doing my setup from scratch ...

Then I switched and my arch install has been the same for the past ~10 years with only minor fixes maybe once a year. It outlived the hardware it was on twice.

But every time people keep saying Debian and Ubuntu are stable and Arch is unstable 🤷‍♂️

[–] _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Any of the ~15 most used distros is stable when you learn how to not fuck it up.

Yeah, well if they’re new then they don’t know how to not fuck it up, now do they? Besides, in this day and age, you shouldn’t have to tip-toe around an OS to stay on its good side, it should just work.

[–] rarsamx@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Usually the problem is that new users go out of their way to fuck things up.

I don't see anything wrong with that. Most of us did that and that's how we learned. But really, all mainstream distros are good out of the box unless you have an unusual hardware configuration. Specially now with flatpaks, appimages and Snaps.

Of course if you want to tweak and twist KDE or install extensions on Gnome or PPAs from who know where on Ubuntu or overuse the AUR in arch you need to know what you are doing.

However, it's no different in Windows but for different reasons. The most common way to fuck windows up is to start installing software from non reputable sources. I think many of us have had to clean windows installations from friends and family when it becomes unusable.

[–] snikta@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If one wants rolling, I would suggest NixOS, Guix System or Tumbleweed. Or something container based like Silverblue or openSUSE micro.

But rolling doesn't really make sense. Just go with Debian/Leap and then use Flatpak, podman, Nix and/or Guix on top of that. For Desktop.

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Same here, dist-upgrades where always hit or miss. I am on EndeavourOS now and would always chose a distro with rolling releases.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

What on earth kinda PC you got that crashes when minimizing windows 💀 Sorry, I'm not being helpful.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Fedora KDE, or Nobara which is a game/editing pre-optimized version of Fedora that has nVidia built in with extra tweaks.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Zorin, OpenSUSE Leap seem solid choices. Even Tumbleweed, because openSUSE has a snapshotting feature built in, so even if an update were to break something you just rollback.

Don't follow online tutorial for adding nVidia to SUSE as the hard steps that still linger out there. Just add the nvidia repo that is specific to OoenSUSE Leap. Nvidia hosts it, but its described in one setup page on the openSUSE website.

[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

Rock solid for a rolling release. Roll back in case of problems. This was such a great beginner distro that finally got me hooked on Linux permanently.

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

There's also Slowroll based on tumbleweed. Gets updates every 2-3 months, bugfixes faster end security patches immediately.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, people suggest Mint a lot, and I can see why, but having any distro with rollback makes sense for new users.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

+1 for Zorin

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In defense of distros, the Nvidia nonfree drivers being absolute hell to install is not really the distro's fault. It has ALWAYS been a hellfest on every single distro I've ever touched. The only one it even remotely installs smoothly on is Ubuntu, and even then, not that well.

[–] Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Been meaning to replace my GPU with an equivalent by AMD. Only thing keeping me back is cost, and knowing if an AMD equivalent would be compatible with my motherboard.

[–] UnpledgedCatnapTipper@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago

If you're using a desktop, there's no compatibility worries for motherboard and gpu. They all use PCI-e ports and are standard.

[–] rarsamx@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You don't mention the specifics of your hardware and that's an important consideration.

I was a mint user for more than 10 years. It never crashed. It became my fail back when I moved to Fedora/Gnome. It's very crashed, but my laptop (ThinkPad X1 carbon) supports Fedora out of the box.

People keep saying "a DE you can customize..." While I love KDE, the amount of configuration available means that's it's easy to screw things up.

I suggest Gnome because it has a modern workflow and it's otherwise out of your way. Of course, you can install extensions. Just don't go crazy because extensions may not be as stable as the core.

The GNOME workflow becomes natural after a few minutes.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 days ago

I'd recommend MX Linux KDE edition. The new version based on Debian 13 should be released this month.

It's basically just Debian with some added convenience utilities to make life easier, one of which was an nvidia driver installer that works a treat. Great little distro.

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I'd recommend to try Mint again. What didn't you like about the layout? You can run KDE on Mint and it shouldn't make a difference to other distros.

Other distros to look at as a beginner are Fedora or SuSE.

[–] Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Not huge into Cinnamon (I think that's Mint's default desktop environment). No idea why people hate on Windows 10 in terms of the layout of the desktop environment because it's just about perfect for me. KDE was like the layout of Windows 10 if it was outright perfect. Kubuntu was incredible as a starter after the mess I had with Manjaro, which was so long ago I can't even remember what happened there.

KDE for me is an absolute necessity in a distro in terms of desktop environment. Remember having it with Debian.

[–] blurb@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Please don't use Linux Mint with KDE, you will just get a much worse experience. Cinnamon is very customizable. I don't know what the OP means by "layout", but if they're talking about the taskbar that can be customized too.

Relevant link: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=426770

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah I somehow misremembered that part, I thought Mint would ship with different options for desktop environment.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 days ago

KDE on mint is a little jank. It doesn't integrate well with the mint tray utilities, and is using a fairly old version of KDE 5.

[–] rarsamx@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When OP says "layout" I think he means the old as windows 3.1 layout and workflow. It was good in the 90's. Now it feels cumbersome and dated.

Don't get me wrong. I know that's the main selling point of Mint: Familiarity and stability. I settled on it for 19 years after I got tired of distro hoping. I've contributed financially to it every month for years.

However, it's that cumbersome workflow which got me back into Gnome where I use only two extensions: transparent task bar and window autotile.

Gnome on a laptop flows naturally and out of the way.

[–] Moss_the_TeXie@rheinneckar.social 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

@rarsamx @Atherel
Nice typo. The term “distro hoping” perfectly describes my state of mind when I try out another Linux distribution to see if this desktop Linux is finally a thing.

[–] rarsamx@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Hahaha, we can always hope.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

PopOS ? LMDE ? Fedora ?

I run LMDE have had zero stability issue's, running AMD.

[–] Fecundpossum@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

My vote is Fedora, but Pop is a good choice as well.

[–] rozodru@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago

in your case I'd say Fedora with a DE you can customize to your liking. Honestly just go for a KDE Fedora then you don't have to think about it.

I'd also say CachyOS but that might be out of your ballpark. Cachy just works. yes it's Arch based but it's by far the best Arch based distro out there. Monthly, on the dot, updates and works with whatever DE/WM you want to throw at it. Hell during the installation it gives you a bunch of DEs/WMs to install with it and all have been customized to work with CachyOS so you don't even have to think about it.

[–] CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There isn't one and this place will gas light you.

Those recommending bazzite, the new hotness, are ignoring a host of issues that typical users, especially Nvidia owners will run into.

You have 2 ways to go. Deal with windows being annoying, or get good enough with Linux desktop to understand and fix all the shit.

Bazzite is probably the way to go if you want to learn it and are comfortable running containers to get the apps you need. Flatpack is still garbage.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Which desktop environments were you using on all those distros? Whats your gpu model? Because if its not suuuper old it should work just fine with the proprietary nvidia drivers that come with most distros these days.

[–] Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I currently have an Nvidia 1060 Ti, and was mainly using KDE save for Mint and whatever it was I had with Manjaro. Too long back to remember for the latter. Think the GPU in the previous comp was exact same model, either that or a 1080 Ti.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I had a 1070 until recently and that was working fine on debian and ubuntu. Usually you need to allow proprietary drivers somewhere in your package sources and then install the nvidia-driver package. Its possible to run into weird configurations issues and those can be annoying to solve. If you wanna avoid that, i would go with a distro that ships with either the drivers prepackaged or supports a guided setup for gpu drivers.

Popular distros that do this are for example Bazzite or PopOS which both come with nvidia drivers pre installed.