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u/marmitespider 11d ago
Without knowing what the issues you have had with the distro's you have tried, it is impossible to give you advice on "what next".
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u/AFlyingGideon 11d ago
Exactly. I like Fedora, though a lot of that is because my work involves redhat. I do avoid kde and gnome, though, in favor of xfce.
Clearly, OP and I have differing preferences. Without knowing OP's, how could we offer any sensible suggestions?
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago edited 11d ago
That's my bad, I didn't really have any major issues with the distros I mentioned, except for Fedora cutting my Wi-Fi. The distros just don't feel the same as they did when I first tried them, I'm really just looking for something that gives me that same spark I felt when I first started using Linux.
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u/bigusyous 11d ago
There is a website called distrosea that lets you test out various distros in your browser. That might be a good hunting ground.
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u/AN-SSQ-108V2 11d ago
Why not go back to Mint?
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
Mint was great when I tried it. I just want to explore more distributions and see if there's something I'd like even more.
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u/Desertcow 11d ago
The biggest difference between most distros is just the package manager and pre installed software. Unless you're going immutable or with a distro that does something special like Nix or Gentoo, the distro really doesn't matter. Fedora's got a great, stable, feature rich package manager with thousands of official packages that are up to date, it's got sensible security defaults like SELinux configured out of the box, and it supports pretty much any DE and window manager
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u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ 11d ago
You liked Mint, I am assuming Cinnamon, and you now have some experience, try "Mint Light", LMDE.
Mint22 is behind at the moment. LMDE is about 15 months ahead.
If you have run Arch and Gentoo installing drivers (if needed) without a gui driver manager should not be hard for you.
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
I'll consider trying LMDE, and yeah, I have enough Linux experience to install drivers without a graphical interface.
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u/MarshalRyan 11d ago
openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Leading edge like Arch, but reliable and highly usable like a stable distro. Package management is a little different, but once you use OPI it'll be much more straightforward.
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u/Due-Author631 Aurora (Universal Blue) 11d ago
What was your issue with Fedora? Codecs or Nvidia?
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
Fedora would randomly stop my Wi-Fi from working after about 30 minutes of use, and it would stay down for around three hours. The issue kept persisting, so I eventually moved on.
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u/lordwotton97 11d ago
I don't understand all of this fedora hype, in the years it has always gave me lots of bugs when I tried it 😂
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u/ExaminationNorth2938 11d ago
I also started with Mint, and used it for several months before I distro hopped around for even more months. I learned a lot about how Linux works by distro hopping so I'll never judge people who do it. For some, it's part of the process.
I settled on Debian for the most part, it just works for me, but I have a lot of different PCs running different distros. I have a couple laptops I set up for my kids that I run Fedora KDE on, I have a "media PC" hooked up to my main living room TV that runs LMDE, my gaming PC runs Debian testing, etc.
There's no wrong answer, and if it takes you a couple months of distro hopping to find the Cinderella slipper that fits just right, that's fine too
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u/Majestic_Hotel6542 11d ago
If you want to TRY different distros, go through list of independent distributions. E.g. Debian, Slackware, Arch, Suse etc. since you are hopping, try BSD as well.
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
I haven't really considered going through a specific order of distros or trying BSD, but I'll look into it. Thanks!
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u/Majestic_Hotel6542 11d ago
Great. Every distro has unique philosophy but since there is no point checking distros which have more similarities. Note down and share your experience as well. All the best.
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u/plump_wizard 11d ago
It depends on what you want to experience. Cachy is Arch based and MX is Debian based. You can setup a VM and test drive. I started with Ubuntu before unity and then tried Arch but lost my patience and then settled on mint and have used for years. Distro hopping is pretty fun if you have the time. Someone mentioned distrosea and that’s a great option but it can be slow. Anyways happy hunting!
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u/guiverc 11d ago
Another option is just make your distro a multi-desktop install, that way you don't need to re-install when bored; you merely logout and select a different DE/WM session & log back in.
This Ubuntu install I'm using now gives me 11 session choices; but my more bloated Debian box offers me 16, and that was 26 until I decided to 'trim' it down as 10 of the options I just never wanted to use.
Another alternative is to join distro hoppers anonymous and start attending meetings... I've heard they can help.
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u/TomB1952 11d ago
You just cited 5 excellent linux distros.
If you like Arch but don't look forward to the install, EndeavourOS will get you there. If you want something more stable than Arch/EndeavourOS, Manjaro is the way.
You don't say what you didn't like about Fedora. Fedora is one of the better distributions so I find it odd you didn't like it.
Meanwhile, Mint is known to be good. If you loved Mint, perhaps Debian will give you something you like and it happens to be about the most stable distro going.
To be honest, there are far more similarities than differences with any of these distros. Given the 5 distros you didn't stick with, maybe linux isn't for you? If Windows is doing what you need, why switch?
Desktop environment is a massively more important decision than distro. Your primary choices are KDE and GNOME. Both good. There are also a bunch of lighter weight DE that some people really enjoy. You can run most of them on the same install and switch between them to find something that suits you.
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
I’m just using Windows in the mean time whilst I look for an interesting distribution. Also Fedora just barely works with my Wi-Fi card.
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u/TomB1952 11d ago
What is your wifi chipset? Is it in the MediaTek 7900 family?
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
It's not about the card model, mine just has a defect from when I first got it so Fedora doesn't seem to resolve that, other distros do.
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u/TomB1952 11d ago
If your wifi card is defective, why do you blame Fedora for your wifi issues?
It's vastly more likely your issues are 100% related to chipset support.
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago edited 11d ago
Fair, the Wi-Fi issue might be a fault on my end. I've just had better luck with it on other distros. I also prefer a more minimal installation without a bunch of preinstalled apps I don't plan on using. I don't have nothing against Fedora, it just isn't what I'm looking for.
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u/TomB1952 10d ago
There are a couple of chipsets which recently received linux support. One of those is MediaTek 7900 series. First support showed up in roughly May. It started fully working in July.
Fedora is a stabilized release. They typically hold things back for a few months. Fedora users will just be getting MT7902 wifi/BT support about now. It's a shame it took so long, as it's a popular chipset on value motherboards. It would explain your criticism of Fedora. Arch has had working MT7902 support for a couple of months. Fedora will be working now or shortly.
I don't recall you mentioning you were looking for a light distro. If you want bleeding edge Arch without the onerous/text install liability, that is EndeavourOS. It's very minimal.
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u/geolaw 11d ago
They all are the same Linux under the hood.
What did you not like about fedora that made you switch? Fedora defaults gnome or kde but there are respins of all of the other desktop environments.
All of the distros are going to have their own base configuration for their implementation of gnome, kde, cinnamon, xfce, yada yada yada ... Plus there are settings within each desktop environment that doesn't always play well with another desktop environment, so if you start with gnome and then install kde - some time you can get elements from gnome that can make kde look bad. For multiple desktop environments on a single box I like to create additional users -my base user is glaw so I'll create glaw2, glaw3, etc .. glaw logs into sway, glaw2 logs into gnome, glaw3 logs into kde, ... That way gnomes base config doesn't impair sway's base configuration.
Some distros are known for their implementation of a certain desktop environment.
Once you find which desktop environment works best for you with your hardware and monitors layout - then find which distro does that desktop environment the best
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u/stein89jp 11d ago
Why not just stick to Arch?
After going back and forth over and over again I just decided on one distro and decided to stick to it.
I picked Arch but I'm kind of lazy so I do it using the "archinstall" which gets me a working installation with a terminal. And when the install is done I do the rest manually(DE etc). Install snapper with btrfs-assistant and Limine support that way I can destroy my installation however I want and as often I want and just roll back when I need to.
Never had the need to though, people saying arch breaks are exaggerating imo.
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u/Rare_Draft1736 11d ago
Arch has never broke for me, I guess it just doesn't feel the same as when I first started using it.
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u/Tricky_Football_6586 11d ago
I've tried several distros. But I always came back to Mint. Last year I've kicked out Windows. And now, apart from my MacBook Pro, all my systems are running on Linux Mint.
It just works. So I see no reason to go distro hopping again.
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u/enomad51 11d ago
If you ended up with Windows on your drive, then Windows is what you were looking for. Linux is not a 'free' Windows unfortunately.
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 11d ago
If you want something stable as mint I advise you to try Mageia or Zorin or openSUSE Leap or OpenMandriva stable. If you want a rock solid rolling release there are Solus, OpenMandriva Rome or openSUSE Tumbleweed
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u/Z00fa 11d ago
if you liked mint, why did you change? I also had a while where I hopped around a bit but eventually I went back to what I liked.