TheModerateTankie [any]

Is it this issue? - https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/2344

Someone fixed a similar issue by setting their display color accuracy to “Prefer Efficency” instead of “Prefer Accuracy”

you can boot ostree:1 change the setting, run sudo ostree admin pin 1 then rebase back to testing (not reboot to ostree:0) that should hopefully work around it

The ublue releases (bazzite/bluefin/aurora) are tweaked to be set up and ready to go with minimal or no set up. You can switch between ublue and the normal fedora atomic distros, or even user customized variants, from what I understand. The root system will change, but anything installed under your user account will stay the same. The only problem that might occur between switching is that different desktop environments might overwrite some settings and cause problems that way. You would want a way to backup your config files just in case if you do a lot of switching.

This also means you can’t install multiple desktop environments side by side. Like if you wanted to choose between kde,gnome,xfce at the log in screen, it’s not possible under the atmoic distros. When i’ve done that on regular distros it would always result in a mess, and getting rid of a DE meant a lot of orphaned programs I didn’t want, so I avoid doing that, but this is a potential downside to the atomic distros. You would have to rebase and redownload stuff every time you switch DE.

Otherwise they are rock solid and basically designed to get you up and running as fast as possible, and be as stable as possible with seamless background updates. I’m running bluefin, and it’s the most user friendly and smooth experience on linux i’ve ever had.

I just switched to a ublue distro (bluefin) and think it’s great. These are designed from the ground up to be an “install it for a family member or friend and never have to touch it again” experience. They are based on Fedora. Bluefin has been the most trouble-free install of linux I’ve ever tried. I can’t say enough good things about it.

I would go with Aurora (essentially bluefin but with KDE instead of Gnome), unless they do a lot of gaming, in which case Bazzite-kde would probably work best (bazzite is more up-to-date which can mean more instability).

These are set up to use flatpak with a software center, so all gui apps can be installed from there and is similar to windows. It updates everything automatically in the background and only requires rebooting whenever you want to switch to the updated system. Also the immutable nature makes it hard to break, but if something does go wrong it makes it easy to roll back to the previous working install. There are also GTS versions of bluefin and aurora available, which are pinned to more stable releases so there’s even less chance of breakage.

Live USB installs aren’t stable yet so that might be an issue if you want to make sure hardware works before install, but you can install to a usb harddrive and boot off of that to check it out that way.

I’ve been running bluefin for about a week and I agree. One of the best things about these different distros is they install and configure a lot of things for you. Bluefin installs with flatpak, homebrew, distrobox, podman/docker, devcontainers configured and running on install, good peripheral support, good desktop tweaks, and sensible but easily removable default apps. Bazzite does something similar for gaming installs. It’s great. If there are common apps or configs that their users want they try to implement it and get it set up and running on install, if possible. The most friction free linux install I’ve ever had.

Eelco steps down

Is the fork still going to happen?

I’ve been looking for stuff to install and ran across this list, it’s pretty comprehensive. https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

Right now I only have jellyfin and pi-hole with unbound.

Pop or mint like everyone else suggests.

There are only a handful of major distros that are significantly different from each other (debian, fedora, opensuse, arch, nixos) that all other distros base themselves on. Apart from that, for the most part, the difference is basically what desktop environment they install by default, what apps get bundled, and maybe a few more tweaks here and there. It’s easy enough to change all of that regardless of what distro you end up on.

Pop and Mint are based on Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) and will probably have the most resources for support for new linux users. They come with default programs and custom software which makes the new user experience easier.

If you have a problem in either one of them, or want to do anything more complex than install software or tweak settings from a gui, and you can’t find what you are looking for in pop or mint forums, you will likely be able to find the solution in ubuntu forums, or even debian support groups. If you are using a computer that’s relatively new and wasn’t built with linux compatibility in mind, it’s not unlikely you will run into an issue that you’ll need to search out a fix for so it’s good to have those resources.

If the distro you choose doesn’t handle your monitors right, it might be a problem with the desktop environment you are using and it’s typically easy to install an alternative to try out before you nuke the whole thing to try again.