Linux Myths

A compilation of linux myths and misconceptions, busted and explained

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How to choose a desktop Linux distro

Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming amount of bad advice out there when it comes to distro recommendations and information for newbies. These recommendations can look something like:

"I use this distro and like it, you should try it!"

"Are you going to be gaming? if so use this single-maintainer distro"

"You should use this distro, it's better for old hardware"

And so on. These are all unhelpful statements: A distro that works for one person might not be the best distro for someone else. Single-maintainer distros should never be recommended to newbies. A system's weight is largely determined by desktop environment and not by distro.

Below, I lay out the variables that are relevant when choosing a distro, and then provide a table you can use to pick a distro once you've determined your preference on each variable.

Rolling vs point release

Distros come in two broad categories: rolling releases and fixed point releases. Rolling releases ship updates to the same set of repos in perpetuity, with no versioning of those repos. In contrast, point releases ship a new repo version at a certain cadence (e.g. annually). Once shipped, updates are pushed to those repos based on certain criteria. This criteria can vary, but generally major upgrades to packages are held back until the next version of the repos is released.

Stable vs bleeding edge

Often confused with rolling vs point release, this variable captures the update philosophy of the distro. The update philosophies of distros fall on a spectrum between prioritization of stability, prioritization of having the latest packages, and striking a middle ground. As one would expect, on stable distros you will find less breakage, but far older packages. And on bleeding edge distros, you will find more breakage but much newer packages. The update philosophy of a distro is generally not related to its release cadence, as you can have rolling release distros that are relatively stable (for example, Gentoo) and point release distros that are relatively bleeding edge (for example, Fedora). Keep in mind that this is all in the context of the desktop use case. What constitutes "stable" in terms of desktop linux pales in comparison to what constitutes "stable" in terms of server distributions.

Atomicity

Within the last few years, several new distros and versions of existing distros have emerged that have embraced the atomic model. An incomplete summary explanation is that the atomic model treats the entire system as a monolith of sorts, with updates to the system's packages coming in the form of updates to the system as a whole. This involves building the system based on the dependency tree remotely (like the packages themselves) instead of locally iterating over the installed packages, updating packages and dependencies individually. This has several advantages including for new users, since among other things it reduces risk of breakage during updates. It also provides a more familiar update mechanism for users coming from other OSes, like MacOS.

Distros

Distro Release cadence Stability Atomicity
Arch Linux Rolling Bleeding edge No
Debian Fixed Stable No
Fedora Fixed Middle-ground, leans bleeding No
Fedora Atomic Fixed Middle-ground, leans bleeding Yes
Gentoo Rolling Stable No
Linux Mint Fixed Stable No
NixOS Fixed Stable Yes
OpenSUSE MicroOS (Aeon/Kalpa) Rolling Bleeding edge Yes
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Rolling Bleeding edge No
Slackware Fixed Stable No
Ubuntu Fixed Middle-ground No
Ubuntu LTS Fixed Stable No
Void Rolling Stable No

Desktop environment

Once you've picked a distro, it's time to pick a desktop environment. You have a number of options, like GNOME, KDE Plasma, XFCE, Cinnamon, LXQt, MATE, etc. For older or weaker hardware, avoid GNOME and KDE Plasma.

Once you've picked a desktop environment as well, download an iso for your preferred distro for your preferred desktop environment. The following links are available for your convenience that provide DE-specific isos. Keep in mind that some distros change upstream default configurations for some desktop environments.