I'm so frustrated rn.
I have been distro hopping for about 2 weeks now, there's always something that doesn't work. I thought I would stick with Debian and now I haven't been able to make my printer work in it, I think I tried in another distro and it just worked out of the box, but there's always something that's broken in every distro.
I'm sorry I'm just venting, do you people think Ubuntu will work for me? I think I will try it next.
I've been using Linux for 10y and never distro-hopped to solve a problem. Overall I've only used 3 distros as daily drivers. IMO you should look into making things work with a distro you like instead of looking for the perfect off the shelf distro.
Yeah you're probably right, which distro do you use?
To build off of the above poster, some things sometimes take some tweaking to make work. When you distro hop you're really just hopping to a different set of defaults and maybe a few relevant library differences. Learning what to do and how to do it can be daunting but when you get it its brilliant and then you have some idea what you need to do the next time you encounter a similar issue
what is your usecase?
Just gotta learn to fix stuff yourself. Highly unlikely for any distro to be perfect out of the box.
Easier said than done sometimes. That's the advantage of Ubuntu, Mint, etc. — they minimize the number of weird quirks you run into.
When I install Linux for friends and family the only distro I use anymore is Fedora. I have used just about every major distro, and Fedora is the only one that has "just worked" on every computer I have tried it on.
Love them, or hate them, Red Hat is by far the single biggest company in the Linux community, and their Red Hat Enterprise Linux is renowned for being stable, performant, and very well supported. Fedora is where most of the updates that make their way into RHEL are initially available, so with Fedora you get a cutting edge distro with the backing and resources of a massive corporation that employs many of the top Linux-desktop contributors.
If you want a distro that "just works" I strongly recommend you give Fedora a try.
You can also try their immutable desktops if you're not planning on tinkering with anything like the kernel and just want to install your apps and have them work.
p.s. if you ever run into performance or weird flickering screen issues with Fedora, switch to x11 on the login screen
OP, my request/suggestion would be the following:
In order for us to better help you consider the following:
On a more general note, you shouldn't feel the need to switch distros even if other distros might offer more convenient solutions.
Moral of the story would be that there are a lot of different ways that enable one to overcome challenges like these. And unless you feel the need to go with a system that's (mostly) managed for you (à la uBlue)[1], you will face issues every now and then. And the only way to deal with them would be to either setup[2] (GRUB-)Btrfs+Timeshift/Snapper (or similar solutions) such that it automatically snapshots a working state that you might rollback to whenever something unfortunate befalls your system or to simply become ever so better equipped in troubleshooting them yourself.
Linux requires putting in some work to get everything working, just how it is right now.
Pick a distro you like, and stick with solving the issues!
You will get tons of distro recommendations, so here is one more: OpenSUSE, then use the YAST GUI GTK application select Yast Printer it has a GUI tool for all kinds of printer setup options and will show recommended drivers based on printer type, it then installs them via that GUI. Not to be confused with the regular printer settings app you see in most distros.
I worked with SuSE. I still have PTSD over how badly it's built. Never again.
do you people think Ubuntu will work for me?
Yes.
Seconded. Just don't run it on incompatible hardware, okay? 😹
There is not a single distro where everything works out of the box. I would be very surprised if even Windows or MacOS work exactly like you expect, the second you boot into them the first time.
I like Arch / EndeavourOS, but you will definitely need quiet some configuration for them. If you want more user-friendly or more up-to-date Debian, try Sparky Linux. It's honestly quite good. Instead of Ubuntu you might want to give Mint a try. Many fancy it as a more open and less corpo alternative.
Ubuntu itself is alright, but it's being criticised for pushing anti-consumer moves lately (i.e. forcing Snaps and telemetry onto them). Also, updates on Ubuntu are extremely slow in my experience. Maybe that has changed, but in some areas I doubt it.
There is not a single distro where everything works out of the box.
On the other hand, if hardware manufacturers or software developers test their products with one Linux distribution, it will be Ubuntu. So that's generally the safest bet - and that's coming from someone who doesn't use Ubuntu.
Windows generally does work exactly like that. It's the reason it has such a huge market share of desktops.
Windows breaks something all the time. Just the other week I had to fix their stupid new Email program for my dad.
There are many reasons why their market share is so high:
That is absolutely not true, Ubuntu has been a lot more out of the box experience for almost 2 decades. Thing is people are already familiar on how to do things on Windows, and most laptops already come with windows and drivers pre installed. Windows 10 was the first version to have a driver manager that could find the correct drivers for you, still you need to waste a few hours and reboots to get all of the drivers and updates.
The only reason you should ever distro hop is for fun
Naah I think it's super useful to know a bit about all popular distros. This makes you able to actually take part in conversations about what distro to pick for example.
I've ran them all at some point in my life, which makes me able to understand that it's not just "different package manager" as some people say.
This is the kind of post that scares me away from trying Linux.
Why? Under Windows or Mac OS too, there's always something that doesn't quite work right.
My current work forces me to work with Apple (because they are lazy to prepare Linux for working), I have been on Linux for almost 10 years and I really want to quit my Job because of this stupid Apple laptop, it is trash, the DE is stupid, and I have many issues (with settings, login items, alacritty not working... yabai stopped to work without any reason...) that stresses me a lot... So good, I love my work and I still enjoy working, but the macOS is pure trash.
You can always try Linux risk free in a virtual machine like VirtualBox.
If you like what you see, and you have any valuable data backed-up, you can try dual booting. That way you get to use Linux as your primary operating system, but can switch back and forth as much as needed.
I found I was dual booting Windows and Linux for over 3 years before I was comfortable enough to stop using Windows entirely. Switching to Linux doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach. You can take it as slow as you want.
I was in the same boat but Linux Mint just literally worked. Easiest transition ever. I keep my Windows dual boot because I need MS Office for work but I'm in mint 95% of the time with no tinkering.
Then stay away. If you don't like to tinker with things it's not for you.
Install Ubuntu and be done. I'm able to print to my brother network printer with no special drivers. I installed a gnome tweaks package to do some minor tweaks in gnome, and I did rip out the Firefox snap thing to install Firefox from a package so I could use my kpxc plugin, but that's the only major change I made. Hell, Dell (laptop) even provides firmware updates via the package manager so your bios gets updated properly. Best Linux desktop experience I've ever had over the past 5 years and I've been daily driving Ubuntu since 2004.
Linux mint I would say its the one that tends to have better support in a large amount of hardware and it was the first one that I was able to stick with
Ubuntu will work, sticking to Ubuntu based system is good to have stuff just work. For Gnome UI just use Ubuntu, for KDE use Kubuntu.
If you don't like Ubuntu as a company you can always use these instead: PopOS for Gnome and KDE Neon for KDE. Both are very stable with great support. I've been running KDE Neon for years now.
Out of curiosity, what distros did you try?
Hi, I tried endeavor, Linux mint, manjaro, mx Linux, and I don't remember what else. I have a question, is Gnome really popular? For me it doesn't make sense, it feels it was made for tablets or something like that.
Absolutely, it's very popular. It's pretty similar to MacOS since it comes with a global menu by default. It's pretty popular since the design is very consistent and looks good. They also have excellent support for new features (except Wayland). Gnome is popular with people that only want to customise the most important ports and just want a standard OS that is well thought out and accessible.
I do watch a lot of content about Linux distros, but I'm not a Gnome user so I can't give good examples of customisation and differences between KDE and Gnome.
Here's a review from a guy on YouTube I like on Gnome 45 that used Gnome as a daily driver for years. https://youtu.be/RQSA0nZaF6M?si=7UUEmWKG41gaU0uS
Btw, can replicate the same layout on KDE because of the high level of customization it provides. It can all done through the UI, as all OS changes should be done.
Linux is kinda like a 3d printer. You can end up tinkering and tuning more than printing.
2d printers are just cursed and have been since the dawn of mankind though. Go to https://openprinting.org/printers/ and see if your printer is in there and if it is which functionality header it is under. I'm assuming it isn't capable of driverless if debian didn't work and the other distro just happened to have something preinstalled. Unless debian doesn't handle driverless printing out of the box. I've only used debian headless for server stuff so I'm just making assumptions.
Arch maintainers recommend against aur helpers but for quite some time I just did exactly that and got the drivers for whatever jank ass printer I had at the time that way. Most of the official ones I have encountered are rpm and I hadn't used fedora or other rpm distros until recently, and the aur pkgbuilds would unpack the rpm and install the drivers the arch way. Incidentally, last I tried silverblue/ublue/kinoite etc can't install the brother printer rpms via rpm-ostree so having a driverless capable printer was lucky considering it was just randomly given to me by a friend that moved away.
If you share the printer model, someone here can probably also figure out what needs to be done without you having to go through a bunch of troubleshooting too.
Did you try Linux Mint Cinnamon? What about Linux Mint Debian Edition? They're improved versions of Ubuntu and Debian, respectively.
What printer are you trying to use and how is it connected to your machine?
Linux Mint is where I always go crawling back to. I have hopped so damn much. Mint sometimes needs a newer kernel installed, but I'll be damned if that Ubuntu base doesn't help with printers, graphics drivers, and scanners. Getting that to work on Arch was a blast and a half, on Mint I literally just turned my network printer on and it found it. IDK, you can do anything and there is always some issue eventually.
I've found ubuntu distros to be pretty good for 'stuff just works". My daily driver is xubuntu. That said, I've never tried using a printer with it. Good luck OP.
What do you want out of your system?
There are two more I'd reccomend as its what my family and friends have been using and have ran into literally, zero issues.
Linux mint (specifically cinnamon edition) is very stable, and customizable if you're into that sorta thing, you can install custom kernels and get greatly improved performance out of gaming if thats your thing. It's built off of Ubuntu (but just better) so there's great support for it, especially with devices such as printers.
Fedora Kinoite is a solid, also well supported, immutable distribution which will either make your life easier, or more difficult.
Immutable means you can't change anything in your root directory, so basically your "C: Drive". You still have a regular file system and can install all your apps, but the operating system stays the same as everyone else's and is something that by design, never breaks and "just works", and is what I personally use.
Pop_OS is definitely another option if you have "newer" hardware and Linux Mint doesn't work for you and you don't like the immutability of Fedora Kinoite (you can always try regular Fedora KDE). But I'd personally reccomend just the first two. But Pop is also built off of Ubuntu, so you still get that great hardware support.
But please, avoid stock Ubuntu. Ubuntu has far gone away from being a beginner, "just works" distro.
Hope this helped! Please reply or message me if you have any issues or are confused, or you can always ask for some more help within this community as well!
Thanks for the information, I'll check them out.
BTW distro is the cure for this kind of anxiety.
For first time plug-n-play distros, I either go with Linux Mint or Fedora, for me they have the best results for just working.
And make sure when installing them, you always check to use proprietary drivers and codecs if it's an option, that will save you a bunch of trouble down the line.
Funnily enough, Fedora is the only distro I've ever had and still have the infamous Linux sound driver problems with
If you're sticking with Deb based distros. Ubuntu Kubuntu - same as Ubuntu but kde Kde neon Pop_os
You might could try Manjaro. I have pretty good luck with it.
It's not Deb or apr. But it has the aur.
Good luck op!
EndeavourOS is pretty good, too; also Arch-based with an easy installer.
The advantage to Arch-based-distros is rolling releases, and the Arch wiki instructions are more easily followed. And right now, the Arch wiki is probably the single best resource for Linux instructions and troubleshooting on the web.
If I remember correctly I liked manjaro and endeavor when I tried them, but the "night color" feature which is very important to me wouldn't work Idk why.
does night light actually work? I used them for a while, turned it off for color and I didn't notice a difference. Isn't it just placibo or just very minimal effect?
Ah I don't use that so I can't speak to it.
:/
Ubuntu in my experience works best out of the box and has the best support reference online. Ubuntu works out of the box save for the webcam where Debian doesn't even boot on my MacBook.
What printer do you have?
I have an epson L4260, I downloaded a driver that was supposedly for Debian, it was a .deb file that I installed but nothing happened, I added the printer but it just wouldn't print.
That printer shouldn't even need a driver to work. It should just show up if it's connected to the same network as your computer.
I'm just taking a guess here but is the .deb you installed a program you have to run to do the setup? My one printer I had to run a program to start scanning every time.
Are you using it via WiFi or usb? Are you able to see both the printer and the scanner in the printer configuration panel?
Usually it takes me less then two weeks to get e.g. a printer to work. Your problem is not the distro but the hopping.
Yeah, Ubuntu works well for me. Ubuntu is operated by the Canonical corporation, which some people don't like. If you would prefer a community-run Ubuntu-like OS, Mint is just as good as Ubuntu. Fedora is also one of the best community-run distros that always just works, especially when running the Gnome desktop environment.
I will say that until last month when I upgraded to Ubuntu version 23.10 (technically Xubuntu), Ubuntu always just worked with all of my hardware. But for some reason this last upgrade broke my wake-from-suspend function. This is the first problem I have had with it in many, many years, so I might actually switch to Mint or Fedora myself. EDIT: I figured out that the problem was being caused by the power manager daemon, I worked around this problem by disabling display power management (dims the display if you don't use it for a while) in the Xfce settings manager, "Power Manager" panel, "Display" tab, switching the "Display power management" switch off.
Give Zorin a try. It's based on Ubuntu but even more user friendly - so much so that my elderly mother has no issues using it, she even prints and scans (a Brother MFD) and has no issues.
Zorin OS is the way to go if you are sticking with the Debian/Ubuntu family. It's basically the Mac OS of Linux distributions, by shipping with a level of polish that other distributions don't deliver. To me this means I did zero tinkering out of the box to have the experience I wanted after spending a day configuring KDE in other distributions any time I did a reinstall. As far as printers go, they have always been hit or miss, but my problems were solved by disabling IPv6 on my local network.
I'm a recent Linux convert I started with Debian testing and that worked out of the box for everything except Nvidia drivers. I hopped from Debian testing over to Pop Os because Debian testing wasn't supported for a bunch of random things I wanted to use. I stopped using pop os a couple of weeks ago because it would crash all the time and was going to jump to Ubuntu just so pretty much everything would be supported. That flash drive install was corrupted so I ended up on nobara and have loved it with no issues so far.
Archlinux has the best wiki and community for every type of issue.
Yes, there is always something that won't work. This often happens with Windows (not too often, but it happens), but most often with Macs. Linux is quite buggy in the userspace area, I usually find bugs or crashes within an hour of using any linux distro. The one with the FEWER bugs is definitely Debian. But it does that by not using hacks or beta drivers or software. This creates a rock solid architecture, but some hardware won't work (in my case, it was the sound chip for an intel J-series cpu that required a third party patch to work and recompile the kernel -- while Ubuntu ships with that patch by default, but ubuntu has way more other bugs all around).
So at the end, you will have to ask yourself if you want Linux because it's the right thing to do and use, or you just don't want to be bothered with ideology, and just use Windows and be done with it. I've asked myself that question and the answer is two fold: as a daily browser laptop, that doesn't depend on third party hardware, I just use my Macbook Air. It's a great laptop to have around in front of the TV, or traveling. For third party hardware dependency, and video editing, I use Windows with an nvidia card. For everything else, I use Linux. I have 8-9 computers, most run Linux. I create databases with it, I do some photo editing, financials etc.
I thought I would stick with Debian
There's your first mistake. Don't run a server distro on a workstation if you don't want to deal with it's downsides.
I haven't been able to make my printer work in it
Read the CUPS Arch wiki page
do you people think Ubuntu will work for me?
Fuck Ubuntu. Use Mint if you want to try something Ubuntu based.
I've recently went through a bunch of stable distros and Nobara had the best experience out of the box.
(Looks at laptop I'm using to reply to this that's running Debian)
Server OS? Debian? Yes it is, but it's also a Desktop and Laptop OS and many other things. Everything on this HP laptop just worked, including the function buttons. There's a reason it's such a well used distro, and it's not just because it's good for servers.
I never said it can't work, but try using MX for a bit and tell me it doesn't make Debian much better as a workstation. MX tools are enough of a reason for me to always pick it over Debian in that scenario.
There's a reason it's such a well used distro, and it's not just because it's good for servers.
What are some workstation specific reasons it's well used?
I'm pretty sure stuff like function keys are just DE defaults. I've installed default gnome and they worked.
The main reason people use Debian, no matter what they use it for, is stability. While it's great that nothing ever breaks, you're also receiving nonessential updates every ~2 years.
That's not an issue on a server that's running mysql released 7 years ago, but you probably need to use flatpak and guix to keep specific tools relatively up to date. You're less likely going to need those tools when using a workstation focused distro like Fedora, that's released on a fixed 6 month cycle.
On top of that, workstation focused distros also integrate flatpak. Since synaptic only knows about apt, MX improves on it by only requiring you to enable flathub as a source to get a unified search/install/update.
Small stuff like that is important for a beginner that's asking for distro advice. They'll most likely want to click through a pretty gui, and Debian is lacking on that front because it's a server focused distro.
Why would you use Debian, it has the oldest packages and kernel of all distros. I would maybe run that on a server, but probably just use Ubuntu LTS instead.
For desktop you should try Pop OS. Really good distro from System 76.
Stay away from Ubuntu, it's very buggy for desktop. I tried it six months ago, fresh install, and the console app wouldn't even open on a fresh install. No error message, just didn't open. Great impression.....
Care to explain how you come to your harsh judgment of Debian? I'm not a fan of using it as a desktop OS either, but every other day you hear people talking about Debian having newer packages than Arch on occasion. If anything, Debian, Arch, Fedora and derivatives should give you the most recent packages.
I don't know which people you are listening to, but Debian does not have newer packages than arch. It has older packages than almost all other distros. You can see this on distrowatch for yourself also.
The idea of Debian is that old = stable, which I don't agree with personally. As an example, users of Debian are reporting tons of KDE Plasma bugs that was already fixed, but because they are running an ancient version, they still have the bugs.
But it depends. It's correct that new versions of plasma had new bugs, that was fixed in the coming weeks or months.
I guess a better way of describing Debian is that it has old bugs instead of new ones, since it stays on older versions.
Most operating systems mostly work find something that has a release cadence you like and is close to what you want then you will have to customize it to fit your needs
Ubuntu actually worked for some people, who, for example, had trouble with PopOS! and getting highest refresh rate on multiple monitors. So yeah, if Ubuntu doesn't work, try Zorin OS, and if that doesn't work, try Manjaro, and if Manjaro doesn't work, there so many more to try out!
