I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are "mainstream" "beginner friendly" distros, right? I don't want anything too advanced, right?
Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had "no signal"). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.
Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I'm used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything "just work" flawlessly, but it's so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!
Credit where it's due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I'd never strayed from Gnome because I'm not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it's "simple" and "customizable" but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only "simple" in that it doesn't allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).
The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.
I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the "beginner" distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!
edit: i am DYING at the number of "you're using it wrong" comments here. never change people.
What about a lightweight variant like Lubuntu or Xubuntu? 4Gb should be usable for a lot of things.
I haven’t tried those, but I did hop a bit on a bad hard drive. mint was too much (also o just hate it, tbh). Antixlinux was too much and that’s meant to run off a flash drive so the drive was failing, and now it isn’t (new 15 year old drive!!!!!!) and Ubuntu is still a bit too much. But it runs a web browser which is all I need for a bedroom media device. I’d like more, but it’s enough.
But since then I’m seeking a different end goal. I was looking to optimize that old pos, but now if it just runs a browser and runs Plex web, I’m happy because it’s so old I can’t expect it to download for me.. it can do, but not well and I have other machines for that. I tried to use it as a download device but lol, nope, can’t handle that many p2p connections on 4g ram.
But I’ll try those on flash drives and see what they can do for me! Thanks for the recommend!