Proceeds to use it exclusively for browsing the web.

How many are there?

It depends.

See, that's not helpful. The right answer is to direct someone to this GitHub project:

https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline

The releases page contains a 3420x12488 PNG to provide a simple and concise answer.

https://files.catbox.moe/7q4v52.png

All you need to know is that, whatever you pick, you made the wrong choice and you will be roasted if you ever attempt to explain your decision.

Unless you use Arch, then you have chosen correctly.

OP is posting AI slop and plagiarizing other people's work. Lead image seems a cyanide and happiness cartoon, but it's a blatent ripoff, and they watermarked it with their own username to boot. And no communication out transparency around any of that as well

I love Lemmy. I hate AI posters.

There are four main flavors

• Debian - For every day
• Red Hat - For work
• Arch - To tinker and learn
• OpenSuSe - To German

Holy sneaky AI image, Batman!

Choice is good when you can make an informed choice. Choice is bad if you are forced to make a decisions where you have no idea of the consequences.

Edit it is so perfectly fitting for the Linux community to respond with mostly criticisms and negations to these flowcharts I shared without a single negative commenter actually suggesting a different similar helpful resource for newbies to Linux who feel overwhelmed or adding something productive and helpful to the conversation.

Do better y'all.

You can't condescend these resources and pretend with a handwave like there are better ones out there, you gotta prove it. If you are going to pick apart these charts then you gotta make a new chart or link me to a better one, I don't care about your condescending minor criticisms of the specifics of the flowcharts, that is irrelevant input unless you are going to edit a flowchart and make a new one or add something else productive.

I feel like I am inside a meme making fun of Linux users right now lol.

https://piefed.blahaj.zone/post/347408

https://lemmy.ca/post/53099450

Worst when the newcomers chose Arch because they've heard is very configurable.

Then complain that Linux is hard.

There are many correct distro choices (except Ubuntu), but the only correct desktop environment is KDE Plasma.

If Cosmic keeps evolving, it could win me over.

You think choosing your Linux distro is bad, imagine having to choose your electricity, water, internet, phone, banking, and insurance provider as well as your local councillor, workplace, school, career, entertainment, childcare, car, house, food, etc.

This "love choice, hate choosing" is a really valuable thing to understand.

ah, classic hangup. you're looking for Debian with KDE

I use Linux Mint. It's very good for beginners. I don't recommend Ubuntu.

see heres the problem, youre doing that in the wrong order.

first figure out your DE/WM preference, THEN choose a package manager with the repos that will best support that for your use case and update cycle preferences. (the distro)

JFCLM

Just Fucking Choose Linux Mint.

Just ask your favourite slop generator to shit a suggestion for you, it already replaced your ability to draw stick figures, something every person knows hownto do by the age of 7.
Or better yet, google a list of active distros and throw a fucking dice. Same amount of precision and intelligence, less wasted electricity and water.

I’ve now gone down this rabbit hole several times now and installed several of them many many times over now just figuring it all out and finally getting a stable setup which took a few months.

From my perspective after doing all of that : Chances are if you are not a developer, high end cgi artist, or specialized in tech, you might just need something safe like Ubuntu. At least just grab it to start. It gets you up and running, nice interface. Easy to use. Works for basic out of the box stuff making plex server, basic computing, house hold stuff. Could set it up for your technophobe friends and family and find it easy to just update and run. Big colorful app icons. Looks and works like an android phone for usability and easy to learn. Stuff even installs from a gui similar to how windows does.

You’d only go deep on something like fedora/nobara with some serious intentions with a high end computer where you just couldn’t reach some goals on Ubuntu. You just wouldn’t go to these ones if you didn’t have to. Those reasons also rhyme with kde plasma reasons/Developer reasons where in you absolutely need specialized software. And you have to be comfortable with swimming in the bios often.

If you don’t know and it sounds weird just googling it then just stick with Ubuntu.

I’ve talked to people in the Linux community gatekeeping hard on others who don’t even know about why someone would need kde plasma. So that should tell you everything you need to know about the fanboys. And I’ve taken heat from them only to have them breaking their own brain on the idea that people actually use computers for simulations or just use computers for anything other than what they would use a computer for.

so Take what they say with a giant truck of salt. Not even Mac users are as annoying as the some of Linux assholes I’ve met.

Just pick the yummiest option each time.

Mint.

Cinnamon.

make it without AI and try again

The wrong assumption is that you have to pick the best of all possible everything the first time. People agonize less about choosing a type of car to spend $30,000 on knowing that if you sell it used its instantly worth 5000 less.

Meanwhile you can switch everything about your computer in 2 hours for free.

I tried to encourage fellow Linux users to just encourage one distro. It doesn't have to be a good distro, but just one the person is least likely to run into issues with and if they do, the most likely to be able to find solutions easily for their issues. Things like Ubuntu and Mint clearly fit the bill. They can then decide later if they want to change to a different one based on what they learn from using that one.

No one listened to me, because everyone wants to recommend their personal favorite distro rather than what would lead to the least problems for the user and would be the easiest to use. A person who loves PopOS will insist the person must use PopOS. A person who loves Manjaro will insist that the person must use Manjaro. Linux users like so many different distros that this just means everyone recommends something different and just make it confusing.

I gave up even bothering after awhile. Linux will never be big on desktop unless some corporation pushes a Linux-based desktop OS.