this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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Note here, a lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I disagree. Obviously the most ideal solution would be the have immutable Mint, but beginners need stability more than they do immutability. I've used mint and my only issue with Mint was that I didn't like how it looked. I'm currently on Bazzite and these are the issues I've ran into:
Every time I start Firefox it asks to be made into the default browser. Even if I click yes it will still ask again next time I start Firefox.
When using the default audio sometimes the audio signal to my monitor cuts off which means I no audio comes from the speakers. If I tell the system to send the audio to my other monitor and back to the one I have hooked on the speakers then it instantly works again. It's almost like the system forgets it has to send out audio. I don't remember what I did to fix it but it definitely wasn't beginner friendly.
Sometimes one of the monitors freezes and only one. The second monitor keeps working just fine. So far haven't found a permanent solution for this issue.
There have also been some minor artifacting that I personally don't consider an issue but someone else might.
Overall I can put up with the issues because I've pretty much conceded that I'm going to have issues. But I don't think new users should be using a system where they're going to run into problems they're most likely not equipped to fix. That why I recommend Mint to newcomers because all the fancy bells and whistles don't matter if the system doesn't work. Mint doesn't have bells and whistles, but it just works.
I recently tried switching to mint from the dark side, but the instability made me go back to Windows. I'd say everything doesn't 'just work' on mint at all, unless you have the most basic needs in your usage. Whenever I've tried to raise the issues with seasoned Linux user, the answer has been "well, most regular people don't need to do that specific thing".
So if it's true that Mint is the only Linux distro that "just works", then Linux is definitely not even close to being suitable as a mainstream choice. Which really saddens me, as I felt much better on a moral level using mint, but I couldn't live with the little annoyances that kept popping up. So now I live with the annoyances that pop up in windows instead .
Here's the problem: what you just did can be done with literally any distro. There are anecdotal stories of every single distro on earth being broken. Even non-linux distros, windows and macos have such stories.
Do you have any actual statistical evidence that fedora works less often than mint?
I've given it to quite a few people and nobody has had any issues. There are anecdotal stories of literally every single distro failing for somebody, them going to another distro and it just working.
here's a counter example: https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/53716147/18213941
"UPDATE 2: Ok, Fedora seems waaaay more stable than Ubuntu (and Mint). No strangeness like before…"
And their problems were MUCH worse than yours.
I have cancelled out your one claim with this, we can't make progress until there's proper statistics, no amount of anecdotal stories will make fedora less stable or more stable than mint.
less up to date software is a double edged sword, if you don't have statistics I don't think you can really make the claim that mint just works when fedora/bazzite don't.
Then there's the things that are objectively broken in mint for everyone until cinnamon properly supports wayland:
We've already established that a lot of people will recommend Mint. What do you think, why do a lot of people recommend Mint?
Simple, it was the best choice for a long time and hasn't done anything to piss people off.
it's no longer the best choice but mint people are still happy so they still recommend it even though it is objectively the wrong choice to start with for a beginner.
We've was it the best choice?
Dunno, a long time ago at this point.
Stupid autocorrect. Why was it the best choice?
Back then ubuntu had pretty much all of linux cornered, the vast majority of distros were ubuntu based or ubuntu adjacent, and ubuntu was beloved, however, it came with a number of flaws, mint just rectified those flaws and was otherwise basically just ubuntu.
By being ubuntu based and getting rid of the stuff that made people angry, you ended up with a highly supported, beloved distro. These days things have changed, however, fedora is just as if not more well supported than ubuntu, same with arch based distros.
The only reason Mint is suggested to beginners is because it's "a highly supported, beloved distro"? A reason that has very little to do with beginners?
That does NOT have very little to do with beginners, being a highly supported distro is one of the most important things for beginners, having guides for how to do things written specifically for your distro is fantastic for new people.
It being beloved is why it's recommended, yes, and that doesn't benefit new people, but that's an obvious reason why one might recommend it...
There's also the fact that it's designed to be easy to use, but that also applies to fedora, and fedora is significantly more well-developed, so it's not really relevant here.
Beingly highly supported is a prerequisite to being a good beginner distro, but it's not a reason to recommend a distro. If we take it as a reason then Mint having a GUI is also a reason to recommend to beginners.
This is where we're going to completely disagree. Guides in general are good, but I doubt any beginner actually cares about guides, unless it's a guide telling you what to click where on the GUI. A good beginner distro has to work for the user without the need of any guides.
Instead of playing the prying game where I keep prying until you give straight answers (because people don't love Mint just because it's an Ubuntu fork) I'm just going to conclude that either you deliberately don't want to say why people recommend Mint to beginners or you actually don't know why people recommend Mint. I don't care which it is because both invalidate your opinion of the Mint suggestion being outdated.
Somehow you think the ease of use isn't relevant because it also applies to Fedora, but support is relevant despite it also applying to Fedora? How about some consistency in your arguments.
Mint having a GUI IS a good reason to recommend it to beginners... Arch for example has terrible GUI support, which is why it's not a good choice for beginners (don't get me started on manjaro...)
This is simply not true, i've given linux to countless people, people always google how to do things and end up with guides for a different distro, i've seen this happen countless times because I specialize in giving beginners linux. They absolutely do care about this, and it's extremely commonly cited as one of the reasons to go with mint.
I think it's a bad recommendation mainly made for legacy reasons rather than current ones, that was very clear. Give me reasons it's a good one, I used to use mint, I gave plenty of reasons for why it's a bad choice. You've given nothing in support of it, and expected me to write your argument for you?
Of course the person on the side of mint being a bad choice... doesn't think it's a good choice? I gave the only reasons you'd want to use mint, tbh. Aside from that there's literally no reason to over fedora. Feel free to prove me wrong with a list.
Are you deliberately misinterpreting me? Are you actually trolling here?
My point was obvious, fedora and mint are both equally easy to use, so, ease of use is not a factor when deciding between them... in fact, fedora is EASIER to use (flatpak meaning completely gui updates, kde being hugely standardized and well-developed), so, if it is a factor, it makes fedora a better choice than mint.
It's obvious that ease of use is a massive factor for recommending a distro to a beginner, it's just that ease of use doesn't favor mint.
Specializes in giving beginners Linux, can't name a single good reason why people recommend Mint to beginners (now or in the past), except for it having a GUI and guides. I don't know about the beginners you're "helping" but based on this conversation I wouldn't trust a single recommendation, suggestion or opinion from you.
You were also unable to, at this point, i'm convinced you're trolling. Sorry, it's just not a good choice. And I gave legitimate reasons for why it was great in the past, you just didn't like them!
Having a great GUI, easy installation, a bunch of guides, and being the most well-supported are all perfectly valid reasons to use mint like 10 years ago.
Interesting strategy: "make my argument for me!"
"Oh, you couldn't make my argument for me? why would I trust you?"
The arguments are super simple.
Mint focuses on stability as evident from its decision to use Ubuntu LTS versions as it's base. In case I need to spell it out, LTS versions are generally more stable and reliable.
And you brought up X11 as a negative, but there's a good reason Mint is staying on X11. Yes, Wayland is the future and eventually Mint will adopt Wayland as well, when Wayland becomes more stable. I'm the mean time Mint stays on X11 because X11 is very stable, extremely stable compared to Wayland if you have an Nvidia card.
Mint also has better out the box support. For example to my knowledge for Nvidia Fedora comes with Nouvuea drivers which means for gaming you need to go through an extra process to get proprietary drivers. Mint has out the box support for Nvidia drivers. This is less of a thing when compared to Bazzite, but still a reason why to pick Mint as a beginner distro.
And the reason people recommend Mint is in those first two points. Mint deliberately sacrifices fancy bells and whistles to be as stable as possible. You not knowing that shows how little you know about Mint.
Stability is essential for industry applications, but is actually TERRIBLE for beginners, especially ones that want to game. I could go into the reasons why, but I doubt you care. I don't agree that this is a selling point for beginners in the first place, which is why I didn't mention it. Stability does not mean "does not crash" in a linux context, it means UNCHANGING. Extremely old software is not good for beginners who want things to just work.
Give me evidence that there are more issues with wayland than X11 and i'll believe you.
Bazzite fixes this and is why I recommend it over fedora kinoite. Irrelevant point, not actually true, actually, the opposite is true precisely because of the last point. You realize stability means out of date kernel versions, and out of date kernel versions means... worse out of the box support!
Wellp, those are bad points, which is why i didn't make them, sorry!
Okay, this has turned into a complete waste of time. It's impossible to talk to a person who makes up their own definition for words and demands proof of something most of the Linux community is in agreement. You're the Linux equivalent of a flat earther.
I did not invent this definition, it is industry standard...
https://bitdepth.thomasrutter.com/2010/04/02/stable-vs-stable-what-stable-means-in-software/
you're very confident and not well informed.
"A stable software release is so named because it is unchanging. Its behaviour, functionality, specification or API is considered ‘final’ for that version. Apart from security patches and bug fixes, the software will not change for as long as that version of the software is supported, usually from 1 to many years."
your first point even directly contradicts your second...
From your own article
I'm sorry that English is not my first language and I'm not aware of the subtle difference in meaning you're after, but really all you've proven is that you're a pedantic little troll who understood what I said and still chose to be obtuse about it. Another example how of this discussion is a waste of time.
...but that still means everything I said is correct and you were a jerk to me for being correct, no?
is it my fault you don't know these things and instead of having a learning attitude, you say I have no idea what I'm talking about and am a flat earther when you don't even know what defines a stable distro?
even if I use your uninformed definition it's still wrong... there is no evidence fedora crashes more than mint, or is less reliable...
FTFY you little grammar nazi.
This is false, they're just less likely to change. They can crash more frequently.
There's no evidence that X11 is less reliable than wayland, and the reason mint stays on x11 has NOTHING to do with this, and everything to do with cinnamon not yet supporting it...
This is still false, stable distros have worse support out of the box because they use an older kernel version and the kernel ships the drivers.
That set of fixes still left everything being wrong or unsupported by any evidence.
Where are your stats for this.
source?
At this point I don't even know what that means because maybe you have some other weird definition to pull out of your ass. Give me that in 5th grader level.
I agree I honestly don't like immutable distro's at all because you can't install packages the way everyone else does: via package managers. You either have to use the gui software center and if that doesn't have to app your looking for you have to use distrobox or box buddy which still doesn't work half the time. That's just been my experience with bazzite as a person fairly knew to linux.
this is false, rpm-ostree exists and works for this exactly. There's nothing you can't do on bazzite that you can do on a non-immutable distro.
Even if that wasn't true... package management is just done through flatpak, there's no real fundamental difference, it's just an abstraction layer, I don't see why that would be important to you at all, and comes with numerous benefits:
It not having packages you may need applies to any package management solution, other distros do not package everything either. In fact, the distro with the most packages is an immutable one, nixos.
Source?
It runs x11, the wayland port is going insanely slow, x11 has the following problems every time:
It may support these someday, maybe. But progress is absurdly slow. Considering cinnamon has fewer changes as a whole than just the KDE text editor alone, kde is a significantly better choice if you want a well-supported, bug-free and feature rich experience.
And Wayland isn't very well tested yet. We should only give a very well tested display server to very new users. They must not get a bad impression
That would've been true 5 years ago. Wayland is plenty tested these days, give me some data indicating the rate of issues is significantly higher and I'll agree, elsewise I think the most secure well supported option is the best one. X11 is being deprecated left and right for a reason.
gnome is wayland by default, kde is wayland by default, even XFCE is transitioning to wayland at this point... that's just not a valid argument in the modern era.
If it's still being tested, then it isn't for very new users
It's well out of the testing phase and used by default on both major desktops.
Testing phase, not stable phase (yet).
Do you have evidence of this?