The "Paradox" of beginner distros

I wanted to discuss something I've noticed in all my years of using Linux (about 20), and that is that the distros that are commonly recommended to beginners seem to present obstacles and roadblocks that simply aren't present in "advanced" distros.

I've never been a distrohopper, but over the years moved from Ubuntu -> Arch -> Nix. Each time the distro I'm using is a more "expert" distro than the last, but (for me) the user experience gets more straightforward each time.

The main offender by far is apt. Personally I can't stand the thing. I've never experienced so many errors on literally any other package manager. Maybe it has more to do with how maintainers use it, but constant "no package found for X distro version" and dependency conflicts seem to be a daily part of life for an apt-based distro.

Installing the packages isn't much better. How is it a user friendly experience to have to explain to a new user that their most used apps aren't in the standard repos, and you have to hunt down a bunch of external PPAs (that themselves are external points of failure) in order to find them? And that's pretty much the best case scenario. Literally just google "Install Discord on Linux Mint" and you will find that the "best" way to install is to just download the .deb and install manually. A commenter there said it best:

>Works well! But it's 2025 and updates still need to be installed manually via downloaded .deb packages.

What are we doing here? And instructing users to just switch to the Snap/Flatpak version, literally introducing a completely separate package manager and packaging paradigm onto the system, is hardly making things easier to understand.

Not to mention the packages that are included are often woefully out of date. Sure, I don't need the most recent version of neofetch but when graphics drivers are 6+ months out of date, your gaming/compute experience suffers. (you'll never guess what the fix is: (hint, it's adding yet another PPA))

Another issue that I've encountered is that point-release distros tend to be more functionally unstable than actual "unstable" distros. Your fresh Ubuntu install will probably work on autopilot, so long as you literally don't touch ANYTHING on your system and just leave it stock. The second you start adding extensions, modifying the UX, etc, and a new major version drops, the entire system can just sort of fall apart, and might require a lot of knowledge to repair. Especially since these "beginner friendly" distros add so much extra configuration layered on top of the default packages, there's unexpected behavior everywhere that doesn't have an obvious origin, consequently making it easier to break by accident.

It's actually crazy how many of these issues were solved when I moved to Arch.

Packages are actually up to date so I'm not getting constantly baited by PPA software not having features that were upstreamed years ago
The packages in the main repos and the AUR covers 99.9% of even power-users' needs. No PPAs, no flatpaks.
Packages have sane defaults that provide base functionality and nothing more. No more tracking down strange behavior to random files in `/etc/` placed by the distro maintainers
Frequent updates makes isolating breaking changes simpler
`pacman` is simply a prettier, faster, and more reliable package manager.
The most comprehensive Linux knowledge base (Arch Wiki) is 1:1 applicable

When I moved onto Nix a couple years back, things got even simpler (admittedly for someone with years of Linux and programming experience at this point)

Everything on my system is clearly self documented. It's either written within my personal config, or the module my config is accessing. Want to know what settings are applied to set up GRUB? Literally just check [grub.nix](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-25.11/nixos/modules/system/boot/loader/grub/grub.nix)!
Even more packages than Arch, and easy to find! Just hop onto

https://search.nixos.org/packages to find the package, and add it into a file, and it will be automatically installed on the system.

I have been the "help me install Linux" guy in my friend group for years now. And each one at some point has come to me with a broken Ubuntu/Mint install due to the above reasons. I wipe their machine, help them click through the installer on EndeavorOS, and basically get zero questions/troubleshooting requests from that point onwards.

And of course, my goal is not to disparage the hardworking volunteers that put their time and effort into developing these projects. And they certainly have their place! My uni computer lab was running Ubuntu and that was a perfect accessible experience for novice programmers (especially since they weren't the ones maintaining the system). But how do we address these issues? It seems wrong to start beginner Linux users off on an Arch based distro, but when my goal is to minimize frustration, that's simply been the most effective method I've found.

https://redd.it/1pgws52
@r_linux

Goodbye, Microsoft: Schleswig-Holstein relies on Open Source and saves millions
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Goodbye-Microsoft-Schleswig-Holstein-relies-on-Open-Source-and-saves-millions-11105459.html

https://redd.it/1ph0ucb
@r_linux

Finally daily driving Linux! (Bye Windows!)

Every time i hear Windows news, its either about AI or some 'Feature' that nobody asks for that's also a convenient excuse used for taking advantage of its customers, and I'm tired of it, like why do you need COPILOT in your NOTEPAD?!?, so I'm finally switching.

I'm a full time software developer, though its nothing crazy, I just do some general web and backend development, I don't know much about kernel or Operating systems in general, basically your average Joe.

2 days ago the SSD i ordered arrived, I immediately started to install Linux on it (Arch with KDE Plasma), from what I've heard Arch is quite complicated to install and that was my expectation, taking multiple hours or days to even start doing some gaming or work,
but NO! I got it working within like \~2 hours, which is comparable or faster than installing windows on a fresh system (considering the unbloating and software updates you have to do afterwards. Though i still need to do some with KDE Plasma) .

Then I install Steam on it, speaking of which, installing stuff is much more simpler than in windows, almost everything I wanted is in pacman, and also downloading stuff is much faster for some reason (maybe because the downloads are parallelized or something).
After that I copied my games from my Windows drive to the Linux drive and use Steam Proton to run it, and it just runs out of the box!, no tinkering or anything.

Maybe I got lucky and everything I wanted just works and is compatible, though I'm still expecting and be prepared for any technical issue I might come in the future.

I might be praising it too much, but that's just my personal experience, I'm very satisfied with it

I still keep my Windows boot drive just in case.

I'm still very relatively new to Linux, and I want to hear some of you guys experience with it, were you satisfied?

https://redd.it/1ph2czc
@r_linux

My grandma is a Linux user now

Just felt like sharing a success story.

My grandma (about 80 yo) has been getting more and more annoyed with windows 11 and all its bullshit. Pretty much everything she does requires either a web browser, a file manager, a word processor, a spreadsheet editor, or a combination of the four. Within the span of an hour & a half, I got her windows 11 install replaced with an install of Fedora KDE, and got all of her files/programs/etc. transferred over; everything was basically 1:1 with the exception of swapping Word/Excel for LibreOffice (which she said looked very familiar and wouldn't take long to get used to). She's already commented on how the system feels more usable and "less annoying" than modern windows. She was getting really fed up by the constant pestering to enable OneDrive, Copilot, updates taking 20+ minutes, etc., and her aging laptop starting to slow down; it feels like a whole new system now, and she's noticing it.

Of course time will tell how things go over time, but I can't thank the developer community enough for making this possible in the first place.

https://redd.it/1ph5zwj
@r_linux

New Linux powered smartphone becoming a reality with Jolla, EU based company.
https://redd.it/1ph9fwc
@r_linux

A quick reminder that Linux Mint has a new Community Wiki
https://redd.it/1ph9afo
@r_linux

Mozilla’s Betrayal of Open Source: Google’s Gemini AI is Overwriting Volunteer Work on Support Mozilla
https://www.quippd.com/writing/2025/12/08/mozillas-betrayal-of-open-source-googles-gemini-ai-is-overwriting-volunteer-work-on-support-mozilla.html

https://redd.it/1phatcs
@r_linux

I use an iPhone but my daily driver is Linux. Apple's Universal Clipboard won't help me, so I built my own.

Copy on iPhone → Paste on Linux. That's it.

I got tired of emailing myself screenshots and texting links to my own number or having to manually use localsend for everything. Apple's Universal Clipboard only works with Macs, so I made Velocity Bridge.

How it works:

\- Runs a tiny local server on your Linux box

\- iOS Shortcuts send clipboard data over your home network

\- Text/images land directly in your Linux clipboard

\- No cloud, no account, no Apple tax

Pro tip: Set up Back Tap (Settings → Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap) to trigger the shortcut. Double-tap the back of your phone = instant paste on Linux. It's stupidly satisfying.

Install:

\- Fedora: `sudo dnf copr enable trex099/velocity-bridge && sudo dnf install velocity-bridge`

\- Arch: `yay -S velocity-bridge`

\- Any distro: One-liner curl noscript or AppImage

Comes with a GUI for easy setup, or run it headless as a systemd service.

GitHub: https://github.com/Trex099/Velocity-Bridge


Built this for myself, figured others might want it too. Feedback welcome!

https://redd.it/1phasv7
@r_linux

Jan, an open-source ChatGPT replacement, now supports Flatpak
https://flathub.org/en/apps/ai.jan.Jan

https://redd.it/1phbt8o
@r_linux

LibreOffice 26.2.0 (Beta 1) A.K.A. 2026 Release !

Release notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/26.2

Download: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/?version=26.2.0&lang=en-US#change

https://redd.it/1phct3f
@r_linux

My first ever contribution to a Linux world just got merged.
https://redd.it/1phk02u
@r_linux

Firefox 146 is released, with Wayland fractional scaling support
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/146.0/releasenotes/

https://redd.it/1phmg3i
@r_linux

17 years ago red hat made this gem

https://youtu.be/5EkkMfjetEY?si=YrEXBrhw5qAYL0Cl

I was discussing with a youngling distro-hopper what it meant 25 years ago to be working in opensource and I remembered this video from Red Hat.

Considering that almost everything processed in the cloud is Linux or bsd based today, I would have considered that already have reached the last step, but with the recent trends of enshtification of windows 11 (and valve awesome work), I think this is even more relevant today.

https://redd.it/1phspbw
@r_linux

Windows is a Joke
https://redd.it/1phxawp
@r_linux

Firefox 146 is released, with Wayland fractional scaling support
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-146-Released

https://redd.it/1phxhkn
@r_linux

Bcachefs 1.33 Delivers Its Biggest Upgrade Yet With Full Reconcile Support
https://linuxiac.com/bcachefs-1-33-delivers-its-biggest-upgrade-yet-with-full-reconcile-support/

https://redd.it/1phz3nr
@r_linux

AMD GPU and Sofware

I was excited for my switch to an AMD GPU since people claim, it is so much better on linux.

I ditched my RTX3070 for a RX 9070XT. I didn't bother to do any benchmarks since i also upgraded from an 5600x to a 7800x3d.

So far the overall upgrade is a blast and i can even run poorly optimized UE5 games without up scaling on 1080p.

However, i don't see any difference to Nvidia when it comes to drivers and compatibility.

I use linux for 2 years now. started with mint, went to Nobara and got stuck with garuda. All on Nvidia. I never had Issues. People still claim it's bad. Maybe it was in the past and people are just used to saying it.
But I'm happy both brands work in linux machines, even though i grew to dislike nvidia as a company over the last few years.

There is another claim i see in forums:
"i never needed adrenaline in linux, because everything just works"

ngl. i've seen this type of comment A LOT.
People ask for adrenaline, or the features it provides and commenters just shrug it off and say you don't need it, because it works. and not in a single of these threads anybody argued over it.

In my opinion it is a shame that i buy a 600€ card and i miss out on features because I'm on linux.
Whether you like AI frame generation or not. it IS a feature of your card that you paid for.
On windows you can just turn it on for ANY game in the adrenaline software.
it isn't the only feature.

The argument "you don't need i because it just works" is nonsense, because "it just works" on windows too.

i wasn't a fan of geforce experience.
But i actually like the adrenaline software. it's a bit unintuitive to navigate but it got all important features in one program that you can even activate in an in game overlay.

on windows i can press alt+r and force star citizen to render at 1440p and scale it down to 1080. This game actually profits from that, because it forces more work load on the GPU, since this game is a CPU eater. i gain 7-10 fps. with just 3 clicks.

i wish they develop a linux variant of this software in the future as linux becomes more popular among gamers.

https://redd.it/1pi1y9s
@r_linux

libxml2 is now officially unmaintained
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/commit/9c80a89af2fdf4f853892f84e46580f4902658ba

https://redd.it/1pi2qcp
@r_linux

PeerTube v8: manage your videos with your team!
https://framablog.org/2025/12/09/peertube-v8-manage-your-videos-with-your-team/

https://redd.it/1pi2xwz
@r_linux

Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: Linux CVEs, more than you ever wanted to know
http://www.kroah.com/log/blog/2025/12/08/linux-cves-more-than-you-ever-wanted-to-know/

https://redd.it/1pi3izn
@r_linux