When I first began researching Linux, for my needs, I found the number of different Distros to be overwhelming. So I made this flow chart, with the intent to help new users find a starting point for choosing a distribution.

I’m open to critique, as to making this chart as helpful as possible.

EDIT: Chart updated based on suggestions in the comments.

  • Mugita Sokio@lemmy.todayEnglish
    1·
    20 hours ago

    I use CachyOS myself, and I’m a gamer who doesn’t even do development, though I do music production, and do pretty well there. However, I see a lot of Wayland-default distros, which tells me it’s a Wayland bias. Mint is an exception, since Cinnamon is working on Wayland support, and it was X11 the entire time, though Cinnamon and i3 (my window manager of choice) works on XLibre.

    Edit: After reading the chart, it actually works extremely well, despite me using Linux for about a 4 years (between myself and my producer, Neigsendoig, about 9 years combined experience).

  • gccalvin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    Question: If I say, go with PopOS, does this mean it isn’t optimal for development? Or can you get pretty much get anything to work provided there’s kernel support, this chart is just a matter of working out of the box?

    • nephew@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      The latter. Imo distros essentially are the choice of different package managers, software repositories and pre-installed software. PopOS will work perfectly for development, provided you install the tools you need. Debian/Ubuntu based distros like PopOs, have a fantastic software repository, out of the box.

  • afk_strats@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    27 days ago

    This is really great. I agree with pretty much everything on there and I figured I might want to try a artist distro at some point.

    I think your legend is supposed to say “with immutability”

    On a more philosophical level… This is great for a certain type of person but I worry about it also being scary for a Linux noob. I know out of my friend group, maybe 25% would appreciate seeing things in this format and thats because those are the engineers in the group.

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    27 days ago

    Joke’s on you, I have a Surface! Is it a laptop? Is it a tablet? It’s the Dr. Pepper of computing devices!

    But seriously, is there a small bit that can be made for tablets and those slightly-more-than-a-tablets?

    • nephew@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      27 days ago

      Good idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience with touch screen devices on Linux. I should do research into it, as it would be a nice addition.

      I heard somewhere that Fedora Workstation includes the Surface kernel-module needed for Surface devices, though I’m not sure.

  • NostraDavid@programming.dev
    3·
    27 days ago

    Minimalist NixOS

    That is NOT a reason to pick NixOS. You pick NixOS when you want to configure your entire OS via a configuration that you’ve saved in one or more files, potentially in a git repo. No more manual scripting that’ll break a major version down the line.

    Copy the repo to another (or new) machine, let the OS setup your configuration and you’re done. You’re back to where you were.

    Now, not everything is tracked in that repo, like a stateful browser containing your browser history, etc, but if you can get back 90% to where you were in a single installation - that’s a massive time-saver :D

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
    2·
    27 days ago

    Nice chart!

    If I could offer an addendum, CachyOS and PikaOS should be included in the gaming distros for non-new users. I love Bazzite, but CachyOS gives people a very good Arch option, and PikaOS gives people a nice Debian (not Ubuntu) option that’s about up to feature parity with CachyOS.

  • mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml
    2·
    27 days ago

    Excellent work.

    I had already had an idea of what distro I will be shifting to but this reenforced that choice. A good sanity check.

  • [object Object]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    27 days ago

    Things I do want to point out if you intend to make this as new user friendly as possible:

    1. The bottom section doesn’t quite makes sense to include as it contradicts the purpose of this diagram. Similar reasoning for color coding and immutability tag; it makes sense to the experienced Linux users, not much for others.
    2. I can understand that the diamonds connected with a simple line are of equal standing, but it looks like steps. Users would also question which they should choose amongst them (or question why they exist if they seemingly serve the same purpose).