Couldn’t find a dedicated community for distro recommendations, I hope it’s ok to ask here.
A couple of years ago my wife and I built a computer and gave it to a friend’s kid. We put ElementaryOS on it since that seemed pretty fool-proof, but it appears to require a re-install to upgrade major versions so it has been stuck with an old glibc and because of that he can’t play Factorio.
For his 13:th birthday we bought him a SSD so it would be a good time to reinstall Linux, but is there perhaps some better choice than ElementaryOS? They live quite far away so I can’t easily pop over to fix his computer if something breaks, we don’t spend enough time there for me to teach him to fix things himself, and he doesn’t seem very interested in learning how computers/operatings systems work either.
- Hardware: Some old Intel CPU with 8GB DDR3 and a GTX1080
- Usage: Gaming through Steam+Proton, Lutris and browsing.
- Requirements: Games work, OS never breaks on updates. Doesn’t need to be “kid proof”, I don’t think he touches any stuff he doesn’t know what it does.
Here are some of my default picks: Nobara, Fedora KDE, Linux Mint. Can’t go wrong with either
I’m using Fedora KDE on my own PC, and it has been soft-bricked by updates multiple times, or by doing seemingly trivial things like choosing a theme from the built-in store. Seems quite unstable to me so it’s not something I would recommend to someone without the ability to repair their OS from a terminal.
I’ve said this many times, and will continue saying this again and again:
When in doubt: Linux Mint will provide everything you’ll need. You can distrohop once you understand the basics, customizations and optimizations can come later.
That hardware is very powerful, so Linux Mint (maybe Debian Edition) will do the trick.
Mint.
I use that on my gaming rig. Most everything runs fine through Proton or Lutris (Stellaris, Mass Effect, Fallout New Vegas, the Witcher, Age of Mythology, lots of classics). Minecraft Java Edition runs fine natively, including mods. Old games run great through Dosbox.
Mint itself is super stable Linux for your grandma. My dad’s been running it for five years and he doesn’t know the difference between an OS and a word processor (he keeps calling LibreOffice “Linux”). It was also my son’s first OS when he was about 8.
Mint was my first thought as well. Haven’t used it myself but in the past I’ve heard that it’s supposed to be very user friendly and stable, though I’m not really up to date on Linux distros so I wanted to check if this was still was true (which is seems to be) and if there were any new options.
I’d recommend Bazzite. It’s a gaming-focused immutable distro. The base system is an image and updates are automatic; a 13-year old might already be familiar with this kind of system because it’s similar to how Chromebooks work. It comes with Steam and Lutris preinstalled. You can install additional software via flatpak.
Bazzite:
- Fedora based, so newer libraries
- Atomic updates, therefore doesn’t break on updates
- Steam and Lutris are preinstalled
I’ve been using Fedora KDE on my own PC for a few years, but I’ve had some pretty severe breakages when updating. Though I suppose most of them happened because I had Cuda SDK installed, or monitor ICC profiles, but early on I also had Plasma crash on login while testing different themes. I’ll look more into Bazzite though!
The first point of bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros is to prevent such breakages. updates aren’t applied over your existing installed packages, the base read only part is updated and your layered packages come after if you even have any. A kid’s computer won’t need it though. Most of my installed software is flatpak, appimage, or brew. I have maybe 3 packages installed via rpm-ostree. If I ever need anything not possible this way it’s not a job for my gaming pc.
I use Bazzite on a laptop that’s shared by family, and it’s great. I never have to worry about downtime, and I know they’ll always have a computer should something happen to me.
I once had a bad update, and I just used
rpm-ostree rollback, and I was up and running again. Really great for anyone that wants to set it and forget it.Legacy Nvidia drivers a couple months ago? That was a fun time, lol.
Try an immutable os like Bazzite.
Pop!_OS might also be an option.
I’d hold off on Pop! OS for the moment, until they have Cosmic into an updated release.
I say this as a relatively happy user of Pop
@fhein Mint (personal opinion - not a big fan), Fedora KDE, Ubuntu (not a fan).
Heck, even an immutable distro like Bazzite or NixOS.
NixOS has quite a learning curve, so even if your son wants to, he’ll have to learn his way out.
Does gaming work fine in Mint? Is Wayland up and running yet?
I have a friend looking into switching to Linux. Mint feels right but I worry about the wayland migration.
Wayland is experimental in Cinnamon currently.
@pathief Mint doesn’t support Wayland well. Haven’t tried it in a while, so I might be totally wrong.
Go with Fedora GNOME/KDE.
I have a kid about that age interested in games. There was definitely interest in social pressure to switch to Windows for gaming for the bigger selection and what friends were playing.
I think Nobara is the other most(?) popular choice by gamers.
I don’t have much experience with gaming distros. I just think whatever it is, a computer shouldn’t bee too locked down for a kid so they can also install other things, try other tools like an office suite, video editing or content creator stuff and maybe even have the experience of messing up. Within limits of course.
Nobara is a great option if you don’t want to deal with the weirdness of installing stuff on an immutable distro. Nobara also has a bunch of tweaks for video editing software like OBS and Blender.
Majority of AAA games run invasive software like kernel-level anticheat, I’d personally recommend js buying him a PS5 or running them in VMs (Linux or windows).
Windows lmao
Windows 95b
Debian?
