with my coming FW12 I want to switch from Windows 10 to Linux. I have no experience at all, am willing to learn and invest time, but it will be daily use, so once it’s set up it should work.
Optically only Bazzite GNOME was my favorite, Bazzite KDE or Fedora looked good too.
My use case: daily nextcloud, office, browser. Till there nothing special. For work I need one program/app available for Android and Win. When I unterstand right it will work with Wine? Can all Linux Distros install Wine?
As I am a bloody beginner I should use an atomic immutable system, am I correct?
Bazzite is advertised for Gamers, is there a reason why its would be not a good choice for daily use working?
It is a journey. Don’t rob yourself of it. If you want things to just work, I would recommend Fedora. Bazzite is a specialized distro meant for gaming. You can use it for your needs, of course, but why customize it for gaming specifically?
Immutable variants of that like Bluefin as also VERY useful. I would recommend it as well. You can’t really break Bluefin, and trust me, breaking Linux is all too easy.
You haven’t said what that one app that you need is but if it has an android version, you can try running it under WINE or Waydroid and see which offers better results for you. Both come pre-installed on Bazzite. All Linux Discord can install WINE, the commands need might change but it’s available for any Linux distro. MS Office will be a challenge unless you like the online version or are willing to switch to libreoffice or similar. Atomic distros have their pros and cons. I use Bazzite and prefer it personally. If you want the same ease of just running an RPM or DEB like you do an EXE file then Bazzite isn’t for you. If the value of being able to experiment and know that you can just rollback any changes outweighs that, then Bazzite is awesome.
Less so if you aren’t using the “deck” images. It’s fine for normal desktop use as well, it’s not like having WINE pre-installed is a problem after all.
Sure! No problem at all. I’m just saying, that for someone brand new to Linux, maybe not the best. But that is the journey, and figuring it all out is part of the fun.
I use Linux and BSDs for some years now, but I have no experiece with atomic immutable systems. But If you want to learn the system I am not sure if it would be the best way. So I can’t say anything about this.
If you want a full blown desktop you can chose between KDE Plasma and Gnome (there are some other windowmanagers, but they might not be the first choice for you). To make your decision, take a LiveCD or so and try both for some time. Both Gnome and KDE Plasma are great Desktops, but with a totally different philosphy.
KDE Plasma can be configured to the bone ans is more a traditional desktop reminding to the pholosophy Windows has.
Gnome gives you minimal configuration and went a new way. It’s maybe more lige MacOS beeing simple with less configuration.
Wine can run an nearly any ditro and is available as Flatpak also. (Using flatpak may need to fiddle around with the paths, but you get it.) But you should have a look if the prgramm is running well with Wine. I found Wine easier than waydroid, but ymmv.
As a person not knowing any atomic immutable linux-systems I would recommend the big ones, as you get a lot of support. I never used fedora, as I don’t got used to it, but as it is officially supported, it may be a good starting-point.
I would recommend Linux Mint, which brings you an other desktop-option with cinnamon.
Grab you some LiveCDs and just give them a try. When you are in, it is totally normal to switch distros and learn something new.
For beginners I find that Linux Mint or MX-Linux are simple to get up and running. Once you’ve gotten comfortable using one of them, you can branch out and try other distros, although when people try Linux Mint, they often keep using it.
Since you’re on the framework 12, and you’re fresh off of windows, I would try the KDE edition of Fedora.
KDE has UI that’s very close to windows, it’s also one of the better DEs for touch support and Fedora works out of the box with all or your hardware.
I’ll be using the cinnamon spin of fedora because I like cinnamon haha.
(Linux Mint is also fantastic, but may not be as good at the moment for the FW12’s hardware.)
I can personally vouch for Fedora 42 KDE edition. Installation from live USB was straightforward and I honestly couldn’t find anything that didn’t work out of the box, and I’ve tried lots of things including:
USB-C portable monitor and hubs with HDMI, Ethernet, SD card reader, USB-A ports
Touchpad including scrolling and two/three finger clicks
Touchscreen, including hold-to-right-click and on-screen keyboard
Automatic screen rotation, drawing and erasing with MPP 2.0 stylus
Suspend and resume via closing and opening the screen
Mic and webcam works properly (after turning off the privacy switches, of course)
Bluetooth mice and WiFi works as expected
FIDO passkeys with Firefox and forks such as LibreWolf
It’s a far cry from what I experienced 10 or even 5 years ago, where at least half of the above things didn’t work at all or needed lots of non-obvious fixes.
Thank you for all your answers, i can see everyone has its own journey through the Linux universerse, which sounds great. As i need a reliable Linux for work it sounds like Fedora is a good choice - i still dont get the difference between KDE and Gnome based. So if i want a Linux i can’t destroy I could go for Fedora Silverlight, which is atomic, but it’s Gnome based not KDE. Many of you recommended KDE, is there a real difference more than the theme /UI? (And KDE is more customizable, which is maybe more of a con for me as a beginner :D)
To the questions at the beginning: “TeacherStudio” is the Program I need for work, there is an Android and an Windows Version so I will try which one is working better.
I already changed to only office in Nextcloud so I don’t need MS Office, but I want an offline solution, so Only Office will do the job.
The extremely oversimplified answer is that KDE looks and behaves more like a traditional Windows desktop and Gnome looks and behaves more like a Mac desktop. Don’t read too much into that analogy though, Linux is not Windows or Mac after all.
You’re probably looking for Fedora Kinoite.
I’m pretty sure they’re both extremely customizable (it’s Linux, after all ), but you don’t have customize anything. I personally prefer KDE’s defaults and I don’t actually change it all that much.
Fedora comes with LibreOffice preinstalled, so I would consider trying that out.
@Stockmaennchen I know this is a bit off topic, but in regards to LibreOffice, my needs for an office suite are very simple. That said (and possibly because of that), I actually prefer LibreOffice. At the very least, I prefer “Writer” to Word. It has all the features I would ever need, but when all I want to do is fire up a blank document and type something up, LibreOffice Writer just seems easier. It’s possible that Word has improved. I’ve used Word very little in the last few years. But at a time when I had word on my personal computer and every update seemed to just make it more bloated and unnecessarily cumbersome, LibreOffice Writer felt nicer to me.
Since then, I’ve used LibreOffice on all my personal machines. I even donated to the LibreOffice project, because I want to support what they are doing.
Has anyone here tried cachyOS? Seems really cool, I just wonder what it is like on the FW12.
Otherwise I am planning on using Fedora. (I am still on win10 with my old Laptop)
Edit:
I looked through some threads and found the answer. Yes people are using it and since it is not supported it’s got some issues that can be worked around.
I’ll chime in and recommend Fedora Kinoite, the “atomic” (≈ harder to break) version of Fedora KDE. I’ve been using it since June and I’m very impressed.
I do recommend disabling Fedora’s Flatpak repo and enable Flathub instead (which takes two clicks in Discover’s settings) to get a better selection of software.
I wanted to install Kinoite in my Chuwi minibook 6 months ago but I remember reading that Kinoite then was using a slighlty older kerner version and I needed the latest.
I want to go with Kinoite for my upcoming FW12 but I am not sure how good is hardware support compared to 42 KDE spin…
), but you don’t have customize anything. I personally prefer KDE’s defaults and I don’t actually change it all that much.