Ubuntu’s popularity often makes it the default choice for new Linux users. But there are tons of other Linux operating systems that deserve your attention. As such, I’ve highlighted some Ubuntu alternatives so you can choose based on your needs and requirements—because conformity is boring.
Y’all seriously overestimate thr average user:
Debian. It’s simple, stable, minimal upkeep, rarely if ever has breaking changes, and all this out of the box.
Someone new doesn’t need to be thrown in the deep end for their first foray into linux, they want an experience like windows or mac: simple interface, stable system, some potential for getting their hands dirty but not too much to worry about breaking
Debian? First time i installed it wanted to use CD for packages instead of online. Don’t know why. Second time it didn’t have wireless drivers as these were non free.
It’s a great distro but not for newbies.
Fedora all the way!
Non-free-firmware is now handled automatically during installation as of the most recent Debian release, just FYI. For reference, see the note at the top of this wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
That’s a recent development. I also though you had to get a specific build, not the normal one.
Yep, fairly recent indeed, June of 2023, but it should work with any of the official installation media.
I think they only started doing this in the past year or so. It is decently new, but I think it is a good move.
I had this problem a week or two ago when I tried to install Debian 12 on my old MacBook pro. Ended up installing something else.
Interesting, that’s kind of surprising. Do you mind sharing which model of MacBook Pro it was? I had been considering getting one for cheap for testing purposes. Also, it may not be useful to you at this point, but I figured I’d drop a link to the Debian Wiki which has a page for MBP-specific info, in case anyone reading might benefit: https://wiki.debian.org/MacBookPro
I have a late 2011 MacBook pro with a broadcom wireless card.
I’ve used this laptop to distrohop a bit and the wireless driver is always an issue. You have to install the broadcom DKMS driver or wi-fi will randomly disconnect after a random amount of time.
Normal users want that potential for getting their hands dirty to be zero at best
Exactly this. To normal people the computer in their house is merely a tool; just another appliance that needs to work every time without any fuss.
Debian is in many ways the “deep end”. A big part of its development philosophy is prioritizing their weirdly rigid definition of Free Software and making it hard to install anything that doesn’t fit that. I’m not saying it’s not a good distro, but IDK if it’s beginner friendly.
The average user needs a web browser and maybe some office apps
The first time I tried Debian was when I was new to Linux, on a laptop with both the Ethernet and Wi-Fi unsupported. On top of which, it had an nVidia GPU. It was hard.
Now I know much more about Linux and checked the Motherboard for Linux support before buying it. Debian works pretty well.
So, it’s beginner friendly as long as someone helps you out with the installation after checking up on all the stuff you will need to run.
In other words, it’s not beginner-friendly
I’m just gonna copy from my other reply to ulterno
I’ve only recently switched to Debian after a couple decades with Ubuntu (because snaps) and I had a few issues during installation.
The net install failed to configure my wifi so I had to download the DVD/CD install. That worked but then I had to manually nano several config files to fix about 5 broken things for some reason.
I installed it recently on a different system, and went with the Live option (gnome) and it installed 10x easier and smoother than Ubuntu. It installed in about 4 minutes (on a new/fast computer).
So I would say Debian Live is VERY beginner friendly, but the other install methods are all messed up for some reason. Ubuntu’s default option is the Live option so I think that if Debian just kinda hid the other options on their website it would be 100% beginner friendly…
I would reckon your original hardware also played a big part if it worked swimmingly this time around. I’ve installed half a dozen Debian- and Arch-based OSes on 3 different PCs and four different hypervisors at different times, and run a few more live CDs to boot, and my experience is that there is simply some hardware/emulated hardware that Linux in general refuses to play nicely with.
Debian does make it harder if there are no free drivers, but my non-free wifi cards (an intel and a broadcom) don’t play nicely with any of the OSes’ defaults
The two PCs were identical hardware btw, so in my case Live just worked 10x better.
The easiest hack I have encountered is to install netinstall Debian, and then on top of it, again install same Debian, without configuring or touching anything. When Debian is installed for the first time, it writes those cdrom folder files, which Debian detects upon a reinstallation. As weird as this sounds, it works reliably, both on my SSD/HDD laptop and ancient desktop with single HDD.
Last month I dualbooted my old Windows 7 desktop with Debian 12 GNOME, works smoothly until I open 10+ Firefox tabs, a Spotify stream and a video in MPV, as it has 4 GB RAM.
the first distro i used is debian when i was getting on linux and im still using it
You’re right, it didn’t use to be beginner friendly. The installer has definitely gotten a lot better, and now they’re offering non-free-firmware in it; that avoids that whole issue…
Nouveau comes packaged. Most people that ditch nouveau do so because it doesn’t give them high performance metrics they expected out of their GPU, or it didn’t support multimonitor, or played poorly with RDP or any other issue which goes outside of my “watch youtube on my laptop” use case. That is, once again, deviating outside of “average user” territory. If you had problems getting any display or DE to work, that’s different, but you may find it sucks less now.
Once again overestimating beginners. Any OS installation is inherently not beginner friendly, and requires helping them, regardless of Debian/Arch/Nix/windows/Big Sierra Lion Yosemite III, Esq. Jr. MD or whatever Apple’s calling it nowadays.
I find Debians defaults during installation very beginner friendly, set and forget type stuff. It won’t use the hardware to full potential, but that’s up to advanced users to decided after they’re comfortable with the training wheels.
🤣
Fedora is also apparently newbie friendly. IME, RHEL is not, but their free developer license is good if you want to learn working with it. Some employers use RHEL exclusively, so it’s not a complete waste.
I might give Fedora a try then, finally see what’s so yummy to all the users. Originally stayed away because I heard it was based of RHEL and didn’t want an office-grade OS to do tinkering on.
Also, how about that “freedom,” Red Hat?? what happened to FOSS???
Debian is good until you need to install a PPA :\
out of the loop since I’ve moved to debian and been using flatpak for the last few years, what software are you installing via PPA that isn’t generally available via flatpak?
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“PPA” is Ubuntu’s branding for third party repositories. So, of course you will have a hard time adding a Ubuntu-specific third-party repository to anything that isn’t the Ubuntu version it’s made for…
Debian of course supports third party repos, just like Ubuntu. On Debian they just aren’t called “PPA”.
For more information on how to add third party repos to Debian (or Ubuntu, if you don’t use Canonical’s weird tooling), check out the Debian Wiki page on UseThirdParty or SourcesList. There’s also an (incomplete) list of third party repositories on the wiki: Unofficial. And just like with PPAs, anyone can host a Debian repo.
To add to that, there’s so much “support” out there for Debian and by proxy Ubuntu. You can Google any error and you’ll find the fix. That’s what draws new people to them. Even my self even though I’m not new to the Linux ecosystem. Ubuntu makes a perfectly good and stable server operating system.
One time the installer got stuck on my hardware. Never again. Debian deserves a lot of credit but personally I will not go near an OS unless I am certain in advance that the initial installation will go without a hitch.