I totally agree, that's a way more important factor when you're starting out with Linux.

~~Gotta be Gnome though~~

That's a strange way to spell Xfce.

DEs are clearly bloat, so the best DE is no DE.

~~Definitely not just because I prefer i3~~

DE? WM!

~~ctwm rocking along nicely since last century~~

Whatever, I always say, use what you want when you want to dive into things. When you don't want to dive into things, use either IOS when you can afford it or Windows. (As long as they don't expect help with the last 2 ;) )

I used to be a huge Plasma evangelist. At first I hated it, the old versions I mean. You just moved the mouse pointer the wrong way and your whole DE was fucked. Too many options and settings. But KDE 5 changed my world. Stable and lighter than Gnome, but still fully configurable. Last night I switched to Debian 12, Gnome. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm loving it. I don't tinker with my DEs that much anymore. Just a couple Gnome extensions and I was good to go.

The arrangement of Start menu hardly matters. Virtual desktops are indispensable though. And I can restart crashed Plasma in 35 seconds.

Five minutes after you installed it and haven't tried anything else.

I use Mint, btw

I use SteamOS btw

(Which is arch based meaning.. I use arch btw lol)

Otherwise Debian stable is my go-to set it and forget it server OS

me and the boys out here still asking Jeeves

Just ddg-it

newfangled... SysVInit

You mean systemd? Cause SysVInit was created in 1991 based on Unix System V from 1983. Which means it's literally older than Miley Cyrus.

I've decided that you have to use Slackware

the ultimate beginner's distro, it's a great start before moving on to something complicated like mint

Oddly, Gentoo was where I started out when I got serious about using Linux. That was when I was in my 20’s and I wanted to get every last bit of performance out of my computer. Also, breaking stuff was fun and gave me a chance to figure new stuff out.

Now I just want stuff to work and be relatively up to date. So I use Debian testing.

What a madlad

I started with Ubuntu and then migrated to Arch. I learned a ton about Linux and how tune everything for optimal performance!

...And then I went back to Ubuntu because I just want to work with my computer, not on it.

Yeah, this meme is mostly to poke fun at the people who genuinely think that Linux Mint is only for beginners or you have to switch to Arch or whatever else, that kind of crowd.

I'm a little bit tempted to try and make an actual flowchart with distro recommendations since I've used and like most of the major ones at this point, but there are better resources out there than what I could contribute.

yeah that's my bad, here's a corrected version

I literally just switched to openSUSE yesterday because I'm trying out an Intel Arc GPU for a bit and wanted more recent packages than Fedora offers to give it the best chance possible. Gotta say...it's really good. Once I'm done testing the Intel card, I don't think I'll be switching back.