Wanting to try Linux

inflames · 8 Dec 2025 at 21:18

Well I had an idea earlier, I still have an old MacBook Pro, what is about 15 years old. Thinking I might install Linux on that, will give a good chance to have a play without any potential issues with my gaming Pc. I have not used the MacBook for years now.

kar · 10 Dec 2025 at 10:03

I managed to get arch on a 2013 13" MBP actually a perfect device for it. Even managed to get all the fn keys (brightness, volume, keyboard backlight) working well on it. Quite a good device for it actually.

Ice Tea · 10 Dec 2025 at 11:03

Make sure you do a backup or snapshot.

MatsyLR · Saturday at 00:15

I switched to Fedora KDE a few months ago, generally fine although I've noticed slowdown recently and Nvidia drivers has just never worked well.
Running games outside of steam/launchers is painful to make work some just don't using wine/lutris where I need to just run a .exe file.
One game specifically just doesn't work or when it does work it's a slideshow or frequent crashes. Also I can go weeks without turning on my pc and come back to a billion updates which is really annoying and for whatever reason it's getting sluggish even though nothing is on it.

Thinking about giving mint a try and running commands on https://github.com/nulls0x0/mint-setup/blob/master/mint-22_2-nvidia-gaming-setup-guide.md to get drivers setup for Nvidia specifically and hopefully less spammed with updates as it's not "bleeding edge" as the kids say.

Any advice? I would try bazzite or something similar but I require support for running games outside of launchers and the perpetual desktop environment

biron_w · 2025-12-16T09:02:49+0000

I'm using TuxedoOS and I think it's superb.
I also think that KDE is the best Linux DE to use.

Cromulent · 2025-12-16T09:53:20+0000

biron_w said:
I'm using TuxedoOS and I think it's superb.
I also think that KDE is the best Linux DE to use.

I'm a big KDE fan as well. I don't understand why some people like Gnome so much.

Throrik · 2025-12-16T10:42:15+0000

Cromulent said:
I'm a big KDE fan as well. I don't understand why some people like Gnome so much.

Purely choice really, I don't understand why people like KDE or GNOME

Resource hogs and look awful in my opinion. I think that's the magic of open source.

Despise the politics in GNOME too.

Cromulent · 2025-12-16T11:36:00+0000

Throrik said:
Purely choice really, I don't understand why people like KDE or GNOME Resource hogs and look awful in my opinion. I think that's the magic of open source.

Despise the politics in GNOME too.

True. If I had the time I'd probably explore some tiling window managers as they seem pretty cool. Never really tried them though.

exhashdotdot · 2025-12-16T12:34:34+0000

Throrik said:
Purely choice really, I don't understand why people like KDE or GNOME Resource hogs and look awful in my opinion. I think that's the magic of open source.

Despise the politics in GNOME too.

I prefer GNOME just because it's simple and anything extra one might require can be obtained via the various extensions it has. That's about it really.

inflames said:
I am seriously thinking of trying Linux not something I have used before. I am very familiar and fluent in both windows and Mac OS. But never tried Linux, just wanted to have a go and see what all the fuss is about.
Was thinking of doing a dual boot so I can still use windows 11. Admittedly if I was to every move over fully I would want something I can daily drive, mostly gaming, internet and the occasional office document. I don’t use office, I currently use Libra. Been told Ubuntu is a good place to start also been told that Bazzite is good for gaming.
Anyone got some good recommendations, or is best to dive in a learn hand on with it?

For gaming you really want to take advantage of a distro which is using a more recent kernel / firmware version (so you have the latest drivers available). My previous comment biases me somewhat to Fedora, but I think it has a good balance between recency, and beginner-friendliness. I've heard Pop! OS is a good alternative for those who want to remain using a Debian-based OS.

kar · 2025-12-16T14:17:00+0000

I think fedora is probably the best bet for a first timer now. The other distros all have something nice about them but fedora just is going to give you the least pain and the biggest same boat factor if something isn't quite right or you have something random in your build and need support getting it working optimally.

biron_w · 2025-12-16T17:48:18+0000

Cromulent said:
I'm a big KDE fan as well. I don't understand why some people like Gnome so much.

I find Gnome to be too limited. Sure you can add extensions, as mentioned above, but they can break when they release a new update. I like that KDE is easy to customise to your liking.

Rroff · 2025-12-16T17:54:21+0000

Throrik said:
I don't understand why people like KDE or GNOME Resource hogs and look awful in my opinion.

One of the reasons I don't use Linux as a desktop - in my opinion all the desktop environment/GUI/window managers are clunky and awful. Years ago I made a custom version of Fluxbox/Blackbox just because I was so frustrated but sadly lacked the motivation to maintain/update it so it is pretty much useless now.

Throrik · 2025-12-16T19:36:42+0000

Rroff said:
One of the reasons I don't use Linux as a desktop - in my opinion all the desktop environment/GUI/window managers are clunky and awful. Years ago I made a custom version of Fluxbox/Blackbox just because I was so frustrated but sadly lacked the motivation to maintain/update it so it is pretty much useless now.

Yeah I'm pretty heavy into the minimal tiling window manager setup these days. Nothing fancy, no animations, compositor oddness or anything, so very little in the way of the change/maintenance.

Using a stable, slow-changing OS group like Debian and OpenBSD helps here I guess. Very much in to the unix philosophy these days of doing one, or just very few things, but doing them well.