I have an old laptop that I use as a Minecraft server as well as running RPG campaigns during game night. I’m getting tired of Windows 10 and I’m looking for a good replacement. I don’t have a lot of experience with Linux lately, the last time I did anything with it was maybe 10 years or so ago and I used Ubuntu, which I’ve read here is maybe not a good choice any longer. Stats of laptop are below. Recommendations are appreciated, thanks.
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ CPU @ 2.70GHz 2.70 GHz Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable) Graphics Card NVIDIA Quadro K2100M (2 GB), Intel® HD Graphics 4600 (113 MB)
Fedora (Gnome or KDE version) is what I recommend to people looking for the stock experience and a large community. I generally point people away from anything Ubuntu because of the Snap fiasco.
+1 for fedora kde
I’ve tried dozens of distros this year. Kept arch for my personal use and fedora for shared. Fedora was the easiest to setup with everything working as they should out of the “box”.
unless you use a touchscreen, don’t install gnome
I personally generally recommend Mint as a good starting distro. It is widely used, which means lots of support readily found online. It also has some of the benefits of Ubuntu without having the Snap forced on users. It also generally works well on a wide range of systems including lower powered systems due to its selection of desktops.
Your laptop is decent and I’d personally be running a slick desktop on that, specifically KDE. But alot of that comes down to personal preferences, and Mint isn’t the best KDE desktop as it’s not a main desktop for it (although it is available).
However once you get to grips with the basics of Linux I think other distros offer better more focused benefits for different user groups. There are lots of choices such as Gaming focused distros, rolling release vs point release distros, slow long term projects like Debian vs bleeding edge focused projects, immutable systems etc.
I personally use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed because it’s cutting edge, but well tested prior to updates, with a good set of system tools in YaST, and decently ready for gaming and desktop use. I also like that it is European. But that may not be a good fit for your specific use case. Leap, the OpenSuSE point release distro would be better - a nice KDE desktop with a reliable release schedule and a focus on stability over cutting edge.
Linux Mint is a good beginner distro if you come from Windows.
I decided to go with Linux mint. After installing it alongside windows, it won’t boot into either. If I reboot from my USB stick, it says that maybe it’s too far away from the start of the drive to be detected. But I believe there is some intel /hp stuff that includes some kind of boot that might also be interfering. Does anyone have a good way forward from here?
Link from boot repair: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/GJcsXfRkrj/
I’m not too versed in grub, but did you change anything regarding UEFI? You might have to disable some BIOS/UEFI safe mode or toggle between BIOS and UEFI.
I ended up reinstalling without Win 10 and it still isn’t finding it. I’ll have to check on a toggle later
Did you nuke the whole disk? Just 1 big Linux partition?
Try enabling/disabling Secure Boot.
Ubuntu is still fine. some people are angry at canonical for “company things” but it’s a well supported major distro.
That’s not entirely true. Snap is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu as you’re not given the choice whether day to day apps like Firefox are a native app or snap app. You can only have snap versions. The lack of choice in having a slower less efficient version of apps forced on users without official alternatives is a good enough reason for people to recommend avoiding Ubuntu.
That is regardless of all the commercial and proprietary concerns people have.
That does not apply to Ubuntu based system like Mint where users are given choices and still benefit from other aspects of the Ubuntu ecosystem.
I don’t disagree that snaps aren’t the best thing but Ubuntu does allow you to turn off auto updates now if you want and although it took a little extra setup, I also use the .deb version of Firefox right now. It works well. I’m running Kubuntu 24.04.
For servers especially, Ubuntu can be a really good option. I’ve heard some people actually like snaps for servers because the auto update so its one less this to worry about. Yea you can setup a script to do that too but its a nice to have for some folks.
All that said, its not for everyone, but for servers I think Ubuntu is a good option just for compatibility alone, not to mention the documentation, tutorials, etc.
Thats just my opinion though.
