I have heard good things about nobara. I don't mind doing a little thinkering to have things work but I also don't want to spend hours doing recharch on how to fix things.

Edit: thanks for giving input everyone. I will try Linux mint and if it does not go well will give nobara a go instead.

Edit part two I had to boot mint in compatibility mode because I got black screen for like 15+ minutes and then I couldn't get it to see more than one monitor and 3 hours later gave up....Just put on nobara will load mint to my laptop and try to learn more because I want to but also tryna game :) you will hear more from me

  • soulsource@discuss.tchncs.de
    ·
    9 months ago

    It's not a dumb question at all, and there is no "agreed upon" definition.

    For me the most important characteristics of a "Mainstream Distribution" would be the size of their maintainer team - though that is also inaccurate if we are talking about distributions that are built on top of other distributions - as in your example.

    Another indication is to check who is sponsoring a distribution's development. If there are plenty of commercial sponsors, then chances are that the distribution is well maintained. Similarly, if the distribution is created by a commercial company (Intel, Canonical, RedHat,...), as those companies also have an interest in keeping their product in a good state.

    Age of the distribution might be another indicator. If a distribution has been around for a long time, chances are it isn't bad either.

    However, I am lazy and would not actually check any of this by hand. Instead, the thing I would actually do is to just go to https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major and read through their list. 😉