STOP RECOMMENDING DISTROS, recommend DESKTOPS instead!

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00:00 Intro
00:37 Sponsor: Monitor and secure your internet access with Safing
01:19 Desktop Environments
02:57 Distros are NOT their desktop
05:01 The DE creates the first impression
06:40 The distro still matters
09:33 Sponsor: 150€ off your Slimbook Executive Ultrabook
10:00 Support the channel

Let's begin with a quick refresher: a desktop environment is the compilation of all programs that are going to make your graphical desktop.

Linux has plenty of these desktops environments, and the choice of that desktop environment is what is going to make or break your first experience with Linux.

Ok, so desktop environments are important. But why are they more important than the distribution?

Well, the first thing is most people conflate a distribution and its default desktop environment. This only works for one distro, and that's elementary OS, because their desktop environment and the experience they provide isn't really available in other distros.

In some cases, I'd say the changes that have been added are enough to turn these customizations into another desktop entirely. Other changes are really not that important, like what Ubuntu adds on top of GNOME, or the Manjaro GNOME version. So, virtually any desktop implementation from a distro, can be replicated onto any other distro. Which means that the distro itself doesn't really matter for the graphical experience.

What makes the experience good, or bad, is the desktop environment. We could argue that the implementation of it, or the stability of the distro's base could play a role, but it's really minor compared to the experience with the desktop, and its default programs.

On top of that, you can install almost all desktops on almost all distributions, whatever the default desktop you picked.

For someone who's already familiar with Linux, distros DO matter, quite a lot, just as the philosophy of the distro itself, the personal preferences, the experience we had with various other distros... It's all important.

For a beginner, these elements do not matter at all. Someone starting with Linux won't care about BTRFS or ext4, about systemd or not systemd, about using flatpaks, snaps, or legacy packaging formats, like RPMs and DEBS.

Beginners will rarely, or at least SHOULDN't HAVE TO interact with these elements of their system. They should use graphical solutions that abstract all of these differences for them, and make them basically irrelevant.

What we should recommend to beginners is a desktop environment first: do they prefer the look and feel of KDE? GNOME, Pantheon, Cinnamon, or something else? Once they've decided on that, then they can be guided towards a distribution, even though they could pick any that uses that desktop, and they would probably be fine.

[abaneyone]

“Most people confuse the distro with the desktop environment.” Same as people not knowing the difference between a browser or a search engine.

[Pearlmaster-tnwi]

This should have been the first video that I watched two years ago when I first started trying to figure out what this Linux thing was all about. It took me a lot of time to realize that all my good and bad impressions were impressions of desktop enviroments and that it is DEs that really make the difference in the eyes of the newbie.

[bobowon]

Very few newbies are going to care about the difference between distro and desktop. As a casual Linux user I have zero interest in installing new desktops, I just go with a distro that defaults with something I like to make my life easy

[InvaderMik]

2:45 “Using workspaces instead of minimizing windows”
With that one sentence, I finally understand what workspaces are for! This whole time I’ve been ignoring them, since I could never tell why they’re useful. I always thought it was weird that there’s no minimize button by default.

[GingerWritings]

Me, a new Elementary user:
“I like your words computer man!”

Honestly I’m often super lost in what the differences is in all of these things, which lead me to having a terrible time trying Linux in the past. Elementary helped by being super simple for this here casual user.

[bradm]

For a beginner, some distros do have ease of use elements, namely their approach to proprietary drivers, codecs, etc. There is a difference between being able to do something vs. being able to do something *easily* or having it configured out of the box.

The answer is that both the distro and the desktop are important, but I would approach them as filters for narrowing your focus, i.e., eliminating options. I agree that the desktop environment is a good filter to start with. If a certain DE resonates more with you, then narrow your focus on distros that offer the best out-of-the-box experience with that DE. From there you can choose based on other factors like app availability, documentation, etc.

The above notwithstanding, if we're talking about true beginners and not computer enthusiasts or tinkerers, why not just start with Zorin or Pop_OS? Given that these are trying to deliver a great out-of-the-box experience, what are the reasons why they wouldn't be your go-to recommendation for a beginner? You might add Elementary to that list, though I would not say it's tailored to beginners per se.

[vermillionjustice]

This being the case, I've been wanting to switch my old laptop over to Linux for a bit now, but ofc it comes down to which desktop and distro to use. I'd love to see an up to date master list video of desktop environments, might make the choice easier.

[briholland]

So good, Nick! How we use something on a daily basis, especially for beginners, is a serious and important aspect. This is why we have human centred design, UX, UI design, etc. to make something usable. DEs are sooo important, not only for beginners, but for everyone. I’m glad to hear you surface the technical and philosophical debates that overpower conversations about Linux and overwhelm anybody outside the community. They certainly have their place and they are important but when that’s all an outsider encounters, they instantly turn away with no desire to come back until they believe Linux has ‘matured’. Love, love, love this video. Well done!

[TheSuhartoBanerjee]

Gets at the heart of the matter! It took me a while to understand that literally any distro can be "best gnome/kde based" distro. Definitely, for a noob, the look and flow of a DE makes or breaks the experience.
Kudos to the amazing content!

[jeinnerabdel]

I love your approach to simplify the choice. My wife uses MacOS and when she told me she wanted to try linux I told her... just try any linux with Gnome. She picked her own distro after a quick "best gnome distros"

I've been using Linux for 20 years and I've tried dozens of distros but always end up using any distro with KDE. Each to their own!

[TazerXI]

After the video: Wholeheartedly agree. As long as a user keeps out of a terminal, and sticks to a gui, they will be fine. The main issue is installing something not in the normal repos. A new user may look online for it in the software store, and not see it. Look online, and could end up having to try installing something from the aur. Just get a .tar file (I hated these, it took me a while before I realised it was just like me googling how to install a zip), and not know what to do. Even then, a windows user may not even go to the software store to begin with. (they don't have a good alternative on windows, the microsoft store is something I don't like using)

[gottatrot]

Great video! My husband and I are brand new to Linux, and like you said, choosing Pop OS was not the biggest thing for us, but trying KDE Plasma desktop instead of the default Gnome made things much easier to use. We ditched Windows altogether on our desktop and laptop, and found all the info online very helpful in our decision.

[douglasfelix]

Congratulations, Nick! What a fantastic video made with a lot of wisdom!
I couldn't so precisely answer this question and now I can. I don't think people want to choose between all the possibilities. They only need a good one. You went straight to the point and showed how to do it. Very good!

[wdnick]

If we are talking about beginners — yes. Beginner in Linux but not in IT is different story. Some distros has specific elements, like YaST in openSUSE or rolling Arch, openSUSE Tumbleweed vs release cycled Fedora, openSUSE Leap. So when we are talking about system for specific tasks distro might be more important than DE.

[ptzzz]

I saw the title and knew I have to drop a like and watch this video. After watching it, I fully agree with the desktop environment being the main thing to choose from. It made me remember my first tries using Linux, was Ubuntu in my case when they were still using Unity as default and I was fine with that despite blindy downloading it back then and not looking at screenshots, but when the switch to GNOME Shell happened I switched to Xfce before going down the rabbit hole of distro hopping haha.
After trying some DEs (Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, GNOME, KDE, Pantheon) I found that for my use case of having minimal hardware accelaration due to having lower end hardware, DEs like Xfce, MATE, and Cinnamon were most usable even inside a VM, while GNOME and KDE with their animations and compositing just chugged hard, then there's Pantheon which was a weird one that worked fine in terms of performance but did not have a lot of stuff I would expect in a DE and its pretty limited settings.

[johng.]

Finally! Someone answers these questions and does a fantastic job describing the multitude of choices a new user has to weed through. I believe this is why more newbies find it difficult to adopt the Linux platform. It's extremely confusing with so many districts, when people are really looking for the perfect GUI for themselves. Great video!

[giomjava]

Being able to install different DEs on the same distro only works on paper.
From experience, every time I've mixed 2 DEs at the same time -- it was short of a total disaster. At least a major inconvenience to use.
So, one can't really use this abilitg in such a positive light, as if it's so easy and simple.

[rockyraab]

That's a cogent argument, Nick. I'm a Linux missionary, and most of my potential converts balk at confusing things like Terminal. They want a simple mouse click environment. That's why if they come from Win 7, I recommend XFCE (as with Zorin) and if they come from W10, Cinnamon (as with Mint). No others, as good as some others are.

[kenmenpiano]

"Many people will choose Garuda Linux because it looks very different from other distros even though you can replicate that look in minutes on any KDE-based distro".

Feeling called out... but I would say you're spot on about what new users are drawn towards. Garuda really opened my eyes on what KDE can do. All other default KDE-based distros looked too corporate.

[edwardbrennan]

It’s a good point. I started with KDE because I kept hearing it’s the best but when I actually used it I got annoyed that every customization was never doing what I want and I spent more time tweaking rather than enjoying my computer so I switch to gnome and have been much happier.