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)
To be fair Ubuntu is still okay especially starting out, it’s one of the more polished distros with a ton of online documentation when you need to search around and figure out how to do things. And no one says you have to stay with a distro, once you’re comfortable with Linux it’s easy enough to check out other distros.
That aside a lot of people have been recommending Mint for new users so that’s definitely one you can check out if you want to try branching out now rather than later.
PS - Nvidia has a less than stellar reputation for their Linux drivers, you may want to consider reading up on that for whichever distro you choose. I have an Nvidia GPU (old non-Quadro class) running on Debian, works fine now but I did have a few false starts getting it going properly at first.
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.
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.
Or the current Debian testing, which will become stable soon. If you have experience with a Ubuntu from 10 years ago, you might know about
aptalready. If not, the package manager is already integrated into gnome-software. Additionally you can easily enable Flathub for flatpak and install packages using gnome-software afterwards.And yes, I would avoid Ubuntu on the desktop because of snap and other weird choices for defaults.
On the server however my experiences with Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 were not bad. But if it were my choice I would go Debian stable for servers.
If you want to do less maintenance, Fedora has good defaults and will have major updates twice a year. But, if you don’t want to get custom to new things on your machine that often, Debian is my recommendation.
Only if you have too much time, try Gentoo. I’ve used it for more than 15 years on the desktop besides Debian on Raspberries.
+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
@ImminentOrbit@lemmy.world
Gnome is different and at first I was lost, but after figuring out the basics is amazingly well integrated and just works as expected. KDE is super configurable but always feels a little off in a hard to describe way, like little quirks or lags or other papercuts.
Yeah, gnome is built for touchscreen and mouse. People prefer different things and I love gnome for it’s minimalistic style and modular customisability via extensions. KDE is also great, but I tipped my favour towards gnome for something different.
What software do you use for RPG campaigns? Is it just PDFs and word processors, or do you use a an online VTT? It should mostly be fine, but I figured I should ask.
Also, what are you doing in terms of the Minecraft Server? While I think most support Linux, there could (not certainly are) be weird caveats depending on the server.
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.
Uh huh. Ubuntu is fine.
Putting “company things” in quotes like you don’t believe people when they say Ubuntu has let them down…
Ubuntu is fine for very beginners, but don’t lie and say “it’s fine”, only to have any competent user discover very quickly that snaps take precedence over deb, snaps will be reenabled on minor release upgrades, even if you disabled them, ubuntu’s built-in NVIDIA install support has become abysmal, ubuntu has recently made the choice to fall out of step with its own supported DEs with regard to xorg support, etc.
Putting “company things” in quotes like you don’t believe people when they say Ubuntu has let them down…
That’s not true. I believe them. I just don’t care.
This is a good laptop, still plenty fast for Linux. However, given the choice, use the Intel graphics card for your 2D desktop rendering, not the nvidia one. The nvidia drivers don’t support it anymore, and the nouveau driver is too slow imho (visibly slow when moving windows etc). You can use old nvidia drivers for it, but these might be crashy with the new kernels. The Intel drivers will be fresh though.
What program are you using for your rpg campaigns?
Minecraft server is fairly universally supported.
Mostly Obsidian, PDF viewers (currently Foxit), Firefox, and Dropbox and/or Google Drive.
All of these can be run on any Linux distro. Dropbox is probably a better choice than Google Drive as Google drive doesn’t have an official Linux app (but you can get it working beyond just using it in a Web browser if its a must).
I’d go.with Linux Mint as it’s well supported but any point release distro will serve your needs well. For example Fedora KDD or OpenSuSE Leap, Debian etc. I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu.
