I got rid of my window from my secondary partition(gaming addiction) and now I have a 128 GB m.d. i have been running Linux mint for most of my Linux experience but want to try out something out side the traditional windows setup
I have tried those setups
- Linux mint xfce
- Linux mint cinnamon
- fedora workstation(gnome)
- fedora silverblue(gnome immutable)
- fedora kde
- majaro cinnamon
I would hope for sometimes were the learning curve isn’t too extreme for me(i3 was too much)
try nixos / guix
I second this. I need to try guix, nixos has been my daily driver for years now.
terminal only
I’d find a distro to settle on, not a desktop environment. Most distros have most desktop environments. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Debian all ship the major desktop environments. I would simply choose the one that best fits your needs.
Want to run on the newest software available? Fedora
Want long-term support for the install and am okay with using slightly older versions of software? Debian
Don’t care about the software part, and the most ready install out of the box? Go for Ubuntu or Linux Mint
In terms of desktop software. KDE is the most like Windows, but still far better in my opinion. Gnome is its thing, more similar to a mac, but still not quite the same.
Did you read my post like at all?
I meant something that breaks the traditional windows environment. Stuff outside xfce , cinnamon and kde. gnome doesn’t work for me on keyboard and mouse. I want a distro to mess around with, not distro to settle on, i am fine on linux mint as is, just wanted to try a distro as a side hobby
I’d still find a distro to settle on, not a desktop environment.
What desktop environment do you want to try that you can’t find on Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu?
Maybe give hyprland a run? That sure breaks away with the traditional paradigm. I’ve been running it a couple months on Arch and love it. Maybe use it with quickshell so it comes preconfigured like a “light” DE, at least at first.
You certainly don’t see that on Windows:
Fedora has an i3 flavor, you could try that - or just install whatever WM you want to check out on your current setup. You can usually select your WM on the login screen once it’s installed.
My bad, phrases that badly. I meant to avoid i3
Sloppy reading on my part as well. Seems like you want something between the standard windows/macos experience and i3, and that sounds like a good idea, but I’m not sure it exists
GNOME and vanilla Xfce are fine, but you can also try ElementaryOS as a distro.
If you want to break out of this and find something new without too much of a learning curve you could try Illogical Impulse
It’s hyprland, modded and more avvessible.
Try out a floating wm. I don’t know any on Wayland at the moment, but when I didn’t want the full DE experience back in 2008 but tiling was still too daunting, I installed fluxbox and used it for years. It’s simple yet unique and very lightweight.
You should try cosmic.
If you want to break out of the windows mold, tiling windows managers are where its at. You’ve already explored that route with i3, and there are other alternatives, but they all have a bit of a learning curve unfortunately. hyprland might be worth a try. I’ve only dabbled but I did remember it being a bit more beginner friendly than i3. But be prepared to be confused, read a bunch of forum posts and edit config files for a bit.
I’d say PopOS with the relatively new Cosmic Desktop could be something interesting for you to try of you don’t really want to go into configurations that much. It has floating and tiling windows that you can switch easily.
If you want to go out there, tiling window managers are neat. I want to try hyprland at some point as well.
You can try Niri - it is a tiling, scrollable wm, a lot easier to use than i3, I’d say half way between i3 and a full de.
+1 here. I always felt some draw to a tiling or scrolling window manager but they were always a lot of work to set up and I never quite clicked with one. Niri with Dank Material Shell is pretty amazing.
You don’t need to change distro in order to change desktop environment: just install gnome/kde/whatever if you want to give different ones a spin (you don’t need to uninstall your current desktop environment either - you can have multiple ones and choose which one to use when you login)
If you want extreme flexibility, use Arch Linux, since it makes it trivial to swap out which window manager you’re using. It sounds like you’re familiar with Linux at this point, so you probably have the requisite knowledge to give Arch a spin.
Niri is supposed to be a pretty interesting WM if you’re looking for something new. I’d be interested to hear why i3 was too much, since I found it to be pretty smooth to pick up.
I’m currently running CachyOS, where I installed Hyprland and ML4W dot files (basically a well refined set of config files for Hyprland) alongside KDE Plasma. ML4W (MyLinux4Work) has great YouTube videos detailing their installation process.
Hyprland, like i3, is pretty amazing to use once you get used to it, but sometimes it can break, so having the option of rock solid KDE right at the login screen is a nice bit of insurance.
CachyOS is based on Arch, so you’ll need to get cozy with updating and installing software, both from the repository and flatpak, via the terminal. If you’re not already comfortable with that, it’s a great opportunity to learn.
