EDIT: Ended up going for Kubuntu anyway. Installed it with separate / and /home so in case they want to explore more there’s the option.
I daily drove Linux for about 6 years and finally managed to convince some of my family members to try it!
However, I realized I don’t have a lot of ideas about beginner distros. I have some requirements that led me to some decisions, but there doesn’t seem to be a fit-all option:
- Minimal maintenance -> Debian-based (stable release)
- High compatibility -> Debian-based (.deb seems more convenient than say, AUR)
- Familiarity -> KDE Plasma (looks like Windows, very customizable)
It’s for a Thinkpad X1. The main purpose is going to be academics.
All of that points to Kubuntu, but I worry about the Canonical Snap store stuff.
Everyone recommends Linux Mint for starters, but it doesn’t come with a KDE Plasma flavour. I know I can install it myself, but the integration is gonna be bad and they’re gonna bug me a lot.
I use Endeavour OS personally, so I’m somewhat familiar with Arch-based system. I guess .debs can be installed with debtap, but that feels like a whole another hacky solution. I have done university courses with my Endeavour OS laptop and I know quite a bit of software comes in .deb but not AUR.
What should I pick for them? And should I get more input from them? If so, what should I ask about?
I’ve never used Fedora. I guess it can be a good learning opportunity but that also means I can’t provide fast solutions based on my experience. I’ll look into it though.
It’s pretty well traveled and established so support for it is pretty easy. Fedora comes in both KDE and Gnome varieties. Debian based, though it uses dnf instead of apt for package installer, but that’s not hard. IMHO it’s a good sweet spot of a release cycle. It’s big enough that issues reliably get ironed out before they hit the stable version, but doesn’t trail kernel updates for too terribly long.