Picking a Linux Distribution

In this video i want to discuss a process for selecting a Linux Distributio9n to start with as a beginner.I am not recommending an actual Distribution, but giving my thoughts on how to go about picking one that you can work with.
00:00 Prelude
02:45 Introduction
06:15 Kernels and Distributions
08:00 Some Technical Stuff
12:55 DistroWatch
15:55 Virtual Box Test Install
27:45 Conclusions

[@SyberPrepper]

I'll bet this video took a long time to put together. Great job.

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for your comment. Glad you liked the video.

[@CliffVillareal]

I have been a linux hater till 2018 when I discovered that this is not to be hated and to be embraced. Like any OS it is not perfect. Linux much more customizable and is not resource heavy. I now appreciate why users are now embracing Linux. Keep up the Videos.

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for your comments.

[@fultonchain]

Thanks. I think you got a little out in to the woods with bootloaders and kernel stuff. I've been at this forever and still don't understand systemd but it's never been a blocker for installation. Anything anyone is going to install from an .iso is going to have sensible defaults, whether Wayland (it's here now, not 5-10 years) or not it should just work. It'll have a display manager and some sort of DE baked in. Whether KDE, Cinnamon, GNOME or Xfce there's gonna be something. You have to go out of your way to download a distro with a window manager and the vast majority of new users are going to go with some flavor of Debian, Fedora or Arch . Probably Debian. They're not watching this video if they want to run Void, NixOS or Gentoo and Hyprland. You get pretty detailed. I don't want to come off as critical and hope you take this constructively. I learned a lot and you obviously know what your talking about. There was just a lot of detail that I think most users will never need to dig into.

[@fultonchain]

Wow. I sound like a dick. Take my like and subscribe along with my apologies.

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for your comment. I take your point. I may have missed the mark. I have had several interesting conversations with new users who have asked about things like systemd, mainly because someone threw the term out there. My intent was to point out that most of this is not relevant to new users, and they should not worry about them until they become more proficient. I think you are correct and I missed the mark there by not emphisising it enough. Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

[@retiredtechie]

No problem

[@bertnijhof5413]

Type 2 hypervisors are the last 14 years not really slower than type 1 hypervisors. Nowadays you could say; type 1 is an hypervisor integrated in the Host OS kernel and the type 2 hypervisor is mostly extended to full OS functionality, like e.g. support for application containers. Xrandr is not supported by Wayland. You should install the Virtualbox Guest Additions to avoid the old fashioned Xorg use of xrandr. Afterwards you can move the VM-Windows like any application window and CTR+F expands it to full screen and it works the same for Windows :) Virtualbox will remember the last size and location of the VM window and at next boot it will use it as default position and size.

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for the advice. I would agree that once a VM is running, there is no real noticeable speed differences. However, it has been my experience that a VM starts faster under type 1 hypervisors. I have run identical VMs on Proxmox and Virtual Box, and on Proxmox, they always start faster. I appreciate the tip on wayland and Virtual Box. I need to take a look at how to run Wayland on LMDE. Did not really see anything in the install to choose.

[@bertnijhof5413]

@@retiredtechie Proxmox is not a true type 1 hypervisor, since it runs in the Debian server. Proxmox speed is probably caused by the memory cache of the OpenZFS file system, that it uses by default for VMs. ZFS has a very advanced memory cache (L1ARC) and it uses half or more of the memory. Probably I achieve the same speed with Ubuntu; OpenZFS and Virtualbox. Boot times are 6.5 seconds for Xubuntu and 11 seconds for Ubuntu on the 2nd slowest Ryzen ever, the Ryzen 3 2200G. I see a 99% memory cache hit rate for disk IO, it is like running the VM from a RAM disk. I notice these type of details, because I worked in IT system development from 1969 till 2011.

[@retiredtechie]

Interesting. I have been running VirtualBox on Windows 11, NTFS is not the most efficient file system out there. When I get the chance, I will install it on a Linux system. I would expect the performance to increase with a more efficient file system. I started out as an electronics technician back in 76. My first real experience with computers was having to hack PDP8s in the early 80's. I retired from my last job as a systems engineer.

[@bertnijhof5413]

@@retiredtechie I think you already know the performance on Linux, because you know Proxmox. If we just compare Proxmox to my solution: - Both systems run a Debian based OS (Debian Server and Ubuntu Desktop minimal install, only system utilities + Firefox) - Both run OpenZFS as file system for the VMs - Proxmox runs KVM and I run Virtualbox in both cases 3 kernel modules are used for the hypervisor tasks. The core of both systems are almost the same, so I would expect more or less the same performance, unless on one side one of the programmers has been a genius. The main difference would be the handling of graphical displays. In Proxmox you run a remote display, using the Windows RDP protocol. In my case you have the choice: You either use the RDP protocol for a remote display or the display is on the same PC and Virtualbox uses a VMWare SVGA driver with some 3D acceleration for e.g simple Linux games like Super Tux Kart. If you use ext4 for the Host OS to store the VMs, I expect it would be slower than OpenZFS, because you miss that large lz4 compressed memory cache for the disk IO. You can see, what my main hobby has been after 2011. Ubuntu since 2008; Virtualbox since 2009 and OpenZFS since 2018. My oldest still used VM, is Windows XP Home from March 2010, it survived 2 VBox owners; 3 Desktops and 4 CPUs :).

[@sandrodellisanti1139]

Ciao and thank you for your nice Video, which i like to share at Telegram and at Tribel, i'm a Debian User since late 1998, many greetings from brunswick in germany and please stay safe 🙃

[@retiredtechie]

Greetings to you also. Thank you for taking the time to comment. I hope you are doing well. Debian was my second distribution. I started on mandrake (The CD set was a gift from a friend who picked it up at a computer show) which became part of the mandiva project.

[@IlIlIIlIlIlIlIlIl]

Just switched from mint to Debian enjoying it

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for your comment. I have used Debian for a long time, it was my second distro, after Mandrake Linux (which became part of mandiva linux).

[@johanb.7869]

Linux is great once you get used to it. I did. User since 2017. Settled on MX Linux Xfce.

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for your comment. I am currently testing MX Linux KDE version on a VM. So far it has been it has been very interesting. MX has so many cool modifications.

[@fabricio4794]

Linux Mint the"ak47"from the Linux distros it never jams

[@retiredtechie]

Thank you for your comment

[@bic4]

5 or 10 years for wayland?

[@retiredtechie]

Wayland is usable now, even though it still has some major compatibility issues. To be fair, a lot of these are outside of Wayland control, residing in other software, like LibreOffice. So yes, 5 to 10 years for Wayland to totally replace Xorg.

[@shadowseek27]

With Linux getting more and more popular by the day it'll probably be closer to 5

[@bic4]

@@shadowseek27 closer to 3 imo a lot of huge distros already moved to wayland and really heavy on fixing wayland bugs

[@ilficherrimolori]

the real reason I ditro-hop isn't the distro it's because installing Linux is like a drug.

[@retiredtechie]

I hear that. Try having multiple distros running in VM's sometime for a rush!

[@awuuwa]

Calling it religious is the wrong term for it. There is a better term "fanatic"

[@retiredtechie]

I won't argue with that term. I have meet a few who were (to quote Commander Cody) lost in the ozone. Thank you for your comment.

[@awuuwa]

@@retiredtechie But are we discussing the philosphical views that people have in general, or some specific possible cracy people who may exist in any group or community? I'm sure there are some cracy cult followings that Apple has. And likely there are some who like MS WIndows for some reason. Or is the idea that merely having a philosophical stance itself is the problem?

[@retiredtechie]

I would say the problem is the same for every group. It is good to have a stance. However, it becomes bad when one loses perspective. I remember when Debian first switched to systemd. Some of the arguments were brutal. Sometimes, people just need to step back and evaluate what they are obsessing over.

[@awuuwa]

@@retiredtechie I wasn't on the scene yet when Debian switched to SystemD, but I would say they made a poor choice in going with it. I prefer Devuan over Debian. Now I don't know what specific things someone would have said on the topic back then, but if you don't care for a good Unix system, and are therefore fine with SystemD then perhaps you just inherently don't see the problem with it. Being against SystemD is not losing perspective on anything, if anything one has lost the perspective on what it means for an operating system to be unix-like if they are in favour of it.