…you mean western countries where nvidia gpu’s are the most common?

If we’re including beginners in developing countries this is even less common of an issue, when I was in india, not a single person I helped with tech had a graphics card, why would they have a 470xx series driver gpu and not an integrated system? It’s not even the cheapest choice. I recently built a PC in india, coincidentally, and we ended up going with an integrated system for a gaming PC.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

i mean, look at these stats, it’s such a minority it’s hardly worth mention. You’ll probably say “these are just the steam stats, most of them aren’t on steam anyway!” But if they’re not using steam/proton… they almost definitely aren’t using xwayland anyway so the issues don’t apply to them in the first place.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5204/~/list-of-kepler-series-geforce-desktop-gpus

compare that to the list on the hardware survey and you’ll see how unbelievably rare this problem actually is. They don’t even make the list, it’s less than a 1% issue.

…the vast majority of beginners do not have 10+ year old hardware.

I want everyone except those who use 10+ year old hardware to move, and in fact, that’s exactly what i’ve recommended in the past.

here I am making that exact recommendation:

https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/53716147/18224187

We shouldn’t be recommending things for a tiny niche, we should be recommending what’s best on average, and as we learn about the specific needs of a user, then recommend things specifically for that user.

And it still is. Being expected to use slightly different software when you’re using a 10+ year old hardware setup is not weird. Furthermore, this is an issue with the nvidia driver support, which is proprietary, the open source drivers have no such problems. And again, this will be nearly completely solved once steam/proton stop needing xwayland.

I desperately want a smithay based hyprland clone… hyprland is just so unbelievably good, shame about the dev.

Bazzite makes it ridiculously easy, there’s just a dropdown to select the nvidia version of their ISO. It’s also a great distro for beginners for a lot of reasons:

bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically, this is fantastic for reliability, but it also has pretty up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

there’s also aurora if you want the same thing without some addons for gamers.

I thought you were referring to having to install ancient drivers that are no longer properly supported, that is still a problem on x.org, but if we use nouveau, the problems go away for the most part.

it appears the only real issue with nvidia drivers from back then on wayland is accelerated xwayland according to the arch wiki. I don’t think we shouldn’t be recommending wayland because over 10 year old gpus have a relatively minor issue but still work.

Sure, if you have ancient hardware, I actually recommend XFCE, but outside of this one niche case, it’s not wise to be recommending it.

Once steam and proton/wine get rid of xwayland… there won’t be many xwayland apps that are used on a daily basis, however, when that happens, I don’t think this will still stand.

The nvidia thing is also a problem for x.org

rpm-ostree is fedora specific, but essentially, yes, it applies a layer ontop of the base immutable system with the package changes you want.

So you don’t have stats you have anecdotal evidence.

Actually, these are appeals to authority, a major distro is telling you not to use LTS kernel versions… people who y’know, have stats

“Recently we have had a number of issues with hardware regressions on the LTS kernels, rendering systems with newer hardware unbootable.”

Directly from the source of a major distro… I don’t think you actually read my sources.

It clearly requires a source because Cinnamon 6.0 has Wayland as an experimental support and Mint team has said they are planning to eventually move to Wayland[5].

that’s exactly what i’ve said… nothing i’ve said contradicts that, just that it’s going to take forever for that to get good. Gnome and KDE already have full proper support and have for ages. Cinnamon will take FOREVER. Notice they only extremely recently launched EXPERIMENTAL support, it’s not even supported yet. Cinnamon development is incredibly slow: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly

compare that to JUST the kde text editor: https://github.com/KDE/kate/pulse/monthly

Clearly implying you should expect running into issues.

The hilarity of this is that those issues are BECAUSE of their choice to be insanely stable (note: this yet again means UNCHANGING)… modern KDE versions have minimal such issues. You just accidentally made yet another point AGAINST your case.

In theory. Except in practice we’re not talking about kernels that are 5+ years old. Latest Mint version is running on Ubuntu Noble which is using Kernel version 6.8 which supports all the latest CPU-s and GPU-s. Just because it’s not using the very latest kernel version doesn’t mean it’s not capable of supporting the latest hardware.

Actually, the problem is more fundamental: https://lwn.net/Articles/700530/

And maybe it supports the hardware, but there are performance and instability issues that can’t or haven’t been backported… honestly, don’t you think all stable distros would only be using LTS kernels if there weren’t issues with them?

Vnc works perfectly, and I think we’re talking 10 or more years old with the nvidia thing…

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213095

https://discuss.getsol.us/d/6564-cant-boot-into-the-lts-kernel/3

https://discuss.getsol.us/d/4899-let-s-talk-about-the-lts-kernels

lts kernels should not be used with newer hardware… because they don’t have modern software support, anyone that uses modern hardware risks being unable to boot with them. I shouldn’t have said crashes but the issues are numerous.

The second thing doesn’t require a source, they don’t have the manpower to implement it in cinnamon, look at the github pulse: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse

https://wiki.debian.org/Wayland debian, notorious for being the most stable distro by far already uses it by default…

At this point I don’t even know what that means because maybe you have some other weird definition to pull out of your ass. Give me that in 5th grader level.

i have only used industry standard terminology and what I said is straightforward… kernel has drivers, old kernel no has new drivers, new drivers needed for hardware support, lts kernel old.

Mint focuses on stability reliability as evident from its decision to use Ubuntu LTS versions as it’s base. In case I need to spell it out, LTS versions are generally more reliable.

This is false, they’re just less likely to change. They can crash more frequently.

And you brought up X11 as a negative, but there’s a good reason Mint is staying on X11. Yes, Wayland is the future and eventually Mint will adopt Wayland as well, when Wayland becomes more stable reliable. I’m the mean time Mint stays on X11 because X11 is very stable reliable, extremely stable reliable compared to Wayland if you have an Nvidia card.

There’s no evidence that X11 is less reliable than wayland, and the reason mint stays on x11 has NOTHING to do with this, and everything to do with cinnamon not yet supporting it…

Mint also has better out the box support. For example to my knowledge for Nvidia Fedora comes with Nouvuea drivers which means for gaming you need to go through an extra process to get proprietary drivers. Mint has out the box support for Nvidia drivers. This is less of a thing when compared to Bazzite, but still a reason why to pick Mint as a beginner distro.

This is still false, stable distros have worse support out of the box because they use an older kernel version and the kernel ships the drivers.

That set of fixes still left everything being wrong or unsupported by any evidence.

…but that still means everything I said is correct and you were a jerk to me for being correct, no?

is it my fault you don’t know these things and instead of having a learning attitude, you say I have no idea what I’m talking about and am a flat earther when you don’t even know what defines a stable distro?

even if I use your uninformed definition it’s still wrong… there is no evidence fedora crashes more than mint, or is less reliable…

I did not invent this definition, it is industry standard…

https://bitdepth.thomasrutter.com/2010/04/02/stable-vs-stable-what-stable-means-in-software/

you’re very confident and not well informed.

“A stable software release is so named because it is unchanging.  Its behaviour, functionality, specification or API is considered ‘final’ for that version.  Apart from security patches and bug fixes, the software will not change for as long as that version of the software is supported, usually from 1 to many years.”

your first point even directly contradicts your second…

Do you have evidence of this?

Mint focuses on stability as evident from its decision to use Ubuntu LTS versions as it’s base. In case I need to spell it out, LTS versions are generally more stable and reliable.

Stability is essential for industry applications, but is actually TERRIBLE for beginners, especially ones that want to game. I could go into the reasons why, but I doubt you care. I don’t agree that this is a selling point for beginners in the first place, which is why I didn’t mention it. Stability does not mean “does not crash” in a linux context, it means UNCHANGING. Extremely old software is not good for beginners who want things to just work.

And you brought up X11 as a negative, but there’s a good reason Mint is staying on X11. Yes, Wayland is the future and eventually Mint will adopt Wayland as well, when Wayland becomes more stable. I’m the mean time Mint stays on X11 because X11 is very stable, extremely stable compared to Wayland if you have an Nvidia card.

Give me evidence that there are more issues with wayland than X11 and i’ll believe you.

Mint also has better out the box support. For example to my knowledge for Nvidia Fedora comes with Nouvuea drivers which means for gaming you need to go through an extra process to get proprietary drivers. Mint has out the box support for Nvidia drivers. This is less of a thing when compared to Bazzite, but still a reason why to pick Mint as a beginner distro.

Bazzite fixes this and is why I recommend it over fedora kinoite. Irrelevant point, not actually true, actually, the opposite is true precisely because of the last point. You realize stability means out of date kernel versions, and out of date kernel versions means… worse out of the box support!

And the reason people recommend Mint is in those first two points. Mint deliberately sacrifices fancy bells and whistles to be as stable as possible. You not knowing that shows how little you know about Mint.

Wellp, those are bad points, which is why i didn’t make them, sorry!

You were also unable to, at this point, i’m convinced you’re trolling. Sorry, it’s just not a good choice. And I gave legitimate reasons for why it was great in the past, you just didn’t like them!

Having a great GUI, easy installation, a bunch of guides, and being the most well-supported are all perfectly valid reasons to use mint like 10 years ago.

Interesting strategy: “make my argument for me!”

“Oh, you couldn’t make my argument for me? why would I trust you?”

Beingly highly supported is a prerequisite to being a good beginner distro, but it’s not a reason to recommend a distro. If we take it as a reason then Mint having a GUI is also a reason to recommend to beginners.

Mint having a GUI IS a good reason to recommend it to beginners… Arch for example has terrible GUI support, which is why it’s not a good choice for beginners (don’t get me started on manjaro…)

Guides in general are good, but I doubt any beginner actually cares about guides, unless it’s a guide telling you what to click where on the GUI.

This is simply not true, i’ve given linux to countless people, people always google how to do things and end up with guides for a different distro, i’ve seen this happen countless times because I specialize in giving beginners linux. They absolutely do care about this, and it’s extremely commonly cited as one of the reasons to go with mint.

Instead of playing the prying game where I keep prying until you give straight answers (because people don’t love Mint just because it’s an Ubuntu fork) I’m just going to conclude that either you deliberately don’t want to say why people recommend Mint to beginners or you actually don’t know why people recommend Mint. I don’t care which it is because both invalidate your opinion of the Mint suggestion being outdated.

I think it’s a bad recommendation mainly made for legacy reasons rather than current ones, that was very clear. Give me reasons it’s a good one, I used to use mint, I gave plenty of reasons for why it’s a bad choice. You’ve given nothing in support of it, and expected me to write your argument for you?

Of course the person on the side of mint being a bad choice… doesn’t think it’s a good choice? I gave the only reasons you’d want to use mint, tbh. Aside from that there’s literally no reason to over fedora. Feel free to prove me wrong with a list.

Somehow you think the ease of use isn’t relevant because it also applies to Fedora, but support is relevant despite it also applying to Fedora? How about some consistency in your arguments.

Are you deliberately misinterpreting me? Are you actually trolling here?

My point was obvious, fedora and mint are both equally easy to use, so, ease of use is not a factor when deciding between them… in fact, fedora is EASIER to use (flatpak meaning completely gui updates, kde being hugely standardized and well-developed), so, if it is a factor, it makes fedora a better choice than mint.

It’s obvious that ease of use is a massive factor for recommending a distro to a beginner, it’s just that ease of use doesn’t favor mint.

That does NOT have very little to do with beginners, being a highly supported distro is one of the most important things for beginners, having guides for how to do things written specifically for your distro is fantastic for new people.

It being beloved is why it’s recommended, yes, and that doesn’t benefit new people, but that’s an obvious reason why one might recommend it…

There’s also the fact that it’s designed to be easy to use, but that also applies to fedora, and fedora is significantly more well-developed, so it’s not really relevant here.

It’s well out of the testing phase and used by default on both major desktops.