My experience has been the opposite. I built a new PC last year, and only Fedora and Arch recognized the Radeon GPU and the Intel Wi-Fi. Mint was shipping a kernel that was too old to recognize either one.
Agreed. Out of all the distributions I have tried, Fedora (and its various spins and derivatives) are what tend to have everything actually work out of the box.
The guy behind Nobara does a LOT of important work to make Linux usable at home, especially when it comes to gaming. And in case anyone doesn’t know, he is a software engineer at Red Hat, the company sponsoring Fedora, the distro that Nobara is based on.
IMO, you shouldn’t have to learn Arch just to be able to get a new PC. Eventually, people who like Ubuntu and Mint are going to want to upgrade to a new computer, and they might be in for a shock once they do. That kind of thing is what pushes people back to Windows.
If you can’t install something like EndeavourOS or tumble weed then you likely were not going to be able to reload an os anyway.
Installing vanilla arch is a very useful activity to do at least once so you know how the system works but don’t have to use vanilla Arch and can use any of the derivatives so long as it has the latest kernel / drivers for your hardware.
Yeah when I first booted up, fedora didn’t see my ethernet port, but I was able to connect via wifi no problem. And then, after updating, when I returned to figure out how to get it working, I saw it already was.
Audio was similar. I use the digital optical out for my main audio device, and at first it wasn’t working. I could get audio via other ports (and temporarily plugged my soundbar in via USB, but didn’t like how that unified the system volume and device volume instead of being able to control each independently). I go back later to debug it only to find it just works now.
Or more recently, I switched to KDE and the first time I enabled my TV output to watch something, it wouldn’t enable the HDMI audio for that port. Fiddled around with it for a bit but gave up because I was in the middle of making dinner and just turned up my PC soundbar. Go back to have another look the next time I enable the TV display and it just works.
Though I did discover bluetooth doesn’t work while trying to connect to my TV’s sound system that way. It can see other devices but won’t connect with them stably. Not a big deal to me because I don’t rely on BT normally, but hoping it also just works when I next go to debug it specifically instead of just checking if it will work around another issue.
Sounds a bit janky but I’ve also had multiple windows laptops suddenly just lose the ability to connect via the connection method that was previously working. Sometimes disabling and enabling the adapter fixed it, sometimes enabling then disabling airplane mode did it, sometimes I’d have to switch between ethernet and wifi, sometimes it wouldn’t resolve without a reboot.
Also, just yesterday, I was trying to use a USB external drive to move a file from my old windows box to my fedora box, but windows wouldn’t recognize the hdd anymore. A USB stick worked (on the same port I was plugging the drive into) and fedore recognizes both of them no issue.
Thankfully Ubuntu will focus on shipping the newest kernel each release and Mint’s gonna profit of it. Also there’s newer kernels you can switch to optionally.
My experience has been the opposite. I built a new PC last year, and only Fedora and Arch recognized the Radeon GPU and the Intel Wi-Fi. Mint was shipping a kernel that was too old to recognize either one.
Agreed. Out of all the distributions I have tried, Fedora (and its various spins and derivatives) are what tend to have everything actually work out of the box.
My first distro has been Nobara after swapping off windows.
It really is dummy proof.
For those on the edge. Just do it. Windows 11 is free to go back to. You risk nothing by giving Linux a try.
The guy behind Nobara does a LOT of important work to make Linux usable at home, especially when it comes to gaming. And in case anyone doesn’t know, he is a software engineer at Red Hat, the company sponsoring Fedora, the distro that Nobara is based on.
Opensuse Tumbleweed tho
On new hardware it’s generally easier to use a rolling release distro in my experience.
You’re more likely to have a newer kernel and drivers that support things like wifi cards.
IMO, you shouldn’t have to learn Arch just to be able to get a new PC. Eventually, people who like Ubuntu and Mint are going to want to upgrade to a new computer, and they might be in for a shock once they do. That kind of thing is what pushes people back to Windows.
If you can’t install something like EndeavourOS or tumble weed then you likely were not going to be able to reload an os anyway.
Installing vanilla arch is a very useful activity to do at least once so you know how the system works but don’t have to use vanilla Arch and can use any of the derivatives so long as it has the latest kernel / drivers for your hardware.
Yeah when I first booted up, fedora didn’t see my ethernet port, but I was able to connect via wifi no problem. And then, after updating, when I returned to figure out how to get it working, I saw it already was.
Audio was similar. I use the digital optical out for my main audio device, and at first it wasn’t working. I could get audio via other ports (and temporarily plugged my soundbar in via USB, but didn’t like how that unified the system volume and device volume instead of being able to control each independently). I go back later to debug it only to find it just works now.
Or more recently, I switched to KDE and the first time I enabled my TV output to watch something, it wouldn’t enable the HDMI audio for that port. Fiddled around with it for a bit but gave up because I was in the middle of making dinner and just turned up my PC soundbar. Go back to have another look the next time I enable the TV display and it just works.
Though I did discover bluetooth doesn’t work while trying to connect to my TV’s sound system that way. It can see other devices but won’t connect with them stably. Not a big deal to me because I don’t rely on BT normally, but hoping it also just works when I next go to debug it specifically instead of just checking if it will work around another issue.
Sounds a bit janky but I’ve also had multiple windows laptops suddenly just lose the ability to connect via the connection method that was previously working. Sometimes disabling and enabling the adapter fixed it, sometimes enabling then disabling airplane mode did it, sometimes I’d have to switch between ethernet and wifi, sometimes it wouldn’t resolve without a reboot.
Also, just yesterday, I was trying to use a USB external drive to move a file from my old windows box to my fedora box, but windows wouldn’t recognize the hdd anymore. A USB stick worked (on the same port I was plugging the drive into) and fedore recognizes both of them no issue.
Mint has a GUI menu where you can select a newer kernel.
Thankfully Ubuntu will focus on shipping the newest kernel each release and Mint’s gonna profit of it. Also there’s newer kernels you can switch to optionally.