Use Ubuntu until you have a first-hand reason why you should use something else.
It's not perfect, but it's still the 800 lb gorilla, and it's what things have the least chance of not working with. It has the most eyes on it and the most immediate solutions when you google a problem.
To add to this: Try to avoid adding software via the software center, instead prefer flatpak, appimage or plain .deb if there is no alternatives. (Application) software in the official repos is often outdated.
I also wanna stress the point that you should not only research different distros, but also whether you would prefer KDE or Gnome. There are other desktops, but for your first time, I'd go as mainstream as possible.
The old saying "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" is an old saying that meant something at some point; whether it still does is another matter. Read the link above to get the full picture. (As someone that used to do support work for HP, a lot of the sales-centric, don't-spend-money-on-the-tech-folks mindset resonated with me.)
People (myself included) aren't happy with Red Hat's proclamation. As an individual, I can't do much other than to watch how this plays out and give my team and management the heads-up, and monitor.
At least the dude is honest though- ‘we used to consider CentOS valuable, we no longer see value in that’.
What this all is really doing though is introducing a lot of uncertainty into the RH ecosystem, and pushing people toward other distros. And that will make RH the only fish in the small and shrinking pond. Because let’s be honest- 99.9% of the people running CentOS and the like were never gonna buy RHEL to begin with.
RedHat creates a product called RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) that is a paid support product, mostly targeted at businesses (and things like Academia/Laboratories/etc).
At one point, there was a Wholly seperate product, created outside the RedHat umbrella, called CentOS, that quite literally took the sources of RHEL, removed the RHEL branding, and rebuilt it, allowing folks to "mostly" be able to use RHEL, without paying RedHat for a support contract.
In 2014, the CentOS Project/Product was "purchased" by RedHat, and then in 2020, RedHat decided that CentOS would no longer just be a "rebuilt" RHEL, but instead would become the development space for RHEL, called CentOS Stream. This made many people very unhappy, and they decided to start the Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux projects to provide roughly the same product that prior versions of CentOS had provided.
Additionally (I don't actually know exactly when), at some point, Oracle started doing basically the same thing that CentOS had been doing, and rebuilding the RHEL sources, and selling it, as "Oracle Linux"
So net effect of what this means, is that RHEL sources will no longer be publicly available at git.centos.org, and will only be available to RedHat customers (i.e. you must have signed up for an account/license with RedHat for RHEL). This may make things more difficult for Rocky, Alma, and Oracle, to provide the same "Bug for Bug" compatible product to RHEL.
Most of what people are upset about, is because they're willfully misreading the GPL (GNU Public License) which covers an awful lot of the RHEL sources.
The GPL requires that if you distribute software, licensed under the GPL, that you also must provide the folks that you distribute that software to, with the sources you used. It doesn't specify how you have to provide them, you could make them available for download, you could mail folks a DVD with all the sources on it, (honestly, I think you might be able to just print them all out and send them on dead trees, and still be compliant).
What most of the folks are upset about, is there is a clause within the GPL, that says something about providing the sources "without restriction on redistribution" or some such. And they view that RedHat can choose to terminate your license to RHEL, if you redistribute RHEL sources/software as violating the GPL. But the GPL cannot dictate business relationships. Redhat cannot stop one of their customers from distributing sources that they are licensed to have. But they are well within their legal rights to terminate that license, and provide no further access, if you distribute them. (i.e. you have an RHEL license, and version 1.0 of a library is covered under that license, you redistribute that source, and RedHat must allow that, but they're under no obligation to continue that business relationship, and provide you continuing access to version 1.1)
That's a rough rundown on the history. What does this mean for the average linux user? Nothing, really. Unless you happen to use Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or Oracle Linux. It doesn't affect Debian, or Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Arch, or anybody else. RedHat will continue to contribute back upstream to projects like the linux kernel, or GNOME, or what have you, they will continue to sponsor and hire developers, they just will no longer be providing free and open access to the RHEL Sources.
It's not a question of legality really, but more one of an ethical nature. It sort of depends on you, as to whether or not you're bothered by RedHat doing this or not.
Unless you happen to use Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or Oracle Linux. It doesn't affect Debian, or Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or Arch, or anybody else.
So, stupid question, but would Fedora be affected at all? I know that's related to Red Hat, but I'm guessing it's not affected since it's not based on RHEL.
It's not a question of legality really, but more one of an ethical nature. It sort of depends on you, as to whether or not you're bothered by RedHat doing this or not.
I'd say I'm bothered by it, but there's not really anything I can do about it. I'm disappointed the GPL doesn't have stricter rules regarding the distribution of source code though. I feel like it kinda defeats the purpose if sources aren't freely available to anyone who wants to use them.
The only thing I think you may have gotten mixed up here is that CentOS or other clone distros didn't remove the branding. Red Hat did that themselves in thier repositories that were used in the clones.
If I'm remembering correctly, in the very early days of Centos and the like, that was the deal that Red Hat had struck...you don't use our trademarks/branding and you can have access to all of our source. Most likely so that Red Hat wouldn't get endless support tickets without pay if something went wrong on a clone package.
Thanks for the thorough explanation - What does this mean for Fedora OS? Isn't that maintained by Redhat as well? I have a fairly large fedora server base in my homelab and hope I don't need to redeploy it all!
There is a legal question. It would have to be litigated to be resolved, though. The argument is that when RHEL threatens to cut off future business, they are placing a restriction on redistribution. RHEL would argue that it's a restriction on future business, not on current redistribution, but who can say what a court would make of that distinction.
It's true that RHEL does not have to continue a business relationship in general, but the point here is that they need to follow the GPL when making relevant business decisions.
What?! I'm sorry but no that has not been my experience, and it's also contrary to the commonly accepted reputation of Linux. I like Linux, it definitely has lots of advantages and benefits, but that definitely doesn't include it 'just working' and "not causing frustration and irritation."
That really depends on your needs, and the Linux distro you’re using. Generally speaking, the greater your requirements (and therefore usage), the more finicky an OS gets.
I switched my non-techy Mum and Dad over to Linux over a decade ago (Xubuntu previously, now Zorin) and in all this time, I can count on one hand the number of times they called about an issue. The entire motivation to switch them over was because Windows was so unstable and would either tend to break after an update, or get infected by malware or something, and I got tired of being the IT guy for them and having to constantly fix it. I reasoned that Linux would be a good candidate for them because they have very simple requirements - they mainly just use a browser foe the most part, work with documents occasionally and do a printout once in a while, like for flight tickets and stuff. More than a decade later, my reasoning was proven right, and I’m glad it’s been working so well. Linux was the very definition of “just working”, at least for my parents.
Really depends on distro/use case/luck. I’ve had quite a few years without any issues, more with minimal and very rare irritations. The day-to-day experience continues is pleasant.
The few months have been somewhat more frustrating for me, and once I have a bit more leisure time I’ll switch distro to something that hopefully works better for me.
I’ve worked with windows professionally for many years, and have experienced far far more stupid inexplicable frustration with windows bugs than with Linux ones. Windows bugs are intractably unfixable and require arcane workarounds more often than not.
beyond one or two mistakes of my own doing, where i didn't read or think before running a command, linux is perfectly stable compared to windows for me atleast!
The 710M will give you trouble. Like, pain in the ass. See if you can disable it in BIOS; you won’t be using it for “serious” gaming anyways.
Distro doesn’t much matter. It’s fully up to personal preferences. Try them all (using Ventoy like @b9chomps recommended. Some distros make the installation and management of the Nvidia driver easier than others but you should ideally be disabling that GPU entirely.
I personally recommend Fedora to newcomers but as I said, that’s personal preference.
Note that if some piece of hardware (i.e. wifi) doesn’t work in one of them, it most likely won’t work in any distro.
It has the option of UEFI but the GeForce (I think) doesn’t support it.
This doesn’t make much sense to me. The GPU plays no role in that part of the boot process.
I’m planning to upgrade the RAM to 8 gigs and upgrade to an SSD
Get an SSD now. Even a dirt cheap one. 4GB is tenable with careful management but a hard drive will make everything excruciatingly slow, even on Linux.
/*
* Yeah, yeah, it's ugly, but I cannot find how to do this correctly
* and this seems to work. I anybody has more info on the real-time
* clock I'd be interested. Most of this was trial and error, and some
* bios-listing reading. Urghh.
*/
I'd love it if the KDE devs made Baloo and Akonadi optional. Their insistence on including them reminds me of Micro$oft's insistence on bundling Internet Explorer and integrating it into the OS shell in Windows 98.
DaVinci Resolve has a native Linux version, with the caveat that it can’t import mp4 files (have to convert them to another format beforehand with a tool like ffmpeg.) You also may have to do some tinkering based on your hardware - Arch Wiki has a good compatibility table, though the Debian packages will probably not match what Arch Wiki has listed, and you’ll need to use the installer from the Resolve website since I don’t think Debian has it in their repos.
If you’re looking for something free & open source, Kdenlive is also a great option, though it doesn’t have nearly as much functionality as its more professional-grade counterparts.
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