this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2021
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Perhaps including what kinds of hardware work best with them. I'm interested in people's opinions on this.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Which distros have the most hardware support?

  • Almost all firmware is baked into the kernel, so any distro with a modern kernel
  • Avoid:
    • Debian, Slackware
  • Use
    • Anything with a modern kernel
    • Linux Mint (has extra driver support)
    • Pop_OS (has extra driver support)
  • Pro Tip
    • When doing your Linux install, select non-free firmware
    • This doesn't mean you have to pay for the firmware, it just means it's not free & open source

Ultimately, they're all the same. If you want to play games and have an easy life, ask these questions:

  • How do I want to install software? (This is "what distro")
  • How do I want my desktop to look? (This is "what desktop environment (DE)")
[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

This recommendation is correct if you have an Nvidia GPU.

If you have an AMD or Intel GPU, being even more bleeding edge on the Kernel and Mesa (open source GPU drivers) is better and as a relative beginner Manjaro is probably the best choice.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 3 years ago

You only need to "Avoid" Debian if you are a real beginner. Adding the non-free repo and installing firmware from there requires adding just a couple lines to sources.list then installing certain packages.