Hi, years ago if someone had asked, “Which Linux Distribution has the best Community Support?” I would have answered “Ubuntu”, but mainly because my journey took me from openSuse to Ubuntu, with some detours around DamnSmallLinux and Puppy Linux, with Ubuntu being the clear winner in terms of having a friendly, welcoming, and active community.
The main avenues of finding support were #ubuntu on freenode (now https://libera.chat/) and https://ubuntuforums.org/ (now retired). Back then both of these were humming with activity. Today, the activity has severely decreased; people don’t seem to be hanging out in these spaces helping each other, with the occasional expert popping in and steering the conversation. They’re mostly quiet. There’s also discourse.ubuntu.com, which I don’t know well, and the Ubuntu Matrix space, which is just an awful buggy experience. Even today, Element took 5 minutes to load, and then hit me with the “this channel is closed, the conversation continues elsewhere” which didn’t work when I clicked it. Not like IRC at all.
All this to say, I don’t think I can recommend the Ubuntu Community any more, unless it truly is the best option and I’m doing it wrong somehow. I am open to that possibility!
The others I’ve heard of, and the preconceived notions I’ve heard are:
- Debian - community geared towards more advanced / knowledgeable users
- Arch - community geared towards more advanced / knowledgeable users
- Linux Mint - less active than Ubuntu
- Fedora - corporate Red Hat?
Could anybody help me out here to find a Linux Distribution where you can talk to actual helpful humans and solve a problem together if you get stuck?
Debian is the correct answer, mainly because Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and Mint are all Debian based, so most of their suggestions work with one another.
I would argue that Ubuntu still has the biggest community. If you’re experienced enough not to be googling answers to basic stuff the Slackware community is pretty good.
I generally liked the Arch community back it the day because they would tell you to STFU and RTFM when you were asking stupid shit. That has changed now so I no longer use Arch or visit the forums
One of the advantages to using Mint is that solutions for both Mint and Ubuntu tend to work.
It’s because they’re both Debian based. Same goes for PopOS
Based on experience I’ve always found the Fedora community very helpful and knowledgeable, I wouldn’t exactly say humming with with activity on the discussion forums but maybe the best quality to quantity ratio and not much drama.
Most of the Linux support community is all handled in forums, though there are some development oriented chat spaces. If you’re looking for a place to just hang out and get live help, youre probably not going to find that.
That being said, the documentation for all distros is massive, and about as complete as you can get. That should be enough for most people, but I understand that not everyone is so technically inclined. I’ll hit some key points:
Most active: Probably Fedora or Arch Best Wiki: Arch first, Fedora second, Debian third, with others usually referring to the above Most active: Arch first, Debian second, Fedora third, with most Fedora comms happening in dev channels and issue tickets
In order to get help though, you need to get familiar with figuring out if your issue is with the actual distribution (it almost never is), the specific software you’re having an issue with, or a combo of both where the software has a configuration issue with the specific distro you’re running.
If you’re having a problem with Audacity on Fedora for instance, don’t go looking to the Fedora community for help, because it likely has nothing to do with Fedora. Go to the Audacity GitHub and search issues first, then start looking for specific information to your issue (error messages, logs…etc) next.
Arch has the arch wiki which is perhaps the best source of information on Linux, if you don’t mind reading. On a Debian or Debian based distro like Ubuntu or mint, you won’t always be able to follow the arch wiki, and might have to rely on a forum where less knowledgeable users are answering questions. Arch also has forums if that is desired.
There are distros bassed on arch that makes installation easier like EndeavorOS, if you don’t mind reading or using the terminal a bit I would recommend that.
You can also set up a multiboot usb with multiple live images ISOs using something like Ventoy. You can put a bunch of Linux ISOs on it and boot into them to test them without installing.
Ultimately, I recommend sticking with any distro for a bit until you notice a major “can not use the computer anymore” type of issue. Then instead of distro hopping, actually fix it. Once you fix a major issue like that, you will understand how useful the community and docs actually are.
And if you never encounter a major issue like that, then you win, you found the best distro. Do not try something else.
Re: the EndeavourOS, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed also has a nice installer, no?
EndeavourOS is Arch based, OpenSUSE is not. Although OpenSUSE is great too, the philosophy and approach is very different.
Would it work for general usage too?
Within Linux I see ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ users mentioned, but I’m not sure where I’d fall, or what those would roughly denote.
Like I’m familiar with what a terminal is and how it can be used for commands, I’m not like an old grandma not knowing what the big red X button does, I know not to delete system32 or to avoid sudo rm rf, but I’m not familiar with a shell, setting up an IP of your own, that stuff. I think this would label me as an average user for whom intermediate distros would be possible, but I’m not sure.
I don’t personally believe in those categories. I think it should be broken down to
- “doesn’t want to read errors”
- “willing to learn”
- “knows how to fix that error”
I think if you are ok with reading, researching, learning, and willing to make mistakes, your computer actually becomes easier to use from the terminal.
Now, your use case is important, so is your workflow. There is no correct solution and you should try to take the time to discover the right solution for yourself.
I’d say, start with a distro with a live image and test. You can reinstall a computer as often as you want with different distros.
I use endeavourOS for gaming, web browsing, hosting, development, video editing, meme creating, and many other things. So I’d say it’s really general purpose.
Live image and test?
do you mean I’d download a distro, put it on a USB, and then extract/open it in there, and test it out?
(and ofc, saving my data on my own desktop on an external hard disk, before committing to switch)?
A live image is an ISO that you can boot directly to without installing on to your drive. You can place it on a USB stick with Ventoy, and then during post you chose to boot from the USB instead of your installed drive.
The EndeavorOS ISOs are live images too.
EndeavourOS has been great for me.
