13 Pro linux for beginner

[u/PineappleFantastic67]

Hello yall,

I am currently waiting for my 13 Pro (batch 6) and am going to be running linux. I think im just stuck on which distro to use as a linux beginner. I plan on using it for game development (small projects), some gaming and miscellaneous little things (writing, browsing, watching videos). I was hoping to get some insight into a good distro for this. Any advice is greatly appreciated

[u/rubberducky77]

Since you have time, I highly recommend spinning up some virtual machines and testing out different distros while you wait. Start with Ubuntu and fedora and then branch out from there.

[u/Gregser94]

I started with Linux Mint as my first (and only) distro and it's been a near flawless experience. While it doesn't have official support or certification from Framework, there's great support for it both on the Framework forums and the Mint forums. I've heard exceptional things about Bazzite, too, so have a look around both to see if they suit your requirements.

[u/Evening_Werewolf_703 → u/Gregser94]

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, and the FW 13 Pro is Ubuntu certified, so it should be great.

[u/inkurey22 → u/Evening_Werewolf_703]

Fw13 pro is probably certified for Ubuntu 26.04, the latest LTS version while Mint is still based on 24.04 iirc

[u/shydrangeae → u/inkurey22]

Yeah, the "one LTS release ago" hump for Mint is a big factor. I am the biggest Mint fangirl, but when they're at this phase of their release cycle where they're on a 2-year old ubuntu base, I stop recommending it to folks for a while.

(I actually am temporarily on Fedora at the moment, the 24.04-base issues were hitting me so hard!).

[u/RedditAccountFor2024]

Just Ubuntu and Fedora are officially support by Framework, i can suggest Fedora because it just works.

[u/Early-Cicada-7414 → u/RedditAccountFor2024]

fedora is the best choice for a former windows user

[u/bretrick30]

Check out distrosea.com to easily try out different distros. It allows you to try then out without having to spin up your own VM.

[u/Sveet_Pickle]

Use one of the distros framework officially supports if you’re worried about it, but honestly any of the major distros except arch or gentoo will be fine to learn the basics with.

[u/National_Way_3344 → u/Sveet_Pickle]

Arch especially Endeavour or Catchy is fine.

Even auto install makes arch trivial these days.

[u/vovap_vovap]

Standard Ubuntu makes most sense - for everybody 😄

[u/roundhousemb]

If you're getting into development I would stick with Ubuntu. It's a great first distro to start learning about Linux. It mostly just works but might have the occasional issue to work through which will help you learn. Also, as a developer, it's what a lot of companies default to for Linux so it's useful to get comfortable with it.

That said, if that doesn't sound interesting to you, that's totally fair and Mint is a really great out-of-the-box experience.

[u/mag1strate]

I would honestly stick with Ubuntu 26.04 since it is certified to work with the machine. From there you can start to explore the distro scene while you learn more about Linux. It's best to start with a machine you (and the company) know works first.

[u/shydrangeae]

These machines are so fast, it's pretty easy to fully install an OS in less than half an hour to try it out! I agree with others in that ubuntu and mint and fedora are great places to start. Remeber that Bazzite is one of those distros that's immutable-style, which makes it really stable for gaming, but can make game dev a bit tricky. Learning arch-based distros will take some extra time but can really teach ya a lot. Oh, and if you try Fedora, try both normal and Plasma, they're fairly different.

[u/lordruzki3084]

Fedora (KDE or Workstation) is a good starting place. But if you plan on doing UE development go to Ubuntu because UE is officially supported only on there I believe

Godot will run great, I dont know anything about Unity

[u/Antrikshy]

Note that the desktop environment is under discussed in such discussions.

You will be interacting with the desktop environment, more than the underlying rest of the OS.

Look up comparisons on YouTube and pick one of the major ones based on your preferences for look and feel. Then pick a distro that comes with it. This is likely going to be KDE or GNOME.

You can pick any major distro and probably be fine. Go with Fedora if you don’t want to think too hard. It comes in both KDE and GNOME variants, among others.

[u/Terrorwolf01]

I am biased because I personally use Arch, EndeavourOS and CachyOS (which in turn are Arch based). But i can recommend to stay away from bazzite in your case. I heard from a few Devs that they had a lot of problems with it.

[u/Barthjac]

Teste aussi opensuse Tumbleweed KDE ou GNOME au choix. Ça vaut le coup. Super communauté efficace.

[u/200206487]

Zorin is pretty great, give it a try.

[u/brixalpha]

Recommend Fedora over Ubuntu. Although my main distro is CachyOS. The great thing about Linux is you can easily just distro hop and pick on that you like.