Crazygirl’s Obsessive Linux Addiction

So you finally decided to ditch Micro$#@! and their horrid horridness? (At this point, M$-bashing is a signature bit) Awesome! Welcome to the club!

Now if you’re new to the game (which let’s be honest most of you are. Hells I still am, I needed some super-helpful guidance from a veteran sysad I trust when putting this all together, and I’ve been maining Linux since before you lot went into Uni), you will very quickly notice that Linux has a lot of… options. Fedora? Arch (btw)? PUPPY?!?! Why is a FFXIV Summon a Linux (Garuda), Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, Kali? Oh, and apparently Bazett is a Linux as well?! And we even have Cursed Sorcerers (Nobara)?!

Yeeeeesh, nononono NOOO. How about…. we boil this down to… Three. Yes. Three options. Let’s call them EASY, MEDIUM, and HARD. These are OS’s that I have fielded (well, with the exception of MEDIUM in the configuration I will recommend, but I’ve used enough spins of it to confidently vet it. The options are!

EASY - ElementaryOS - ElementaryOS is an operating system I have fielded for a couple of older home improvement contractors when their computer went kaput. I have NEVER heard a complaint from them, and I will take that as proof that they somewhat know what they are doing. ElementaryOS is a spin on Ubuntu which not only tosses out the bad part of Ubuntu (Snaps), but also has a very lovely graphical app store (AppCenter) which I think I would use more than the command line (NOT AN EASY FEAT!)

Now, some caveats - AppCenter’s flatpak repository is not FlatHub for those who know about it, but ElementaryOS also curates what goes into it, and does not try to pair it alongside or claim to be Flathub. (UNLIKE FEDORA!) Also, ElementaryOS is very much a Beginner’s Linux - as you advance through the ranks so to speak it is expected you will graduate past it and settle on either the MEDIUM or HARD options. (Or Find Your Own Path, who knows. I love a good distro hop here or there)

MEDIUM - Debian(w/Flathub) - Debian is one of THE G.O.A.Ts of the Linux realm, and with a mild enhancement, can be made into a formidable force. (Hell, I might actually try it if I ever decide to Distro Hop out of my Main). Debian is the Queen Of Stability; if you don’t go out of your way to break it, you Will Not crash or otherwise experience sudden failure on a Debian system. The same cannot even be said of Linux Mint! (I recently had to reconfigure Nvidia drivers on my wife’s LM system because the OS decided it was smarter than us and that she didn’t really NEED access to GPU Rendering as an artist.) The primary problem with Debian, however, is age - Debian prioritises stability over absolutely everything else, to the point where Debian’s repositories can be upwards of FIVE YEARS BEHIND. (But hey - it won’t crash out!)

Obviously we all have applications that hard-require the latest and greatest (Fucking DISCORD being one of them) - so how do you solve that in Debian? You don’t in its base state… BUT you CAN install Flatpaks and the Flathub repository! Flatpaks are self-contained applications that come with the executable and everything needed to run that executable in one nice convenient format. Is it bloat? Absolutely - you have all the OS supporting structure For Every App Individually. I DON’T LIKE THAT! But what I DO like is functioning and up-to-date software! (My vanilla Discord client on my Main is a Flatpak because Arch is a third class citizen in the eyes of Discord - Their Linux support is exclusively .deb packages, which are cool!!! FOR DEBIAN.) Also if you like AM2R but can never get the Vanilla install to work (Hi! That’s me!) the Flatpak pre-loads that bullshite .NET Runtime 6.0 that it needs.

So basically what you have here is probably THE most sturdy flavour of Linux to ever exist, plus an Expansion Pak that allows you to bypass its biggest weakness at the cost of storage space. But you kind of have to configure that yourself.

HARD¹ - EndeavourOS - This is my OS that I main, which is based on Arch. Arch Linux is the Latest And Greatest, you’re on the Bleeding Edge of Cool Linux Shite… but that also means if some piece of Software goes kaput, OR Arch switches out how they store firmware blobs (AS HAS HAPPENED IN 2025! I HAVE HAD TO DO SOME CONSOLE MAGIC TO OVERCOME THAT), you suddenly need to get familiar with Arch’s command line structure and fast. Oh, and don’t expect much help from Arch’s forums - you’re using a spinoff of Arch, therefore Not Arch, and you’re also using the AUR, which is not nearly as well-curated as Arch’s official repos, which you also have for good measure. Also because it’s rolling release you need to update early and often or you WILL pay for it (Like I did when my last EOS install bricked and I had to repair my OS from inside my OS, which I did, because braggng rights, and Arch is the best for manual repairs, but I don’t think anyone outside of a select group could pull that without losing their mind)

But once you DO have that system mastery… Nothing is off limits. And you can go even further… beyond… (AHHHHHHHHHHHH intensifies for 10 minutes)

And those are my three recommended Linux options! I will include some honorable mentions down below along with their difficulty level in my eyes:

EASY/HARD - Linux Mint - Linux Mint is the Internet People’s Most Recommended Linux OS. It’s really cool for what it does when it works, and it’s the Turn Your Brain Off option that feels so similar to Windows it’s not even funny. When Mint works it is very very easy, and they have lovely little graphical tools for everything. It’s kind of a dream. IF SOMETHING BREAKS HOWEVER, it is almost invariably going to be Driver related, IME it will be NVIDIA related, and the difficulty level spikes up to HARD very fast. Linux Mint is also, like ElementaryOS, a Beginner distro. I expect that it will be graduated past.

HARD - Arch - Not much to say here, except that unlike EndeavourOS, Arch maintains its HARD status Full Time. But if you’ve repaired EndeavourOS at the command line level, you’ll be just as comfortable here. I actually used Arch straight for a while before switching back to EOS because EOS is comfier and I didn’t feel like retrofitting my Arch to fit EOS.

VERY HARD - NixOS - NixOS is Config Files, the Operating System. The core benefit of NixOS is you can create a reproducible environment meaning I give you a config file, you can spin up a NixOS build with the EXACT specifications in that file. I do not think anyone will be using it, but it exists.

SECRET - Chimera Linux - Chimera is a Linux I need to try out, but it removes a lot of GNU dependencies, which most people will need to run Games, etc.

AWWW - Puppy Linux - It’s cute, okay?!

Now how to install these?!

First off, select your distro: EASY (and yes you can pay $0) MEDIUM HARD

Download the appropriate image file for the OS you’re after (with Debian, you can pick the straight installer straight out of the link above, or Pick a livecd here, just make sure you know what you want.

Now we need to tribute… A FLASH DRIVE!!!

If you’re on windows, I recommend Rufus which will help you graphically murder all the data on that flash drive to turn it into a bootable Micro$#@! Liberation Instrument. If you’re on Linux, you’ll very likely need to do:

sudo umount /dev/WTF*
sudo dd if=/path/to/your/iso of=/dev/WTF bs=4M oflag=direct	

and wait for the idiot light on your drive to flicker like a madlass. (oh also substitute WTF for what your drive actually gets mounted as. If you have NVME drives it’ll likely be sda, but it could be sdb if you have a SATA drive. ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO CHECK HOWEVER BECAUSE YOU CAN DESTROY YOUR ACTUAL DATA THIS WAY!)

And now with that out of the way… you can shut down your target computer, plug in the drive, and boot to it. Woot!

Congratulations!

Since yall are on windows, recommendation is to grab Rufus and an 8GB USB (this comp DOES support USB boot, right? Also you MAY need to turn off Secure Boot, because depending on which Linux you grab, the OEM may not have included that OS’s keys in its default trusted keystore)

As for Distro, it really depends on what you’re going for.