To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time. I’ve used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I’d say it’s essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Cool, that is very helpful, and yes one main reason for this is I can’t install Adobe, and Blender3D has no GPU rendering support. I have yet to come across the lack of printing, lol. But what I like is just everyday usability, and also the lack of bullshit from Microsoft, Apple, and also Android that gives me literal anxiety at this point. I dont know, it just feels like the zen garden of the computer world for some reason, but yeah more support would be grand, as well as playing Cyberpunk with mods and 60fps ultra.
This and Kubuntu are sounding good, and probably better than Bazzite for everyday and art stuff.
don’t do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software… among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don’t.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.