edit: Fedora it is then!
He will be running the AMD 9800 X3D w/ RX 9070 XT, B850 motherboard.
I am deciding between either Fedora (probably KDE) and Bazzite (also KDE), but I’m not sure whether an atomic distro would be better/worse for a newbie.
As far as I understand, atomic distros can be easily rolled back after an update, but you are unable to use apt/dnf/etx, you need to use Flatpak, I think. Would that be limiting for the average user? Also, does Bazzite have better driver support for newer AMD hardware compared to Fedora?
I would recommend Linux Mint. Its really simple to work with and basically plug and play. Comes with a solid software selection and built in tools. I personally really like the cinammon and mate editions. Cinnamon has a bit more modern look to it and MATE is a bit more retro.
I heard that Linux Mint doesn’t play nice with newer hardware? Or is that only an Nvidia thing
I had to use an AMD provided script to get Mint to work with my ryzen AI 9 370, as the system couldn’t drive the built in graphics
First boot had to happen with the “nomodeset” ( no [graphics] mode set[ting]) or it couldn’t do any graphics, the screen went black as soon as it got out of the initial text mode
So no, Mint isn’t great with very new equipment
It has to do with LTS kernel (iirc) making it incompatible with certain new(er) hardware. I recommend Fedora KDE.
Mint is based on Ubuntu, which has a Hardware Enablement Stack offering newer kernels. I would expect that (or maybe something Mint-specific) to take care of it.
I still would never recommend a “stable release” or LTS distro because the vast majority of security vulnerabilities never receive a CVE, and as a result the a large amount of vulnerabilities go unpatched for months. Also I like distros that take security seriously (Fedora and openSUSE).
Usually they backport security fixes to the stable version.
As I mentioned, most security vulnerabilities are not reported because it may not seem security related. The distro maintainers can’t keep up with every package and read all the commits, so as a result security fixes often go unfocused. It is a real big problem that many security researchers acknowledged.
Anything Ubuntu-based (and thus Debian-based) may not be the best choice for brand new hardware, as it takes a bit longer for all the drivers to make it into the kernel.
My husband is using the non-LTS version of Ubuntu 25.10 with a 9060XT and has driver support and is happy with it. Mint would not support his card at this time according to our research. Bazzite was just a disaster for him – lots of issues with not sleeping and the immutable distro made it hard to do what he wanted since he uses spinning hard drives for storage and wanted them to automount as well as managing a huge music library housed on a NAS. I think some of the issues were with his older B450 motherboard despite having updated the bios to the latest stable version. I am on older hardware and love Mint. I feel at home on the Debian-based distros though. Depends on your use case and how much you’re willing to learn. Protip: Before you leave your friend alone with the system, make sure that it will do normal system things properly – enter sleep, wake from sleep, reboot, etc since these are the things that will drive an average person insane when they don’t function correctly.
Will do that.
I ran an older Nvidia card an currently a new amd card on Linux mint without problems. I suggest you try it out first using a live install on a USB stick.
It also doesn’t have HDR if that’s important to you. I switch into kubuntu whenever I want to watch something in HDR.
I believe you need to be on kernel 6.12+ for the 9070 XT. Mint 22.3 will support that.