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?
Immutability is a double edged sword. I bricked my drive permissions trying to get Bazzite to let me change my login screen background. Everyone assumes that immutability will prevent these sort of things, but for me, switching to a non immutable distro (Garuda) meant I didn’t have to muck about in the more touchy settings because I didn’t have to fight the restrictions in the OS anymore.
Right click image > set as wallpaper > both
It would be nice if it were that easy, but the login screen settings are in the immutable portion.
I don’t care anymore though, I switched to Garuda and everything works as expected out of the box.
That’s just not true I did it with this method on a clients computer three days ago.
Great, maybe they fixed it. Still don’t care because I moved on to a great system a few years ago where that didn’t need to be fixed.
Right but if the issues are fixed then immutable is the right choice for beginners.
maybe it was a double edged sword years ago.
Look, I’m not going to study immutable systems for other potential problems just to argue with you. I’m just pointing out that sometimes you can’t predict what will cause a problem for someone and there are other easy to use options out there, so people can make well-informed decisions.
I’m sure Bazzite is great, I liked it well enough while I was using it, but it wasn’t until after I switched to something else that Linux started making sense to me. Bazzite may be harder to break, but for me as a Linux newbie, it wasn’t “better” and it felt weird to use in a way Garuda never did.
There are countless documented issues that are fundamental to non-immutable systems, your example is both not a fundamental issue with a design and has been fixed. It’s not good info.
Whether you like it or not, “I had trouble with that distro but not this other” is always valid info.