Table of Linux Distros by Difficulty for Beginners

Tutorials & Resources
21

I never really got to understand why a simple CLI is regarded as less friendly than a GUI.
Perhaps because I grew up with BSD Unix where the only thing available was a CLI, sometimes on a teletype rather than a screen. Before vi, line editing on a teletype or a simple screen was quite a challenge.

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22

Well something thats perhaps slightly tangental to that is that when people talk about friendly they also talk about accessible. And CLI’s are hard to make more accessible than guis. (english-only commands, keyboard centric approach, hard to work with files in, lots of tools and shortcuts to memorize or have handy somewhere). So I get where people come from with their dislike for CLI’s, but I think framing it as “never seeing a terminal ever” means that a distribution is “begginer friendly” doesn’t orient us in the right direction either.

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23

All we were trying to do with that list was give users a guide as to which distros might be a suitable choice given their level of experience.

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24

I guess what I’m trying to add is that “beginner-friendly” might not always mean “no terminal use”, but maybe how intuitive the recovery/configuration/daily use feels to someone who’s casually using the system.

Some distros feel easier even with terminal use just because the system’s behavior is more transparent or the documentation is clearer. So maybe, the “amount of hand-holding” or “quality of feedback when things go wrong” could be interesting extra layers to add.

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25

Want some terminal work!!! Try compiling LFS!!!

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26

When you have mastered LFS, try compiling FreeBSD from source.
BSD is an easier build than Linux.

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27

I am now compiling LFS in a VirtualBox VM, using W11 as my host. Did not know I had to have the “which” command installed and showing in “/usr/bin/which” for the vbox-guest-additions to work. Working on dependencies for “nss”, which is required for “firefox”!!!

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28

Maybe try a low level window system this time… like Fluxbox or Enlightenment.

After you have built a system in a VM, I wonder is it possible to extract it and make it a hard install?.. There would be driver issues and a filesystem reconfigure, but it should be possible. Want to try?

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29

A suggested edit: there is an LFS version with systemd.

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30

Thanks. Edit done. I need to fix the Markdown file too.

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