And IMO, that needs to change. Mint has released ISOs with updated kernels which does help. But expecting everybody to eventually graduate to a rolling release distro by the time they want to buy a new PC is just going to send people back to Windows.

The guy behind Nobara does a LOT of important work to make Linux usable at home, especially when it comes to gaming. And in case anyone doesn’t know, he is a software engineer at Red Hat, the company sponsoring Fedora, the distro that Nobara is based on.

IMO, you shouldn’t have to learn Arch just to be able to get a new PC. Eventually, people who like Ubuntu and Mint are going to want to upgrade to a new computer, and they might be in for a shock once they do. That kind of thing is what pushes people back to Windows.

My experience has been the opposite. I built a new PC last year, and only Fedora and Arch recognized the Radeon GPU and the Intel Wi-Fi. Mint was shipping a kernel that was too old to recognize either one.

I agree that KDE is better for newcomers. I’ll never understand why the newbie-friendly distros tend to favor GNOME.