385
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
385 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
84940 readers
3706 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
C'mon, microsoft. What are you DOING with your life???
I'm no linux apologist. I BARELY understand what I'm doing. If ANY task needs terminal, then that task just isn't going to happen for me.
All that said, it's time to switch to linux. And for anyone asking where they should start with all these distros....Mint. If you've never used linux before, start with Mint.
Now I'm a bit of a hypocrite for saying that, because I'm on Zorin. There's nothing wrong with Zorin. It is perfectly fine as a starter distro if you're coming from Windows. It's almost equal to Zorin in usability. Mint has one edge that cannot be overlooked for newbies.
Userbase.
EVERYONE uses Mint, which means there's going to be a broader range of support. There are times I wish I had started with Mint. But I chose Zorin when I was new, and now my heels are dug in.
That being said, YOU should use Mint.
Ugh......I can't believe this is where we are in this world. Where I have to reccomend linux, while still not knowing what the hell I'm doing.
Anyways.....use linux. Fuck microsoft. It's the only way to take back OUR hardware. They want to go full greed mode? I'm now using software which they don't make a dime on, and never can. As much as I hate the structure, I can't say anything negative involving bloat, or spyware, or anything else that I classify as "modern day bullshit".
sigh Just use linux.
I love mint, but much prefer LMDE over the Ubuntu based one.
I mean with every day passing there's less and less desktop users anyway. Most teenagers know significantly less about windows than you know about Linux. They're on iOS and android.
As an admin i see it as an opportunity to switch to Linux but the boomers are refusing to let go of microslop office so it's a bit of a fight still.
The gaming PC sector is just fine however
I've been recommending Endeavour because its "Arch with a nice installer" and it seems to go down well with modestly technical people.
Especially since they can then pick their DE.
Arch? For people new to Linux? Dude seriously ....
My dude, its.. easy?
Please do not recommend Arch-based distros to newcomers. At some point, something minor or major is going to break, and they're not going to be able to fix it. Give them something Debian-based to learn the ropes (or not). It's not going to break down on them as easily.
Also, just a follow up reply: I'll do what I want, thanks.
If you have a struggle with it thats on you, I've found it easy to get working and keep working. Even all my games through steam and lutris.
Don't assume everyone will struggle with reading error messages and googling.
EndeavourOS was my first distro, and I had a great experience. Learned a ton (sometimes by completely breaking everything. Time Shift saved my ass many times).
I'm sure not everyone learns things the same way, but breaking shit and having to learn how to fix it was the best way I could have learned about how Linux works
I think these people are having skill issues or reading comprehension issues. Arch is not hard. Infact, its less bs than de-snapping an ubuntu install.
I'm happy that things did work out for you, and indeed, "breaking shit and fixing it" is part of the rites of passage on Linux.
That said, I guess you're part of the "tech-savvy tinkerer" crowd. This demographic will handle these things gracefully and take every breakdown as a learning opportunity.
Coming from this demographic, it's easy to forget that there are people out there that deem computers mere tools, not a hobby. These people expect things to "just work", and any breakage is an annoyance, a road block, a "this Linux thing sucks". Set them up with a tinkerer's distro, and you will make them thoroughly unhappy. Not because they're wrong. Not because we're wrong. Just because of a mismatch of expectations.
So, dear penguins: let's not blindly advertise our pet distro to whoever asks (or doesn't). Let's look at who is before us, and provide them with the best experience possible. In a lot of cases, due to the influx of "just works" users, this may mean something stable in order not to put them off.
Skill issue. People cannot just passively expect to understand a complicated thing without applying themselves.
If they can't use a computer, they can't use a computer.
Using != fixing.
Do you need to learn how to drive ("use") a car? Absolutely. Do you need to have intricate knowledge of its inner workings and be able to fix even the smallest component in case it breaks? No. That's for enthusiasts.
Hard disagree. Less people should drive, they have no mechanical sympathy and scant grasp of what they're doing.
Its just as a society we've decided to enable them because it meant we could sell cars.
I dunno man, less shits broken here than on Ubuntu.
Debían based except Ubuntu, Even Ubuntu flavours like kubuntu are fine just not Ubuntu.
Wait, why did you use "í?" It's just "Debian."
Autocorrect does weird things.
I’m out of the loop, Ubuntu has been broken/unstable?
No but they have been steering towards practices that makes people uncomfortable.
They are slowly replacing part of their ecosystem with proprietary modules or modules with permissive license and people have seen this behaviour enough to know what the end goal is
As a new user I tried all the "easy" distro and they all just fucked me over really hard, they favor ease of use by restricting the user so anytime I went to do anything I just kept running into repeated minor problems. When I tried endeavor it #just works and with snapshot software you can always rollback most distros as far as I know so there is no reason to not reccomend a Linux distro that doesn't hold your hand unless there is something suepr specific the person needs that for some reason is the only thing capable of doing it reasonably well.
Yeah, thats the vibe I have with Endevour/Arch.. its just "get the fuck out of my way and let me do my work/play vidya game".
I hate snaps and flatpacks, just make real packages guys its not hard.
Never ran into anything like that. I'm hungry for more details.
It sounds you've never done that yourself. It's not hard if you know what you're doing, but it's not trivial either and may require use of a boot stick, dealing with disk encryption through the terminal, chrooting... and that is not the kinds of hoops I'd expect a newcomer to have to jump through just to fix their system.
I don't expect a newcomer to set up the snapshotting themselves, we have technology for this.
I don't mean they literally restrict you as much as they give you more hoops.
What's the difference between Zorin and mint? I'm on zorin right now to get my feet wet on linux. I am not a terminal user as I'm not technical.
Zorin and Mint are pretty similar, I wouldn't stress about it as long as you're happy with what you have
And while at that, I recomend regular Mint (which is based on Ubuntu).
There is Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), but I have found it harder to use (while I can manage, I'm not that experienced with Linux to bother to troubleshoot and solve it [at least at the time], but I think it was dependency, incompatibility, or driver issues).
Plus, the main Mint version is still the Ubuntu based one, LMDE is kinda a side project and usually isn't as up-to-date, as far as I know.
LMDE would indeed be a bad recommendation for a newbie. Regular Mint benefits from Ubuntus better hardware support, GUIs for drivers/updates, PPA support and if you have AMD graphics it's not a newbie nightmare to get the most up to date Mesa.
There is also cachyos, they are sooooooo smooth on kde plasma desktop environment.
As an arch user this is a terrible suggestion. CachyOS is a distro for enthusiasts who are ok with dealing with the Arch way of doing things. This is a distro that no beginner should be using unless they are prepared to learn how to use the terminal and learn how Linux works. Anyone else is likely to be scared away because it is "too difficult".
OP is right, just use Mint.
I never denied Mint. definitely recommend it too. Although for gaming I had a lot of issues. I am definitelt not an expert by any means, so I would also put my hat in to say cachyos with kde plasma as the desktop environment is pretty beginner friendly. I understand the arch way is difficult, but in my ignorant (as I dont know linux terminal talk too well) perspective, i think kde plasma on cachyos is a good option to look into at the least. 'A terrible suggestion' feels a slight stretch. It isn't too complicated, im saying this as a beginner
If you can use a program like Octopi I think Cachy is just as friendly as any distro. Certainly moreso than any debian derivative.
And its bleeding edge enough to make a great gaming OS
Do more people use Mint than Ubuntu these days? I've been on Arch for a decade now so I don't know the popularity of distros as well as I used to.
Yeah Mint is pretty good for a "starter" Linux OS. This is subjective, but of all the Desktop OSs, I found myself fixing shit in terminal and nailing down obscure issues a lot less often in Mint than other distros. Also, whenever a friend/family member came to me with a very old and "broken" laptop that needed saving that's what I'd throw on there. Modern Windows is way too much for the 4GB RAM dual core or whatever bullshit on those old machines. The only complaints I ever got out of them were that they couldn't run .exes and had to use LibreOffice instead of desktop Office apps, but that's about it. No crashes outside of legitimate equipment failure.
I ran it on my personal machines before I got more comfortable. Now my ideal setup is KDE/Debian though playing around with cachyOS in VMs has been pretty fun.
I don't know but it seems that Mint is pretty popular: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
Anyway, Mint is the closest to Windows 3.1/98/2000 by its simplicity. It shows windows, you can move your files and run applications, it's all I need.
Sounds good enough for average people. 👌
I switched from popos to manjaro and later mainline arch about a year ago for the AUR. It’s a lot more streamlined then all the terminal stuff needed to install third party software on Ubuntu
I remember mucking about with all these custom PPAs when on Ubuntu. The AUR is a dream compared to that. I even made my own packages because it's so simple and well-documented.
Eh, I’m a sufficiently advanced Linux user (been using it on and off since the mid to late 90s) and I use zorin. It just works and it also looks pretty good too