Like the title says, my partner's laptop was still running Windows 10 and they got infected with a backdoor malware. We'll need to reset her computer. It's an Asus Tuf Gaming A15.
She's been using Windows 10 for as long as she could but support is running out. At her work the computers are on Windows 11 and she hates it. Plus she's fervently anti-AI and wants none of that forced Copilot bullshit and privacy eroding features of Windows 11. She's seen me use it for over a year now and I also installed it on our old OG 1st gen MS Surface Pro table and she sees how well it's going. So now she wants Linux on her laptop.
After careful consideration and comparisons, I've decided to go with Zorin OS. I thought of Linux Mint, but it just looks so dated. There are inconistencies in the looks and I feel it lacks some features that I found that Zorin OS has. (It's essentially Gnome with QoL extras.) My only concern is that Zorin has Snaps out of the box but I don't think that's a concern for her. I'll install it on a BTRFS partition with automatic snapshots and grub-btrfs to recover from snapshots. And I'll schedule monthly backups of her files through rsync, or whatever the built-in backup tool does, onto an external drive.
I've tried Zorin on a VM and it was already outstanding. On the live USB session it was able to detect her NVidia card and recommend either the nouveau or NVidia proprietary driver. Everything worked out of the box. So I'm fairly confident everything will work well. One concern I have is she uses her personal laptop for work, and needs to connect to her work's Microsoft account. I see there's an accounts section in the settings where this can be set up, but I've never used it, so that'll be a first. Her work also requires Cisco AnyConnect VPN client. There is a Linux client, but you need a Cisco account to download it, and her work IT department does not support Linux, so I don't know if she'll be able to get it. One of the IT people has Linux on his machine and was able to set it up so maybe we'll rely on him for that part. She'll also need MS Office which uses a work license. I wonder how that will work on Bottles. We can try with Libre Office but I know the spacing and fonts get all wonky when you open a MS Word document or a Powerpoint presentation. Every other app she uses is open source apps like Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, etc. And she doesn't game much, but I know this will work just fine. And the Gnome-Network-Displays will allow her to cast her screen onto our NVidia Shield device for watching movies.
Is there anything else I should be concerned about? Maybe hardware wise? Or anything to so with Snaps that could cause issues?
Thanks. I understand the concern. I don't think the Snaps are going to be a big deal for her. As long as she understands not to install Snap apps unless strictly necessary. (And she won't need to from the list of software she uses.)
I thought about getting her Debian with KDE. That's probably what I'm going to do with my own PC as I want to avoid Kubuntu 26.04 and their forced snaps. (They're a concern for me though lol)
I looked at Pika and Nobara. She doesn't want a gaming focused OS. They're also pretty niche and might not last long, relatively speaking. I mean Nobara is one guy (Glorious Eggroll) and PikaOS is very new and is also based on Sid (testing, unstable) which can potentially come with it's loads of problems.
She's new to Linux. It was either Mint or Zorin. I went with Zorin for the desktop experience that's loads more polished with great features. Mint seems a bit old in comparison and I find the look isn't really consistent throughout. It lacks some customization features as well.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe this Pika OS is right for me though. I'm a power user and I use my PC for gaming a lot, and I'm used to Debian. And Sid, honestly, is still far more stable that Arch while still being a rolling release with somewhat recent packages. Set up with BTRFS snapshots in case something breasks... This might be the right thing for me.
I understand the concerns on how long some of these might last, like Nobara, but now that it's been a couple of years and some of GEs work is being used by Steam/Valve, I think it's safe enough to recommend.
Normally I would have instead recommended Bazzite, as others here have, since she doesn't seem like a power user. But because of those other uses she might need, it's a bit riskier to have to work in a more locked down system in case you yourself have to rig something up for her for work, hence I didn't recommend an immutable distro.
PikaOS I understand is more niche though, but it is still Debian based and Debian is pretty stable, even Sid is. It's more of you preferred a Debian option.
The reason I mentioned the gaming focused OS' isn't because they're gaming focused, but because they likely have good driver support for her laptop out of the box, and controller etc support as well. I wouldn't say either really has a heavy "gamerz" aesthetic to them (Pika if anything is just cute Neytirix vibes), and they come with KDE options which can be customized however you like. I think you'll like it as a power user, and their updater is handy too. Also they set up Discovery to already have access to Flathub as well.
Now for the main reason I'd recommend against Zorin.
The issue is they're update model + how they have things set up. Gnome + extensions can be prone to messing up with updates, and Zorin doesn't usually do the longest of updates unless you go with the paid editions. It's also heavier on system resource use. It's not the worst option, but it's not the best either, especially since she has someone who understands Linux decently with her too. But most of all, if you really want something to look like Windows, you can get a better result on a cleaner distro with KDE than you can with Gnome and extensions. Here's some links - from Windows XP to Windows 10.
https://store.kde.org/p/2136378
https://store.kde.org/p/1407086
https://github.com/AlexcomX/Windows-8-Dark-Theme-for-KDE-Plasma
https://github.com/yeyushengfan258/Win10OS-kde
If you really want to make it feel like a seamless transition for her, that last one might be it, though there's other variations of it too. It's much more Windows-like than Zorin, all while making it easy to avoid snaps entirely and Ubuntu dependency.
It's your choice though, and if you do end up going with Zorin, well, that's still kilometers better than Windows 11. Just want to make sure you know all the options out there for switching someone away from Windows. I've done Fedora KDE + Windows 10 theme in the past for an older family member that wasn't too tech savvy that couldn't update to 11. Just told them it was a new update and they thought it was still windows, though they really liked how the new "update" really sped up their computer a lot.