What is the persons skill level and are both of you OK with you picking up the slack?
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026
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She's a pretty proficient windows user who mentioned looking at kbuntu. She can probably handle some rough edges on her own, but I have no interest in long term support. So probably mint π€£
I was going to recommend a kubuntu lts, maybe help install flatpak support
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Debian
With Mate desktop
Converted my non-tech wife to Mint without a single hiccup after her laptop crapped out - intuitive af for lifelong windows users - my kids will have never known another OS outside of their school issued chromebooks as theyβre only just experiencing desktop environments
especially for new converts (or those that do not know what an OS is).. the curated store of applications makes it very easy to push people away from microsoft.
Mint has been my go-to, except for a couple of people who ended up with pop!_os.. mostly cause I showed them some options and that's the one they thought looked cool lol
What are this options? I just switched to mint yesterday. I had a spare hard drive and a 12 year old computer not being used. The 120gb ssd is lightning fast compared to the old 1tb HD and it turned this old broken uselessness into a slick new machine. But I'm almost a complete newbie at Linux so mint/cinnamon it is.
A lot of them are debian/ubuntu based ones. Mint, zorin; pop!_os used to be in the list as well, but less so now, since COSMIC is kinda under baked (even if I myself am a big fan).. then for people who know what a computer is I also usually throw in some non-debian distros like fedora/nobara, and for people I actively trust to be capable of using a computer (which is mostly my friends who work in IT/computing or related fields) and who run bleeding edge hardware they also sometimes had ones like cachy or endevour thrown in.. the bleeding edge hardware feels less relevant now tho, with no one being able to afford a computer :p
Anywho, mint is fine, there's no reason to not stick to it
I've been installing Fedora Silverblue on family member's computers. No complaints so far. They're all non-technical users.
A Fedora variant of some sort since they are up-to-date in terms of features and have a low learning curve
Likely either mint or popos
They tend to be the most liked by newcomers. Enough so that they don't miss windows, or want to try something else a week later.
I think popos definitely deserves mention here. Cosmic has come a long way in a short time and the nvidia support is really helpful.
Initially I went with Ubuntu for my father in law, but he wouldnt stop messing with it and breaking things. So, last time it broke I installed arch with gnome, and now he doesnt know how to break it. Its been solid for over 2 years now on his 2010 macbook pro.
Does Mint have screensaver and locking issues with Cinnamon?
I install Mint on computers of people that don't want Windows and that I have to help, but I personally use Debian and MATE. Recently I tried to use Cinnamon on Debian but the screensaver was not always working. Sometimes I was away for days and when I was coming back, my monitor was still on. And sometimes the screensaver got stuck, impossible to remove without restarting my session.
I have a friend that tried Mint too, and he basically told me the same thibg was happening to him.
I have not heard about this from other folks to whom I installed Mint, but since they're all very basic users that turn off their computer every time they are done, it never came up.
It would be my only issue with Mint for beginners. If they leave their computer running and come back later, there's a slight chance that the screensaver will either not be started, or very difficult to exit.
I believe this is an X issue, not a Mint issue. Most other distros have switched to Wayland, but Mint will use X until Wayland is mature enough.
Not strictly a Mint issue, but it's still sotfware from them.
The development of Cinnamon began by the Linux Mint team following the April 2011 release of GNOME 3...
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Never happens for me, across a laptop and three PCs
My Couch PC runs mint, and sometimes I forget to turn it off.
I'm not running a classic screensaver though, it just turns of the video output after a while, and eventually the tv turns off too.
I haven't had any issues with getting the video output back once I return, but the longest its been left alone is about 8h...
What the crap? Surely this canβt be a widespread issue?
I don't want to spam multiple links with examples, but you can look this up on your favourite search engine to find multiple current problems with Cinnamon's screensaver. It seems pretty common and that's why I'm asking.
Here's a link that's from a month ago listing all the possible causes.
Mint is always my go to safe suggestion.
Depends what their level of technical comfort is. A friend of mine just got switched over to Kubuntu because it was Windows flavored enough for him to make the jump. He's more comfortable with tech but wasn't a Linux daily driver prior to that though.
For others, yeah, Mint is probably what I'd aim for. It kinda depends on the target demographic.
If like most people they only really need a browser, Linux Mint. If they're more of a power user, let them try a few DEs (Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Cosmic, XFCE) and choose a distro based on which they prefer.
Are you committing to having her Linux setup to do everything her windows can do? Mint would be good at that point.
CachyOS, as it's the one I'm using.
By installing it for them, I can only expect I'll be also called upon to support it. Thus choosing the one I'm most familiar with right now.
NixOS and tell them to figure it out.
if it helps, as a lifetime Windows user I installed Linux Mint on an old laptop a few weeks ago, and used it for a week while travelling, and it went well :D It's just different enough from Windows to have a bit of a learning curve, but nothing too scary.
Bodhi!
Ideally it would be a laptop/distro pairing that is officially supported by the laptop vendor. For better or worse, I think most often the distro is Ubuntu or Red Hat.
Iβve never used for-fee subscription distros like Ubuntu Pro or RHE, but if someone had the money to burn and a viable use case, I wouldnβt stop them.
RHEL (and I'm assuming Ubuntu Pro) is really more for like your company's servers than an end user's desktop. There's really no reason to go that route unless you really need to get security patches for a super long time but won't just upgrade I guess
Agreed, these would be very niche for a consumer laptop. I have seen them available, though, specifically Ubuntu Pro for my Lenovo Thinkpad. Long-term driver support is the only reason I can imagine.
RHEL is great for servers, but not an awesome experience for a user workstation, IMO
Fedora because a) it's what I use so it's easier for me to help them with and b) it's organizationally big and stable.
we have done this before and our go-to is Pop!_OS. it seems to be learned reasonably quickly.
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