Ask Lemmy

Can't go wrong with Linux Mint

Cachyos, I swapped from windows with it, og dualbooted, ended up never wanting to open windows agaun

Put Linux Mint on an USB thumbdrive and play with it until you are comfortable. Be wary it would be somewhat slower than a system installed on the laptop's drive.

Then, if it is a spare laptop, go ahead and install it. Avoid dual booting, it is more hassle than worth at this stage in your journey. Disable secureboot before installing, or Windows will try to hijack the laptop. You can always re-enable it later if you really want to, but it's such a bad implementation currently that it doesn't actually provide much security.

Alternatively: if all you want is to use the computer, without having to worry about the technical details of managing an OS. Try something like Bazzite (for gaming) or Aurora (general productivity) instead. They just work and will (practically) never break.

Ubuntu, Ubuntu is fine, it gets hate but tbh it's fine. It's well supported, issues getting fixed and there's plenty of info on how to fix stuff when you inevitably find something that doesn't work.

Fedora has 2nd best repos compared to Arch/AUR in my opinion, but because Fedora is actually stable I use it instead to avoid headaches. As much as I miss pacman, Fedora just works. Flatpaks and Appimages fill in the blind spots.

What Desktop Environment or Window Manager to use is your call. I spend most time in my livimg room vs at my actual desktop so I like GNOME it's couch friendly. Desktop I'm KDE. Boring I guess but I'm too lazy to fuck with ricing.

The most important decision as a new Linux user is the desktop environment, the most similar desktop environment to the Windows desktop are KDE Plasma and Cinnamon. This means your best options are:

• Linux Mint (Cinnamon): They are the creators of the Cinnamon desktop environment and will be the default on installation.
• Kubuntu (KDE Plasma): This is Ubuntu's official KDE Plasma flavour, it comes with everything as usual just different desktop.
• Fedora (KDE Edition): Same story as Ubuntu here, only that with Fedora's own packages and environment.

First I would check if the hardware is compatible (99% of the time is). Then I would check what software you need and/or want and check if it is available at these distros, and get familiar on how to install the software packages (either with their respective app stores or in the command line).

There is a lot to learn but with these distros you can just install, forget and simply keep using them for eternity.

The last and more important tip I have is to not to worry about the sea of options out there, you will not be missing anything huge by picking one or the other. Which is how most of new users feel (I did in my time).

Hope you have a great Linux journey mate!

Any of the distros branded as beginner-friendly will do. It doesn't really matter. Don't get analysis paralysis.

Choose one and go for it. Use it for one whole week, and ask questions. Then decide if you want to keep it or look for something different.

Note that the desktop you choose is an important choice. I recommend KDE, but you can try different ones. Most major distros offer a variety, so you don't have to install a different distro to get a different desktop.

Experiment and have fun!

imo every single beginner friendly distro all have the same problem. They are, for some extent, easier to use than others, until they're not, at which point you find yourself digging through documents and forums or asking ChatGPT to break the system.

After few years of that dance, I found Linux Mint to be the easiest and Fedora KDE to be the nicest.

My recommendation is, don’t go with any of the distros you haven’t heard of before.

At some point, you will need to google “ how do I…” many many times. It is much better if you have something popular and common to do that in.

I have tried to approach this off the basic principle of “Oh, it’s basically Fedora!” on a few distributions but it doesn’t work as reliably as you’d like.

Mainly I would steer you away from any distro that uses Gnome. Very short answer as to why: most desktop environments bear some resemblance to Windows, Gnome is more like MacOS with a concussion.

I think you can't really go wrong with trying ubuntu or linux mint. There are plenty of guides, most important thing is to back up your data in case you mess something up, you don't want to lose any files over a silly mistake.

Linux Mint and PopOS.

I know you want to move away from Windows, but trying to choose something completely different might be a bad idea, you're already unfamiliar with the system also being unfamiliar with the way to interact with stuff might be a bit too much. That being said I don't think any of the largest DE mentioned would be a problem, so look at pictures and choose on what you think looks best.

As for distro lots of people recommend Mint and I'll back that up, although I haven't used it in years it was my go to distro to give new users as it was very plug and play.

And the two recommendations I always give new users are:

• Keep / and /home in separate partitions, this allows you to format your system, change distro, or whatever without losing your personal files.

• As much as possible use the package manager, googling a program and downloading an installer is 99% of the time the wrong way to install stuff and a major cause of problems for new users.

I'm a big fan of PopOS.

Most people advocate for Mint, but when I run Mint, I don't feel like I've made a step forwards in terms of UI. I'm a huge fan of the design choices around PopOS. It just feels much more modern than windows.

If you use your machine predominantly for gaming, Nobara is a good option. Built by the same people who made Proton (the tool to get Windows games working well on Linux). Comes with everything you need to get going out of the box. Based on Fedora so lots of community support. Comes with either KDE Plasma or GNOME to give you the desktop environment you prefer.

I was in your exact spot some months ago. I went with Linux Mint, and I have been thoroughly converted. Feel free to check my post history, there was a lot of great information provided by the Linux community. Good luck and enjoy!!

I find Fedora provides a great balance between new code and stability. I've had lots of trouble getting distros like Ubuntu to work with newer apps and features.

Maybe it's just me and maybe it's that my experience is quite old, but I would say it is not worth messing with dual boot if that's what you're thinking. It can be a big hassle to get working, and has some chance of screwing up your Windows side during installation.

Instead, buy a new SSD or hard drive and swap it into the place of the old one, then do a clean single-boot Linux install. I prefer Debian MATE which has a Windows-like UI, but again there are lots of choose from. If something goes wrong or if you don't like it, you can swap drives again and be back where you started.

I tried Linux Mint Cinnamon but swapped to Fedora Workstation. I like Fedora Workstation, it’s very well animated and smooth.

But I think I heard in another YouTubers review that on her laptop it wasn’t as battery efficient as other distros. But I like it on my desktop pc.

Zorin Linux is very Windows'ish (xp) :]

As long as you have the free drive space, any of the major distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, NixOS, Arch) are a good choice.

Personally I like Kubuntu, but at this point, unless you have special requirements they are all variations on a theme.

IT guy here, I mostly work with Windows, but have daily driven Linux in the past and am planning on switching back to Linux when Windows 10 goes EOL.

Anyway, here are my thoughts.

Ubuntu - simple to use, but has a history of doing their own thing to the detriment of the user. Currently pushing their own alternative to Flatpaks, Snaps, which is built around centralizing apps around Canonicals servers.

Mint - similar to Ubuntu in terms of use, based on Debian, well known and seemingly working well. Good starting point for everyone.

Fedora Linux - easy to use, more standard Linux than Ubuntu, based on Red Hat, focused more on using the latest tech when compared with Mint and Ubuntu.

Manjaro - for the more experienced users, based on Arch, modern, but a bit more unstable than the other distributions mentioned here.

There are other's but few that I have actual experience with and can be called newbie friendly, so it would be unfair to add distributions I don't have experience with.

Fedora, imo, strikes a great balance between modern, cutting edge, and stable. It's typically what I recommend.

Ive had a good time with PoPOS. Works well with Steam for instance.

Mint if you like windows, Ubuntu if you like Mac.

Or whatever else looks interesting. Try a couple. It's not hard to just replace it with another if you don't like it. Most of them are easy to run off a USB stick to try out first too