The main logo choice is fine, no complaints there, but the choices for the others just seem so disjointed from each other (not to mention they basically just chose the old Leap logo again, but in yellow). I really liked the idea of having some sort of unifying design element across the logos to indicate they are all OpenSUSE products. There were some decent concepts with that idea floating around.
Get Ubuntu, Mint, or PopOS don’t bother with the others at first as it will be more difficult to find help on forums with lesser known versions of Linux. If you have an Nvidia as your main graphics card you might have a better time with PopOS as it comes pre configured with the right drivers and everything.
I've been linux-curious on-and-off for years. I've toyed with it several times but always gone back to Windows eventually. I have a laptop with a 7th gen Intel CPU that is not supported on Windows 11, so I decided to wipe it and threw the latest version of Linux Mint on it. Everything (except for a fingerprint reader) worked straight out of the figurative box, and I've been happily running it on that machine for about 6 months now. I think Mint is a good choice if you want a simple windows-like experience.
I still have a desktop PC running Windows for games and Adobe Lightroom and stuff, but I won't be going back to Windows on that laptop.
First time? Use Ubuntu. Not only is it easy to use and a good UX overall, most tutorials assume a Ubuntu based distro (there are differences between distros that can be...hard to translate over). That's going to be really useful when you're looking up how to do stuff
This is not 2005 when the vast majority’s experience with interactive UX on a screen was Windows. People today operate Android, iOS much more so than Windows. Thus they are able to grok multiple OS chrome paradigms without much difficulty. And then the OS chrome is rather simple and therefore learning it doesn’t cost much or yield significant benefits should you have gotten that knowledge for free. Therefore the argument for choosing an OS based on its chrome is as shallow as the chrome itself. The difficult stuff is things not working due to defects (bugs), finding solutions and implementing them and that’s where the OS choice yields the highest benefit. On that front few options beat Ubuntu LTS other than perhaps Debian, but Debian isn’t novice-friendly.
The default UX used in Ubuntu may actually be confusing for newbies, as it’s quite different compared to Windows.
It's not that different, dude, and it's not like they don't give you a tutorial on first boot either.
Perhaps a distro which uses KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE or LXQt by default.
Gauge your audience dude. A Linux newbie will not know wtf anything you just named is. (For any other newbies reading, these are all 'desktop environments' - essentially collections of programs that make up a user interface)
Side dock, top panel, lack of a “start” menu are already three immediately visible differences, and you claim it’s not that different?
The side dock is a taskbar except on the left hand side. Big whoop. Top panel is basically the system tray as seen on Windows, with all functionality fairly obvious just by looking at it, and there is infact a start button where you can type in the program name you're looking for, just like most people do in Windows. Not exactly MacOS levels of relearning.
Which is EXACTLY why I mentioned them, so that they can Google it.
Or...you can explain what you are talking about. Like I did for you. Sending newbies off on wild Google chases is not helpful.
Parent comment is wrong. The default UX used in Ubuntu may actually be confusing for newbies, as it’s quite different compared to Windows. Just check some screenshots or videos and you can see for yourself. I’d instead recommend going for a distro which uses a more familiar UX (ie the Desktop Environment).
Perhaps a distro which uses KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE or LXQt by default (these are “desktop environments” (DE) - which is a collection of the desktop shell components (eg start menu, taskbar, dock etc) plus default applications that go with it eg the file manager, document viewer etc). A desktop environment like the ones I mentioned above, in their default settings, should be familiar to most Windows users. Now whilst you can install any DE on any distro, it can be a daunting task for newbies, plus, the settings might not be optimal for you. So it’s better to go with a distro that comes with such easy-to-use DEs by default. Examples of such distros include Linux Mint and Zorin. These, by default, should look quite familiar to you, and should be even more easier to use than Ubuntu.
Both Mint and Zorin are based on Ubuntu, so most of the documentation for Ubuntu should be relevant to Mint and Zorin as well. But if you’re not sure, just include quotes for your distro when you’re doing a web search, eg how do I do this in Linux “Mint” will ensure you’ll only get results with “Mint” in the page.
Parent comment is right. The body of documentation generated for Ubuntu by the community is an enormous asset. It’s one of the important side effects of it being the most used distro.
Also try LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). I think it’s their best flavor actually, but not enough people know about it and usually only try the regular Mint.
Almost all of those support forms are from way back when Ubuntu was user friendly and community driven. However they are no longer serving the community and shouldn’t be considered user friendly like it was previously.
Anyway almost all of the Ubuntu specific stuff will work on Linux mint as its Ubuntu based.
Try it with a Live USB stick. And maybe don’t listen to the people recommending Ubuntu. It’s somewhat okay, but they regularly do annoying business decisions that affect their users. I’d rather start with Mint or something.
There are many other websites dedicated to this question:
I believe PostmarketOS with the PinePhone Pro is a decent experience. Nope, it’s not. Don’t get it if you don’t want to contributr your time to the project. With that said, I’m not too confident on its usability, 2 years after its release. What do you run and what has your experience been like?
what do you even mean “don’t support encryption”? Do you mean FDE? In that case PostmarketOS supports it, and you can get any other distro to use FDE if you tinker hard enough
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