When Windows 10 dies, I am going to jump ship over to Linux. Which version would you recommend for someone with zero prior experience with Linux? **Edit: Linux Mint it shall be.**
Whom also likes to game every now and then ;)
Edit: Thank you all for your input and suggestions! Linux Mint shall be my next OS! Though, I think I’ll give Pop!OS a look-see as well.
I recently jumped to mint, and I have to say I’m very happy with it. I struggled with like two things but the OS is popular enough that there are walkthroughs for nearly everything. And I was able to get Linux-based or browser-based software for everything I did on my windows computer
How does Mint compares to Fedora? I decided to finally switch almost a month ago, and went with Fedora because it seemed like the best solution for general development, and I really like their Toolbox. However, I’ve been running into some issues mostly regarding gaming and NVIDIA drivers, and in general getting some applications to work on Fedora was more painful than apparently in most of the other systems.
So, should I switch, or will the Wine/Steam/Lutris experience be mostly the same on Mint as it is on Fedora?
Most problems I’ve seen between Nvidia and Linux were caused by Wayland. If you’re using Fedora with Gnome (the default) then you can try hitting the gear icon when logging in and choosing “gnome on xorg” (screenshot). That might help with the drivers.
For any other issues, Mint might be easier just because it’s based on Debian, which is immensely popular. It’s more of a well beaten path, and there’s probably more help online for any issues you run into.
Debian is Debian based and regular Mint is Ubuntu LTS based and use theirs respective repos (not a big difference for the average user). While currently the non Debian version is the main and recommended version, due some controversial changes in Ubuntu people want to move away from Ubuntu and the devs have considered making the Debian edition the main one.
I personally started by playing around with Ubuntu, but it just didn’t feel intuitive coming from windows.
Went over to Mint, and was very happy,especially with drivers and gaming. I even fully removed my windows installation during this period. Having gained a better understanding of Linux, I have now moved on again.
The only real drawback of Mint is not natively supporting KDE Plasma (as they did before). And yes, you can just install it yourself, but I wouldn’t recommend a beginner who barely knows how to install Linux to attempt such an endevour.
One word of advice to OP: don’t wait till you can’t use Windows anymore. Start by dual booting and getting a hang of Linux, but with windows at the ready for any tasks you cannot yet do/feel comfortable doing on Linux. As you get a better hold of Linux, you should naturally begin to use Windows less.
The worst thing someone can do, is to jump OS without any backup or safety net. Learning to use Windows took a long time, getting a hang of new concepts and getting used to an alien environment. Now, already having a hang of “computers” (Windows), we have digital needs and expectations (E-Mail, gaming, etc.) which will need fulfilling, but many seem to forget that a different OS means different ways of doing our daily tasks and different challenges to handle.
And yes, “different”, because Windows definitely also comes with it’s own unique challenges, you just don’t see them as much when having gotten used to them.
One word of advice to OP: don’t wait till you can’t use Windows anymore. Start by dual booting and getting a hang of Linux, but with windows at the ready for any tasks you cannot yet do/feel comfortable doing on Linux. As you get a better hold of Linux, you should naturally begin to use Windows less.
Mint is great. It also works well out of the box in virtual machines. I like the MATE versions for my older machines.
There is a major shift happening right now, and mint is slower than many to adopt changes. I’d argue that’s good for mint users, but it may be bad for you personally if you plan to learn about modern linux. Idgaf personally about X11 vs Wayland, because I just need to be able to use my programs.
Ubuntu, mint, fedora, Manjaro are all pretty much in the same class, and it’s largely irrelevant which you pick. They’re all supported, have decent UI for most of what you want to do, and have good documentation for how to do it.
It’s not too difficult to change distros without having to move all your data once you’re switched, so it doesn’t matter too much, and you’ll probably try a couple before finding the one with the best menus for you.
I would recommend endeavor over manjaro. Manjaro has issues with the aur.
And I’d recommended if either of these are your first foray into linux, then dual boot with a windows install still functioning (because a noobie will break arch once or twice)
I’d second Mint as well (I’ve used it for many years now). Out of interest, what games are you thinking of? Most of them should work out of the box, but with some there can be issues especially with multiplayer ones.
You should try Linux Mint. It’s a good distribution for new Linux users. It’s easy to understand, has a good community with plenty of solutions for all types of problems and it is not too specific.
Gaming with Steam on Linux works without any major issues except when it comes to games that intentionally made run on Windows only due to their DRM. I suggest using the Flatpak variant of Steam so you won’t clutter your system with too many weird dependencies.
Some Flatpak apps don’t have the proper permissions or they can be quite restrictive especially when it cames to file access.
For example; it’s not possible to upload files using Discord from the user home (except a few specified folders). This could be solved with a XDG portal, but most apps don’t bother implementing that.
Very beginner friendly and has a big community, most stuff works out of the box, steam is recommended heavily as it has a build in compatibility layer (Proton) if you want to check your favorite games check out at protondb.com
Only notable thing is that MS office isn’t working on Linux unless the web app is used (wich isn’t a problem unless you are required by work/school to use it)
My recommendation is to avoid any overly bleeding edge distro while starting out, as when things will inevitably break you won’t have much knowlege on how to fix the issue, and googling it may not always give you an answer.
Everyone has different opinions. In the end the different versions, or distributions, are basically the same.
It starts with the Linux vernal, that as far as I know, handles communication with the hardware, and things like directories, storage, users, permissions. On top of that, every distribution creator puts a destropenvioment, like gnome or KDE (plasma?). Gnome is kinda like Mac is, KDE can be what ever you want, very customizable.
Than there is the package manager. Fedora for example uses yum or dnf (dnf is the new version I think) and Ubuntu uses apt. The package manager is like your app store, that you access over the command line. It is managed by the owners and ist mostly safe to download anything. (Installing Spotify would by ‘sudo apt/dnf install spotify’. So pretty easy to use.
On top of that the distribution has preinstalled programs, like the browser, writing tools, and some useful apps
That is basically the only difference between distros. You can even get different spins of a distro. If you like fedora, get it with the KDE desktro envioment. It’s all the same basically.
So put something on a usb drive and boot from that, try it out for a few minutes and than look at others. There are also websites that allow you to boot into different distros.
If you like something, just install it, maybe as a Dualboot first next to windows (best is on a different drive) and just try it out. If you don’t like it, just jump to another one.
Linux can be a little bit pain sometimes, but in my opinion it’s worth to invest the time. Have fun!
-Linux Mint: the default choice, nothing wrong with it, however not the best when it comes to gaming or if you have multiple monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates.
-ZorinOS: Looks good, but can take some time to get used to it and doesn’t have the multi monitor issues of Linux mint, however it is on the heavier side of Linux distros.
-Fedora/Nobara: the 2 are basically the same with one another, but nobara is more gaming-focused. They will also take some time to get used to how they work, but are in my experience generally snappier and more responsive.
No matter which distro you choose, remember, don’t think of Linux the same way you think of windows, think of it as desktop android, as in you download stuff from the distro’s app store and not off of the internet, unless necessary.
-Linux Mint: […] not the best […] if you have multiple monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates.
I’m thinking of installing Mint (Debian Edition) on a 2013 MacBook Pro with an even older external monitor connected through DisplayPort, while using the internal Retina as the secondary monitor.
Do you think it’d be a safer bet to go with a different distro with better multi-monitor compatibilities, or do you think I’ll be good using this hardware+software combo?
Don’t get me wrong, it will work, you might just have issues like screen tearing and choppy animations…
I’d personally go with fedora on a laptop, especially for a Mac user as it’s default desktop experience is kinda similar to MacOS, and you get 1:1 touchpad gestures.
I’ll comment and agree with most of the people who have already commented who recommend Linux Mint. It’s very good for beginners. Alternatively, you can also take a quiz found at distrochooser.de to get an idea of which distros may be right for you.
you’ve got a lot of answers, but as someone who started playing around with Linux recently I would say it’s probably better to start familiarizing yourself with some command line operations in windows now.
Do some things like, use the terminal to search for and open programs you need, delete files, even write some basic text documents.
yes, you’ll have to do some googling to work out how to do these things (and why it didn’t work) - and now you’re on the path to linux!
Maybe you’ll even find a way to install a command line browser to look up the answers.
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