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.
You should try a bunch and see what you really like! The beauty of Linux is there’s so much out there that you’ll almost definitely find one that gels with you.
A good place to start is Linux mint! The best way I can describe it is a blend of all the best parts of windows 7, 10 and 11 with very few of the downsides. You’ll almost definitely settle in quickly and you might never want to switch as it’s very full featured, snappy and well put together. It was designed for people wanting that Linux experience while still feeling familiar to windows users.
Another one to try if you love customisability is ZorinOS. There’s a free and paid tier, both of which are excellent with the free tier offering layouts for old and new windows and Mac like experience and the paid tier (only around £30 for a lifetime licence) has layouts and customisability for absolutely everything else and extra tools and options for those that want more of that!
I’d recommend Zorin. It has a UI similar to windows, easy to get into, great defaults, and being based on Ubuntu, most help on the internet will work just fine
You know, as much as people here say they aren’t happy with it, I haven’t seen any specific complaints that detail the problems. What bad change does windows 11 even make from windows 10?
Not saying I don’t see problems with windows, there are… A lot. But what are the new problems with windows 11?
Edit: to the people downvoting as if you disagree with me: I’m literally asking a question because I don’t know much about windows 11. I am not trying to make any kind of statement for or against windows 11, I just don’t know what the current flavor of bullshit is and wanted to.
Literally the only annoyance I had with it initially was that I preferred my taskbar at the top of the screen, and you can’t move it, at least not without janky registry hacks, on Windows 11.
I’ve since gotten over it, because for me and the vast majority of people, it’s functionally identical in almost all cases.
The only other thing I can think of that’s still a rare annoyance is that sometimes, completely at random, Windows Explorer, if you’ve just left a window open in the background for a while, will just rip focus from whatever other thing you were doing.
Yes, they’re trying to shoehorn their copilot AI thing into the UX, but that was so easy to disable and forget that I refuse to call it a real problem, myself.
Pop OS is great because of up to date kernel and drivers, and they even have a specific version created for nvidia gpus, on disadvantage is that gnome version is a bit old, but its very stable at least
I think it depends on what you are looking for. While Linux Mint is a safe option, it does have some drawbacks… well it’s more drawbacks from Ubuntu but as Linux Mint is based off of it, it’s also impacted. Primarily the fact that Ubuntu packages are terribly out of date. Thankfully mint makes adding PPA’s painless, but for apps that don’t have a PPA it’s a pain to install them from scratch like Mangohud. It’s not impossible, but there is an expect level of Linux knowledge which is required before going in.
Another option is Manjaro. You will hear the litany of endless criticism about it from the community, some of it is valid. But for the most part, while it’s not as nice as Linux Mint, I think the OS will get you to the point where you can start using your machine faster. Mostly thanks to Arch’s rolling release, as well as the AUR for filling the gap between official packages and flatpaks.
I was using Manjaro for the longest time, but switched to Mint due to a freak bootloader accident. I prefer Manjaro in terms of how well it handled Games and Windows software due to it’s association with Arch. But I like how well Mint manages my laptop’s battery and performance or lack thereof due to it’s pitiful cooler.
Keep in mind they have zero Linux experience so I doubt they’ll be needing packages that are too obscure for mint, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to run windows software in Linux to a novice.
While I agree, the issue is, that they’ll want to. Thankfully Valve is handling games well enough right now that it’s a non problem. Regardless which distro you are on.
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.
Linux Mint is great, I used it as a daily driver in college on an old IBM T42, however, modern Linux on a modern PC – Debian/Ubuntu with KDE.
Basically, Kubuntu.
Kubuntu gets you off the ground running with Debian core, KDE Plasma, which is familiar to the Windows workflow and all the compatibility of Debian/Ubuntu. Steam and Proton work FLAWLESSLY via Vulkan API. Zero loss of performance.
If you want to spend a ton of time relearning an OS/tinkering however, get some flavor of Arch.
The AUR is crazy, it’s like a huge software library and the Wiki is expansive, BUT, you will be relearning absolutely everything.
Sorry other Linux people, I’m a jaded lifelong Windows user, who unironically uses Kubuntu and Artix on seperate machines.
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)
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