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’m a Linux mint user for my main system and am no beginner. As others have said, it’s friendly to both beginners and advanced users, it’s good to see you’ve made that choice.
That being said, don’t stop there. Whether it’s in a virtual machine or some old laptop, also try one of the “from scratch” systems. I went with Gentoo and that is the root of where a ton of my Linux knowledge started. It’s my favorite distro simply because it has that history for me. You’ll find everyone has their own favorites for their own reasons, so be sure to explore and find the one that you enjoy and helps you learn.
How do you survive on in Debian/Ubuntu flavor? Whenever I would need a software that was not in the repo. Have to put PPA in place to get it. To many times it would then not install becuase of package conflicts. I have up and switched to arch based distro and between primary repo nd AUR I havent looked back and been very stable.
Rarely do I find software I need that’s not in the repo, but when I do, I just dusky build it myself. Not at my machine now, but I think I only have one PPA that’s not default added. In the other cases where I don’t want to build the app, it tends to be in Flatpak too.
That being said, although Mint is technically based on Ubuntu, it really doesn’t feel like it at all. I personally can’t stand Ubuntu, but again all personal opinions. If Debian-based systems didn’t work for you and an arch based distro did, then go with it. Everyone’s needs are their own and that’s why we have so many choices :D
I went with Pop!_OS because it was one of the least Windows-like DEs. Which is what I wanted after getting so damn sick of their garbage. Kinda macOS though with the dock and all. I dig it.
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
Like most others have stated here, I’ll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.
I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.
For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.
Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.
And as a desktop environment (which I think will influence your Linux experience far more than the distro pick) I’d pick KDE or Cinnamon or if you want to go old school XFCE (which is little easier on the resources) (all three stick to a more traditional desktop paradigm, so the switch from windows wont be as awkward)
luckily you can switch the DE pretty easy. you can just install them on your distro of choice and use them side by side if you’d like to try them out (generally speaking, you can choose which DE session you want to use on your login screen)
Yes but this a problem, you get very fragmented systems, tons of wasted space and resources (because your CPU/RAM will pay as well) and even worse you create a situation where developing Linux desktop apps isn’t just attractive to anyone.
Just to prove this point I’m sure you’ve noticed that the largest growth in Linux “desktop” apps (be it single developer apps or more “professional” stuff) was around the time Java desktop app became popular and then later on with Electron because at that point those packing solutions were dealing with the Linux DE mess (the constant updates and breaking of things) behind the scenes and the developers only had to add a very few checks into their code to handle all Linux systems.
What I’m saying is that by have all that DE choice and constant fuckery we’re making our lives worse in the sense that nobody same wants to develop to such platform thus getting less software and making Linux less of an alternative. Until we don’t get a single DE with a single solid and well designed theme, UI library, developer friendly frameworks and whatnot Linux won’t be getting any meaningful traction among regular people and professional developers.
GNOME and their large backing was a way to fix this mess and make all other DEs fade away but then their purist vision and CSS themes got in the way of optimizing the DE for the mass market and take over everything as they should have had.
The DE that will take Linux to succeed in the desktop doesn’t need themes, customization and all the personalization that would make it really hard to create. Hell it don’t need to be much, it can even be a simple 1:1 copy of the macOS desktop experience (and keep it updated) and it will likely become very popular in no time and send GNOME, KDE and others into oblivion.
I went with Fedora when switching almost a month ago now, and I’ve been having issues with some games not working as expected, and also had trouble getting NVIDIA drivers to work correctly (which I’ve already solved, I hope). (And some applications weren’t working at all, such as Unity)
What would you consider as major advantages of Fedora, in addition to what you mentioned? So far, I usually couldn’t find a Fedora-specific version of the applications I wanted, unlike for other more well-known distributions. I do work as a programmer, which was also why I choose Fedora - I really like their Fedora Toolbox, but I would like to game regurarly on my PC and so far, it seems that Fedora doesn’t really handle it too well. Will I have similar issues on other distros, or will switching to something like Pop!OS be worth the time?
EDIT: Just found out about Nobara, I guess I’ll give that one a try.
One plus for fedora, or more of a minus for debian-based distros, is that fedora with its short release cycle is closer to how windows does updates. There’s no release cycle for almost all software on windows, and so the years long release cycle weirds many people out.
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