Looking to dip my toes into Linux for the first time. I have a 2016 Intel MacBook Pro with pretty solid specs collecting dust right now that I think I’m going to use. Research so far has indicated to me that the two best options for me are likely Mint or Elementary OS. Does anyone have any insight? Also open to other OS’s. I would consider myself decently tech savvy but I am not a programmer or anything. Comfortable dipping into the terminal when the need arises and all that.
Perhaps Arch Linux? Maybe a bit too much for a toe dip though, I wouldn’t know. You’ll likely run into driver issues (wifi, audio and apple specific hardware) and Arch ostensibly has the latest drivers. Will happily be corrected though, I’ve been languishing on Ubuntu and haven’t had to fix anything in years.
Arch is not a beginner OS.
OP: give Mint or PoPOS a try or start off directly with Debian stable. As far as driver issues go, make sure to enable the
non-freeandnon-free-firmwarefor newer Debian versions and you should be okay.I don’t want to be rude, but recommending Arch to a newbie who wants to dip their toe in is just mean. Why not tell them to set up an OpenBSD desktop while they’re at it.
And the laptop they’re using is from 2015. Why would you need the latest drivers for that?
I am using Linux for 3 years or so now. Even with BTFRS snapshots, no AUR and other things I would not use Arch over Fedora Kinoite. I have no idea how to chroot into anything and suffer from enough daily KDE bugs (bts the KDE components are basically the same version as on Arch).