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Linux Mint (XFCE desktop) is the best for beginners coming from Windows, in my opinion. Linux enthusiasts will fawn over KDE because of customization, but they ignore that the vast majority of people don’t want to spend months tweaking pixels, widgets and animations, they just want to use the computer.
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I like https://distrochooser.de/
While your endorsement is definitely well-intentioned, I’m unsure if it correctly reflects the project’s health[1]. I’d argue we’ve got (a lot) better resources on the fediverse. Like, e.g. this excellent guide: Understanding Linux and choosing your first Linux distro, v2.0
That’s excellent, I found the distrochooser recently while coming back to linux and was happy when it recommended the same distro I used years back
Realistically, the best distro for a Windows user is one that runs all their existing Windows software (both applications and games) right out of the box.
Does any distro even come close to doing that?
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Not that I’m aware of. Wine only goes so far before programs misbehave. It didn’t work well with heroes of might and magic 5 for me in 2022, for instance, terrible framerate
As a newer Linux user I think the priority in communication should be use Mint and then have some general information about how Linux isn’t Windows, with some key differences and how to do things. I know that’s more complicated than just saying it, but a “simple” get started guide would ease transition a lot.
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Yeah, I agree. Especially since there’s SO much information out there that’ll come up if they try to search, and lots of it isn’t good, and tons of it is conflicting with each other. It’s best to make it as easy and simple as possible. Like just suggest Mint or something.
I think it doesn’t actually matter what distro you use.
It’s like whether you’re wearing red socks or blue socks. As long as you’re wearing socks, so you don’t get cold.
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damn Ubuntu Satanic Edition sounds cool.
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Thank you for the answer! Much appreciated.
Mint has a common issue of destroying itself on updates.
Could you be more explicit? Like, I don’t think it literally deletes itself from your drive. Right? So, what is it then?
I was just on Zorin OS web page and I like what I am seeing.
Have to set some time aside this weekend to seeing dual booting it
I recommend Gentoo for a beginner.
What better way to understand your new OS than by compiling it from scratch?
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I wonder what will win out, the sociopathic need of managers and execs to gaze over heads in cubes like it’s their kingdom - e.g. “return to office” mandates that saved no money and made no sense other than to control people - or the sociopathic need of the business to cut costs so low that the stability of the entire company teeters on a house of cards, be it AI or something else.
That’s what free software advocates have been telling everyone for decades. When you use proprietary software licensed to you, you have no agency in what becomes of it, they can force you to accept changes that you don’t agree with, violate your privacy, take what you thought you owned from you.
People give up freedom for convenience and treat those that don’t as crazy misguided idealists, thinking they’re fools for using less convenient and sometimes powerful fools for pointless principles only they care about… Meanwhile, if everyone was just a tiny bit like the crazy idealists, these companies wouldn’t be able to abuse their position because a modicum of resistance from everyone would be an overwhelming force for them.
Some will say it’s dumb being idealist about computer software, but aside from computer software being serious fucking business, the practices of these companies are what birthed disposable, unrepairable electronics, privacy erosion, robber AIs and so on. Do you think a tech industry dominated by free software supporters would have allowed the rise of people like Bezos, Zuckerberg or Musk?
Dabbled with Linux over the years but have finally made the jump to using it as my primary OS. I tried a bunch of distros and settled on the elegant simplicity of Mint. Every game has worked just… fine.
It feels genuinely refreshing to know nothing will change without my consent, I know I will not login one day to find a surprise cortana/copilot/clippy icon in the taskbar or an ad for Avowed waiting for me. I can’t believe that is even considered a ‘pro’, but here we are.
AMD or NVIDIA user?
AMD. I think if I had nvidia I might’ve gone for Pop OS, I heard that has good support for them out the box.
Good to know. I’m NVIDIA myself
As a 15 years old pc user who likes to play games with a 15 years old nvidia graphics card. The only thing that’s preventing me from fully migrating to linux is the fact that nvidia doesn’t support my gpu anymore, so no proprietary driver, unless, I use a 6 years old kernel version.
The only choice I have for modren distros is the nouveau drivers, which lacks behind alot specially when it comes to gaming. I now have a dual boot setup running Popos and windows, but still I can’t be fully free from Windows, having to reboot every time I feel like playing something. I hope in the near future I get less broke to buy a new computer or maybe the new nvk drivers will supports my gpu which is unlikely.I feel like eveyone should reccomend Fedora KDE edition, its close enough to Windows for new users and modern enough to not push people away.
People have their gripes over the “big corporation” side of this but I also daily drive fedora KDE and I love it. My only complaint is 2 things.
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Wireless shuts off after long periods of sleep. Suck if I’m torrenting my Linux isos.
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Very rarely it’ll freeze up and I need to hard restart.
Both of which could be a me issue. But besides that it’s a beautiful, easily and highly customizable system. Highly reccomend as well.
I also have issue number 2 with fedora KDE (kinoite). It’s happened like 3 times in the past several months
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Check out CachyOS as well.
Most people who just have a PC don’t have a DGPU, for those who do the built in open source driver is good enough for 99% of use cases. People heavily exaggerate how much you need the proprietary drivers and you can always install them later if you really want (its not needed in the vast majority of cases to get it booting).
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No I mean genuenly you dont need then, maybe they preform better but strictly speaking proprietary drivers arent nessesary. You could just as easily not install them and the vast majority of people wont notice the 5% performance penalty.
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Ive been seriously looking into making the switch. After some reading I decided Mint would be the easiest transition and downloaded the ISO to try it out with a USB boot. Im sure its a fluke, but since I have dual monitors the display was messed up and whenever I tried to fix it the entire GUI went away on both monitors and wouldn’t recover. I had to force power off the machine and ive been hesitant since then to make the actual switch. Id hate to brick my machine right off the bat, just trying to swap display sources.
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Been on linux for almost half a year now. Don’t miss a single bit of windows, thanks to steam proton. Also thanks to microsoft for pushing me over.
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Mints file explorer when moving large files does leave some meat on the bone for me.
I’m a very recent convert. I downloaded mint a couple months ago after seeing that my entire steam library was rated as highly compatible on protondb. At first I planned to dual boot but I didn’t have any reason at all to use windows and finally just took the plunge and made Mint my daily, and sole, driver
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As much as people complain about electron (some valid, some not) Linux has benefited quite a bit to the cross platform availability of local applications.
what distro do you use? im looking into moving from windows, but currently use apple devices to sync my music to my phone so im on hold for now
I tried Mint initially, but it had some issues with Wayland and some other small issues, so I ended up settling on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after a friend recommended it.
This weekend I want to make a point to finally begin the transition to Linux…
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I want mint to be my distro.
Honestly I don’t mind 11. It’s miles better than 10 ever was IMO. However with that being said, Linux is better. I have to dual boot Windows 11 on my computer because unfortunately there’s no way I can use my Elgato Capture Device on a Linux machine.
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How can I convince the GF to switch? She only plays The Sims and the occasional hentai game; her Skylake i5 and 1050ti are more than adequate for those tasks. Yet she refuses to try Linux; won’t even let me install LTSC to buy some time.
I think she just wants an excuse to buy a new laptop. She’s the kind of person who replaces her shower curtain every six months, rather than do the sane thing and simply wash it. I’ll never understand such a wasteful mentality.
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Might want to have some people a hit more coherent on which version of Linux so they don’t get frustrated. Some people are jumping to distros that I’ve never heard of and getting annoyed it’s not windows. Like yea no kidding Justin Bieber OS isn’t getting updates. And your 3k series Nvidia isn’t working. Switch to Hanna Montana DE like the rest of us.
Jeez. Pathetic losers. On Linux for 15 years never thought of going back.
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Ubuntu 12.04 was nice for desktop users. It just didn’t do anything good for gaming at the time.
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Yea I tried all the DE back during intel 3rd gens. And I really tried and wanted it to work.
It’s funny, you’re using Linux for 15 years, but you’re still 15 years old…
Switched to Mint recently. So far it’s been smoother than I expected, but still had some crazy rough patches. Luckily, helping me through this junk seems to be one of the things AI excels at. I’m set up mostly how I want to be and it’s been mostly working well enough so far. Mostly.
Mint’s popularity is unfortunate because it (the last time I checked) defaults to X11, which gives you a desktop built on technology from 1984.
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Why? Never hear of it. What makes it better conpared to other popular distros? And how does it serve the need of Windoofs refugees better?
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Zorin OS has done great work with making GNOME more usable/accessible.
KDE was fairly seamless for me, my workflow basically didn’t change from Windows. It’s still a bit messy, but they are getting there.
Switched to CachyOS a couple months ago and haven’t looked back. Everything works right out the box including NVIDIA cards. Recommended it to a coworker to check out and he switched from Windows a month ago.
