Whats a good Linux distro to dip my toe in with in a laptop running Windows 11? Is there a decent longer form guide to doing it successfully?
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IT guy here, I mostly work with Windows, but have daily driven Linux in the past and am planning on switching back to Linux when Windows 10 goes EOL.
Anyway, here are my thoughts.
Ubuntu - simple to use, but has a history of doing their own thing to the detriment of the user. Currently pushing their own alternative to Flatpaks, Snaps, which is built around centralizing apps around Canonicals servers.
Mint - similar to Ubuntu in terms of use, based on Debian, well known and seemingly working well. Good starting point for everyone.
Fedora Linux - easy to use, more standard Linux than Ubuntu, based on Red Hat, focused more on using the latest tech when compared with Mint and Ubuntu.
Manjaro - for the more experienced users, based on Arch, modern, but a bit more unstable than the other distributions mentioned here.
There are other's but few that I have actual experience with and can be called newbie friendly, so it would be unfair to add distributions I don't have experience with.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]If you choose Arch, you can say "I use Arch btw", from time to time, in unrelated conversations. That is a plus and should be considered.
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What do you think of a PopOS, sort of leaning there just based on statistics
PopOS is very old I would recommend against it to anyone not already stuck with it.
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Sorta is
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS sounds like your best starting OS.
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So what distro is Mac without a concussion? I dont want windows
Ubuntu?
Gnome is actually very solid. Its a great desktop environment, it just works in a specific way that takes some getting used to. A good out of the box gnome experience would be fedora.
People will not recommend it though, since desktop environments that mimick windows are easier to get used to for new users, like linux mint with cinnamon, or any KDE default distro.
The previous comment sais it's like Mac is with a concussion. It is an apt comparison because like MacOS gnome is very clean and minimal, but its still very different in its workflow. Giving macOS switchers quite a headache.
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I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
imo every single beginner friendly distro all have the same problem. They are, for some extent, easier to use than others, until they're not, at which point you find yourself digging through documents and forums or asking ChatGPT to break the system.
After few years of that dance, I found Linux Mint to be the easiest and Fedora KDE to be the nicest.
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imo every single beginner friendly distro all have the same problem. They are, for some extent, easier to use than others, until they're not, at which point you find yourself digging through documents and forums or asking ChatGPT to break the system.
After few years of that dance, I found Linux Mint to be the easiest and Fedora KDE to be the nicest.
They are, for some extent, easier to use than others, until they're not, at
The thing is that many well integrated distro have enough user friendly features to not need to go in the until they're not part. If the most complicated thing you do is install a standard package and a printer, you won't need to learn much.
Obviously, if you want to program a driver to control a nuclear reactor, it's another story.
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Agree with everything you've said. I would add OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I tried all the KDE distros you mentioned and OpenSUSE is what really got me using Linux longterm.
Also, I didn't know about this at the time, but now that I look back I wonder if Tuxedo OS would have been the best starting option for me. I wonder why Tuxedo OS hardly gets mentioned.
I've been using tumbleweed for awhile and I would be hesitant to suggest it to a new user unless they are comfortable with solving technical problems and learning how to take advantage of its recovery features. (Such as btrfs snapshots)
It's got some out of the box issues where you're expected to research and understand how to solve them. (Like many other distros) Where I've found Ubuntu just simply works or its just a few clicks away from working.
Things like the backlight on laptops not responding, codec support (needing to use packman repo), Nvidia support (has improved significantly over the years).
And with the nature of tumbleweed there's so many frequent updates, plus you're expected to understand how to resolve zypper package concerns.
Great OS, most issues I've had, have been solved.
I am currently battling with it to properly support my 9070xt /w rocm. (Mostly working but unstable) -
PopOS is very old I would recommend against it to anyone not already stuck with it.
PopOS was only initially released in 2017, making it one of the newer distributions. It is actively developed and really pushing the needle in the community. It is a great option. Don’t know what distro you’re actually thinking of, but it isn’t Pop.
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I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
I know you want to move away from Windows, but trying to choose something completely different might be a bad idea, you're already unfamiliar with the system also being unfamiliar with the way to interact with stuff might be a bit too much. That being said I don't think any of the largest DE mentioned would be a problem, so look at pictures and choose on what you think looks best.
As for distro lots of people recommend Mint and I'll back that up, although I haven't used it in years it was my go to distro to give new users as it was very plug and play.
And the two recommendations I always give new users are:
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Keep
/and/homein separate partitions, this allows you to format your system, change distro, or whatever without losing your personal files. -
As much as possible use the package manager, googling a program and downloading an installer is 99% of the time the wrong way to install stuff and a major cause of problems for new users.
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If you choose Arch, you can say "I use Arch btw", from time to time, in unrelated conversations. That is a plus and should be considered.
This is true, but I see "I use Mint btw" appearing more and more in the wild during the last year.
I use Mint btw
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I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
Xubuntu is very user friendly, low on resources, and overall great to use.
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Mint is a great choice for windows converts. The UI closely matches what you are used to.
Mint and Ubuntu are both fine and have a huge support base so you'll always find help.
I've been on Linux for going on 10 years, went through just about all the major and moderate distros out there and the past two years I've just been using mint on my study laptops (in particular LMDE for stability) and it's completely fine for me.
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I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
If you use your machine predominantly for gaming, Nobara is a good option. Built by the same people who made Proton (the tool to get Windows games working well on Linux). Comes with everything you need to get going out of the box. Based on Fedora so lots of community support. Comes with either KDE Plasma or GNOME to give you the desktop environment you prefer.
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I know you want to move away from Windows, but trying to choose something completely different might be a bad idea, you're already unfamiliar with the system also being unfamiliar with the way to interact with stuff might be a bit too much. That being said I don't think any of the largest DE mentioned would be a problem, so look at pictures and choose on what you think looks best.
As for distro lots of people recommend Mint and I'll back that up, although I haven't used it in years it was my go to distro to give new users as it was very plug and play.
And the two recommendations I always give new users are:
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Keep
/and/homein separate partitions, this allows you to format your system, change distro, or whatever without losing your personal files. -
As much as possible use the package manager, googling a program and downloading an installer is 99% of the time the wrong way to install stuff and a major cause of problems for new users.
When you mention putting the
/homeelsewhere, that's something I do when setting up a distro install? I can't recall from the last time I did a system install of mint. Sounds extremely helpful so I would like to do it next time
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When you mention putting the
/homeelsewhere, that's something I do when setting up a distro install? I can't recall from the last time I did a system install of mint. Sounds extremely helpful so I would like to do it next time
Yes it is. I mean, you should be able to do it later, but if you have to ask how it might be better not to risk it since that would involve resizing your root partition. If however you have a secondary disk you want to use for it it's just a matter of adding a new entry to
/etc/fstab(which the UI installer in Mint and others allows you to do with a nice UI instead of having to write the file manually). Although bear in mind that mounting a disk on top of an existing folder will mask the contents of the folder, so you won't be able to access the files that were there before. Long story short you can move the files over to the new disk first, them add the fstab entry and it should work, for future installations you can set this during the installer, same way you create a different partition for/boot, in Linux partitions are mounted to folders and they work as if they were in that location for all intents and purposes. -
I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
Linux Mint and PopOS.
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I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
Zorin Linux is very Windows'ish (xp) :]
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PopOS was only initially released in 2017, making it one of the newer distributions. It is actively developed and really pushing the needle in the community. It is a great option. Don’t know what distro you’re actually thinking of, but it isn’t Pop.
Let me explain, the current version of pop is based on the 22.04 branch of Ubuntu. They've been in dev hell trying to update to the 24.04 branch.
As a consequence it doesn't have full support of more modern hardware and you can run into libc issues trying to run precompiled binaries.
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I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
I tried Linux Mint Cinnamon but swapped to Fedora Workstation. I like Fedora Workstation, it’s very well animated and smooth.
But I think I heard in another YouTubers review that on her laptop it wasn’t as battery efficient as other distros. But I like it on my desktop pc.
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Can't go wrong with Linux Mint
Mint didn't work at all on my last desktop. I should have tested more with the live disk before installing.
The mint discord I found was pretty helpful though.
