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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I'm a big fan of PopOS.
Most people advocate for Mint, but when I run Mint, I don't feel like I've made a step forwards in terms of UI. I'm a huge fan of the design choices around PopOS. It just feels much more modern than windows.
I've been working on "moving in" to Linux Mint, and I've been annoyed and frustrated by things like how hard it is to pin a program to taskbar, or find my recently used folders, or how it seems most installations disappear into a mysterious void and don't let me put them in directories of my choosing.
How is PopOS in the context of being able to do most things through a GUI or at least menus that don't involve terminal usage, or hotkeys I have to constantly look up? Is the general desktop environment polished and thoughtfully designed? I think I'd be up for a drastically new interface after a lifetime of Windows if it at least was intuitive, navigable through menus and made sense.
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I've been working on "moving in" to Linux Mint, and I've been annoyed and frustrated by things like how hard it is to pin a program to taskbar, or find my recently used folders, or how it seems most installations disappear into a mysterious void and don't let me put them in directories of my choosing.
How is PopOS in the context of being able to do most things through a GUI or at least menus that don't involve terminal usage, or hotkeys I have to constantly look up? Is the general desktop environment polished and thoughtfully designed? I think I'd be up for a drastically new interface after a lifetime of Windows if it at least was intuitive, navigable through menus and made sense.
How is PopOS in the context of being able to do most things through a GUI or at least menus that don’t involve terminal usage, or hotkeys I have to constantly look up?
PopOS is hotkey dependent, for certain, but its really only the 'option' key that you need. The option key, which gives you access to many things, including what I consider its greatest feature, which is the multi window desktop view.
Its extremely intuitive. And it gives you something that if you've been on windows for a long time, you haven't experienced, which is like a "many desktops" view of the world. I have a desktop view with my programs I'm running for utility purposes (terminal, system monitor, and a text editor.) I have another desktop set up with my work firefox windows and tabs. I have another with my communications (signal), and another with lemmy, and random stuff for shit posting/ entertainment. I hit the option key and scroll to get to any one of the desktops. If I need a program, I just tap option and start typing the programs name.
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So what distro is Mac without a concussion? I dont want windows
Ubuntu?
Probably the closest to "Mac without a concussion" would probably be ElementaryOS with the Pantheon desktop, but I don't really recommend it.
Linux is modular in ways you're probably not used to. Windows looks like WIndows and that's it, you can't just uninstall the taskbar and install someone else's taskbar. In Linux you can do pretty much exactly that. The GUI is a separate system that sits on top of the OS like Windows ran on top of DOS back in the 90's and at airports today. There are several Desktop Environments (DEs) you can choose from.
For example, if you go to Linux Mint's website, you will find it offered in three main flavors: Cinnamon, MATE and xfce.
The vast majority of DEs you'll find in Linux are set up out of the box the way Windows is, in terms of basic UI elements. Most have a panel at the bottom with the application menu on the left, a window list next to that or centered, and system tasks and the clock on the right. A window has the minimize, maximize and close button at the top right, etc. Stuff you have muscle memory of using.
Gnome deliberately does things like that differently I think out of a sense of grudge. I used to hear Linux newcomers say things like "I tried Linux for a few hours and found you can't even rename a file. Like it's impossible to rename a file. Linux is completely useless." And I didn't understand how it was they could come to such a bafflingly dumb conclusion until I tried using Gnome and caught myself saying the same things.
Gnome also deliberately doesn't implement a lot of features because they expect you to use the terminal for them. Other DEs like Cinnamon and KDE are actually finished.
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How is PopOS in the context of being able to do most things through a GUI or at least menus that don’t involve terminal usage, or hotkeys I have to constantly look up?
PopOS is hotkey dependent, for certain, but its really only the 'option' key that you need. The option key, which gives you access to many things, including what I consider its greatest feature, which is the multi window desktop view.
Its extremely intuitive. And it gives you something that if you've been on windows for a long time, you haven't experienced, which is like a "many desktops" view of the world. I have a desktop view with my programs I'm running for utility purposes (terminal, system monitor, and a text editor.) I have another desktop set up with my work firefox windows and tabs. I have another with my communications (signal), and another with lemmy, and random stuff for shit posting/ entertainment. I hit the option key and scroll to get to any one of the desktops. If I need a program, I just tap option and start typing the programs name.
Thanks for the info
That does sound nice, but often I find myself using my computer with a drawing tablet in a weird position, which means getting to my keyboard can be a hassle. I can program some hot keys into my tablet but it's limited. If it's just one button to press to bring up menus that's fine, but if it's option+a key per function I need, I wouldn't have enough buttons basically. I guess I'm looking for a user experience that would let me do all of my everyday functions using only a cursor or a mouse, and maybe 5-8 hotkey combinations/macros. -
Thanks for the info
That does sound nice, but often I find myself using my computer with a drawing tablet in a weird position, which means getting to my keyboard can be a hassle. I can program some hot keys into my tablet but it's limited. If it's just one button to press to bring up menus that's fine, but if it's option+a key per function I need, I wouldn't have enough buttons basically. I guess I'm looking for a user experience that would let me do all of my everyday functions using only a cursor or a mouse, and maybe 5-8 hotkey combinations/macros.wrote on last edited by [email protected]So I run a 2-1, and I like the 2-1/ tablet form factor (I actually just ordered this for my new machine) and will 100% be running PopOS on it. You don't need any hot keys and its tablet mode is dreamy. I have a bit of criticism on the onscreen keyboard (it should be bigger and easier to get to).
You will need to learn the gestures (three fingers swipe up), but I found that easy enough to learn. I would actually say that the PopOS tablet mode is among the best, maybe even better than windows. I use it about an hour to two a day in this way.
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So I run a 2-1, and I like the 2-1/ tablet form factor (I actually just ordered this for my new machine) and will 100% be running PopOS on it. You don't need any hot keys and its tablet mode is dreamy. I have a bit of criticism on the onscreen keyboard (it should be bigger and easier to get to).
You will need to learn the gestures (three fingers swipe up), but I found that easy enough to learn. I would actually say that the PopOS tablet mode is among the best, maybe even better than windows. I use it about an hour to two a day in this way.
Thanks! It's a drawing tablet which uses a stylus, rather than touch or fingers, so it behaves more like a mouse. Would that mode still work?
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Thanks! It's a drawing tablet which uses a stylus, rather than touch or fingers, so it behaves more like a mouse. Would that mode still work?
So I've never used a drawing tablet before, but there is a tab in the settings panel for a 'wacom tablet' / 'stylus'. You might want to check reviews specific to that use case. I've just never tried it that way and don't know very much about stylus.
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So I've never used a drawing tablet before, but there is a tab in the settings panel for a 'wacom tablet' / 'stylus'. You might want to check reviews specific to that use case. I've just never tried it that way and don't know very much about stylus.
I do have a Wacom, sounds like I'll need to try it out!
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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 find Fedora provides a great balance between new code and stability. I've had lots of trouble getting distros like Ubuntu to work with newer apps and features.
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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
Ubuntu, Ubuntu is fine, it gets hate but tbh it's fine. It's well supported, issues getting fixed and there's plenty of info on how to fix stuff when you inevitably find something that doesn't work.
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Put Linux Mint on an USB thumbdrive and play with it until you are comfortable. Be wary it would be somewhat slower than a system installed on the laptop's drive.
Then, if it is a spare laptop, go ahead and install it. Avoid dual booting, it is more hassle than worth at this stage in your journey. Disable secureboot before installing, or Windows will try to hijack the laptop. You can always re-enable it later if you really want to, but it's such a bad implementation currently that it doesn't actually provide much security.
Alternatively: if all you want is to use the computer, without having to worry about the technical details of managing an OS. Try something like Bazzite (for gaming) or Aurora (general productivity) instead. They just work and will (practically) never break.
Mint has so many drawbacks these days and so few advantages that I wouldn't recommend it anymore.
Sadly.
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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 mainly game: Nobara (and I get less and less convinced of that - Fedora original is almost as good by now)
If you mainly work on it: Fedora.If you need broad support: Ubuntu. Sadly. But read up on the drawbacks.
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Fair enough, but assuming you’re using any of several package managers, seems like libc shouldn’t be an issue. Nevertheless, I clearly misunderstood you. Anyway, alpha 7 for 24.04 is out now.
My fault, I should have been more clear.
Yeah, I've mostly noticed the issue working on projects with people sharing builds.
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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)I specifically bought an AMD GPU when building my PC. So I've successfully avoided all this Nvidia driver nonsense.
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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
Cachyos, I swapped from windows with it, og dualbooted, ended up never wanting to open windows agaun
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Cachyos, I swapped from windows with it, og dualbooted, ended up never wanting to open windows agaun
Ubuntu is an alright first pic, id prob reccomend something fedora based instead since I prefer flathub/flatpak to the snap store, bazzite if you game, imo the best default app store bazaar (can dload anywhere I have it on cachyos but it may be hard to figure out at first)
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Cachyos, I swapped from windows with it, og dualbooted, ended up never wanting to open windows agaun
You cant really go wrong, de is more what decides the desktop experience, like theming/look ,etc. Kde plasma, gnome, cinnamon, xfce , etc. or tiling managers like hyprland (id stick to des for now coming from windows)
Ive mostly tried plasma and gnome
Kde plasma is windows on steroids, customizable and snappy, tons of settings, most customization built in and not reliant on extensionsGnome is like chromeos/macos futuristic opinionated, I like it a lot with extensions, slightly better than kde plasma with a lot of extensions imo
Cinnamons like closer to a simple windows experience
xfces lightweight but I think plasmas caught up there?
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You cant really go wrong, de is more what decides the desktop experience, like theming/look ,etc. Kde plasma, gnome, cinnamon, xfce , etc. or tiling managers like hyprland (id stick to des for now coming from windows)
Ive mostly tried plasma and gnome
Kde plasma is windows on steroids, customizable and snappy, tons of settings, most customization built in and not reliant on extensionsGnome is like chromeos/macos futuristic opinionated, I like it a lot with extensions, slightly better than kde plasma with a lot of extensions imo
Cinnamons like closer to a simple windows experience
xfces lightweight but I think plasmas caught up there?
Deepin and elementary have unique des I think, and pop os with cosmic in alpha
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Mint has so many drawbacks these days and so few advantages that I wouldn't recommend it anymore.
Sadly.
How do you mean? I recently installed it and now I'm curious. What other distro would you recommend instead?
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You cant really go wrong, de is more what decides the desktop experience, like theming/look ,etc. Kde plasma, gnome, cinnamon, xfce , etc. or tiling managers like hyprland (id stick to des for now coming from windows)
Ive mostly tried plasma and gnome
Kde plasma is windows on steroids, customizable and snappy, tons of settings, most customization built in and not reliant on extensionsGnome is like chromeos/macos futuristic opinionated, I like it a lot with extensions, slightly better than kde plasma with a lot of extensions imo
Cinnamons like closer to a simple windows experience
xfces lightweight but I think plasmas caught up there?
They all come with different preinstalled apps, which are a mix of os and de dependent, like mint with cinnamon may use nemo for files, cachyos with gnome may use nautilus, but I like nemo so on cachyos with gnome I have nemo installed and set as the default.
