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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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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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Funny that Debian and Fedora were the only two distros that worked on my laptop. (dual GPU, others booted to black screen after install.) Debian hasn’t grenaded itself yet :)
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
While that’s a good read for someone more technical, the distro chooser brings it to people of lower technical prowess.
While that’s a good read for someone more technical
I would perhaps put more importance to eagerness to learn. But (I think) I understand where you’re hinting at.
the distro chooser brings it to people of lower technical prowess.
While the distrochooser definitely has a lower entry barrier, I’d argue that if one isn’t willing to read the above guide, then they might as well roll a die and choose between Bazzite, Fedora, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, TUXEDO OS and Zorin OS accordingly.
I’m not really hinting at anything. I’m saying that not everyone that comes to look at Linux will have technical info to understand why that guide matters, nor will they want to invest in learning beyond meeting their needs. Having supported windows and mac users alike, the overwhelming majority really just wanted something that wasn’t a hassle. And they favor which ever OS gives them that in the way they find least onerous.
And so the distro chooser helps the ones of those willing to put in a tiny bit of effort to try something new, but don’t want to go read extensively to do it. It’s better than rolling a die when it comes to meeting their needs.
Trying to force people to see linux the way you want them to see it will never work. It hasn’t worked for decades now. All the factions with their different ideological principles get in the way of Linux more than help it. The guide you linked is mostly removed from that thankfully and to its credit. It is also a lot of info a basic user doesn’t need to know in the end. They want “OS go brrrr”, not to understand the nuances of flatpak and snap, or why atomic might be beneficial to them. Even though knowing all of that is definitely in their best interest. I fully agree they’d be better off knowing. But they still don’t want it. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. And since Linux people won’t generally come meet them at their level (or worse you get two people trying to ‘help’ arguing with each other instead of helping), a tool that does something like the distro chooser has to come meet them. It’s only a benefit in Linux adoption at the end of the day.
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Mint looks pretty dated tho. I would go with Kubuntu because it looks pretty similar to Windows and is sleek and modern even without any customizations
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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I need autodesk for work so I’m setting up a 2nd box I can remote into. I looked into virtual cloud environments but they are too expensive
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Why do you suggest Mint over Ubuntu?
Mint in any of its default offerings feels significantly more familiar to a Windows environment than default Ubuntu, Lubuntu (LXDE desktop) or Xubuntu (XFCE desktop), making the migration “less painful”;
The ISO image is ~1GB smaller \Because fuck snaps
Snaps probably 😆
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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?
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
Been on CachyOS for a couple months now. If you want to go Arch, I highly recommend it. No issues with NVIDIA drivers or any of my other hardware. The only thing I need Windows for anymore is Solidworks.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
It’s actually comments like this which will scare people the hell away from trying Linux.
My comment wouldn’t exist if some distros didn’t cling to X11.
I’d be more worried about the lack of HDR support. Shame they killed off the Plasma edition. To anyone considering using Mint you can install Plasma on top of it with ease and get a modern desktop that supports HDR. If you don’t have an HDR monitor then Cinnamon is great.
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.
Is it necessary though? Microsoft have already been campaigning pretty hard to get people to switch to Linux. Telling people their perfectly good PCs won’t work anymore because the operating system is expiring, and they can’t even “upgrade” to Windows 11 is a pretty powerful message.
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.
I’m going to be migrating to Linux and using Mint. I’m just paranoid about doing something wrong and accidentally walking into a security vulnerability. So I want to set aside time to properly learn things and understand what I’m doing but I’m just busy AF these days…
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Agreed.
Had the same problem with the Steam library on a Windows filesystem and some annoyances with NTFS drives.
Other than that, pretty easy overall (you have to tinker around with some games and wineversions though)
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I have four pieces of advice
- btrfs file system for easy backup and recovery
- Encrypt your drive
- use an ad blocker everywhere
- use virus total to scan anything you might be wary of, and if you really feel like you need an AV, they do exist for Linux.
I usually prefer Debian based systems, but when I finally ditched windows 3 weeks ago, I switched to Manjaro, and I’m loving it. You got this!
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.
Peppermint is always left out. That is the perfect on for just working, stable and easy to move to from windows. It’s also lightweight and fast.
Microsoft Access and Publisher, the Adobe suite, VR. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of why I can’t completely abandon Windows, yet. I do have a handful of older PCs running Mint though, and I’ll be switching over more. But not all of them.
Publisher is being discontinued soon and will be removed from Microsoft 365 installs
I’ve never used 365. I use a 2019 purchased version. I refuse to pay subscriptions. But my job has a lot of graphics that were created and are still updated in publisher. I’m sure I can find an alternative, but recreating hundreds of files will be terrible, and it will likely all fall on me. And that’s only like 5% of my job.
Ok, I really need to know what you’re using Access for in 2025
Old nonprofit, old files, continuously maintained for about 30 years now. Tiny staff, not many resources to work on migrating the files. It’s just not a missional priority.
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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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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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Alright, I need to move my main desktop to linux. Help me decide which distribution. Note that I already run a desktop-less server on Debian, a raspi on their flavor of deb and have a laptop I rarely use on fedora (installed it to test the waters, but Mint would probably suit its use case more).
My main desktop PC is on windows and I wanna switch but im not sure which distro to switch to. The thing needs to be gaming ready for 2024 hardware. Debian is too slow to update for such a use case, I dont jive with Ubuntu philosophy, Arch is… im just not that kind of guy… so Im leaning on Fedora but I kinda dont like that it has 100 updates every time I boot it up. Is there any in between? Stable and quick with updates, but not when updates can crash the thing?
Edit: thanks for the recommendations, I’ll probably check em all out!
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I know you said you’re not an Arch kinda guy…but I highly recommend Garuda.
Takes away most of the rough parts of running Arch, and comes in more flavours than you can shake a stick at. The forums are highly active, and Devs/admins/mods are very quick to respond to question/issue posts.
Edit: I’ve only had one single update related fuckery in the 3ish years I’ve been running it, and it was through personal error.
Peppermint is worth checking out. I don’t game but Debian and some extra on top. Lightweight
