So i was surprised today when my fiancee told me she was thinking about switching over to linux. Surprised because she is absolutely not technically minded, but also because she was weary about having Microsoft AI slop forced on her PC every update. ( i’m so proud!)
Now i’ve used a little linux but i’ve always been a holdout. Won’t stop me from moving someone else over but i have too much going on in my setup to deal with that right now. So i’m not super versed but i was able to give her the basic rundown of what distros are, concerns when switching, what may and may not be available, shes still on board so we’re doing this! Knowing her she would like to not have to transition too much, whats something fairly hands off and easy to learn. I’ve heard some good things about mint from hanging around you nerds the past few years but also some not so good things, any suggestions?
next concern is what kind of transfer process is this going to be? i have some spare HDD’s so we can try and get everything ported over but i’m so busy with school right now i can’t quite allocate the time to really deep dive this.
Any help is appreciated, cheers!
Three correct answers:
And a few incorrect answers:
Another incorrect answer: Manjaro
https://github.com/arindas/manjarno
If you want Arch but a bit easier, just install EndeavourOS.
Gentoo it is, then!
Damn, I’m 2 months into my first Linux experience and went with Ubuntu Studio since I use my PC for freelance audio/music/art and it’s promoted as great for creatives. It took a lot of work to get my audio working without ALSA and more work to get smaller things working right. I’m concerned if I switch distros I’ll have to do it all again and I barely remember what I did to fix things haha. Think I’m stuck with Ubuntu. Didn’t realize it was so looked down on.
Ubuntu Studio is great, but absolutely not for beginners. Ubuntu Studio isn’t the same thing as Ubuntu, too. They change a lot from the base Ubuntu.
Oh ok, I didn’t know that. I thought it was just Ubuntu with pre installed programs and a low latency kernel. I’ve been enjoying the learning curve, even though it’s been frustrating at times I’ve learned so much in the last 2 months and love it haha
Ubuntu was really good when I was a kid. when I went to school like 10 years ago I had to have a windows computer for a while to run my school’s proprietary virtual clinical lab software and I was too busy studying and going to irl clinicals to worry about getting a dual boot running. I tried to go back once a few semesters in but it seemed really bloated compared to the Ubuntu I grew up with and I did mint for a bit but that computer kicked the bucket iirc and I didn’t have the time to set up another dual boot. Hubs is thinking we’re gonna have to switch soon and I’ve honestly been ready for a bit and think I’ll probably try mint again, but distrowatch says a lot of people are super into cachy so I was considering that. Will Probably still try mint first.
Ubuntu has started going off the deep end. They’ve been heading in that direction for a while, but they recently (I guess like 5 years-ish ago) hit this corporatey, money-grabbing, mentality that’s so completely opposite of what made Linux great.
The feel I get about it is 10 years ago, tutorials were written using Ubuntu because it was an easy distro to use and was a great platform for beginners, so people used that as their platform to teach. Now it feels like tutorials are written using Ubuntu because they’re being sponsored to. A lot of how-tos I come accros have the same vibe as watching a video animation tutorial that uses adobe and oh gosh, it’s also sponsored by adobe. Or a networking tutorial sponsored by Cisco. I’ve actually started just looking to see if another distro is acknowledged before I actually see what they have to say.
There’s a very different feel if you’re trying to set something up and a website has “if you’re in this family of linux, here’s what you do, or if you’re in this one, do this” versus “so you want to set up x in linux? Here’s how you do it in Ubuntu”. It’s as if no other distro exists.
Anyway, ignoring that rant. Linux is super stable these days, you can take pretty much any distro and you’ll be fine. I tend to gravitate toward the base distros, like fedora, opensuse, and Debian over Rocky, mint, etc. I haven’t come across one in the past five years that gave me any trouble, except when it came to updated nvidia drivers and wayland. In which case some distros were behind a month or two on getting those updated.
When I was a kid (15-ish years ago) my laptop’s hard drive crashed. The repair place told my dad that something broke and it’s not compatible with Windows so they installed Ubuntu. Barely noticed the difference.
Yeah, I switched to Ubuntu in 2008, and it was great for years, but lately it’s just been so awful.
My advice would be to just give up on the dual boot (unless you still need it, and even then, maybe keep Windows on a different machine maybe?).
I think the best way to go is full Linux immersion.
Pop is such a cool project but it’s been kinda broken for me both times I’ve tried it, and then add to that what happened with Linus tech tips where him being dumb combined with pop having not fixed a major and obvious packaging issue that completely broke his system has kinda just left me with the impression they’re not super on top of the ball
I hope that’s changed, I want them to be successful, especially with cosmic
You guys use Arch ??
btw
They didn’t say beeteedubs so clearly not.
What about Ubuntu flavors? Or Debian?
While Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro, it tries to un-fuck the worst of Canonical. Other Ubuntu spins with a different desktop environment don’t do this, like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. They end up as just Ubuntu on a different DE, with all the decisions made by canonical.
Base Debian might work, but afaik, is “not as beginner friendly” compared to Mint.
Seconding LMDE. It’s Debian based rather than Ubuntu so no canonical to un-f. It’s my favorite distro. LMDE for desktop, vanilla Debian for servers.
Two points: Mint has a Debian version (LMDE), but also base Debian, especially the KDE flavor, has made enormous gains in beginner friendliness.
Not for beginners.
Who even uses normal arch anymore.
All the cool kids use endeavour or cachy. Which is like calling Ubuntu, Debian.
Me, btw.
Nah all the cool kids are on Omarchy now.
Cringe
Unfortunately, Linux Mint devs are transphobic.