I’m sure you could manage to do a lot of things without a terminal on something like Fedora or Mint, but you really should just learn to use the command line. If you’re expecting it to be anything close to the windows command line it is not, it’s way easier to use and you’ll be able to do things so much faster than you ever could with a gui on windows. Learning everything you really need shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.

The one other option I can think of is ChromeOS Flex, but even there you’re going to have a way better experience if you learn to do things from the command line when appropriate

try out Zorin OS

It looks like you want SteamOS. I recommend either getting a Steam Deck, wait for the Steam Machine or install it compatible hardware if you have any. No Nvidia GPUs.

SteamOS checks all three requirements for the most part, maybe 3 not so much. But it will be near impossible to fuck it up as it has a read-only filesystem and all apps are installed through flatpak which are sandboxed similar to apps on iOS.

Did you set your Mint to autologin to desktop? If so then your Keyring is then locked and you get prompts to unlock it when you want to use anything that needs it - websites, software like email etc. The keyring holds your passwords and credentials to pass to on as needed and keeps your system secure. If you set your desktop to not autologin - i.e. have a login screen - your keyring is unlocked automatically as you log on to the PC and you don’t keep getting prompts to unlock the keyring. You can disable the keyring entirely or give it a blank password, but it’s better to use the login screen to keep your device secure, and let the keyring do it’s thing in the background even though “login automatically” is so easy to tick and use. The wallet is the same concept on KDE desktops.

Otherwise the only password prompts you should get are similar to windows - when you want to make system level changes.

I’d recommend OpenSuSE Leap with KDE. User friendly, stable, with a good GUI for making all system changes. Fedora KDE is also a good popular distro; I’m not sure how good it’s GUI is but I’d be surprised if you need to use the terminal. People often recommend the terminal (because it IS quicker - often one step instead of “go here, click here, click here”) but there is usually a GUI way of doing everything.

You’re probably going to find that the terminal will come up at some point no matter what version of Linux you choose.

For most I would recommend Mint, but since you mentioned having a negative experience previously, perhaps Zorin OS would be a better alternative?

If you want a hardened OS that would be difficult to break, an immutable OS may be a better route for you. Here’s a link with some options to choose from. My recommendation would be Fedora Silverblue.

As someone else mentioned, you will still need to use a password when making changes to the system. You can set it to boot without a password if you prefer to. I use Bazzite (gaming focused immutable OS; based on Fedora Silverblue) and I want to say 90% of the time I only need my password at boot.

If you need office apps, LibreOffice and Open Office should do what you need. MS office can be a challenge to get running, but the online web versions will run out of the box.

Hope that helps!

For these requirements, I’d recommend PopOS. Thanks to its app centre being very well designed, you never need to touch the terminal for anything. Package managers are apt and Flatpak, so you get full access to basically anything that GNU/Linux has to offer. The install itself is super easy as well. I think it may be one of the best beginner distros.

I’d like to know a bit more about your troubles to answer.

Do you know what desktop you were using? If so, what did you like and what didnt you like?

Where were you reentering your password all the time? Was it logging in, logging in after the screen went dark, the wallet, etc?

What sort of troubleshooting were you doing? Was it an application not working, a piece of hardware, or something else?

The reason I’m asking these questions is because most people are interacting with just the desktop GUI, so some of your issues (password) may just be configuration, the distribution won’t matter. If your troubleshooting was due to hardware, there may be a better choice.

For example, I use Debian everywhere. That said, there are times where certain pieces of software or certain pieces of hardware work better with a different distribution. On my T480, I’m using arch, mostly because of the fingerprint reader and a some things I’m building will be easier this way.

Generically speaking, it doesnt matter which distribution you use, you can do the basics on all of them. What it can come down to is familiarity, hardware, and purpose, and the guiding principles for each distribution.

ideally not requiring a terminal

No chance, sorry. Look at every Linux distro in existence and you’ll find the terminal pinned in the Dock. Learning to use it is just part of The Linux Experience.

ideally doesn’t require a password for every input

You can enable autologin, but in my experience this just means you have to enter your password in every time you open a new app. You can look into Howdy. Basically the Linux equivalent of Windows Hello. But this will require terminal to configure as well. And most likely still wont work because biometric hardware is rarely compatible with Linux.

What’s your favorite color? Pick the distro with that color in their logo.

Zorin is user friendly. You may still need to use a password for doing updates.

If you game, then probably Bazzite.

If you hate the command line you could try tumbleweed, you will have Yast2 GUI apps for everything yo want to alter on the system. And it has automatic snapshotting if out you mess things up, you can boot to a previous snapshot. Howeverits will require a password whenever you want to make system changes. And a learning curve compared to other distros.

Not really getting away from typing a password, that’s the part that can keep malicious stuff out because it doesn’t have permission.

When I started my Linux journey a couple of years ago, I tried lots of distros and experienced some of the same frustrations. The distro that hooked me and just worked was Pop! OS. It was very user friendly, didn’t require any fiddling, it just worked. Later I wanted a more up-to-date system, and after trying several distros I settled with Fedora.

Other thoughts: …be sure to install Timeshift (system rollback app). …my experience is that gnome desktop is easier, cleaner, less tweaking and less overwhelming than kde.

I recommend zorin os. Its an ubuntu lts (long term support) respin that is fine with proprietary software so will offer to install nvidia drivers and such if you want. This means its anything but bleeding edge and about as stable as your going to get. It tries to mimic the windows look and feel to be comfortable to windows users. Then it is also an out of the box distro which means it comes with software someone would exect a laptop to have and then some. so it will have libre office and a browser and software to play and edit audio, photos, video and software to burn a disk if you have a burner. Even an rdp client. It also has wine setup with play on linux so you can right click a windows exe and run or install it (may or may not work depending on the windows program). When you find programs online if it has a debian download you can use that or you can check a gui add software ting and search for it with the spyglass icon. Its about as easy as you will get. That being said I often recommend people install onto their last laptop if they have one that did not break when they replaced it. Linux runs so much better than windows that the old one will often run better than windows on teh new one.

Zorin

I’d suggest you don’t listen to anyone in this thread and don’t switch.

You don’t want to learn how to use linux, you want to keep using windows and you’re trying to do something about it now because the clock has run out on you. Go to massgrave.dev/windows10_eol and follow the instructions to get esu updates for three years or do an in place switch to iot ltsc 2021 and get updates for eight years.

During those years, branch out a little and try using a mac or linux on their own terms. Neither will be an easy switch, you’ll have to retrain your muscle memory and you will absolutely have to learn to use the terminal if you wanna use linux but especially if you have someone who can help you in person, you can easily get switched over.

One thing to keep in mind about the terminal:

In Linux, many GUI tools are simply pretty interfaces for the terminal. That’s why folks tell you that you’ll need the terminal occasionally, no matter what: you might need to type in commands that don’t already have a friendly GUI.

The terminal isn’t that scary, though! Every big distro has a support community. And if you need to do something in the terminal? Someone else has definitely needed to do the same thing, so you won’t need to figure it out on your own.

I mostly use Bazzite in front of a big TV. When I first set up the computer, I needed to use the terminal to configure a couple of things related to network shares. Later, I used it to help specific devices wake up the computer from sleep. It’s been months since then, and I’m not sure I’ve needed the terminal for anything else.

Use it as an opportunity to learn how your computer works. It’s really satisfying to understand how things happen.