hey nerds, I’m getting myself a new personal laptop as a treat, but I very much do not want windows 11 shitting it up. Is there a linux distro with caveman-compatible instructions for installation and use? I want to think about my OS as little as possible while actually using it.
I’ve got one friend who uses mint, but I’ve also seen memes dunking on it so who knows. I actually really only know what I’ve seen from you all shitposting in other communities
Ubuntu. There are mixes of it but out of the box Ubuntu is about as straightforward a dist to install as possible and it is well supported.
That said “new laptop” and Linux are not always a match made in heaven. You might try it from a boot stick and confirm that things like the GPU, touch screen, touchpad, fingerprint reader, USB C / Lightning all work properly.
Go ahead with mint. It’s the only distro I know with a fully featured setup wizard that holds your hand through the entire process. I am confident anyone who has used computers can use it.
But honestly, most modern distros are about as difficult as picking up an iOS/android phone for the first time. There are different ways of doing things, but they’re still phones and can’t be too different anyway. Same with mint, it’s just a computer, it isn’t all that different.
Mint is one of the best bets for beginners, it’s very similar to windows 10 UI wise by default and generally very user friendly
Fedora KDE. It’s easy to setup, modern, customizable and fast. Second would be Mint, it’s only flaws is that it ships an older kernel (might be a pain) and uses X11 (insecure).
Go with Mint, it’s my daily drive on both my laptop and HTPC. If you choose the regular edition Ubuntu based you have also hardware enablement (hwe) kernels which could be useful on newer hardware.
ITT: 100 people naming their favourite distro and making that fit whatever OP needs.
You can go with mint. It’s a solid choice. I prefer opensuse tumbleweed since I find it easier to work with. It also has a great selection of desktop enviroments witch is the thing you interact with and what you use to manage your open programs. If you want something like modern windows you can go with KDE or cinnamon and if you want something more minimal and windoes XP like you can use xfce.
Linux mint, Debian, Fedora
PopOS if you are into gaming
How is Debian beginner friendly? Quite far from it imho
Have you used it in recent years?
Generally I agree with everyone else, Linux Mint is great.
However, if you really want to not worry at all, you could just buy a laptop from e.g. Tuxedo or System76. They come with Linux preinstalled (I think in the case of Tuxedo at least, you even have a choice of which Linux Distro?), and are guaranteed to have no hardware “difficulties” with Linux, i.e. even if you put another distro on it, you won’t encounter driver issues.
(Those have become very rare anyways, but do put a damper on the “Firsttime Linux Experience” if you do encounter them…)
You can also buy from novacustoms and get Linux installed and you get to have coreboot as the bios
HolyOS, Hannah Montana linux, AmongOS
How about serenity OS
Don’t forget uWuntu
Personally I would recommend Fedora, most distros people have recommended here works.
I had less issues installing Fedora on a new laptop than I did with the win11 and win10 attempts, I’m never switching back to windows
The process for installation is more or less the same for all of them.
Linux Mint and PopOS are the “go to” suggestions. I really don’t like the way either of them look. I’m partial to GNOME for aesthetics and ease of use.
Bazzite comes with most of the stuff you will want pre-loaded, and also the cool Steam Deck Gamescope interface. It’s the only one I’ve used with seamless background updates like you might be accustomed to on Android or iOS. That’s my recommendation.
Currently using Bazzite as my main OS on my laptop, and it works pretty good, the ostree setup has prevented me from manually installing several things though :/
What’s this ostree setup thing please? Was thinking of trying Bazzite but am not yet a super experienced user so trying to understand any issues beforehand…
I’m partial to GNOME for aesthetics and ease of use.
At that point just get a Mac. Gnome has the same “we know better than you do. If you want to do something outside of our extremely specific use cases, you’re using it wrong and should figure something else out” mentality that Apple does.
Except on Linux you’re not obligated to use GNOME, with it being simply a choice between many, and that just so happens to fit into it’s users specific needs. It sure has it’s issue like any DE has, and if it bothers you then you’re completely free to use whatever else you want, that’s the beauty of open source.
Thanks for the input ya nerds. Much love from the geek side of lemmy. I’ll be taking the advice of poking around with multiple distros before committing to one, because it sounds a whole lot less painful than I was imagining.
Quick question though, what the hell is a gnome? Or a KDE for that matter?
This is a GNOME: https://www.gnome.org/
This is a KDE (Plasma): https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/If you’re going to test multiple distros, my advice is that you should take a look at a software called Ventoy. It basically let’s you have multiole iso’s inside a single USB Drive, without the need to reformat it everytime. Also, many distros got beef with a function called “secure boot”, which you can diaable in your BIOS in case it generates issues booting Linux.
About Gnome and KDE, they are simply different Desktop Enviroments (DE).On Linux, DE’s are a slftware category, much like how browsers are a category with many different alternatives (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, …) on Linux we got DE’s such as: Gnome (a more tablet-like DE. You either love it or hate it) KDE Plasma (by default it’s windows-like, but it is very customizeable but can be kinda overwhelming to some) Cinnamon (the one that comes with Mint, very simple, very light, very user friendly and has a familiar layout for Windows users) And many more, Cosmic, Pantheon, XFCE, Sway and so on…
I discovered Ventoy a week ago and it’s fucking amazing. So much time and hassle saved.
Umm, I came across this post some time ago, it says some bad things about ventoy😅
GNOME and KDE are different desktop environments. Basically they are the software that provides you a graphical user interface. Gnome is more simple, but KDE is more customizable and windows-like. There are more options to choose from than these 2
Desktop Environments (DE), or the Graphical User Interface (GUI) you use with it. Essentially you can choose the graphics set and layout of your computer. The underlying functionality of your computer doesn’t change too much, but how things get displayed does. Ubuntu by default uses GNOME. but you can install Kubuntu instead of or alongside it and use the KDE environment. I used to have both installed and just chose which one I wanted to use at the login screen. Eventually I moved to the i3 environment as well and would switch to that sometimes because it could be fun to play with. If you’re new to this and use Ubuntu I’d just start with that (GNOME) and then you can branch out from there when you feel ready. KDE runs a bit more efficiently but looks a bit simpler, last I used it.
Gnome and KDE are two different “desktop environments”. Each distro has a default desktop environment (DE for short), but it’s like a regular application that you can swap out for a different one that does the same thing. The DE is (roughly, I think) the graphical interface to the operating system. So it can feel like the DE is the operating system (especially on Windows or Mac, which don’t have options to change the DE).
Most Linux distros, and certainly all of the beginner friendly ones, make it relatively easy to switch to a different DE. (Or, so I’ve heard. I’ve been using Linux as my daily driver for I’ve a decade, and I barely understand what’s involve in installing a new DE.)
Mint or Zorin
https://ultramarine-linux.org/ Linux ultramarine is based on very popular fedora distro. Let me quote some fedi post:
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Just like Microsoft Windows, you do not need to configure your firmware, drivers, media codecs, and sources. That is already taken care of for you.
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Just like Windows, you can have automatic update, update notifications, or choose not to update. By default, update notifications is the default, allowing you to choose when and what to update. And you can update with a click of a button (point and click), just like Microsoft Update.
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Installing, updating, and removing apps through the app store is point and click easy.
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Go ahead and download an RPM setup file, and double-click to install, just like you would a Windows setup file. Updating and removing that program, can also be done through the app store, which doubles as the app manager.
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Point and click settings. No matter if you want to add users, manage a VPN, add a printer, etc… etc… A simple-to-use control panel is what is offered.
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Friendly support - Based on Fedora Linux, means you have 20+ years of documentation, live help, support forums, and chat groups, both from Fedora and Ultramarine. Source: https://kitty.social/notes/a12bji4hf8zb0332
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