Honestly, at this point I’m so done with window’s bullshit. Their operating system is damn near unusable. All the convenient stuff is hidden in weird places. The constant whining about having to buy their crap. Or worse trying to get me to use the horrible software that comes with the new versions.
My excuse used to be, but I can’t play games on it. This is no longer the case for the games I love. So Windows can suck it. At this point I’m switching away from a lot of stuff I used to use. (x-box became Steam-deck, twitter became blue-sky and reddit is becoming Lemmy) As a kind of computer illiterate person, this has been a worth while transition but a difficult one. Let’s just say I had to learn a lot of new stuff.
So I’m a total Linux newbie but thanks to my Steam deck I’ve become somewhat used to using it. Not like an expert, but I have run wine to create separate environments for running pokémon fangames. And have taken a look around the Linux environment. I like it and think I’ll be able to get used to it with practice. It reminds me weirdly of windows XP in how easily I can get everything to work the way I want. It takes a bit of doing and some research, but it works. Which is all I want in an operating system.
I am looking for tips as to where to start searching, because I am converting my windows computer to Linux. I just don’t know what version.
Any user experience is welcome, I have no idea where to begin. I mostly use the computer I’m installing this on as a glorified typewriter, that I play movies, music and retro-games on.
A user friendly version is preferred, I find it hard to parse out from the various versions I have seen so far how easy they actually are to use. Extra points if a large amount of the information has easy to find tutorials on the internet. I don’t always know where to start looking and as I learned while getting wine to work, some of the names/terms are completely different. (And kind of a lot at once if you are just getting started).
Any resources you might think are useful for a newbie are also highly appreciated.
tl;dr: I (a Linux noob) am looking for a recommendation for what version of Linux to use for my needs. And any tips tricks or other info that I might need to know before I switch. Because windows sucks.
I’m sorry if this has already been asked and answered. I did try to find an answer through searching, but as I already mentioned. My lack of terms and knowledge is holding me back.
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Linux Mint is the obvious “newbie” choice, and not just because everyone says so.
Now, I’m no Linux expert, but Mint is great for the huge amount of tutorials availiable. The catch is: most of them aren’t aimed at Mint itself, but Ubuntu or Debian, from which it “inherits” a lot. So, if you have a problem and can’t find a fix for Mint specifically, chances are one aimed at Ubuntu (or even Debian) will work flawlessly.
Additionally, GenAI chatbots impress me with how helpful thay are. Just by asking them how to do stuff will teach you a lot.
I highly recommend you save the info which seemed most useful somewhere for future reference. In my experience I had to do a few dozen things repeatedly and ended up remembering them. They’re mostly simple commands like
apt install,apt update,apt upgrade,cdand my favourite<app_name &>which opens the app invoked without “hijacking” the terminal.As most in the Linux community say, some things are lightning-fast to do in the terminal once you know the proper incantation.
As others said, the Mint install is incredibly simple, and much faster than the Windows one. You don’t need a guide, just reading the on-screen prompts and instructions will guide you through it. During the install I highly recommend checking the “Install proprietary drivers” box because depending on your exact hardware, some things (especially Nvidia) may not play well without it.
You will be able to do almost everything without the terminal, although many tutorials do utilize it, so using it is pretty much inevitable at some point of your Linux journey.
Now, some hearsay: I’ve heard that Windows doesn’t play nice with dual boot (although I’ve never experienced it fist hand), so you should back up your files just in case.
But, before you do that: For starting, if you’ve got the time, I’d recommend getting an old machine to dip your toes into Linux on it first without fully committing. I’d recommend you do this even though you have the Steam Deck since there are some differences between SteamOS and Mint, so it wouldn’t hurt to try.
and my favourite `` which opens the app invoked without “hijacking” the terminal.
lemmy sanitized it out, did you mean the ampersand?
Sounds like Linux Mint would be a good start for you
You get my standard reply that I use zorin which is an ubuntu based distro that tries to give the look of feel of windows and has a lot of default installed things like wine/playonlinux, libreoffice, app for disc burning, rdp client, basically most everything I would want for day to day use. It is not necessarily the best gaming distro and its certainly not bleeding edge. Its a great install and get to doing things right away distro to me which is what I want.
I don’t mind if things aren’t the newest of the new. In my experience that usually means there are more tutorials and fewer bugs. A distro that feels like windows a bit is tempting as a newbie and might make my switch easier, thank you for that consideration. I also like the idea of getting to work right out of the box. I’m definitely adding Zorin to the research pile, thank you.
Bro you’re messing with wine prefixes? You already know more than most and clearly have the motivation and ability to do what you want. You’ll go far, just google what you need when you need it like the rest of us :)
Switching to something else because you’ve had it up to here with existing is a bad reason. Your mind is biased and loaded for prejudgement.
I second Linux mint. It’s my daily driver and I love it. I first switched my laptop which wasn’t much daily driver to mint and when I got used to it I switched my main desktop.
Linux Mint. Easy to set up, reasonably easy to use, and used by enough people that a quick internet search should probably turn up results of people who have run into similar issues if you ever have a problem.
Also has an interface that clicks easier with people used to Windows.
Linux Mint DE will be the easiest transition.
Absolutely go with bazzite, I have 15 years of experience and am willing to do unlimited troubleshooting for free if you message me on matrix.
as for why bazzite? it’s immutable, which means there’s a core set of stuff that is read only and can’t be broken, which is massively beneficial for new people and is very up to date, and has the fixes for certain patent related stuff built in (fedora doesn’t as do any other american based distros) that make twitch and some other websites work properly out of the box
https://distrosea.com/ After following some of the recommendations here, you can look into this website to gets first look and feel for the distro before downloading the live USB.
The best advice I can give you is to switch to Linux is don’t right away. Switch the applications you use to open source or Linux compatible alternatives that also run on windows. Then after you get used to those on windows then make the switch.
I would also recommend not dual booting at first since it’s too easy to jump ship at the slightest issue vs sticking with it to figure out the issue just like you would with a problem on windows. It’s a real thing I have experienced it in reverse as a long time Linux user that tried Windows 11 i kept jumping back to Linux every time I ran into issues that caused frustration.
This is some very solid advise.
I dual booted and I rarely ever used windows when i was starting, mostly because windows takes a while to reboot.
I was in your shoes last year, OP.
I first installed Mint (because everyone recommended it as the newbie distro) on a laptop that I took with me on summer vacation, to see if I can do some summer course work and finals on it. It worked flawlessly for that. Then I installed Steam and the paw patrol game for the kids, with controller support, and again everything worked flawlessly.
This basically gave me the confidence to just axe windows on my home desktop and fail horribly over and over again to get Arch working. Until I didn’t. I’m still Linux illiterate, but the Arch wiki, their IRC channel and duck.ai & asking every available LLM through it for consensus, helped a ton with resolving anything I have encountered. I’d probably go for something more stable though next time.
So yeah tl;dr try on old laptop first for a month, then switch your main PC.
Mint is a safe bet, I would also suggest you have a look at Pop! OS and CachyOS once you feel a bit more comfortable with Linux and are curious at all. They have a bit more cool stuff to offer that you don’t really get from windows imho
Go for a popular/“beginner” distro (basically mint or fedora or fedoraKDE, or Bazzite for gaming) so you can search up anything you need, and before you install anything test it all out with the live boot disk you created; keep backups and don’t be afraid to fuck up, at worst you reinstall and you can script much of the set up process; and do not be afraid of the terminal, learn its secrets, watch a “bash beginner” and “linux terminal beginner” video or a few on youtube and follow along like it’s a class, you’ll be fine.
That’s it, you’ll have specific questions later, but for now that’s all you need.
