I can’t ever tell what is critical to people. I got my wife her first MacBook last year. She’s used it three times and hates it. I’m like… red yellow green, and everything else is just like iPhone. Nope, she despises it.
I moved my daughter from windows to Linux Mint, and she barely noticed. She can’t use her VR the same way, and that was the only difference that bothered her.
So I can’t say you wouldn’t hate Linux, but I can tell you I don’t want my hobby to be fucking with OSes and Mint was perfect. You can just use it. Steam games, browsing the web, damn near everything works exactly the way you’d expect on Windows. I don’t happen to need a second computer after my work MacBook, but if I did it would be Linux for sure.
Well, except no OneDrive. Which another point in Linux’s favor.
There’s so many options for Linux though. Mont is super beginner friendly and doesn’t focus on the terminal. You don’t have to set up Arch your first time around.
That’s a neat thing about Linux, the look and feel is actually totally separate from the distro. Everyone focuses on distros when really, that’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, the look and feel is the desktop environment.
KDE is windows-10-like (out of the box, you can also rearrange the crap out of it, ours is set up more like Mac!) and also happens to be one of the most full-featured desktop environments, so you won’t be missing stuff (like HDR support or whatever).
So, a distro with KDE.
Debian is great if you want something that Does Not Break on you. Ever. It will never throw you a curveball with an update. That also means you just won’t really get updates very much, outside of a Big Major Upgrade every couple of years. If you’re tired of Windows Update screwing with you, Debian’s perfect.
Fedora is pretty good if you want the new shinies all the time. Major updates every 6 months. Debian has a bigger appstore and even stuff that isn’t in there often provides .deb packages, which Fedora can’t run, but it’s not a huge deal.
Mint doesn’t have a convenient KDE version (but you can install KDE after the fact). It has its own desktop called Cinnamon. More Windows 7 vibes. It’s based on Debian so you get the Debian compatibility, as well, and they put work into making sure you have GUI apps for stuff like installing drivers (Debian you might need a terminal command or three during initial setup).
There’s also immutable distros like Bazzite, which is basically SteamOS But Desktop. It also comes with similar restrictions to SteamOS, though. Good for an Appliance Computer, an absolute fucking pain if you ever need to install drivers/VR stuff/other system software or what-have-you. I’d avoid for your main computer.
Learning how to use a Linux distribution like Mint doesn’t require any special degree or knowledge. I’d say you can do that in a weekend or so. Especially since you can ask the AI about everything and it’s surprisingly good at Linux questions and terminal commands, although you don’t really need those for Mint.
If you’ve never been into Microslop Windows, navigating their piece of shit os can be equally as daunting since you are not free to do what you want, you can only do what MS want you to do which is completely counterintuitive to what Linux is.
Just because something is the market leader, doesn’t make it good or better than the alternative.
I get that you don’t care for Linux, and that’s fine but if you are the slightest interested in IT, you’re doing yourself a disservice not learning it.
I don’t think you know at all where I’m coming from. You don’t seem to understand how great AI are at documentation. I’d rather ask an AI than browse the mint forums reading decades old threads that won’t lead to anything anyways. That’s just wasting time. What’s your argument?
Oh, I hate all of those because of all the murders they keep committing. Young and vulnerable people go to them looking for help with homework and end up being talked into isolation and suicide.
Linux. I don’t want “using the computer” to turn into a hobby that I need a computer science degree for.
I can’t ever tell what is critical to people. I got my wife her first MacBook last year. She’s used it three times and hates it. I’m like… red yellow green, and everything else is just like iPhone. Nope, she despises it.
I moved my daughter from windows to Linux Mint, and she barely noticed. She can’t use her VR the same way, and that was the only difference that bothered her.
So I can’t say you wouldn’t hate Linux, but I can tell you I don’t want my hobby to be fucking with OSes and Mint was perfect. You can just use it. Steam games, browsing the web, damn near everything works exactly the way you’d expect on Windows. I don’t happen to need a second computer after my work MacBook, but if I did it would be Linux for sure.
Well, except no OneDrive. Which another point in Linux’s favor.
I put Ubuntu on my MacBook a few weeks ago.
That’s one of the reasons I switched from Windows to Linux.
Every single patch and every single version upgrade made using worse as all the settings changed weirder and weirder and hidden or missing.
Bazzite is super easy to use and sets everything up for you.
I don’t like using it because it doesn’t allow you to mess with your computer as much as I like to, but that makes it perfect for normal people.
There’s so many options for Linux though. Mont is super beginner friendly and doesn’t focus on the terminal. You don’t have to set up Arch your first time around.
Which one is “literally just legally distinct windows 10”?
Anything with the KDE desktop!
That’s a neat thing about Linux, the look and feel is actually totally separate from the distro. Everyone focuses on distros when really, that’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, the look and feel is the desktop environment.
KDE is windows-10-like (out of the box, you can also rearrange the crap out of it, ours is set up more like Mac!) and also happens to be one of the most full-featured desktop environments, so you won’t be missing stuff (like HDR support or whatever).
So, a distro with KDE.
Debian is great if you want something that Does Not Break on you. Ever. It will never throw you a curveball with an update. That also means you just won’t really get updates very much, outside of a Big Major Upgrade every couple of years. If you’re tired of Windows Update screwing with you, Debian’s perfect.
Fedora is pretty good if you want the new shinies all the time. Major updates every 6 months. Debian has a bigger appstore and even stuff that isn’t in there often provides .deb packages, which Fedora can’t run, but it’s not a huge deal.
Mint doesn’t have a convenient KDE version (but you can install KDE after the fact). It has its own desktop called Cinnamon. More Windows 7 vibes. It’s based on Debian so you get the Debian compatibility, as well, and they put work into making sure you have GUI apps for stuff like installing drivers (Debian you might need a terminal command or three during initial setup).
There’s also immutable distros like Bazzite, which is basically SteamOS But Desktop. It also comes with similar restrictions to SteamOS, though. Good for an Appliance Computer, an absolute fucking pain if you ever need to install drivers/VR stuff/other system software or what-have-you. I’d avoid for your main computer.
– Frost
Thank you for confirming that, yes, we are on lemmy.
Learning how to use a Linux distribution like Mint doesn’t require any special degree or knowledge. I’d say you can do that in a weekend or so. Especially since you can ask the AI about everything and it’s surprisingly good at Linux questions and terminal commands, although you don’t really need those for Mint.
If you’ve never been into Microslop Windows, navigating their piece of shit os can be equally as daunting since you are not free to do what you want, you can only do what MS want you to do which is completely counterintuitive to what Linux is.
Just because something is the market leader, doesn’t make it good or better than the alternative.
I get that you don’t care for Linux, and that’s fine but if you are the slightest interested in IT, you’re doing yourself a disservice not learning it.
I hear where you are coming from, but you just said “Use AI” on Lemmy. This should be fun 😁
I don’t think you know at all where I’m coming from. You don’t seem to understand how great AI are at documentation. I’d rather ask an AI than browse the mint forums reading decades old threads that won’t lead to anything anyways. That’s just wasting time. What’s your argument?
Mint has an AI?
lol no. That’s now what I said at all. I was refering to chatgpt, claude of what ever flavour of AI you wanna use…
Oh, I hate all of those because of all the murders they keep committing. Young and vulnerable people go to them looking for help with homework and end up being talked into isolation and suicide.