When Windows 10 dies, I am going to jump ship over to Linux. Which version would you recommend for someone with zero prior experience with Linux? **Edit: Linux Mint it shall be.**
Whom also likes to game every now and then ;)
Edit: Thank you all for your input and suggestions! Linux Mint shall be my next OS! Though, I think I’ll give Pop!OS a look-see as well.
Like most others have stated here, I’ll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.
I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.
For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.
Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.
Pop!OS. It is maintained by a company called System76 who make Linux computers. You might think about getting one if you want a new computer. Support the cause!
I personally started by playing around with Ubuntu, but it just didn’t feel intuitive coming from windows.
Went over to Mint, and was very happy,especially with drivers and gaming. I even fully removed my windows installation during this period. Having gained a better understanding of Linux, I have now moved on again.
The only real drawback of Mint is not natively supporting KDE Plasma (as they did before). And yes, you can just install it yourself, but I wouldn’t recommend a beginner who barely knows how to install Linux to attempt such an endevour.
One word of advice to OP: don’t wait till you can’t use Windows anymore. Start by dual booting and getting a hang of Linux, but with windows at the ready for any tasks you cannot yet do/feel comfortable doing on Linux. As you get a better hold of Linux, you should naturally begin to use Windows less.
The worst thing someone can do, is to jump OS without any backup or safety net. Learning to use Windows took a long time, getting a hang of new concepts and getting used to an alien environment. Now, already having a hang of “computers” (Windows), we have digital needs and expectations (E-Mail, gaming, etc.) which will need fulfilling, but many seem to forget that a different OS means different ways of doing our daily tasks and different challenges to handle.
And yes, “different”, because Windows definitely also comes with it’s own unique challenges, you just don’t see them as much when having gotten used to them.
One word of advice to OP: don’t wait till you can’t use Windows anymore. Start by dual booting and getting a hang of Linux, but with windows at the ready for any tasks you cannot yet do/feel comfortable doing on Linux. As you get a better hold of Linux, you should naturally begin to use Windows less.
Debian is Debian based and regular Mint is Ubuntu LTS based and use theirs respective repos (not a big difference for the average user). While currently the non Debian version is the main and recommended version, due some controversial changes in Ubuntu people want to move away from Ubuntu and the devs have considered making the Debian edition the main one.
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