As someone who went through something similar, Linux Mint is a really great option. Based off Ubuntu so lots of software, cinnamon desktop environment for a windows familiar feel and layout, and stable releases.
Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Tech-idiot, here, but Linux-curious and running Windows 10 with an ardent refusal to change it to 11.
I know there are a ton of different versions of Linux, ‘Ubuntu’ and such, but I don’t know jack about any of them… which would you recommend that’s best suited to someone who’s only ever used Windows? Looking for the most idiot-proof option. Gaming and office style work are primary use.
Emphasis on the idiot proof. I am really anxious about switching from fear of jacking up my computer, but am so sick of Window’s bullshit… probably as good a time to dive in now than any point going forward.
Nutteman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
If you want a windows-like experience, Linux Mint is hard to beat. It will feel very familiar.
If you enjoy gaming (which I’m assuming you do, considering the article) then maybe Bazzite would be a good option. It comes with GPU drivers (which have historically been a giant pain in the ass for Linux) ready to go. It’s an immutable distro, which is… Contentious in the Linux community. It means you won’t be able to accidentally break your OS, but it also means it isn’t as customizable. The newer users appreciate the safety net, but the experienced power users see it as overly restrictive coddling.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It also pisses off new users frequently when they start to try to use any community tools for most games… Bazzite is a fucking nightmare for gaming because of it. It’s God damn funny counter productive issue.
The steam deck has the same problem to be fair.
Also historically is right, installing drivers has been trivial on every distro I can possibly think of for the last fuck, almost 20 years.
There have been one click gui installers for fucking ever at this point. Lol
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 day ago
For gaming, you can’t go wrong with Bazzite. It’s meant for gaming to mostly just work out of the box, so you likely won’t need to tinker with anything.
It’s that tinkering that introduces stability risks. Adding third-party package repositories and trying to install newer software on top of older LTS distros is what tends to end up breaking them.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 1 day ago
How new is your computer?
I found Pop!_OS worked out of the box fine on my new desktop.
Mint had problems, but worked fine on my older computers.
Back up any important software (like, on a separate drive or online). Get a couple flash drives. Try out mint, popos, bazzite. They’re all free so it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t like one.
I don’t recommend trying to dual boot on one drive because windows is a rude room mate.
Shroomshroom@lemmynsfw.com 1 day ago
I am running Pop!_OS, too. Really easy to get in. For most parts entering code isnt needed. And when its just installing packages.
For Singleplayergames i dont have any problems. Its just install and play.
If someone just multiplayer games it can be hard time. Many anticheat wont work
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 1 day ago
Depends on how much you care about security. Some distros are still very focused on “I operate my desktop in my locked house and don’t expect police to knock” use cases.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Rule 1 you do not get better instructions, manuals and documentation then arch and it’s family. Full stop. It’s great
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
If you need a computer that’s reliable for office work, use Debian, if you want a more console-like experience and less likely it’ll break your computer, use bazzite, if you want to be able to use new hardware, the moment it’s released to the market have the best compatibility with all games and software and the widest range of supported hardware and software use cachyOS.
Debian is stable because it updates so slowly. It makes sure everything works under pain of death. So having compatibility issues, new hardware being supported, having to do weird little things for a less than popular application is pretty normal. But if it works, it’s literally the most stable thing you can possibly put on a computer.
Bazzite it’s kind of your middle ground. It’s up to date in 95% of all cases while support. Basically everything but it is immutable which makes it hard to tinker with or change things should you need to. Which is both a benefit and a downside. Does mean you’re less likely to break your computer while you’re learning on the flip side.
CachyOS is based on Arch the most up-to-date core that you can have for any computer. It’s what steamos is based on in many other bleeding edge options. It has a focus on hardware support, gaming support, software support doing so as up-to-date as physically possible. If you need something to be supported, it’s more likely to be supported here than anywhere else. While the old joke Arch likes to randomly break itself isn’t untrue. It’s also about 15 years out of date in how true it is. Modern Arch rarely ever breaks and when it does so will every other option barring debian almost exclusively.
Realistically speaking, when it comes to actually installing and using any of these options day-to-day, they’re completely identical. Typically, if you have the ability to rub two brain cells together, read and have even a 5th grade level of critical thinking skills. If you’re planning on gaming as your main use of your computer not work, not art, just gaming, just use cachyOS.
There is one last thing to be aware of when choosing any option. If it’s based on Arch, it’s going to have the best documentation in the most user-friendly possible way. Arch has the single. Best, wiki there is. Which for a new user can be a godsend if you actually know how to read.
wavebeam@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
despite your weirdly hard-line anti-bazzite stance elsewhere, this is an excellent expansion on some of the other comments in this thread.
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s really easy and quick to install a distro so you can just test them out. Get three you think you’d like, try em out, you’ll probably like all of them, but you get to pick your fav.
There is no “best”, just “best for you”.
If gaming is your focus and you just want to go into Linux without research, I’d start with Ubuntu or Mint for a couple weeks. If you’re liking it, check out some others, but don’t be surprised if you go back to Ubuntu or Mint simply because you found them easy and working just fine. There’s no wrong choice, just lots of good ones. It is all up to how you like it with no anxiety of making a bad choice 😁
bookmeat@lemmynsfw.com 22 hours ago
Most good Linux releases (distros) have a Live CD/usb boot option. Do try that out! It doesn’t mess with your existing setup and you can see how it feels.
wavebeam@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Tbh it actually doesn’t matter that much. There’s like a million different distros, but really there’s like 3 base distros (yes Linux nuts, this is an oversimplification) of Debian, Fedora, and Arch. Ubuntu has gotten a lot of hate lately for their choice of forced package manager, but it’s probably fine. It’ll matter way more to you what desktop environment you select. I’d recommend looking into Bazzite for gaming. It’s based on fedora and it has a bunch of gaming stuff built in, but also does great for anything else. It’s made to be the steamOS for anything not a steam deck. Go with KDE for a windows-like desktop experience.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 day ago
For gamers who are newcomes to Linux, Ubuntu (or Debian) should be a hard pass. Linux gaming is advancing too fast for the 2-3 year gap between LTS versions to not matter, and trying to work around the stable (outdated) packages is typically what ends up breaking installs.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
How fedora still struggles to keep up sometimes which has always confused me why people suggest a bazzite. Not to mention how many community tools and communities that are starting to support Linux. Only support Arch and don’t support anything else.
Which means you now have new users trying to figure out how to f*** to compile or install software outside of their package managers without a flat pack or anything. Just to use the same community tools that they used on Windows.
While it’s just in the aur because it’s supported. Seriously cachyOS is such a easier solution for new comers.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 1 day ago
People suggest Bazzite because it just works and is difficult to break or otherwise have things to wrong. I’m not sure what you mean by “struggles to keep up”, can you explain?
StitchInTime@piefed.social 1 day ago
I actually just switched to Ubuntu 25.10 from Bazzite. Can you recommend me other (non atomic) distros that play nice with both secure boot and nvidia drivers? I don’t think fedora does. I’m not interested in managing keys and certs for my drivers, and do occasionally play those anti-cheat games on a dedicated windows partition. I’d rather not toggle secure boot each time I reboot.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I wouldn’t exactly recommend it because of the learning curve, but I have the exact setup you’re looking for working on NixOS.
Lanzaboote made it pretty easy. The downside is that you need to put secure boot into user-managed mode, and some asshole anticheats might not like that even though only Microsoft-signed executables were used in the boot chain of Windows.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Did you set up secure boot during setup of Bazzite, out of curiosity? It has the ability to function with it and should prompt you if I remember correctly.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
CACHYOS literally ANYTHING arch based.
There’s a REAL good reason steam uses arch. A REALLY REALLY GOOD ONE.
wavebeam@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
lol, lots of folks responding to me doing the exact thing i was warning about. Honestly, just pick one that seems like it offers what you’re looking for.
If you want it to feel kind of familiar to windows, pick KDE as your desktop environment. you can have this in pretty much any distro, some make it easier to set as part of the install process.
If you want it to be harder to fuck up, but with less flexibility for customization or being on the bleeding edge of support, pick an immutable distro like bazzite
If you wan full flexibility and the added danger and complexity that brings, go for an arch-based distro. lot of great comments below too with actually good details and not just “people are dumb for using X, they should use Y because i’m smarter” - specifically dubyakay and Holytimes are offering some great details.
FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Dude, we don’t know what you just said. Lol
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Tbh it actually doesn’t matter that much. There’s like a million different distros, but really there’s like 3 base distros (yes Linux nuts, this is an oversimplification) of Debian, Fedora, and Arch. Ubuntu has gotten a lot of hate lately for their choice of forced package manager, but it’s probably fine. It’ll matter way more to you what desktop environment you select. I’d recommend looking into Bazzite for gaming. It’s based on fedora and it has a bunch of gaming stuff built in, but also does great for anything else. It’s made to be the steamOS for anything not a steam deck. Go with KDE for a windows-like desktop experience.
The three base distros mentioned are ones that other distros use as their base
E.g.
Debian -> Ubuntu, Mint, Pop_OS!
Fedora -> Bazzite, Nobara
Arch -> EndeavourOS, Manjaro, CachyOS
While you can customize the base distros however you want, think of these derivate distros as various prebuilts.
Most distros come with a package manager that allows you to download (software) packages from a centralized repository. Similar to say Microsoft store. Ubuntu was dissed for Canonical (the creators of Ubuntu) forcing their own package manager into it, which had various issues, while there were already well established package managers available.
Desktop Environment (DE) is what you see on your screen. Various elements control how the task bar or app bar behaves or what it looks like, what windows are stylized like, and how they behave etc. For someone coming from Windows, Linux Mint’s Cinnamon DE or any distro with KDE will likely be most familiar experience, while those switching from MacOS, Gnome DE as the Fedora default is very similar.
Bazzite is a gaming focused distro based on Fedora.
FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Can you install your own package manager? Are there established quality ones?
Thanks for this btw
TachyonTele@piefed.social 1 day ago
Which distro is the steam deck based on?
addie@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Listen, there’s dozens of Linux users on Void, Slackware and Gentoo. Dozens! Especially the ones wanting to run the latest games. Can’t just leave all of them out.
wavebeam@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
lol, i know you’re joking, but this is the kinda thing i think actually really confuses and scares people who are unfamiliar with linux. There absolutely are really great distros out there that aren’t the big players, but for a newcomer they can probably stick to a big distro that seems nice and if they start getting the bug they can come back for a deeper dive. deciding to just do it is way more important than getting it “right” imo.
addie@feddit.uk 22 hours ago
Indeed - I’ve seen more people recommend Hannah Montana Linux (
apt-based) than any of those for newcomers recently.You are entirely right that a Linux distribution is really just its package manager, the default packages installed, and some remote repositories which may (or may not) have had some customisation applied, which will have been pulled and built from a source repository somewhere. All that’s really needed to swap between eg. Arch, Manjaro or Cachy is to update the repo files and issue a package manager update command, although I’d probably like to verify my backups and get a stiff drink first.
The House of Linux is built out of bricks, and the bricks aren’t that scary - you can take them to bits and look at them if you like, they’re usually zipped-up folders of text files and the binaries you’d get from compiling them yourself. But if that’s not what you’re used to, then yeah - 🤯 .
In all seriousness, I wish that most distros had art half as good as what Void Linux has - got some really gifted people, there.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The problem with bazzite is it’s just an objectively worse option then cachyOS if your using your PC exclusively to game.
Immutable distros and the lack of aur can be such a massive pain in the fucking ass if you play games with a lot of community tools.
Almost exclusively every community tool I’ve ever seen for any game only ever supports Arch and never anything else. So while you can use other things, it sucks to have to compile it all yourself every f****** update.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I’ve never had an issue with any community tools on an immutable distro. Especially distros that have distrobox, but for the most part, the community tools I’ve needed use lutris or flatpak and do not require compilation. Do you have an example of some of the tools you’re talking about? I’m not necessarily doubting you, I just haven’t encountered it before. You can also still install things (at the cost of image space) with rpm-ostree.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I can access the aur on Bazzite easily using my Arch distrobox.