Mint. It’s a great, simple, well supported first distro. And last distro, TBH. I know plenty of people like to distro hop as a hobby, but if you just want to use your machine pick a well supported basic distro and stick with it. Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora are all good options, but Mint is really aimed at newcomers.
Comment on Screw it, I’m installing Linux
RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
What’s the easiest and most secure linux distro for a non-techie? This is for a spare thinkpad I want to try linux on.
BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Sektor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
3 weeks with Mint after 25 years of windows. It’s good and it has solid support. Most things worked right away, some refused, like gaming peripherals and some games. Wine and Proton work most of the time. It has a learning curve bit it’s manageable.
Darkness343@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ubuntu
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Ubuntu has broken too many times on my computers for me to recommend it anymore
Darkness343@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Skill issue
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Ubuntu is too hard, I use arch now
collar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Good mix of usability and learning curve. You will need terminal, but that’s never been easier with AI assistants to learn how. Plenty of support for applications or open source workarounds. It also is familiar enough to use rather quickly, but not so much that it feel like a Windows clone. Highly recommend starting with Ubuntu.
ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Mint is great, but if you have a touchscreen ThinkPad like I do and actually like to use the touchscreen a lot, Mint is very hit or miss.
I installed Fedora with Gnome and it works beautifully with the touchscreen.
phar@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I’d you want an it just works version, I recommend Fedora Plasma.
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
That’s going to vary based on your definition of ‘secure’, and in my experience, most distros are very secure, it’s usually the user that ends up messing the security up.
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve installed mint, pop os and Ubuntu. TBH if it’s a spare, just download one and give it a go.
I really just play games and use a browser, so it’s been easy peasy for me. Look into making a partition for /home if you feel like you’ll swap around it makes it pretty easy. Then you can try a few out without too much of an issue.
mlg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fedora (with KDE Plasma) or OpenSUSE tumbleweed (with KDE Plasma)
Mint is good but its kernel is usually slightly out of date and it still has upstream Ubuntu issues.
Other Ubuntu downstreams are subpar imo.
Plus Fedora & OpenSUSE ships with SELinux if you want MAC security support.
The only downside for Fedora is you have to enable 3rd party software after install and run a couple of commands to swap to full ffmpeg and Nvidia drivers if you have Nvidia hardware. I think OpenSUSE might ship with these enabled but I forgot.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Wait, I’ve been on fedora for a few years now and never noticed any ffmpeg problems, am I missing something? Maybe I ran the command at install and forgot, but I don’t remember that being one of the things I did on set-up.
mlg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
Check if you have ffmpeg-free or ffmpeg (from RPMFusion)
Honestly forgot which codecs+encode/decode aren’t included in Fedora’s free build, but I think they don’t include some parts of H264, H265, and other proprietary codecs.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Oh then I must, because I can run those two at least. Still gonna check when I get home though, thanks!
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Lots of good suggestions there.
I’ll also add AntiX. (I, non-techie, started with SuSe (over 2 decades ago.))
Or if you’re a bit wacky like my uncle, Puppy (~ boy I really did not expect him to pick puppy as his distro, when I showed him several, but he’s been on it over a decade now, utterly loves it.)
You may not initially be techie, but I have heard some users started with arch (or artix or other non-systemd forks of arch), gentoo, GuixSD, or NixOS, and learn, just by following the documentation, becoming more techie. I think some even went as far as starting with LFS. O_O
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Mint.
RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’s thinkpad T420. Is it powerful enough for Cinnamon?
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Note that I’m not that knowledgable. You could run cinnamon, but I think you want MATE. You can install cinnamon and if you want more performance then switch to MATE. That may sound insane but most of the work is in backing everything up and then setting up programs, so you can try cinnamon for a week or two (without perfecting everything) and see if you want a lighter OS. Don’t worry it’s really easy the second time.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m running Fedora Cinnamon with Celeron N95, 8 gigs of shared memory, and Intel HD graphics with a little mini desktop. Runs fine. You have a better processor and if you have 8gigs of memory, you should be more than fine for office needs, web browsing, and light gaming to get your feet wet. Heavy coding or gaming might be a bit of a stretch with your ThinkPad though. I find heavier CAD sessions can be a heavy chore if the renderings get hard, like modeling threads or even moderate assemblies.
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
His thinkpad is 4GB ram and processesor is half as good as yours. cpubenchmark.net/…/Intel-i5-2520M-vs-Intel-N95
RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’ll just be used for browsing office work so sounds like it’ll be fine.
Qwel@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Looking at the specs, I would guess it is
You can setup a Ventoy USB stick if you want to try multiple options