As others have said, Mint or Pop_OS are your best options. It really depends on what you want in terms of layout. Do you want a more apple mac osx look or a Windows look, if you want Mac then pop, if you want Windows then mint. They’re both based on the same OS, Ubuntu, and in Mint’s case there’s a Debian edition. None of these have a price, they’re free, you have nothing to lose trying them out.
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iMastari@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I have been using computers since before there was an internet. I have used DOS and now Windows 10. Is there a good place to learn about Linux with a GUI and which one I should purchase? I’m so tired of M$.
Defaced@lemmy.world 8 months ago
iMastari@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks. As a gamer, I am primarily looking for an OS that will run games without a hitch. To be honest this is what has kept me from switching previously.
Eccitaze@yiffit.net 8 months ago
Linux is pretty much universally free, with the exception of a few select distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and even then, there’s variants of RHEL that are free like CentOS and Fedora, the main attraction for RHEL is paid support).
Most distributions are fairly similar, these days, with the main differences being the desktop environment (i.e. how the UI looks and feels), the update cadence (some distros are much more aggressive about deploying updates to the software and utilities underlying the distro, which gives new features faster at the cost of breaking things more often, while other distros prefer to stay on older, known-stable versions longer, at the cost of being slower to deploy new features that sometimes a program needs to run), and the methods used to configure settings (some distros go out of their way to make as much configureable in the GUI as possible, while others are primarily configured through console commands, and others like Gentoo expect you to manually compile pretty much all the software yourself–this makes it extremely customizable, but extremely difficult), and the default file format for package installation (rpm, deb, flatpaks, snaps, etc).
My personal recommendation is to check out a few of these:
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Ubuntu
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Linux Mint (or Cinnamon)
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EndeavorOS
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Pop!OS
I also recommend that when you first format the disk, you make two partitions: one smaller 50-100 GB partition for the root partition (where Linux stores its system files and software), and a larger partition for /home, which is where all your personal files are stored. This way, you can easily swap between different distros without needing to really worry about losing your files.
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spittingimage@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I third Linux Mint. Everything you need is in the same place as you’d find it on Windows. Everything simply works out of the box. It’s a very smooth transition. If you dual-boot you don’t even need to get rid of Windows before you’re comfortable. (I keep Windows available for games.)
dome@feddit.de 8 months ago
Youtube. There are a lot of content creators in the Linux realm.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
You don’t need to purchase Linux. If your computer can run virtual machines (e.g. via VirtualBox) you could just download various distros and try them out.
Personally, for a beginner-friendly Linux with plenty of community support I’d recommend Linux Mint.
doofusmagoo@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Hi there! I’m you. My first computer was a TRS-80 in the early 80s, and my daily driver today is Debian (a flavor of Linux). I’m not an IT person, but I’ve had some skin in the game for a while.
You won’t need to purchase a thing unless you have some weird/old hardware where drivers will be a challenge.
There are a million flavors (“distros”) of Linux. The most straightforward ones to start with are probably Ubuntu and Mint.
Most Linux distros have a “live CD” version that you can “install” on a thumb drive. That allows you to take the entire OS for a test spin without changing anything on your “main” computer.
iMastari@lemmy.world 8 months ago
ou won’t need to purchase a thing unless you have some weird/old hardware where drivers will be a challenge.
There are a million flavors (“distros”) of Linux. The most straightforward ones to start with are probably Ubuntu and Mint.
Most Linux distros have a “live CD” version that you can “ins
Thanks! I have been a gamer for a while now and have primarily been using Steam. One of the main reasons that I have not switched to another OS is I have been worried about compatibility issues.
TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com 8 months ago
Here's a Reddit post with some people talking about Linux distros if you want to see some additional opinions: link. Manjaro with KDE is a good option as well I'd like to add, my personal recommendation is to install a Linux partition separate from Windows and ease into it, if you enjoy the experience you'll find yourself using the Windows partition less and less until you are able to finally delete it.
Progat@zerobytes.monster 8 months ago
I would recommend linux mint. Its completely free, has a nice gui, and is fairly straight forward to use. All you need to do is download the iso file from their website. If you want to try using it you can put it in a virtual machine to try it out first and then if you want to actually use it just download a program called rufus to flash the iso file onto a flash drive and then boot from the flash drive. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this on youtube.
PeterPoopshit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Linux mint does seem to be the best Debian based distro. Ubuntu is bad and Debian cares more about open source drivers than hardware compatibility which isn’t what the average user wants to fuck with.
iMastari@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thank you.
0ddysseus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah seconded on Mint. Works really well, is very stable (way more than windows), has a lot of out of the box configuration and tools in the GUI. Connectivity (printers, wifi, network shares) and security are both excellent and intuitive. I use it 10 hours a day 5 days a week and its glorious