I hate Microsoft and Windows, I want to choose better AND more importantly, see what all this fuss about Linux being awesomest is about
My recommendation is, don’t go with any of the distros you haven’t heard of before.
At some point, you will need to google “<distroname> how do I…” many many times. It is much better if you have something popular and common to do that in.
I have tried to approach this off the basic principle of “Oh, it’s basically Fedora!” on a few distributions but it doesn’t work as reliably as you’d like.
Can’t go wrong with Linux Mint
Mint is a great choice for windows converts. The UI closely matches what you are used to.
Mint and Ubuntu are both fine and have a huge support base so you’ll always find help.
I’ve been on Linux for going on 10 years, went through just about all the major and moderate distros out there and the past two years I’ve just been using mint on my study laptops (in particular LMDE for stability) and it’s completely fine for me.
Seconding mint. I’ve heard it referred to as “Ubuntu for people who don’t want to admit they’re running Ubuntu”, but the fact of the matter is that Mint has consistently been, for the last 15 years, the distro that has worked best out of the box on my daily driver laptops.
I use several distros for various purposes, but Mint is my go-to for general purpose everyday use.
Plus if you want to just check it out, the install USB can be used as a live OS without any installing anything to the disk. It probably won’t handle GPU drivers and the like, but it should be enough to just get a quick glance at what it’s about.
I find Fedora provides a great balance between new code and stability. I’ve had lots of trouble getting distros like Ubuntu to work with newer apps and features.
Mainly I would steer you away from any distro that uses Gnome. Very short answer as to why: most desktop environments bear some resemblance to Windows, Gnome is more like MacOS with a concussion.
So what distro is Mac without a concussion? I dont want windows
Ubuntu?
Probably the closest to “Mac without a concussion” would probably be ElementaryOS with the Pantheon desktop, but I don’t really recommend it.
Linux is modular in ways you’re probably not used to. Windows looks like WIndows and that’s it, you can’t just uninstall the taskbar and install someone else’s taskbar. In Linux you can do pretty much exactly that. The GUI is a separate system that sits on top of the OS like Windows ran on top of DOS back in the 90’s and at airports today. There are several Desktop Environments (DEs) you can choose from.
For example, if you go to Linux Mint’s website, you will find it offered in three main flavors: Cinnamon, MATE and xfce.
The vast majority of DEs you’ll find in Linux are set up out of the box the way Windows is, in terms of basic UI elements. Most have a panel at the bottom with the application menu on the left, a window list next to that or centered, and system tasks and the clock on the right. A window has the minimize, maximize and close button at the top right, etc. Stuff you have muscle memory of using.
Gnome deliberately does things like that differently I think out of a sense of grudge. I used to hear Linux newcomers say things like “I tried Linux for a few hours and found you can’t even rename a file. Like it’s impossible to rename a file. Linux is completely useless.” And I didn’t understand how it was they could come to such a bafflingly dumb conclusion until I tried using Gnome and caught myself saying the same things.
Gnome also deliberately doesn’t implement a lot of features because they expect you to use the terminal for them. Other DEs like Cinnamon and KDE are actually finished.
Distros don’t define the UI.
That’s the desktop environment’s work. Many distros will look and feel exactly alike, because they use the same DE.
These are:
- GNOME
- KDE
- Cinnamon
- a long list of etceteras.
GNOME is their own thing, with very opinionated and authoritarian devs. They are not very flexible in their design and development philosophy. That said, Gnome is a very good and quality DE that does have customization, but is also very different to everything else UX wise.
KDE Plasma is very Windows like, because their thing is to be extremely flexible and customizable. But, with sane defaults that look like Windows as closely as possible. So it is very familiar out of the box, though it can be made to look and work into very unique ways. It is also very good and quite polished, aiming to have virtually everything into a GUI or menu, minimizing the need for terminal commands.
Cinnamon is Linux Mint’s continuation of what Gnome used to be like. Which means that it is very similar to pre-Windows 10 but with modern quality of life upgrades and functionality.
Most distros will use one of the first two, and Mint champions it’s own Cinnamon. Other DE’s are for more specialty or niche distributions.
Very few DE’s capture the macOS experience. Mostly because there’s little interest on it from the crowds that use Linux, so they get abandoned quickly. The closest thing currently is Budgie, which had died for a while, but is now revived by a different group of developers.
Gnome is actually very solid. Its a great desktop environment, it just works in a specific way that takes some getting used to. A good out of the box gnome experience would be fedora.
People will not recommend it though, since desktop environments that mimick windows are easier to get used to for new users, like linux mint with cinnamon, or any KDE default distro.
The previous comment sais it’s like Mac is with a concussion. It is an apt comparison because like MacOS gnome is very clean and minimal, but its still very different in its workflow. Giving macOS switchers quite a headache.
Cachyos, I swapped from windows with it, og dualbooted, ended up never wanting to open windows agaun
You cant really go wrong, de is more what decides the desktop experience, like theming/look ,etc. Kde plasma, gnome, cinnamon, xfce , etc. or tiling managers like hyprland (id stick to des for now coming from windows)
Ive mostly tried plasma and gnome Kde plasma is windows on steroids, customizable and snappy, tons of settings, most customization built in and not reliant on extensions
Gnome is like chromeos/macos futuristic opinionated, I like it a lot with extensions, slightly better than kde plasma with a lot of extensions imo
Cinnamons like closer to a simple windows experience
xfces lightweight but I think plasmas caught up there?
They all come with different preinstalled apps, which are a mix of os and de dependent, like mint with cinnamon may use nemo for files, cachyos with gnome may use nautilus, but I like nemo so on cachyos with gnome I have nemo installed and set as the default.
Deepin and elementary have unique des I think, and pop os with cosmic in alpha
Mint if you like windows, Ubuntu if you like Mac.
Or whatever else looks interesting. Try a couple. It’s not hard to just replace it with another if you don’t like it. Most of them are easy to run off a USB stick to try out first too
imo every single beginner friendly distro all have the same problem. They are, for some extent, easier to use than others, until they’re not, at which point you find yourself digging through documents and forums or asking ChatGPT to break the system.
After few years of that dance, I found Linux Mint to be the easiest and Fedora KDE to be the nicest.
They are, for some extent, easier to use than others, until they’re not, at
The thing is that many well integrated distro have enough user friendly features to not need to go in the until they’re not part. If the most complicated thing you do is install a standard package and a printer, you won’t need to learn much.
Obviously, if you want to program a driver to control a nuclear reactor, it’s another story.
If you mainly game: Nobara (and I get less and less convinced of that - Fedora original is almost as good by now) If you mainly work on it: Fedora.
If you need broad support: Ubuntu. Sadly. But read up on the drawbacks.
Ubuntu, Ubuntu is fine, it gets hate but tbh it’s fine. It’s well supported, issues getting fixed and there’s plenty of info on how to fix stuff when you inevitably find something that doesn’t work.
Ive had a good time with PoPOS. Works well with Steam for instance.
I know you want to move away from Windows, but trying to choose something completely different might be a bad idea, you’re already unfamiliar with the system also being unfamiliar with the way to interact with stuff might be a bit too much. That being said I don’t think any of the largest DE mentioned would be a problem, so look at pictures and choose on what you think looks best.
As for distro lots of people recommend Mint and I’ll back that up, although I haven’t used it in years it was my go to distro to give new users as it was very plug and play.
And the two recommendations I always give new users are:
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Keep
/and/homein separate partitions, this allows you to format your system, change distro, or whatever without losing your personal files. -
As much as possible use the package manager, googling a program and downloading an installer is 99% of the time the wrong way to install stuff and a major cause of problems for new users.
When you mention putting the
/homeelsewhere, that’s something I do when setting up a distro install? I can’t recall from the last time I did a system install of mint. Sounds extremely helpful so I would like to do it next time
A note about the package manager: Mint, and most other distros have a GUI software centre. Kinda like an app store. So you can search for an app there, find it, and install it.
Linux mint also comes with flatpak but apps installed from the software centre default to the .deb version.
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Fedora has 2nd best repos compared to Arch/AUR in my opinion, but because Fedora is actually stable I use it instead to avoid headaches. As much as I miss pacman, Fedora just works. Flatpaks and Appimages fill in the blind spots.
What Desktop Environment or Window Manager to use is your call. I spend most time in my livimg room vs at my actual desktop so I like GNOME it’s couch friendly. Desktop I’m KDE. Boring I guess but I’m too lazy to fuck with ricing.
If you use your machine predominantly for gaming, Nobara is a good option. Built by the same people who made Proton (the tool to get Windows games working well on Linux). Comes with everything you need to get going out of the box. Based on Fedora so lots of community support. Comes with either KDE Plasma or GNOME to give you the desktop environment you prefer.
Xubuntu is very user friendly, low on resources, and overall great to use.
Zorin Linux is very Windows’ish (xp) :]
