Linux comes in a million flavors but most people should start with Mint. That sounds like a pun, but it’s also true.
Mint is a nice, safe, up-to-date, simple, Windows-like choice that won’t unnecessarily complicate the transition to an entirely different operating system. It has good hardware support and good defaults. Most things will feel very familiar and be very accessible. It is popular enough to find plenty of help on the internet and answers to almost every question you could have. It mostly just works and when it doesn’t it’s usually not a deal-breaker.
It’s not my favourite distro, but you aren’t ready for my favourite distro. Honestly I’m barely ready for my favourite distro. It’s not elitism, it’s just practicality. You’ll learn as you go, and you’ll eventually want to try other distros, but start with Mint, and keep a Mint system around for when you break everything else. Which you will if you start playing with other distros.
Absolutely this. I like mint because I no longer like fiddle farting around with my PC. It just works out of the box. An overlooked bonus is when I need to learn how to do something the Mint forums usually have the answer, and its catered to Mint defaults. It’s not the end of the world, but when answers match your file explorer, text editor, system editor etc…it just makes it easier. Compared to finding answers elsewhere that are for Debian and then having to wonder if it’ll work or not based on the family lineage of the OS is just unnecessary for most people.
As I said over and over again: my biggest pet peeve with Linux is that there are often several ways to accomplish something but many are somewhat distribution specific and not really standardized.
Who doesn’t love to find a tool that has install instructions like:
Start by installing all required packages with sudo apt get package1, package2,... then clone this repository and…
Just to realize that a) you’re not running anything Debian based and b) you first step is now to find out how these packages are named in your package manager.
Or tutorials that tell you to do X and you only find out, that they’re assuming (but not telling you) you’re using Debian and some old package versions that now have a completely new syntax in their configuration, so that either the tutorial doesn’t work or you maybe even f up something by changing values that you shouldn’t touch.
Best is, of you find help in a distribution specific forum/wiki/… But not all problems can be found there
Linux comes in a million flavors but most people should start with Mint. That sounds like a pun, but it’s also true.
Mint is a nice, safe, up-to-date, simple, Windows-like choice that won’t unnecessarily complicate the transition to an entirely different operating system. It has good hardware support and good defaults. Most things will feel very familiar and be very accessible. It is popular enough to find plenty of help on the internet and answers to almost every question you could have. It mostly just works and when it doesn’t it’s usually not a deal-breaker.
It’s not my favourite distro, but you aren’t ready for my favourite distro. Honestly I’m barely ready for my favourite distro. It’s not elitism, it’s just practicality. You’ll learn as you go, and you’ll eventually want to try other distros, but start with Mint, and keep a Mint system around for when you break everything else. Which you will if you start playing with other distros.
Absolutely this. I like mint because I no longer like fiddle farting around with my PC. It just works out of the box. An overlooked bonus is when I need to learn how to do something the Mint forums usually have the answer, and its catered to Mint defaults. It’s not the end of the world, but when answers match your file explorer, text editor, system editor etc…it just makes it easier. Compared to finding answers elsewhere that are for Debian and then having to wonder if it’ll work or not based on the family lineage of the OS is just unnecessary for most people.
As I said over and over again: my biggest pet peeve with Linux is that there are often several ways to accomplish something but many are somewhat distribution specific and not really standardized.
Who doesn’t love to find a tool that has install instructions like:
Just to realize that a) you’re not running anything Debian based and b) you first step is now to find out how these packages are named in your package manager.
Or tutorials that tell you to do X and you only find out, that they’re assuming (but not telling you) you’re using Debian and some old package versions that now have a completely new syntax in their configuration, so that either the tutorial doesn’t work or you maybe even f up something by changing values that you shouldn’t touch.
Best is, of you find help in a distribution specific forum/wiki/… But not all problems can be found there