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Linux mint a good start?

TwilightLink
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Go to solution Solved by Lady Fitzgerald,

Linux Mint, Zorin, and PopOS, probably in that order, are the three most frequently recommended distros for Linux newbies, especially Windows refugees.

 

You have to pay for Zorin but what you get for your money is added support direct from the developers. I've seen reports that Zorin tends to be behind other OSes in kernel updates.

 

PopOS, though proprietary (it is put out by System 76), is free. System 76 is a small company that has been around for only around five years and they or may not be around for a while. I haven't had great results from their laptop support but do not know if that would be the same for their PopOS support. Still, PopOS has been enjoying a fair amount of popularity.

 

Linux Mint is free. Support comes from forum volunteers and can be a bit hit and miss but, generally, is pretty good. Of the three, Mint has the largest development support due tho thousands of volunteers working on it. Cinnamon is the most popular desktop, especially for Windows refugees.

 

Ubuntu was the most popular distro but it has slipping in popularity while Mint is quickly catching up, especially since Win 7 is past its EOL. Ubuntu also collets some data from users. Supposedly, that data is anonymized and is not shared but we have heard that same line from Microsoft.

 

I went with Mint Cinnamon and have been happy with it. It took me a month to get to where I would use it as my daily driver but, since you have used Linux before, you could probably get there faster.

 

While a lot of people do it, many experts recommend against dual booting, especially for beginners to Linux. While some distros look a lot like Windows, under the hood, they are completely different from Windows and that can cause problems with dual booting. What is often recommeded for beginners is to install Linux on a separate, older computer and learn on that.

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22 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Duckduckgo is a good one, Start Page was my default search engine until ten minutes ago when the idiots started blocking my searches, claiming I was scraping or some other nonsense (I don't know what their damage is).

I'll star using duckduckgo then.

 

Thanks everyone for all your help! I guess now I need to star using Mint and get to know it quite well.

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Can I suggest Manjaro? While it might not be the MOST entry level distro out there, the community support support for arch/manjaro is amazing. The AUR is awesome, and the variations of the available distros (kde, xfce, i3) all preconfigured is great too. I have had good luck with nvidia support as well.

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On 4/19/2020 at 5:18 AM, Lady Fitzgerald said:

While a lot of people do it, many experts recommend against dual booting, especially for beginners to Linux. While some distros look a lot like Windows, under the hood, they are completely different from Windows and that can cause problems with dual booting. What is often recommeded for beginners is to install Linux on a separate, older computer and learn on that.

to be clear:  the reason many people recommend against dual booting has to do with Windows 10 overwriting the boot parameters and leaving your Linux system inoperable after Win 10 does updates.  This has happened fairly often since Win 10 was introduced.  It is not related to any sort of thinking on the part of more experienced users thinking it will confuse new users.  It's relatively straightforward to rebuild this but it's a PIA for new users who may not want the hassle.

It was good info you laid out, just wanted to make this clear for anyone who was curious.

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If you want the system as a full package Mint is your best shot. All essential software is preinstalled, Nvidia drivers out of the box. Cinnamon as desktop environment is just great and what is most important coherent and good looking with default themes. It's a subtle plus but imo a big one when a system is your daily driver. The whole ecosystem is integrated on a better level than other distros. Styling, system updates, timeshift, keyboard shortcuts etc. There're lots of those small details that are polished without the need for you tinkering in the config files.
I'm often doing a system set up for friends/family if any of them decides for Linux, Mint is my go-to, always, even if I'm not using it myself. 

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Thanks for the answers!

 

I actually stopped using mint for a while because i run into a problem with my ntfs drive that i use for storage, I can't modify any file in it nor write anything, been looking solutions online and so far it ain't working :( 

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7 minutes ago, TwilightLink said:

Thanks for the answers!

 

I actually stopped using mint for a while because i run into a problem with my ntfs drive that i use for storage, I can't modify any file in it nor write anything, been looking solutions online and so far it ain't working :( 

try ntfs-3g

  

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NTFS-3G

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@TwilightLink are you dual-booting with Windows? If so Windows have a fast-boot option enabled by default which doesn't really turns off you computer but rather keeps it hibernated. Because of that your Linux system can't properly mount shared drive and is doing a fallback to read-only mount. To fix it you'd simply need to disable fast boot in Windows and reboot the computer

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I'd suggest either Linux Mint or Peppermint as a good starting point for Linux.
ATM I'm on Ubuntu and it's kinda spartan vs Mint for me, some things it does are great but other things aren't so user-friendly to one just starting out with it.
Once I get a few things sorted here I'm changing distros.

Mint is almost like using Windows itself, it's a very nicely done OS.

The Peppermint distro (Not related to Mint) has alot of functionality similar to Windows plus it just looks good. In fact Peppermint, inspite of it not being from the same guys that make Mint is very similar to it in many ways but different enough you can't call it a clone of Mint. 

 

I have to say either one would be what to start off with and both are so good you may even stay with it, whichever one you choose.

"If you ever need anything please don't hesitate to ask someone else first"..... Nirvana
"Whadda ya mean I ain't kind? Just not your kind"..... Megadeth
Speaking of things being "All Inclusive", Hell itself is too.
 

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