Recommend me a Linux-based OS, please.

[George.]

Hey all, so I have decided it's about time for me to explore the world of OSes. Also got tired of microsoft's bullcraps so I'm going to install a Linux-based OS on my laptop.

Laugh or not, I have 0 knowledge about Linux, however. So I need experienced users to give me some recommendations on which one to choose, the differences between the different versions and generally to give me some tips. I'm not an expert in any way, but I do like to deal with and learn about pc stuff so I'll get the hang of it quite swiftly.

Also what are the differences between Linux and Windows in terms of performance and compatibility and gaming experience? I do play world of warcraft, cs go and some other random games occasionally so I need these to work if not better, as good as on windows.

Alright, thanks for taking your time to read this. Any help is appreciated! Have an amazing day/night!

 

My laptop specs (if it matters): Intel i5-4210m 2,6ghz with turbo up to 3.2ghz

                                                 Nvidia Geforce 940M 2gb
                                                 Ram - 8 gb DDR3 L 

                                                 HDD - 1tb mechanical vacuum cleaner

[Mira Yurizaki]

Linux Mint or Lubuntu would be my go-to. If you want something a bit more hipster, Elementary OS is a pretty good one.

 

And there are some people who suggest Arch or Gentoo, which is great if you want to really work at making Linux yours, but if you don't want to deal with that, then those aren't for you.

 

As far as compatibility for apps goes, you can usually find a substitute application on Linux that you used on Windows. For games though, that's hit and miss. The number of native running games is much smaller (though more popular ones tend to be ported over) and WINE can only get you so far.

[RadiatingLight]

It's not Linux, but you might want to experiment with Remix OS

It's basically android, but adapted to a desktop/laptop environment with a taskbar, multiple window support, etc.

[George.]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Linux Mint or Lubuntu would be my go-to. If you want something a bit more hipster, Elementary OS is a pretty good one.

 

And there are some people who suggest Arch or Gentoo, which is great if you want to really work at making Linux yours, but if you don't want to deal with that, then those aren't for you.

 

As far as compatibility for apps goes, you can usually find a substitute application on Linux that you used on Windows. For games though, that's hit and miss. The number of native running games is much smaller (though more popular ones tend to be ported over) and WINE can only get you so far.

Alright, thank you for your input. I'm leaning over Mint as of right now. I do like to customize my environment, however I mostly prefer everything to be clean, light and well-sorted.  Thanks again

[George.]

2 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

It's not Linux, but you might want to experiment with Remix OS

It's basically android, but adapted to a desktop/laptop environment with a taskbar, multiple window support, etc.

gonna look this up. thank you

[MrWalex]

iv used mint and ubuntu and i liked mint more as it ran much better on my machine

[Chaos Network]

19 minutes ago, George. said:

Hey all, so I have decided it's about time for me to explore the world of OSes. Also got tired of microsoft's bullcraps so I'm going to install a Linux-based OS on my laptop.

Laugh or not, I have 0 knowledge about Linux, however. So I need experienced users to give me some recommendations on which one to choose, the differences between the different versions and generally to give me some tips. I'm not an expert in any way, but I do like to deal with and learn about pc stuff so I'll get the hang of it quite swiftly.

Also what are the differences between Linux and Windows in terms of performance and compatibility and gaming experience? I do play world of warcraft, cs go and some other random games occasionally so I need these to work if not better, as good as on windows.

Alright, thanks for taking your time to read this. Any help is appreciated! Have an amazing day/night!

 

My laptop specs (if it matters): Intel i5-4210m 2,6ghz with turbo up to 3.2ghz

                                                 Nvidia Geforce 940M 2gb
                                                 Ram - 8 gb DDR3 L 

                                                 HDD - 1tb mechanical vacuum cleaner

i would go for linux mint. but as far as i know, you cant run steam on linux. you would have to boot steam os.

[jammiescone]

If you're planning to game often and want to keep compatibility, maybe look into keeping Windows and dual booting instead. That way you can do everything else on your Linux drive/partition and hop over to Windows when you want to game. 

[zMeul]

9 minutes ago, Chaos Network said:

i would go for linux mint. but as far as i know, you cant run steam on linux. you would have to boot steam os.

not true

[wowsers]

Another nice with Mint (with cinnamon) is that you can just browse for themes in the theme selector thing in system settings, be sure to come back if you have any questions

[sinkesnnj]

First of all, don't get too excited quickly. Let me tell you a few things about Linux before you begin, it will save you a of lot time and effort. Before i begin i will disclose that i'm a noob, i've been using Ubuntu for the past year and I don't know a lot about other distros, and that everything below is just my personal opinion.

 

First thing you need to know is that Linux is not Windows(obviously lol). Now what i mean by that is there is no (in most cases) "one click solutions". You are your own support. If something is not working no one is going to hold your hand and fix it for you. You will have too Google it and find a solution or fix it on your own. 

Also installation of programs is 50%-50% when it comes to "one click installations". I don't really know about other distros, but for me on Ubuntu(and Debian) there are these .deb packages that are fairly easy to install because they are pretty much like .exe installations on Windows. But the other half are either zipped in .tar.gz format, so you need to know how to extract them and where to put them (in the beginning i had a folder in my /home/usr but now i just put them in /opt). Or you need to install it through terminal (apt-get for Ubuntu, and i guess Debian as well). Oh yes, get ready for that. Terminal is the most, most! important thing on Linux, you will need it for almost everything, everything! Btw terminal = cmd in windows as far as looks go and some commands like cd or dir. So pretty much you need to know some general commands in terminal to get around pretty much everything in Linux.

 

As far as games go my general opinion is forget about them. There are some through steam, like csgo and dota, they work ok, depending on your driver. But everything else is a pain in the ass to set up. I'm not saying it's impossible, I didn't bother since i don't game. And the performance of games is also questionable since no DX on Linux. You will need wine to install pretty much anything. So if you are planing on gaming i would suggest dual booting with Windows.

 

Now about other programs. A lot of them have their respective Linux versions, some are as good as on Win, some are not. For everything else there is a similar Linux app that pretty much does the thing you need it to do. If you need anything from Adobe or Microsoft for your work/school forget about it, nothing is supported natively, but i guess some could be installed via wine as well. As far as programming tools go (since im a CS student), i am yet to find something mainstream that doesn't have a Linux version, so that is pretty good supported (with exception of Visual Studio, Microsoft ofc).

 

If you ask me i like Linux. Even after all the hustle and problems the pop up from time to time. I switched from Windows because i got tired from all things MS forced down our throats like upgrades, using edge, constant monitoring and telemetry, that shit was killing my HDD. It took me 3 attempts to switch from windows. I would install Ubuntu and something would not work so i'd get pissed and delete Ubuntu partition and go back to windows. And then 3 months later i'd try again. That went on until last semester when i picked up a Linux Administration class and that taught me everything i needed to know. Although i still keep Windows on my other partition, just in case i need something or i feel like wasting time on some game for a few hours. So yea, that would sum it up.

 

Best regards

[George.]

53 minutes ago, sinkesnnj said:

First of all, don't get too excited quickly. Let me tell you a few things about Linux before you begin, it will save you a of lot time and effort. Before i begin i will disclose that i'm a noob, i've been using Ubuntu for the past year and I don't know a lot about other distros, and that everything below is just my personal opinion.

 

First thing you need to know is that Linux is not Windows(obviously lol). Now what i mean by that is there is no (in most cases) "one click solutions". You are your own support. If something is not working no one is going to hold your hand and fix it for you. You will have too Google it and find a solution or fix it on your own. 

Also installation of programs is 50%-50% when it comes to "one click installations". I don't really know about other distros, but for me on Ubuntu(and Debian) there are these .deb packages that are fairly easy to install because they are pretty much like .exe installations on Windows. But the other half are either zipped in .tar.gz format, so you need to know how to extract them and where to put them (in the beginning i had a folder in my /home/usr but now i just put them in /opt). Or you need to install it through terminal (apt-get for Ubuntu, and i guess Debian as well). Oh yes, get ready for that. Terminal is the most, most! important thing on Linux, you will need it for almost everything, everything! Btw terminal = cmd in windows as far as looks go and some commands like cd or dir. So pretty much you need to know some general commands in terminal to get around pretty much everything in Linux.

 

As far as games go my general opinion is forget about them. There are some through steam, like csgo and dota, they work ok, depending on your driver. But everything else is a pain in the ass to set up. I'm not saying it's impossible, I didn't bother since i don't game. And the performance of games is also questionable since no DX on Linux. You will need wine to install pretty much anything. So if you are planing on gaming i would suggest dual booting with Windows.

 

Now about other programs. A lot of them have their respective Linux versions, some are as good as on Win, some are not. For everything else there is a similar Linux app that pretty much does the thing you need it to do. If you need anything from Adobe or Microsoft for your work/school forget about it, nothing is supported natively, but i guess some could be installed via wine as well. As far as programming tools go (since im a CS student), i am yet to find something mainstream that doesn't have a Linux version, so that is pretty good supported (with exception of Visual Studio, Microsoft ofc).

 

If you ask me i like Linux. Even after all the hustle and problems the pop up from time to time. I switched from Windows because i got tired from all things MS forced down our throats like upgrades, using edge, constant monitoring and telemetry, that shit was killing my HDD. It took me 3 attempts to switch from windows. I would install Ubuntu and something would not work so i'd get pissed and delete Ubuntu partition and go back to windows. And then 3 months later i'd try again. That went on until last semester when i picked up a Linux Administration class and that taught me everything i needed to know. Although i still keep Windows on my other partition, just in case i need something or i feel like wasting time on some game for a few hours. So yea, that would sum it up.

 

Best regards

Thank you for the thorough introduction to Linux.  About the "fix things by yourself' part, I do that on a daily basis pretty much so that wouldn't be much of a problem. In that regard, I googled the questions I had about Linux as well, I just decided to write a post here for some quality info, since this is a great tech forum. Despite the things I might miss from switching over to Linux, I am still pretty excited to try it out. Thank you again

[wowsers]

36 minutes ago, George. said:

Thank you for the thorough introduction to Linux.  About the "fix things by yourself' part, I do that on a daily basis pretty much so that wouldn't be much of a problem. In that regard, I googled the questions I had about Linux as well, I just decided to write a post here for some quality info, since this is a great tech forum. Despite the things I might miss from switching over to Linux, I am still pretty excited to try it out. Thank you again

Have used (and still do) Ubuntu since before I knew about windows vista myself
I can tell you straight away Mint probably will feel more at home, as for myself I've only needed to go out of my way to extract and place .tar.gz archive data a couple of times over the years, and nowadays it's easy to deal with such files (by dropping the contents of a .tar.gz into ~/.local and then doing some $PATH trickery).

But again it's fine to just ask on forums if you have trouble! that's usually a great help (can't speak too much about ubuntuforums where it sometimes takes a few days or weeks). Dual booting will be benificial if you want to have support for your games too

[Wild Penquin]

I just find this guide so good I'm going to just leave the link here again:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5ohlyv/the_ultimate_guide_for_migrating_to_linux/

 

It is written from a gamers perspective, but it still applies if you are not that much of a gamer.

 

One thing that I want to point out (from sinkesnnj's otherwise excellent introduction, but to me it seems this was not clear): generally, you install programs from your distributions package repository (remeber: Linux is not windows!). Only if there is no version of the program (or the version is very old in the repository), you will go outside, in the following order: 1) external repositories made especially for your distribution 2) external packages made for your distribution and 3) source .tar.gz package (compile and install yourself from source). You need to really know what you are doing, if you are going to use either of these.

 

I'd never install .tar.gz binary packages, except if the source is not available and I absolutely trust the one who made the binaries, and even then only per-user, or in /opt.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Wild Penquin
Clarification about binary/source .tar.gz

[George.]

26 minutes ago, Wild Penquin said:

I just find this guide so good I'm going to just leave the link here again:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5ohlyv/the_ultimate_guide_for_migrating_to_linux/

 

It is written from a gamers perspective, but it still applies if you are not that much of a gamer.

 

One thing that I want to point out (from sinkesnnj's otherwise excellent introduction, but to me it seems this was not clear): generally, you install programs from your distributions package repository (remeber: Linux is not windows!). Only if there is no version of the program (or the version is very old in the repository), you will go outside, in the following order: 1) external repositories make especially for your distribution 2) external packages made for your distribution and 3) .tar.gz (compile and install yourself from source). I'd never install .tar.gz binary packages, except maybe per-user or in /opt. You need to really know what you are doing, if you are going to use either of these.

I see, I'll check this guide out. Thanks

[JustRichard]

Ubuntu budgie looks good I think. Give it a look maybe.

[noahdvs]

I haven't read everyone else's replies, but since you're totally new, I wanna tell you about some things that you need to know in order to not be confused when picking a linux distribution.

 

The biggest differences between mosts distros that you will notice are the package manager, the default programs and the Desktop Environment.

 

On Windows, there is no package manager. You can get a package manager for Windows called Chocolatey, but it's not quite the same as most Linux package managers because Chocolatey just lets you install programs from a repository so you don't have to go to a website to download one of them. On Linux, each program is separated from the libraries it depends on. This makes package management significantly more complex than the way Chocolatey does it, but it allows you to save some space by having programs share libraries as long as they're compatible and it means you don't need to download the program and all its dependencies every time there's an update to just the program, unlike on Windows. Aptitude (aka `apt`) is the package manager that Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) use.

 

On Linux, the graphical part of the OS is called the Desktop Environment. Windows and Mac have only one desktop environment. Linux has several.

Gnome, KDE, Unity, Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, LXDE, LXQt, Budgie and more are all DEs. Many of them have a lot of similarities, but they all do something different. Gnome, KDE and XFCE are probably the most popular and well supported DEs (sorry, no stats), aside from Unity, which is the default on Ubuntu (the most popular distro), but Unity is being discontinued in October. Linux Mint uses Cinnamon, Ubuntu will switch to Gnome in October, Kubuntu uses KDE, Xubuntu uses XFCE and Lubuntu uses LXDE (will use LXQt eventually).

Edited May 4, 2017 by noahdvs
grammar

[George.]

21 hours ago, noahdvs said:

I haven't read everyone else's replies, but since you're totally new, I wanna tell you about some things that you need to know in order to not be confused when picking a linux distribution.

 

The biggest differences between mosts distros that you will notice are the package manager, the default programs and the Desktop Environment.

 

On Windows, there is no package manager. You can get a package manager for Windows called Chocolatey, but it's not quite the same as most Linux package managers because Chocolatey just lets you install programs from a repository so you don't have to go to a website to download one of them. On Linux, each program is separated from the libraries it depends on. This makes package management significantly more complex than the way Chocolatey does it, but it allows you to save some space by having programs share libraries as long as they're compatible and it means you don't need to download the program and all its dependencies every time there's an update to just the program, unlike on Windows. Aptitude (aka `apt`) is the package manager that Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) use.

 

On Linux, the graphical part of the OS is called the Desktop Environment. Windows and Mac have only one desktop environment. Linux has several.

Gnome, KDE, Unity, Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, LXDE, LXQt, Budgie and more are all DEs. Many of them have a lot of similarities, but they all do something different. Gnome, KDE and XFCE are probably the most popular and well supported DEs (sorry, no stats), aside from Unity, which is the default on Ubuntu (the most popular distro), but Unity is being discontinued in October. Linux Mint uses Cinnamon, Ubuntu will switch to Gnome in October, Kubuntu uses KDE. Xubuntu uses XFCE and Lubuntu uses LXDE (will use LXQt eventually).

Thank you very much for the detailed info. I'll start off with Mint and might try Ubuntu later on. thanks again.

[You_are_a_cunt]

User friendly Linux distro pretty much means Ubuntu tbh (or some flavor of Ubuntu)

As for gaming, you're pretty much SOL in that department. While Wine might let you run some games, most won't agree with the emulator and simply not run or run poorly. Keep in mind that most games need DirectX (although OpenGL is an option in some games) and if a game isn't natively supported on Linux (check Steam for a comprehensive list of Linux-friendly games), odds are it might not run.

Your best option, as I see it, is to dual-boot Windows alongside Linux and only boot into Win when you want to play something, but that sort of defeats the purpose of dumping Windows.

[Dat Guy]

On 2.5.2017 at 6:10 PM, George. said:

Hey all, so I have decided it's about time for me to explore the world of OSes. Also got tired of microsoft's bullcraps so I'm going to install a Linux-based OS on my laptop.

Why not Unix?

[flowalex]

Here is a guide that another member made about getting started with linux

 

[fjdhdhcyfhf]

everyone has to write super long shit. just install ubuntu and use it

[BestPCBuilder2017]

Fedora is my go to, there's things I don't like about it, but it's pretty much the only thing I use if I have go Linux style 

[Sauron]

For a beginner I would recommend ubuntu mate.

[Urishima]

On 2.5.2017 at 8:00 PM, sinkesnnj said:

Also installation of programs is 50%-50% when it comes to "one click installations". I don't really know about other distros, but for me on Ubuntu(and Debian) there are these .deb packages that are fairly easy to install because they are pretty much like .exe installations on Windows. But the other half are either zipped in .tar.gz format, so you need to know how to extract them and where to put them (in the beginning i had a folder in my /home/usr but now i just put them in /opt).

The package manager should cover most, if not all, of OPs Software needs. No need to go downloading packages manually.

 

On 2.5.2017 at 8:00 PM, sinkesnnj said:

Or you need to install it through terminal (apt-get for Ubuntu, and i guess Debian as well).

'Ubuntu Software' exists as a GUI, and you can install Synaptic if you find Ubuntu Software to be lacking in features. And it's really no big deal to use the terminal for managing software via apt or apt-get.

 

Update your package list: sudo apt update

Update ALL your packages: sudo apt upgrade

Search for new software: apt search SOFTWARE

Install the software package and ALL dependencies: sudo apt install SOFTWARE

Do a bit of cleanup: sudo apt autoremove

 

Overall package managers are brilliant. You tell it to install the thing, and it installs the things and all the other things the thing needs to work. I like my things to handle things without me having to look at all the things.

 

Package manager master race. Gas the .exe. Software war now.