I had a dream about windows and have decided to setup Linux on my laptop. What distro should I use?

'it came to me in a dream' has got to be a pretty unique reason for switching to Linux

Anytime someone new ask for recommendation, I'd give Linux Mint.

You don’t need to be a programmer to use Linux. I’d probably recommend you go with something like mint. Avoid things like Arch or Gentoo or NixOS for now as they involve a lot more manual configuration and it’s probably best to understand the landscape of things first.

What was your dream about windows?

Many people have asked me this (I'm the certified neighborhood tech guy :P), I always recommend Linux Mint, with the Cinnamon desktop environment, or KDE. Ubuntu used to be the best one and it's still very good, but pretty heavy on hardware and they keep adding frustrating features nobody asked for.

Please please please, at the start, stay away from Arch and it's derivatives. I daily Gentoo, but you need a decent knowledge of Linux to use both. If you need help, post to the Linux community or DM me :)

Clear vote for Fedora,

Really recommend mint, or ubuntu. Please for the love of god stay away from arch and all of it's derivatives, or at least try Ubuntu/Mint first. Also do NOT use manjaro it sucks, it is not maintained well at all

https://distrochooser.de

You didn't give much info to go on, so maybe try Distrochooser. Honestly, most distros should work out fine. If you like Ubuntu, maybe try Mint.

I'd recommend against Ubuntu. It uses snaps and it'll teach you that the hard way eventually by having very weird issues.

Mint is based on ubuntu but says no to snaps, so that's a good place to start.

Pop os

Do yourself a favor and just go with Debian Stable

Permanently Deleted

Mint is currently my recommendation for Windows refugees and has been for a while.

• Cinnamon desktop environment works like Windows' UX
• Ubuntu-based, so you'll find help online for basically anything
• Not just Ubuntu; follows more popular, community decisions rather than Canonical's (e.g. things like Flatpak instead of Snap) which will help you in the long run since you'll be using what everyone else is using
• Ubuntu-based, so Debian-based, so pretty stable with lots of available software (even outside of Flatpak)
• Significant amount of work put into UX with less you have to do

If you're not worried about high-performance gaming, you'll be fine with whatever. For developers, any Linux distro is gonna be leagues better than what you're used to on Windows. For Assembly, NASM + VS Code will be great.

My vote is for mint. If you've been a long time windows user it should be the easiest one to get used to. PopOS is also newbie friendly if you're not into the feel of Mint for whatever reason.

My biggest recommendation though is to spend some time with a few different OS's and try setting things up different ways. Like if you start with Mint, try something new a month or two later. It's a good way to get used to the way linux OS's work under the hood.

I'm not a programmer at all, but if you have some background with computers and are willing to sink some time into learning and setting up a new system you'll be fine.

I recommend Pop! OS.

Permanently Deleted

Linux Mint or Garuda Linux

Just use Ubuntu/Mint, because that's what everyone uses and has the most support forums.

I still think Ubuntu or a flavor of it is the right answer for people new to Linux.

Do you got NVIDIA?

Ubuntu is a good starting point.

You can follow the general idea of: "Are you new to Linux? If yes, use something you know other people know too. If no, use whatever the fuck you want, heck, make your own distro if you want".

I'd say try whatever looks good to you, you can always install something else if you don't like it, as long as it isn't Manjaro. (backup your data before you install something new)

Some distros that I think are a pretty good choice for starters (no particular order):

• Pop!_OS
• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• Endeavour OS
• Linux Mint
• openSUSE Tumbleweed

You can also use Distrochooser to maybe help you make a decision.

Not a great programmer but I’d like to learn.

That's alright, you don't have to be a programmer to use Linux. You don't even have to use the command line if you don't want to (tho I recommend it, getting good at it feels pretty great).

EndeavuorOS. It's a seamless base configuration of Arch which has a wonderful wiki that has a ton of stuff to tell you.

You can install pamac for a GUI for the package manager. Do yay to search for any package and install it; do yay (nothing else) to upgrade everything, and yay -Rcns to remove stuff and all their unused dependencies. I also recommend chaoticAUR

For the DE I recommend MATE but you can select any of the major ones in the installer. For me Steam didn't work when xdg-portal-gnome was installed though and firefox-like apps booted real slow, so you may or may not want to try GNOME.

Get synapse for a spotlight-like search; it uses the alt+space keybind by default

I use my PC for gaming. Ubuntu works well for me with my new hardware: Intel 13gen, Nvidia 3080, Steam.

Since you're just starting out, I would probably recommend mint. I think it's the most stable of the "mainstream" distros and you'll have less frustrations. If you want to have a great experience with managing packages, I think installing and using the nix package manager is the best way to manage packages on any distros (and who knows, maybe in a year or 2 you'll want to try nixOs!)

Fedora is great with gnome for beginer and don't get in way to much like Ubuntu when used daily

In case no one else mentioned it: prboom for Doom 2

I've been using arch for years, but finally removed my windows install a week ago and ended up on opensuse tumbleweed. It's rolling release like arch (so there's never a need to reinstall or have a big update once a year) and it has some extra fail-safes for when updates go wrong (there's an automated QA that tries to find package breaks before they're pushed for updates, and they have a tool called snapper that let's you revert back to a working state if you run into problems)

Arch, of course.

I swapped from windows to Opensuse Tumbleweed recently. Seems like a really nice distro. Frequent updates and easy rollbacks if something breaks. Luckily I haven't had to use that feature yet but it's nice knowing I have it. Yast is also great for changing system settings with a gui instead of using konsole for all that.

Counter Strike 2 and WoW have been running great.

Additional to the Mint suggestions: Mint tones down the "Ubuntu-ness" of their default distribution, but it's still Ubuntu under the hood. LMDE is the version of Mint based on straight Debian skipping the Ubuntu "middle-man" if that sounds more appealing.

Can't speak to compatibility one way or another, though.

My computer is old and made of parts from well-known manufacturers. Everything in it is pretty well-known to the open-source community at this point, so that might well be giving me a huge advantage with regard to drivers and such. (Case in point, I have an NVIDIA graphics card and Intel i7 from the tail end of the era where people wouldn't advise you against getting either, and in fact might have outright recommended them over AMD. Yes, that old. Legacy proprietary drivers work fine for me.)

Whatever distro looks good to you is a good place to start. Think of distros as default configurations, you can basically change most stuff whenever you want.

Avoid Arch, just in case.

Linux mint hands down

Any general purpose distro will work well for you. As others have said, Ubuntu and Mint are the standard recommendations.

Debian with GNOME

Suggestions: Linux Mint: this is the most popular recommendation for new users. Its nice and stable, uses a familiar Windows-like layout, and should just work out of the box. Pop_OS!: this one is another popular option, which uses a layout similar to MacOS and has lots of features such as window tiling. It does use older package and isn't often updated, however. Zorin OS: this one is pretty similar to Linux Mint. It also offers some additional desktop layouts, but some of these are paid, so if you want an entirely free experience, this is not the best option.

Suggestions for if you enjoy suffering: Arch Linux: Requires manual installation. You have to download and configure all the things yourself. Good option for advanced users who want complete control over their system and all packages installed on it. Otherwise, stay away. Arch-based distros (Endeavour, Garuda, etc): Far simpler to install, but will likely require regular maintainance, due to frequent updates.

Debian Testing branch.

Linux Mint

If you're a power user, I'd actually recommend installing Arch Linux. It will take a while, and definitely much longer then just pressing "install" on a fancy UI, but the advantages it brings are priceless.

Generally, you'll have to build the OS yourself, but you get a manual doing most of the job if you simply follow it, kinda like Lego. Given that you ultimately build it all yourself, you know how things work if anything might break. You also know how to adjust things if you wish to change something. And for everything you want to do, there's an up-to-date manual in the arch wiki.

On top of that, the distro is running the newest software, which means that almost everything is compatible and runs in the best possible way. It will be tested 2-3 weeks in advance in order to ensure it won't break your system immediately. But even if it does, guess what, there's a manual on how to fix your system.

In case you're overwhelmed at any point, there's a great community. Not sure if they managed to move to lemmy, but they're definitely over on reddit.

Good luck :)

nixOS , because it's a completely atomic distribution, like a docker container OS style. You define the state of the system in a configuration file, which can even control the kernel, and you can switch to an older configuration file in any reboot. It's more of a pain than the others, but it works ok out of the box and when you fix something it stays fixed so you'll never end up in a situation where something breaks and you can't fix it.

Also, all the packages bring their own versions of their own libraries and directly link to them so they'll never break during upgrades, but conversely a lot of Linux installers that try to link to system libraries won't work.

Btw, I use Debian.

Linux is great but it isn't for everyone, damn perfect on servers but kinda of fails for most desktop use cases, have a read at this: https://lemmy.world/comment/4119679

IF you want Steam, THEN you want one of the Ubuntu family: Steam doesn't support any other kind of Linux distro.

openSUSE gave me compatibility-issues after I had it running properly, both Tumbleweed AND OpenLEAP versions, when they broke my wifi-driver, early in 2023, so I'm kinda leery of recommending them.

If you want the most Unix-like system, Slackware used to be that, haven't used it in years, though...

Funtoo should probably be the go-to distro for compute-oriented machines, like Blender renderers, or such... optimize to use ALL the hardware-advantage you can...

Many enjoy Void Linux.

just some opinions & experiences...

( :