Mint

Three correct answers:

• Mint
• Fedora
• Pop

And a few incorrect answers:

• Ubuntu
• Arch
• Ubuntu again
• Really, don’t go with Ubuntu

If she's a Windows refugee, Linux Mint.

If she's a Mac refugee, fuck if I know.

If she's a IBM OS/2 refugee, please let me know how to get the drugs she's gotten. I want in.

Fedora is pretty cool.

Linus Torvalds uses it, so you could say it’s the canonical distribution.

As a general rule of thumb, I usually recommend Linux Mint to beginners. The installation and update processes are easy and intuitive, and there is a ton of software available, as well as good support if you know how to do web searches properly. The main trick is to try and remember that a paradigm shift needs to happen here. Linux is not Windows. It doesn't work like Windows, and it has different aims and priorities. She will also need to be prepared to learn a bit and be slightly more hands-on with her computing. The learning curve with Mint is comparatively gentle, but it does exist.

This is all very broad and general, but I hope it helps. Good luck to the both of you. I hope you are satisfied with whatever you decide on.

Popos 24 beta is dope if you like to live dangerously.

Linux Mint is the windows 7 experience of linux. It gets out of the way so you can work. It also has the best in-OS help tools. It's also a bit more conservative in terms of newest features, so it's a lot more reliable.

If she does PC gaming, you might want to look at Bazzite rather than Mint. It's a lot better equipped for non-technical people to start gaming. It's basically a preconfigured Fedora linux, so it's got a solid foundation. It's also something called an immutable distro, which basically means it's more difficult to break as the core OS is "read only" (to simplify).

In terms of migrating, best to avoid dual booting off a single disk. Microsoft keeps breaking Linux installs (probably on purpose). So best to install a second SSD.

Before you migrate, have her make a list of software she uses and the hardware she has. Best to post that on a forum like this to have more experienced people look for possible issues.

When it gets to migration day, if bitlocker is disabled, you can access your windows data from linux.

Also get her on Lemmy and asking questions directly. The best thing you can teach a low tech person is how to get help.

Personally, I don't think anyone new to Linux at this point, who isn't tech-minded, should be pointed to an X11 environment. So until Mint devs have ported Muffin into a Wayland compositor, I wouldn't recommend it. They're used to a shiny experience visually, so I'd go with Plasma 6 running on Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

Any of the large, easy to use distributions should work just fine. I'd recommend a popular distribution because it'll be easier to get help online. So consider Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and maybe Pop!_OS.

I think the main consideration should be which DE (desktop environment) she'd like to use. IMO the main contenders would be:

• KDE - Very configurable, nice looking, a bit heavy.
• Gnome - Simple and very opinionated, so not very configurable, a bit heavy.
• Cinnamon - Should feel familiar to Windows users, a bit faster than KDE and Gnome.
• Cosmic - A middle ground between Gnome's simplicity and KDE's configurability, pretty fast.
• XFCE - Very fast and light-weight, fairly configurable, but not very flashy.

Based on which DE she prefers, I'd suggest getting a distribution that comes with said DE by default, for the best possible integration. How do you figure out which DE she likes best? Put Ventoy on a USB stick along with a few different Linux ISOs. Ventoy wil let you choose which one to boot from a menu. You could get the following ISOs:

• Fedora or Ubuntu with Gnome
• OpenSUSE with KDE
• Linux Mint with Cinnamon
• Pop!_OS with Cosmic
• Mint or Ubuntu with XFCE

Download an ISO for each, install Ventoy on a USB stick and copy the ISOs to the stick. Boot into each ISO and play around with the desktop for a bit. When she's figured out which DE she prefers, install a distribution that comes with that desktop.

I guess a good question would be what software you plan on using. If it's something more reliant on frequent updates and feature releases like gaming, the choice would be a bit different compared to something like office work or common browsing, where stability would be prioritized (at the cost of slower updates).

Mint, for example, is a great jumping off point for Windows users because of the familiar User Interface and a focus on stability and lack of prior knowledge required - but it lags behind when it comes to cutting edge stuff for things like gaming.

Mint is a good jumping off point

Distro:

• First choice: Mint Cinnamon
• If the GPU is very shitty: Elementary OS (Mint Cinnamon expects a basic level of GPU performance)
• If Mint/Elementary are too simple: Fedora KDE

Process:

• For fully switching: Obtain an external hard drive, copy the contents of the Windows partition(s) to it and install your preferred distro so that it takes over the entire computer. This is the most stable way.
• For dual booting: Buy an SSD for Linux, disconnect the Windows drive and install your distro of choice so that it takes up the entire space. Reconnect the Windows drive afterwards and set boot priorities in UEFI.

One More Tip: Don't frontload them with information, but teach them one thing: How search for and install packages through the GUI (Mint Software Manager/Elementary Store/KDE Discover). Tell them that it's more like a smartphone apps and downloading software from websites should be a last resort.

If you're supporting it, then one you are familiar with would be my recommendation. If you're both beginners, then Mint.

Fedora. I would not have said that two years, but I am blown away by how easy and up to date it is.

And I am normally an Arch person.

Coming up on 10 years since I switched from windows to Linux. I tried Ubuntu and absolutely hated it, so much so that I switched back to windows at first. But I kept reading and tried ZorinOS, and that got me comfortable with Linux, it was a little buggy but I could understand it.

After a few months with ZorinOS I switched to Linux Mint and have been running Mint for 9 years. Recently my 76 year old mother who has trouble with some basic computer stuff said she'd like to try Linux and asked me to help her, I made a live USB of Mint for her to try and she told me "I can understand this, it's like windows 7!". If she can get Mint, I feel totally confident recommending it to new users.

I think Linux Mint would be a good first distro.

I recently learned about a project called Operese. It is a Windows to Linux migration tool that also sets up Kubuntu. Kubuntu is Ubuntu with the KDE desktop environment instead of the GNOME desktop environment. I don't know how well that tool works since I never tried it but it looks promising.

There is also a new project called Winboat that is meant to make it easier to install and use Windows software such as Adobe Photoshop

Bazzite, i tried arch and then realized the whole wiki was like a uni level symposium and was burning through steps, kept doing instead of understanding, etc...

It's probably amazing, but since my only interaction with linux back then was being forced to use it at uni and windows, I really wanted a good experience of what linux could be. I needed it to work out of the box and be unbreakable, so I went with bazzite.

It's great, and I am digging the immutable aspect even if it broke my brain for any dev work, but once you learn how to use an immutable system (still figuring it out tbh) it's solid, easy, and works great.

Really wished there was more resources on immutable systems for newcomers though XD

I loved Mint. It's still great. Recently I installed Linux on a family member's laptop which is not upgradeable to Windows 11. Hate to say it (and I may be a bit petty here): Mint looks dated, Cinnamon needs a facelift.

That was a reason I went with Zorin. It clearly tries to transition users that come from Windows with it's design (honestly, it's modded Gnome looks awesome). Even running .exe files is as simple as just opening them. Zorin will either just run them or suggest a Linux alternative. Had no issues with that OS so far.

That said, Mint or Ubuntu are solid choices for beginners (and pros alike).

Well quite obvious: as the name "Debian" was coined to celebrate the union between Debra and Ian, makes it a de facto choice! ;)

Debian + KDE

Mint Cinnamon. Just make sure to change the background before she sees it. The first impression is god awful with that stock background.

I think basically all the default backgrounds aren't great. There are a few passable ones but that's it.

Hannah Montana

It's dead simple. It is a meme. They may find that funny and humor and novelty help beginners ease into new environments.

https://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/but you should install something else as the main OS

Just set this as the first thing to boot and then teach them to remove it

There are two “just works” distros I recommend to new users: Bazzite or Fedora.

Start with Bazzite. It is familiar and has lots of guardrails so it’s nearly impossible to break.

If you decide you want more control over your system later, switch to Fedora KDE.

If you decide you want even more control and flexibility, consider CachyOS or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

You will see Mint recommended a lot, but I don’t like it. The default desktop — Cinnamon — is very Windows 95, and I much prefer KDE Plasma, which doesn’t work well on Mint. Mint also has driver issues with newer hardware. But if you like retro and your hardware is older, give it a try.

Avoid Pop_OS right now. It’ll probably be amazing in a year, but the new Cosmic desktop (currently a beta) has a lot of annoying bugs with common linux GUI packages.

Zorin

The distro I find easiest to recommend to folk in my life looking to move to Linux is the distro that I'm using/most familiar with, because it makes it easier to help them out if they run in to an issue.

I use CachyOS, and previously, I was trying to support Mint etc, but having zero experience with the way the way Mint handles packages, with its default apps, update process etc, I found myself having to research an OS I don't use, and offer 2nd hand advice. I moved them over to CachyOS, and even though technically, it's not as beginner friendly, my day to day familiarity with it meant that it was easier to help out when troubles arose.

This really depends on her hardware specs and what applications she needs to use.

Without knowing any of that, I would suggest Linux Mint. It is desktop user focussed and a good general OS. It includes drivers and common software in their version of an app store.

Debian is my distro of choice, but is not ideal for a new Linux user.

I would suggest checking what apps she needs and making sure they are available on Linux, or that a close equivalent is. Any apps that will be replaced, try the replacement out on Windows first if available. For example Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape, or MS Office to Libre Office.

For data transfer:

1. As others have said. Backup the current computer fully. This in probably best done on an external hard drive. Make sure you know how to reinstall windows and restore from the backup.

2. Copy all her data onto a different external hard drive. This is not the backup. It is a separate drive.

3. Make sure all the data is actually on the external hard drive and readable from a different machine. Ideally boot from a Lunx live USB and check that the data can be accessed from the external drive.

4. Install her distro of choice.

5. Copy her data from the external HDD to her user account's home folder of newly installed Linux.

I can recommend Debian or Fedora. They are both mature distros that are pretty easy to install and generally work well with minimal fuss and are easy to maintain. I often see Linux Mint recommend, including in this thread. I've never used it so I can't speak to it. But I have every reason to believe it's a solid choice.

As for transfer process, since you mention using spare disks, NTFS filesystems are supported and you may be able to just copy files off of them. I don't know if bitlocker is supported.

Fedora Silverblue (GNOME) or Kinoite (KDE) are great for a "hands-off" OS. They are atomic so very hard to accidentally fuck up the system. Apps are installed easily via the GUI software center. I tried both when I switched to Linux and found I loved the simple but powerful and delightful-to-use experience of the GNOME desktop.

Debian or Ubuntu because they're stable and well-funded. Makes a lot of stuff easier.

Everyone hypes Mint but if you're working with newish hardware you might have a bad time due to the drivers taking a while to mature and filter down through all the distros. If her rig is a couple years old it should work just fine though. I would also suggest trying out Kubuntu, Pop!_OS, PikaOS, and Zorin if that is the case.

If she is on brand new hardware then something Arch based is the way to go IMO. CachyOS, Garuda, and EndeavorOS are all Arch based distros that make setup easy and they've all worked great for me out of the box. Honestly if you have snapshots configured with timeshift or something being on a rolling distro isn't as scary as it's made out to be. Fedora is an option too as they get updates every 6 months, but there is a little extra setup to do after install like media codecs and proprietary drivers etc.

Cachyos was my personal pick and it's working perfect for me so far.

Install gentoo

Opensuse tumbleweed. It's solid, stays up to date because it's a rolling release, and Yast can be a life saver for new users.

Always great to see more people curious about Linux, especially when the motivation is escaping ms-bullshit..

If she wants something that just works but still feels polished and professional, I’d actually give openSUSE a look. Leap is rock-solid and perfect for people who want a stable system that behaves consistently and doesn’t demand much maintenance. Tumbleweed, on the other hand, is rolling release, so it’s always up to date but still surprisingly reliable thanks to openSUSE’s testing process.

Both use YaST, which is one of the best control panels in the Linux world. You can do a lot with YaST, like manage users, partitions, updates, drivers, and networking all from one place without ever touching the terminal.

Mint is also a fine choice as well....

Put Linux on one of those spare hard drives and simply mount the existing drive as a second drive in Linux.

This will give you access to all your current files from within Linux without having to do anything. Move over what you want and need as you use Linux. At some point, you will probably want to reformat the original Windows drive for extra space. You could consider mounting it as /home at that point.

Choosing a distro is a matter of taste. I can tell you though that I have moved a few Windows users to Linux Mint and they are all happy with it. My last one was LMDE (Mint with a Debian base).

Come on gang! We all know the real answer is Hannah Montana!

Fedora because it just works.

Gentoo

Bazzite

A lot of folks recommending Mint Cinnamon. I agree, that's a great choice, one of my favorites. If for some reason there are technical problems, you might also try something with KDE, like Kubuntu or Fedora KDE. Also windows-like, even more mainstream than Cinnamon, faster to adopt new shit like Wayland.

First, BACKUP EVERYTHING.

Then, the best distro is probably going to be the same you are currently using. You will not have to deal with issues that may be specific to one distro. There is enough difference from one computer to another to cause annoying issues, even on windows.

Biebian.

Mint. it's slick, stable and similar (usability wise) to people coming from windows

I vastly prefer/recommend stable LTS distros. There are really 2 main families of distros for this:

1. Linux Mint / Ubuntu LTS / Debian Stable (Ubuntu is based on Debian, Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS):

Basically endless amount of packages. Most people in the linux world have some familiarity with these so it shouldn't be hard to get help if you need it.

2. Rocky linux / Almalinux / RHEL (Rocky and Alma aim to be compatible with RHEL software):

For desktop systems people usually opt for fedora, but that distro does not meet my own criteria. Biggest reason you'd use these is for professional VFX software support. For whatever reason a lot of that stuff only has official support for this family of distros. Not sure why!

Get good at 1 of these families of distros. If you aren't vibing with one its okay to switch to the other. Both have more cutting edge options if you desire them.

Linux Mint is a community favorite and very much is built with a desktop user in mind, but I don't think it's unreasonable to subject someone to learning any of the others even if they are more server focused. Everything I listed has atleast 5 years of support! If your fiancee isn't super tech literate, you'll probably be the one doing a lot of the system maintenance so keeping those major updates sparse is a very good thing. And of course, if you don't wanna learn 2 different sets of tools, try and keep in the same family of distros.

Also, for desktop environment don't choose anything crazy obscure. KDE & Gnome are most common, Cinnamon & XFCE are less common but IMO fine. Venture into others at your own peril.

Transfer process depends on what you mean. Transferring your files will probably just take time. I'm hopelessly unorganized so for me backing stuff up takes a few days of combing through a bunch of junk and copying to a flashdrive or cloud storage. Other people might have more efficient ways of dealing with this though.

If you mean software Libreoffice is great local office software, SMplayer is imo a good media player, GIMP, Inkscape, and Krita got art stuff covered. We're also at the point you can more or less run most windows software on linux with enough fiddling, but that obviously isn't ideal.

Your biggest hurdle moving to linux full time will be understanding commands when you inevitably do need to change configuration of something with the terminal. If you need help there are usually forums, IRC, matrix, etc.

Happy computing!

LFS

omnixy, a NixOS fork of omarchy (which aims to serve the best defaults) that isn't maintained by a fascist

I have been thinking this for a while too and it's a toss up between Fedora and Debian for a regular user and if you are gaming then something like PopOS or Bazzite I would want someone non-techy using something that is not a rolling release distro like Arch.

I'm a fan of the uBlue distros Bazzite (gaming), Aurora (KDE), and Bluefin (Gnome and software devs). Other than that, Mint, Fedora, or Pop beta if you want to try the new Cosmic desktop

So my standard thing with newbies is to suggest putting it on their old machine rather than dual booting. I feel most people will be amazed at how fast linux runs on their last pc and how slowly windows does on their current and if they dual boot it can lead to lazily keeping it booted in windows were as if the linux is available for web browsing and such it will help getting used to it. What I use I think is good for newbies. Its a lazy mans linux in the sense that it comes with everything you need out of the box. Its called zorin and its an ubuntu lts respin and once installed without doing any further tinkering you can rdp to a windows host, burn a disk, open and edit sound, image, and video files. along with standard web browser and libre office and such. I think most folks could go with it unmodified for most everything they need to do. Since its ubuntu you can add programs from the software program and update with the update program but if you feel the need to do like windows many downloads will have a debian linux option which when double clicked will work fine. also out of the box it has wine with play on linux installed so often times windows programs can be run by right clicking them and telling it to run with wine.

I'd suggest 0 change at first : boot on a live USB then connect with her Web accounts (e.g. Firefox Profile) then get an easy win. Sure not 100% will work but she'll be 80% there in minutes. If she hates it, logout, reboot, remove key and that's it.

Here are some tips once you have chosen:

You can change your desktop environment later.

If you do your install with seperate partitions for /home and others, leave 10% unallocated. Also make /bin about 15gb and /boot about 1.5gb. When you eventually run out of space, you can use KDE Partition manager to add the unallocated space to the partition you need, even if you set up encryption (gparted doesn't play well with encryption). You can install Partition manager as a package, you don't need to use KDE Plasma.

Using a drive mirror is a good idea. Maybe use it the second time you install.

If you want to use a cool filesys like zfs, just use btrfs for now (licensing issues). Ext4 will also work for desktop user needs.

If you go with Debian, you can add repos to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. But it is a one-way trip, so before adding sid, consider running your program in a vm. Non-free non-free-firmware and contrib are fine

Show her some pictures or videos of DEs and see what she likes. If she's someone who likes to make it look the way she wants, she might get a bit more out of KDE than Cinnamon for example.

I would suggest whatever you pick, it should be a similar base to what you run or are most familiar with.

If you run something Debian based, you should recommend something Debian based. Fedora, Arch, etc.

The same is also true for desktop environments, if you use KDE, recommend KDE. If you run something not necessarily beginner friendly, recommend what you're familiar with.

At some point you're going to be asked questions, so the more familiar you are, the better for both of you.

AnduinOS

When I switched a while back I somehow got my partner to switch with me. We've both been using Kubuntu. I had her try popos, and it was flippin terrible with her multiple monitors, and unfamiliar. If Kubuntu wasn't already set up, I'd totally have her try Bazzite.

I know, it sounds odd, but: Arch! Once my best friend wanted to try linux. So he asked me, which distro to use. I gave him an honest answer: "I use Arch. But for beginners I would recommend Mint." He don't gave a shit and installed Arch anyways 😅 - with success! That's when I noticed, that the Arch Wiki is actually SO GOOD, that even a newbie can install Arch without any help. It's just a bit more time expensive, compared to distros with an installer. However, there are some huge benefits, that made me switch to Arch:

• I used Ubuntu on my daily driver before. However "stable" packages means in this case "antique". A 3 years old version of Sway isn't more stable than the newest release version.
• I never survived a dist-upgrade. That's why i prefer a roling release linux today.
• Your system is slim, because you only install what you really need. Also you know your system this way.
• Especially for gaming it's good to have the newest kernel + drivers.

However, you should also notice the down sides. Sometimes an update breaks something. It doesn't happens often, but it happens. A few years ago the bluetooth stack was broken, so i wasn't able to use my headset during a meeting. However they released a fix like a few hours later, so I just needed to update. But still: That's something to consider too.

start with something simple that’ll teach the basics of Linux – like LFS

Why do you want to start a distro war?

Is this with the intent of trolling our community?

"Let many flowers blossom".

I would like to suggest Kubuntu but I did have one bad experience with it where it was no longer capable of updating. It looks like if somebody does try it they need to use the LTS version.

A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite or aurora if you don't like gaming is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

I'm honestly astounded at how many people are suggesting Mint. I recently switched full time to linux and even as a software dev, Mint has to be one of the worst experiences I've had with a computer. Not only driver issues, but software issues and general buginess. Along with being butt-ugly, I do not think any windows user is going to confuse Mint for Windows.

I switched my wife to Bazzite (not necessarily recommending that) and she literally didn't notice it was a different operating system (even though I told her it was and walked her through it). Bazzite has a nice UI for installing pretty much anything a normie would be thinking to install. The only issue we've had so far is that Dropbox just outright does not work on it. I've filed a bug with them and have been awaiting a response from their dev team for like two months now. I'm sure they'll fix it eventually, but if you need the Dropbox UI (you can use rsync otherwise) then don't choose Bazzite.

As for myself, after trying out like 6 different OSes, I settled on CachyOS. There are still issues, but it's pretty dang stable and they're very fast to fix issues. It's not for a person not willing to touch a terminal at least once though.

You could install bunch of popular liveboot distros on USB with ventoy and have them try each one. Just make sure to mention it will run faster when not in a USB.

Comma splice akimbo.

Did this with my SO, they have mint like me. And they like it!

They wanted puppy linux though xD

openSUSE.

The one she likes... How about listening to her needs, and then show here some examples, and let her choose?

I'd present her with Mint and Ubuntu - and then what you know is her "style"...

If it's her first, I think Ubuntu is a great place to start

There are so many resources on what to pick as first distro. I do not understand why people don't check those out first ...

If older computer that works fine, I'd get a new 780m (Amd) mini pc. They support 3+ monitors, have 2 network ports allowing to "daisy chain" the old computer. No transfering of anything, or worrying about getting old stuff still working.

Deskflow is a mouse/keyboard sharing app. If you keep old computer in sleep mode you don't need extra keyboard/mouse, but power outages, mean that if you don't have a floor standing old pc you can stack old keyboard/mouse on top of, then you will need to occasionally plug in keyboard and mouse into old computer to get deskflow restarted (if you don't put it as autostart).

It's far more convenient than dual booting. Can use resources from both computers in network, and seemless mouse/keyboard focus. Switching 1 monitor for occasional use is better than dual booting, because rebooting on older computers especially is slow.

Deskflow needs a modern kernal linux distribution. Ubuntu 24.04 is recent enough. Linux mint has not upgraded kernel yet. AFAIU, the only difference between mint (recommended here) and Ubuntu is a slightly prettier version of kde.