hey nerds, I’m getting myself a new personal laptop as a treat, but I very much do not want windows 11 shitting it up. Is there a linux distro with caveman-compatible instructions for installation and use? I want to think about my OS as little as possible while actually using it.
I’ve got one friend who uses mint, but I’ve also seen memes dunking on it so who knows. I actually really only know what I’ve seen from you all shitposting in other communities
Ubuntu. There are mixes of it but out of the box Ubuntu is about as straightforward a dist to install as possible and it is well supported.
That said “new laptop” and Linux are not always a match made in heaven. You might try it from a boot stick and confirm that things like the GPU, touch screen, touchpad, fingerprint reader, USB C / Lightning all work properly.
Ubuntu is horrible these days, including most derivatives that change nothing but the DE. If you want Ubuntu, use Mint instead. There’s plenty of other options available, like Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc.
As for testing, most distribution installers allow you to try them without installing first. No need to set up anything separate for that.
Well, except that they have consistently been the one that has and installs proper drivers for a variety of hardware I’ve used it with. Many - many test units over the years with either brand new or older and obscure hardware that not a single distro I could find recognized, nearly every time it was Ubuntu that came through for me. Including my current laptop. I have been aware of the progression toward a corporate type atmosphere with them, though, and I don’t like it. I’m thinking about seeing if plain ol’ raw Debian now has the proper drivers because if it does, I may replace my Kubuntu with it. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve delivered when all others failed.
In the past, I would’ve agreed. These days, hardware compatibility for anything except the very latest is pretty much the same among distros.
I’ve been using Mint and Pop!_OS on two different machines for a few years.
Neither has really required much from me as the user, although I have needed to use the terminal once on each of them.
Personally, I really like the way Pop does window tiling and workspaces.
deleted by creator
Mint is the best distro for the average user who doesnt want to tinker with their OS or doesnt want to waste time fixing issues.
IF Mint doesnt go well with your laptop, I would try out Fedora, which is more up to date with stuff and also very user friendly choose Fedora Workstation if you’re feeling adventurous. choose Fedora KDE if you want a Windows like experience.
To add, if OP is looking to use the laptop for gaming, I can recommend Bazzite. Built upon fedora with some quality of life things and very stable as it’s immutable. Very hard to fuck up.
I’m not sure about recommending immutable distros to noobs, I’ve read enough reports from people that want to (or because of some hardware crap, need to) install or mess with some low-level stuff that just won’t work on the immutable distros, plus a bunch of online advice or help will just not be applicable.
Universal Blue OSs (Bazzite, Bluefin, and Aurora) are actually way easier than immutable is made out to be.
For one thing, there is no such thing as keeping the system and packages up to date. That all happens automatically as long as you restart your computer every now and then.
It is true that if someone is looking up how to install something online it could be confusing. But anything in Flathub is obviously dead simple.
I think if there were better demos and tutorials, it would seem a lot easier.
For instance, if you can’t find something in Flathub, and the only instructions you can find are for installing in Ubuntu, all you have to do is use Boxbuddy/Distrobox and use an Ubuntu container and install it there using the instructions.
It really is the best of almost all worlds. Granted, this setup doesn’t work for 100% of software. But it works for the vast majority.
Listen to yourself. What’s a distrobox? Boxbuddy? I’m already annoyed about someone expecting me to learn about this and I’ve used Linux exclusively for 25 years. I actually did Linux from Scratch and used that for 6 months for actual stuff. Telling a noob who wants to do normal things that work on a normal Linux distros that because of the (recommended by you) immutable distro they have, they need a container which has an actual normal linux distro inside it to run the thing they want to run, they’ll want to run away and probably never speak to you again.
And about flatpak: I had so many bugs that somehow only happen when you get the flatpak. And you can’t install command line tools over flatpak, you can’t install servers or drivers. Regular users (especially windows power user types) are likely to run into these things and curse you for recommending the one distro where you can’t just
apt install theclitoolineed.And you sound like the entrenched Windows user who doesn’t realize all of the little things they’ve internalized to keep their system working the way they want to. I should know, I was one of those Windows users until recently.
Regarding other tools, they really aren’t necessary for most users. I don’t even use Distrobox. Flathub for UI apps, and Homebrew for CLI apps serves all of my needs.
I believe that Jorge Castro is right about the Linux desktop. It has failed, and it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And that’s what they’re doing. Universal Blue is a completely different mindset from traditional distros, and I think it’s the future.
And that’s the great thing about Linux. You can continue to use the old methods you’re used to and have built up 25 years of muscle memory around.
It certainly has downsides in that regard, I will not deny that. However, if you want something that Just Works™, it is a very good option in my (admittedly limited) experience.
What spec of laptop are you thinking of getting?
Still shopping around, so nothing’s set in stone. I’m not much of a hardware guy either, so the best I could tell you is just that I’m looking for something a step or two above ‘bare minimum’ for 2025. An SSD, fair bit of ram, ports for external storage so I can actually boot with another OS, maybe enough guts to run skyrim modded to the gills. Somewhere in that ballpark.
If you’re running an Nvidia gpu, then Linux Mint is great for not needing to deal with setup issues.
If you’re going with an AMD gpu or no gpu at all, then i actually recommend Garuda Linux. It’s Arch-based so you may need to keep up with the updates more often. But you’ll get access to the AUR, a centralized* repository for just about every program you’ll need to install. I personally find it and pacman easier to use than apt.
If you’re getting a laptop with a graphics card, make sure you go with something by AMD. Nvidia cards will work fine enough, though for a whole host of different reasons, AMD is generally preferred for Linux.
good insight, thanks
mint
-
generally a solid choice
-
you have a friend who uses it! big advantage
people who make memes about linux distros are in a lot deeper than you want to be. they have different goals.
True for the friend benefit. Fun and useful to occasionally chat about it with someone who knows what’s up.
-
I usually recommend Zorin OS to noobs, but personally I prefer arch based
to those suggesting mint, any particular reasons to choose between Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce versions?
Cinnamon or Xfce are more similar to Windows’ user interface. Between those two, Xfce is more lightweight than Cinnamon. MATE is more for people who liked GNOME 2 and want that interface over what the current GNOME is.
Cinnamon would probably be the most friendly as a new user, but I personally haven’t used it in years and I’m not familiar with its current state.
It mostly just depends on how you want your desktop to look. They have screenshots of each on their website. Since it sounds like you have a new laptop, power won’t be an issue for you. (If you were trying to run Mint on something with the power of a potato, a lighter DE would be a good idea.) Personally I love how Cinnamon looks and feels. It’s pretty simple, but also modern and customizable.
I personally use Cinnamon, which has a similar feeling to Win10. Very satisfied with it on my desktop. From what I’ve heard XFCE also feels similar to Windows, but I simply have just used Cinnamon ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I really like Fedora. Swapped to it a few months ago, my first time using Linux, and I’ve since only been using the Linux machine. With the KDE Plasma spin, it really is a near 1:1 UI to Windows.
mint is probably where you want to be. if you have performance issues with mint, consider MX Linux, AntiX, and EndeavourOS, in that order.
Mint was my beginner distro and is what I recommend. In my experience I was able to find a solution for most of my beginner problems by searching for a solution for mint.
I think Mint is good enough. People will dunk on anything popular.
Don’t get mint if you’ll get a remotely capable laptop or plan to game on it. Its so called ‘modern’ desktop environment (wich still defaults to the old X window system) feels awful to use imo and while the ‘retro’ ones are better there’s no point in using them on a new laptop. Choose a distro that ships with KDE, GNOME, or a wlroots based desktop environment.
I’ve also had driver issues with it that didn’t happen with Ubuntu or arch.
Pretty much every distro has a caveman compatible installer.
Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or one of the offshoots like Mint or Pop.
As long as you don’t go too far into the weeds with Arch, Silverblue or NixOS, You’re probably going to have a pretty decent experience, as long as you don’t dig too far under the hood too early most things that you’re going to want to try are just going to work out of the gate.
Linux mint (Cinnamon is my fav). You can never go wrong.
Maybe
It’s hilarious how uncool it is to suggest Ubuntu but it often just works, including very recent hardware if it’s from Canonical partners like Lenovo or Dell. And the kerfuffle about things like snaps are way overblown.
deleted by creator
I haven’t used Windows in about 3 years, so I may be out of date, but in my experience, Ubuntu and its derivatives work easier with scanners and printers. For me and my printer-scanner combo, I literally just have to place it and the Linux desktop on the same network/WiFi. I don’t even have to add the printer-scanner. The OS finds it in the background on its own. It confused me the first time it happened because like you, I had wearisome issues in the past. Last I used Windows, I had to tell the OS to search for the printer and find the drivers for it myself online. Now, it’s installed before I open up printers on my OS.
Fedora tends to “just work” too. Some manufacturers that support Ubuntu also support Fedora for customers that need a “RedHat-ish” distro instead of a “Debian-ish” one.
More specifically Ubuntu LTS, since interim releases are now expectedly beta quality and require upgrades a few months after release. Ubuntu LTS, enable unattended upgrades, register and activate Ubuntu Pro for them and you won’t have to touch it for the lifetime of the hardware.
deleted by creator
I came here to say this as well. Ubuntu "just works"™ and was my entry into linux 15+ years ago.
Ubuntu was my entry to linux as well, 19 years ago. But Ubuntu of today is not the Ubuntu of 15-19 years ago, and not in a good way.
Especially because it’s to a newbie, who stands to benefit the most from using an OS with more user share and more available online resources.
you’re right, but the issues with ubuntu crop up later, when you have to update or after you install enough incompatible stuff that it breaks your system. which is a shame bc ubuntu is the most user friendly distro there is imo
is it user friendly if it’s so prone to breakage?
Is it though? I’ve found it rock solid for years on end - been using it for 14 years, and Debian before that.
i mean idk, i was just asking about what that other poster was saying. i fuckin’ hate ubuntu for other reasons and i generally don’t speak on it in the negative or positive in threads like this. i only chimed in because what was being said struck me as odd. “it’s the most user friendly distro there is, it just breaks a lot”
it made me wonder what user friendly meant to this other user. i wanted to hear their perspective because i thought i could learn something, especially as i help my mom, an inexperienced linux user, use linux on an old laptop for the first time
i mean… when it doesn’t break, it works better than anything else. 5-minute installs, supports a ton of configurations and peripherals out of the box, makes gnome a little more usable, etc, etc
…but it breaks, eventually
I don’t recognize this myself. I’ve never had trouble with incompatibilities or degradation etc.,
Especially these days my OS can remain very vanilla, as many complex things can be containerized. E.g. I run syncthing and an nfs server and sometimes torrenting over vpn, through docker-compose; I’d never install all that on the host with all the extensive dependencies. Same with some heavyweight apps like darktable - spin them up from Flatpak.
Ubuntu does it very well with minimal fuss. I see little to dislike.
my last personal anectode with ubuntu is this: my company decided to setup our office as a remote-onsite hybrid workplace, so our working machines were moved to a rack elsewhere to be accessed remotely and the local machines were supposed to act as basically dumb terminals that can be used interchangeably by us
we develop on rhel, but since the local machines are just to access our dev machines remotely, support decided to install ubuntu because it “just works”. turns out, since ubuntu does a lot of stuff its own way for no good reason, it broke under our network configuration (it’s complicated) and no snap application could run – so, no slack or firefox. not a great scenario for a workplace. in the end we decided to replace ubuntu by rhel and no longer had any issues
you’re right that ubuntu might work flawlessly for you and that it might never break. but, it also might break in unexpected ways. i cannot reliably recommend ubuntu to a beginner because this risk might forever put someone off of linux
