I know it’s not a very Linuxy distro, but Linux Mint (Cinnamon) is so easy to use, especially for Windows users. I’ve completely replaced Windows (and with better software), aside from using Windows for a few games that require it. I used Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora long ago, but for me, Mint takes the proverbial cake.
The nice thing is that you can test out what you like about linux on mint cinnamon.
I installed it to get to know Linux “the soft way” and now love to use the terminal and got to know a buch of underlying concepts and whatnot. And I still use and love mint cinnamon.
A friend installed it and hasn’t configured anything, just uses its GUI and is very happy that way.
So I think the creators really hit the balance of ease of use and possibility to tinker, while ensuring great stability (“it just works”). Big props btw.
Being a beginner distro doesnt make mint any less linuxy. Its probably the gest recommendation to convert people over from windows
Thank you. I appreciate your perspective. Using Linux again has been like a breath of fresh air, honestly. I just love how fast everything is. (Both my Windows and Mint boots live on their own M.2 drives, but Mint is so, so much faster.) And, unlike Windows, I don’t feel like I have to jerry rig it to get things to work. I’m sure there are instances where that is the case, but I haven’t run into them yet.
I’m a linux user in the past 20years, and used to work with high maintenance / cutting edge distros like arch but grew tired and now use exclusively mint. Very stable, quiet, beautiful ux (tho cinnamon can look more modern).
I think many linux users go through a similar journey. In the beginning you feel a need to tweak everything manually, you take pride in it being difficult and you polish your dotfiles. Modifying the OS itself is 90% of what you use the computer for. You have strong opinions on tiling window managers. But then that becomes kind of old when you need your computer for actual tasks and work. You want to work on your actual projects, not configure irssi or ncmpcpp. The joy of tinkering with the OS itself transforms into seeing it as a tool to do interesting things with. Still, now you have an idea of how to fix things, where to look, but configuring Xorg is not the fun part of using a computer.
