So ive use windows pretty much for everything and ive kinda had a enough of windows. i was thinking of trying linux on an old laptop that i just upgraded to 8gb of ram and im not sure wha tos to put on it. i was thinking something lightweight maybe ubuntu mate? i need somethign like windows that will allow me to game and do other things liek gaming maybe even streaming or reading? idk. also what are some neede dsoftware, browser so rthigs needed for linux. i com efrom a family who has never trie dlinux and hates it because its “the smar advanced coders os” somethign liek that.
anyways im a noob so go easy on me please als i may have ben linux distro hopping but i still feel lost.
There are excellent suggestions in this thread. However, I want you to change your mindset. What you’re asking is like “I don’t want to drive my car. I’m sick of 4 wheelers. I want to ride this new thing called a motorbike. What are some good motorbikes? It should have AC and the safety and comfort of my previous car. Also are there any 4 seater bikes which is family friendly?”
When you are shifting from one platform, please be prepared to make some changes in the way you normally operate. You can’t magically expect the new platform to be perfect when you have a decade of experience in the previous platform.
I wish you all the best in your Linux journey.
Linux mint is amazing for you, I personally would say its better than zorin
No.
Linux is not Windows. Don’t try to make Windows from Linux. It can be visually similar, but it will never be the same. Don’t expect a seamless migration. Stay on Windows or be ready to learn new things.
Linux Mint Cinnamon is a good choice. Even as a sysadmin and DevOps engineer I use it on my workstation because it Just Works. It has good window management, settings management, file management and just stays out of the way. Flatpak is well integrated for things you may need that aren’t natively packaged, like discord.
I’ve heard good things about PopOs too but haven’t tried it.
People usually recommend Linux mint or some Ubuntu version. I recommend neither.
Ubuntu is a proprietary-solution-ridden piece of hot garbage that tries to hinders what you do at any chance. I use it daily for work, unfortunately.
It’s been a few years since I tried mint. It looked good and felt nice for the first few hours, after that I don’t remember what happened, it was maybe lack of configurabilità or lack of support, but I noped out very quickly and I just remember that my thoughts were “never again”.
I never tried it, but it looks like Pop!_OS might be the thing to look out for in this space.
Besides that, know that Linux is different from windows starting from its very philosophy. Keep an open mind, it can be a confusing journey for a beginner (which is why I am holding back about telling you about the many possibilities).
One thing to keep in mind is that some software that you were used to will not be available, and that you might need to look for alternatives. But as far as the things you mentioned go, these are my recommendations:
- browser: Firefox
- gaming: steam
- streaming: OBS
just go with something like fedora. It’ll be easy enough and you can do almost anything through graphical user interfaces.
+1 to Fedora, and if you want a UI that is very close to Windows I’d recommend the KDE Spin of Fedora as well.
Iv been running garuda Linux GNOME edition on my gaming rig for years. Best Linux experience iv had. Honestly in my opinion and theres 2 schools of thought on this. The windows paradigm is literally shit workflow design, and thats just objective assessment. The only reason it has carried on is because people got real familiar with very shitty design choices.
I think you may want to consider opening yourself up to trying a whole new UX. Try out GNOME would be my suggestion. NixOS is another positive choice. You can install almost all your software graphically in basically 1 click using flatpak too these days and thanks to steam and their investment in proton. Most steam games work REALLY WELL on Linux.
I would recommend that you check out Linux Mint. It is based on Ubuntu, but is in my experience easier to use out of the box.
They have a MATE version on their website.
Everyone reccomends Linux Mint, but I personally use Kubuntu. You can use Discover to install apps such as Steam and you’d probably not need the terminal
ubuntu mate is a good choice for a beginner, but if your computer is old enough, the system may slow down. This is due to the fact that snap images are slowly decompressed on older processors. You can try Linux Mint too.
About the software. The main thing is to accept the fact that not all Windows applications have analogues on Linux. some people actually make such a mistake. no need to try to install wine and migrate literally every exe file. Look at the software specifically for linux.
The default browser is firefox. But you can install chrome or chromium without any problems. There is OBS studio for linux for streaming. For games, you can put lutris. There is also an official steam client. if the game has an anti-cheat and this anti-cheat is not optimized for linux, you will not be able to play it.
You grab your biggest usb stick and install a tool Ventoy2Disk into it: https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_ventoy2disk.html
Then you never re-format again, but just drag and drop any .iso-file you want to try. You can try any Linux distro in live mode without installing anything into your computer before you found your favorite distro.
Try at least these, Pop_OS!: https://pop.system76.com/
Linux Mint: https://linuxmint.com/download.php
If you don’t have Nvidia gpu, then try LMDE5 instead and here’s why: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=374128
Fedora KDE: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/kde/
If you want something totally different and fully keyboard driven distro (docs reading is mandatory), Manjaro Sway: https://manjaro-sway.download/
At this point it is only about the looks you like the most.
Linux mint is often recommended for new people, and has a interface very similar to windows. In my own experience, it’s very fast to get it up and running.
I highly recommend trying Manjaro. I haven’t moved past Windows 7, so I can’t compare doesn’t to Win 10/11, but it’s the only Linux distro I’ve found that was Close Enough ™ to Windows to make it possible for me to switch.
Like any Linux, things aren’t going to Just Work ™ as often as in Windows, but this is the closest I’ve gotten.
I recommend NOT using Manjaro, they have many issues, most described here: https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/
for someone who wants an arch-based distro without tinkering too much there are other alternatives like endeavourOs, and I think Garuda too.
For someone who wants something that looks like windows, no need for Manjaro, just something with a desktop environment that looks like windows. I’d recommend Linux Mint, very simple to use (and for low end computers there is the XFCE edition), or distributions with KDE (fedora KDE, Kubuntu…) or maybe ZorinOS.
edit: also nobara Linux (based on fedora)may be good for games, they have a version that kinda feels like windows
I’ve been using Manjaro for a couple of years now on my desktop (with an Nvidia GPU). Their package situation is not great. Updating the Linux kernel and Nvidia drivers is a process separate from pamac that you have to just know to do, or one day X will break and now you have to figure out how to fix it.
On top of that, because they delay the release of non-aur repo packages for stability testing, but don’t delay aur, some aur packages will just break occasionally. I now manually install discord from their tar ball because of this.
Because of these little unnecessary quirks that you just have to know how to work around, I can’t recommend it for new Linux users, and honestly don’t recommend it to seasoned users either. I’m trying out endeavor OS on my laptop now and I think that is what I would recommend; but possibly only for more seasoned users because it’s arch. Might be more stable if you install the linux-lts package and remove linux.
OpenSuse Tumbleweed is easy to use and configure
Linux Mint is the obvious recommendation. It looks pretty similar to windows and is really good for those unfamiliar with Linux.
I personally use fedora which is also pretty good for beginners but the installation process is pretty confusing and setting up dnf fusion might not be what a new linux user wants to fiddle around with right away, which is why I think mint might be better.
