If you wanna try Arch + KDE without hassle, well Arch has an easier installer now, but I use EndeavourOS. It’s a lovely smooth Arch experience!

Very easy installer with lots of options to choose from. :)

Yes! Great way of putting it. It’s hard to explain how just using an OS can be a fun hobby in itself.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed does it all for me. I work and play games on it and stuff, but my laptop is less mission critical, so I run EndeavourOS on it and experiment with fun layouts and everything is all “frutiger-aero-esque”. It feels like how I nostalgicallyremember those WinXP-7 days!

Snapper rollbacks with BTRFS are incredible for letting you play around with an OS you actually use, and still giving you a cushion to fall back on. :D

My little media streamer / guest PC has Mint. Nice, maybe a little boring, predictable, reliable. Ahhh simplicity. :)

It’s gonna have to be “Linux From Scratch” at this point…starting with the hardware.

Also OP, if you want pretty and Cinnamon can’t do it for ya, you can always install KDE (my fav!) or GNOME or what have you right on top of your existing system.

Research before doing so! But it’s possible. :)

I also love Tumbleweed and rock it as my daily driver!

To complement this point, OP, you can also get that sweet rollback functionality in any distro! Usually the easiest way is selecting BTRFS as your file system on install, and installing a software called “TimeShift” that will manage snapshots for you.

BTRFS can be complicated, but basically, it allows remembering the changes in files, without needing to copy the ENTIRE file. This saves a ton of space. (You don’t need to get into the weeds deep diving if you don’t want to. Snapshots are great, everything else is great, as long as you aren’t doing crazy specific RAID setups or something lol)

Otherwise, on EXT4 for insurance, your rollbacks would just literally be copied files, which can eat your storage fast. :)

Tumbleweed is known for rolling (heh!) this in quite smoothly by default, but this is just an example how any distro can be tweaked how you like! (Highly recommend setting up Timeshift on ANY install.)

I absolutely second the advice in this comment: Try some live USBs or virtual machines and just play around for what feels right. Distro hopping can be lots of fun, but you’ll find one that “feels like home.”

:)

I agree with most folks here that usability-wise, both are truly fine! Mainly I think philosophy is where Mint might have an edge here.

Ubuntu, run by a corpo named Canonical, has had some controversial decisions in the past, such as inserting amazon ads into the system’s search feature, or “opt out” analytics being default, and lately, a system called “snap.”

Snap is controversial because it has a closed source backend, but effectively works just like its open-source counterpart, the “flatpak.” It’s packaged so the software has everything it needs to run.

Some people say they work great, others hate them, but Ubuntu doesn’t make it very easy for you to have a choice in the matter.

If you don’t like the idea of snaps, it’s a bit of a pain to get rid of it. And otherwise, Ubuntu will sneakily use it as the default way to install most software. Philosophically, this can feel a lot like why people left Windows behind!

Long term, that’s why I favor and recommend Mint to most newcomers: It doesn’t play those games, sometimes the drivers work even better, the community is fantastic, and the vast knowledge that works on Ubuntu should work on Mint too.

So that’s mainly where the difference will lie.

Either way, I wouldn’t sweat it too much while you’re learning, as long as it does what you want! And purple-orange is pretty snazzy. ;)

Mint just feels a little “cleaner” in my humble opinion. Most software you’d want the latest of, like GIMP or Discord, will be found as a Flatpak in Mint’s app store.

Hope this helps you get a clearer view!

I like that idea, although I think we need some simpler guides as to what exactly one might he getting into if they’re setting up an instance that’s not just a domain name. (Costs, potential usage blowing up, legal issues with content, etc…)

Also, I really think there needs to be a smoother way to navigate between instances. I guess, so you’re still aware of “jumping nodes”, but also don’t feel locked in there. (Although maybe I’m just a newb still haha)

Truuue!

I probably engage here a little much too, but I’m glad there’s not a ton of “You also might like based on where your mouse hovered 0.4 seconds longer” panels on every single page!

Dammit, Manjaro. Why you gotta be WEIRD?! I used to love their branding, but they keep doing crazy things that would clearly alienate the userbase that’s left…

NGL on pretty much any install, I’d end up looking up pros and cons of every filesystem AGAIN…

… It’s BTRFS now. Simple. Easy. Lol

But it was a lotta research to reach that conclusion. So yeah I get that newbie apprehension!

Yeah I honestly legit enjoyed my fond time with old Windows machines back when they were fun and user-oriented instead of the user-exploitative SAAS monsters they are now.

Win10 wasn’t even SO bad as everyone says…well, until recently when they started forcing Microsoft Accounts on install and harass you with their ads every 3 forced updates. Ugh.

Now they’re on the Ai bandwagon? Yeah they’re real small in my rearview mirror now.

I think it’s just a different landscape now, and I’m glad Linux was there to jump to after all these companies started losing their collective minds.

“Linux is open source and free! You can do whatever you want with it! It’s our thing!”

Microsoft: “Whatever I want with it?..Free?..Hm…This is my thing .”

XP was totally a wild time, to Dad’s credit though! hahaha

It was that funky era of needing like 4 different anti malware programs, and downloading game patches from various hopefully-trusty file hosts, or nabbing the suspiciously convenient “Linkin-Park-Meteora-FULL_ALBUM.exe” off of Kazaa which would promptly rootkit your whole system.

Routinely running Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, AVG, and CCleaner to combat constantly-reinstalling spyware.

Heck, I consider myself kinda smart but I still had Bonzi Buddy for a while! …I mean, c’mon, funnee purpl monke. Who could resist?

Like wow, now that I think back on it, you really needed a bit of “street smarts” back then. Nowadays security has gotten a lot better and one can get away with just “Not downloading weird Russian Web3 games off the dark web” and they’ll usually be relatively fine. Lol.

TL;DR: Windows XP was compatible with Bonzi Buddy, Mandriva was definitely a more secure choice, seeing as it couldn’t run Bonzi Buddy unless you were determined with WINE maybe?

… It’s cool you got introduced to Linux so early. Cool dad. :)

That’s defo Broadcom’s fault. Unfortunately when Linux is a second class citizen, hardware vendors will make crappy Windows and maybe Mac drivers, but a lot of Linux support seems like it needs to be reverse engineered or something, if the company itself refuses to play ball. :(

This was the case with NVIDIA for a long while. Still kinda is. Hopefully that’s improving though.

Fair disclosure, I personally run OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, BUT…

Honestly for this situation I think Linux Mint might be your on-ramp. It’s very familiar from a user experience perspective from someone coming from Windows, and everything can be done with GUI apps.

It updates the entire system smoothly through an “app store” so it stays nice and secure. “Cinnamon” is also a highly attractive and smooth desktop environment.

I’ve switched a few people to it who were sick of Windows on older machines, but NOT computer people at all, and they’ve enjoyed it a lot! The nicest thing is it will feel like your computer again, not like you’re leasing it from Microsoft.

Don’t try and “completely switch over” in one go.

Look up how to try Linux in a virtual machine on your existing setup (so you don’t have to risk anything!) and just try it and play around with installing and using it.

An old laptop or something is also a great way to try it out.

You can always dual-boot if you want. I sure did for a while until Win10 started BSODing for no discernable reason, and refused to let me “refresh this PC” because “Sorry, can’t. Goodbye.”

I still have it, just in case, but it’s been most of the year since I’ve even bothered logging into it.

If you game: you’ll want Heroic Launcher for your GoG/EA stuff, and Steam of course, and maybe Bottles to run your old CD/DVD games maybe. :)

Sometimes things take a little tweaking, but Mint’s community is fantastic and helpful. You really will start to learn a lot about computers just by using Linux a little and trying things, while Windows makes every effort to hide things from you. (“wE’rE gEtTiNg ThInGs ReAdY” who’s “we”?!)

As you start to get comfortable with it, it will grow with you. You can start trying to get the hang of the terminal, or jump to another distro once you learn why you might prefer to.

But you really can’t go wrong just trying Mint out. It’s overall just a pleasant OS.

ProTip: You’ll be asked about a file system when you install any distro. I spent COUNTLESS HOURS on researching this question. BTRFS can be a bit of an advanced file system, but if you just “set it and forget it”, it has the ability to take incremental snapshots without taking a ton of space! So if something really goes south, you can use an app called “Timeshift” to just roll back.

This is great for your root drive / partition, but I wouldn’t suggest it for your home folder. :)

(Just like Windows rollback used to do, but…more reliable lol)

Lol sorry for the ramble but I hope this might help you feel a little less lost at the grocery store. ;)

Me, a long time KeyPass enjoyer:

“Y’know people keep talking about BitWarden, maybe it’s more accessible and I should give it a tr…(sees this) PFFFFFTTTT! DODGED THAT BULLET.”

Cosmo? Isn’t that Pop_OS’s new DE coming out? :D

Woo! ALWAYS a good day to see InkScape getting some updates! I suck at it but I sure do appreciate it. :D

Hey I didn’t know that! Cool! :)