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Ask Slashdot: What's The Easiest Linux Distro For A Newbie?
joseph Kramer -- a long-time user of both Windows and MacOS -- comes to Slashdot with the ultimate question:
I've been lurking here for years and seen many recommendations for a Linux flavor that works. What I'm really looking for is Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking (ala early Windows flavors, 3.1, 95/98). Does such an OS exist? For the record, I am not an IT tech. I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls. Any recommendations?
When it comes to Windows and MacOs, he describes himself as "fed up with their shenanigans." So leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best way for a newbie to get started with Linux?
When it comes to Windows and MacOs, he describes himself as "fed up with their shenanigans." So leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best way for a newbie to get started with Linux?
The answer in my opinion is Mint, there shouldnt be tons of constant fiddling... However it is important to understand, Linux is still very much a power-user operating system... So far i havent seen any distro worth its salt that does alot of hand holidng.
Definitely the easyest
It's linux. And there isn't any tweaking you need to worry about.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Elementary OS: https://elementary.io/
Ubuntu for me is the first thing that comes to mind.
I have not actually installed it on a computer though I have a few times booted from a disk with it to do some hardware maintenance when I was having some hard drive issues and overall seemed to be relatively straightforward.
and if you want the best user experience, install it from floppies.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Oh and Ubuntu has an entire corp behind it keeping it up to date and functional like OS X or Windows but with less shenanigans. So I'd vote for Ubuntu for ease of setup.
I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls
Apparently you just don't need a run of the mill desktop linux distro, but some special purpose to control some hardware, right ? The good news is that all linux systems are more or less equivalent for that. The bad news is: what is you equipment ? Does it support Linux ? Do you need to write software for it or are you provided drivers ? If the latter you should ask your hardware provider what they recommend, not us.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
for sure.
Obviously.
then try Linux Mint - it seems to be the most popular and the highest rated among new users. But if you don't mind reading a bit before making a decision, then maybe this link will help (includes screenshots): http://distrowatch.com/dwres.p... Have fun!
CentOS/RedHat, those will leave you around the Windows Server 2000/2003 level in terms of "easy to use". Beyond that, there really isn't anything. But you'll still need to deal with everything about these distros that is still Linux. Want to configure anything? Then you have to dig out your command-line based notepad variant.
Then there's Ubuntu. That'll give you an intolerably inferior GUI to use with all your off-brand open source alternatives. Comparable to maybe Windows XP pre-service pack, maybe SP1. But you'll still need to dig out your command-line based notepad variant for any kind of serious configuration.
There's no way around it really. Linux is just terribly inconvenient to work with. It's powerful, absolutely, but with great power comes terrible manageability.
The more obscure the distribution you choose, the worse it is to deal with, but the more powerful it becomes. Choose wisely.
No, Linux is something fundamentally different from MacOS.. open.
Just Debian, no derivatives.
I've had the least trouble with Debian. Mint just doesn't seem to like me, and I don't like Ubuntu.
Building Gentoo from source was fun, Fedora just didn't feel right, FreeBSD wouldn't even work in Virtualbox, and I've yet to experience the pleasure of Slackware.
If this is to control manufacturing/industrial equipment, you really should be employing someone with skills and experience. /advice
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
I would choose Kubuntu for its normal Windows 7-like start menu (incorporating type-search for applications, and organized submenus). The distro also has several things to get you rolling, optionally installing flash and mp3 proprietary extensions, a driver installer to get proprietary things like ATI/Nvidia and WiFi up and running. Firefox and LibreOffice are ready to go, and typing "updates" or "software" in the menu will get you more programs to install.
In 17.04 (beta 2 from a few days ago) the awkward "K" branding has been removed from KDE plasma, giving the startup and menu a more unified feeling.
At noob level, probably the most challenging thing is to make and use a bootable USB of the distro, and for that, the ISO plus Rufus or Unetbootin will make the flash drive, and creative pounding of function keys on boot will get your PC to start live off it.
Android, or ChromeOS. Both are based on Linux, after all. But otherwise, Fedora. Everything about Ubuntu is weird.
You say you don't want to spend time tinkering. As we don't know what specific software/hardware you will run, only general advice can be given. So generally speaking, if you go with the flow and use the most used distro, that will maximize chances that any 3rd party software you use will work with it. Even if something goes wrong, you have the largest chance of being able to Google your way to a solution. So, then consider Ubuntu (or another mainstream Linux distro).
For a newb, nothing beats PCLinuxOS. It has wizards for everything.
How much time you waste tweaking things in Linux depends on you. If it works, leave it alone and it will keep working.
I have left servers with zero maintenance and zero reboots for several years. They eventually die when the PSU fails after 4 to 5 years of utter neglect.
Here's how it works in Linux.
Either you're very lucky and Linux works for you out of the box and you don't have problems with your hardware or you're very unlucky and you have troubles with your hardware and software.
I'd recommend that you download Xubuntu/Mint LiveCDs, run them and verify that your PC works (including your GPU/peripherals like printers and scanners/networking like Wi-Fi/LAN). After that you may proceed with the actual installation. If you want to spare yourself from frequent OS upgrades, please install an LTS version of a chosen distro.
Linux even in 2017 is not exactly a friendly OS with zero problems, the truth is to the contrary. Unless you're content with the software your distro provides, you'll have to teach yourself command line and Linux CLI commands.
Also make sure you read this article - it has a lot of wisdom in regard to Linux and its inner workings for a beginner like you.
In a way I think this question is silly for Slashdot, especially if you've been here longer than a month. Ubuntu and Mint get mentioned a lot in the comments.
But besides that, you could easily try 3 or 4 (or more) different distros in a VM in a day or two and see what feels better for you.
If you actually want to learn Linux decently well, one thing a lot of people don't mention is how comprehensive and organized the documentations are. For example, I don't like Fedora but their documentation is pretty well structured.
My short answer would be Mint or an Ubuntu variant.
What books or websites do you recommend, to teach the beginner the basics of Linux? For exampe, what's a KDE desktop? How do you use packages?
What websites and user groups are the most helpful to Linux newbies?
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
If you don't want it to do stupid things like when you ‘rm -rf’ a directory/‘folder’ it asks you to confirm for every single file (rather than none, but you can set it to confirm to remove folder,) which could be 1000 files, or another stupid thing of forcing you to use a password on a PC you may not have anything personal on, or another stupid thing of booting to GUI (of course, optional) when you might run a few commands first, then use Slackware. If you want it to do some of those really difficult things (and maybe some easier things,) use something newer and more difficult.
Mint Mate in particular. It is most similar to standard Microsoft Windows (before Win8) in that most stuff is obvious and/or available with a right click context menu.
open -> "Gluten free."
No.
Open -> "Free gluten"...
I suggest running Knoppix from a CDROM or DVD.
Unless you specifically tell it to it's not going to change anything on your hard disk. You are not going to mess anything up by accident.
If you want to keep stuff save it to a USB disk, or even run Knoppix from a USB disk.
I've seen a lot of people who had never used linux before run knoppix with no trouble.
If mac design is your thing you might want to check out elementary. All the tweaking is bolted shut anyway.
A basic mental recollection from lurking for years or even just a cursory web search would reveal the very easy approach of putting Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, openSuse, and many others onto a USB and testing if it will "work with the mechanical equipment it controls." Moreover there is no indication what "mechanical equipment" is at issue so there is no way to truly answer this at all. Personally I've had no issues with any of those distros on computers 5 years or younger.
It has Gnome3 without the odder bits of Ubuntu, and always comes with a working WiFi stack. The software manager GUI interface had a facelift a while back, and now you don't need to know much more about how to use it on a general level than "login and click around".
Surprised this hasn't been proposed already. I've had pretty good experiences with it lately, fairly stable, fairly well supported.
Look, I'm sure some of you clicked on this post in bewilderment, expecting to see some hypocritical pro-Ubuntu argument from a known digerati eliteist here. You're not gonna find one. But the answer to the question is Ubuntu.
The problem is that the question is wrong. Like many such users, their actual biggest problem is just not knowing how to ask the right questions. The question "What's the easiest Linux distro for a newbie?" was formulated by someone who wanted a Linux distro that would not leave them running in terror, frightened and disgusted of all open source software forever. While Ubuntu (or Mint, or whatever... something even more absurd) may indeed be the easiest for new adopters to understand, it's a far cry from a good example of the pinnacle of quality in open source software that they want and need.
If you don't want to constantly fiddle with things, get a smartphone.
Otherwise the only OS that is "fiddleless" is MacOS X, and even then, only if you don't buy any accessories.
Windows and Linux are full of fiddling around, just in different ways. With Linux it's dependency hell, where one update requires a support library update, which requires a sytem library update which requires a kernel update which requires a build tool update, which requires ... you get the idea. With Windows, you get the constant pushing of C/C++ and .NET runtime updates/parallel installations which in turn makes things so much of a pain in the ass if you use software built against an earlier runtime but libraries against a later runtime. Basically for software that you can get the source code to, it's much less of a pain in the ass to recompile linux/windows applications against what libraries are already on the damn system than to go find working old copies of libraries that don't depend on ridiculous versions of obscure libraries.
In a sense, with Windows to Linux, you go from fiddling with hardware drivers to fiddling with kernel drivers, and system tunables on both.
So there is no such thing as a "linux distro for a newbie", if anything zero Linux distros work out of the box, and those that do, do not support hardware newer than 5 years (or if it does only minimally through a generic driver.) You see this a lot with people bitching about OpenGL, because a game that uses OpenGL will not work on a stock version of Windows or Linux without the video driver installed. On Linux it will be pushed through the software renderer Mesa, while on Windows it will simply look for the openGL miniport driver and go "NOPE" if it's not there.
Since Mageia is a fork from already very user friendly Mandriva and has a very friendly community and forums, nice and translated documentation I also found it very easy to use. I even install it for some non-techies and they still use it without any complain. I just showed them how to update if there is an update icon in tray for it.
They also have a strong and very dedicated QA team. They even write advisories regularly which is very very rare in independent distros.
Not Arch. But I would recommend it if you were willing to dive into a world of fuck you, because you will eventually climb out victorious and full of knowledge. I'd say it's worth it.
Just don't be like me and accidentally delete all graphics card drivers, and be forced to download them through the text only webbrowser.
I think you will get as many answers as there are users on /. My preferred distro is Debian, simply because that is what I am used to. It is fairly conservative in that it doesn't dance exactly on the bleeding edge, but I have yet to find anything missing; I may just be a rather conservative linux user, of course. You could probably go for any of the popular distibutions and avoid tinkering, if that is what you want - it is more a question of which ones to avoi, in that case, since there are some that are made specifically for that purpose; Gentoo springs to mind.
But I have to ask: Why do you want to avoid tinkering? Even if you choose a distribution that doesn't require it, all Linuxes invite it; it is very open to playing around with the system. And unlike Windows where it is a pain to try to go under the hood, in linux it is more pleasurable.
See the desktop and new features: New features in Linux Mint 18 MATE
I second. Mint is quick, easy, works out of the box, and is feature-packed, stylish, and attractive. It is one of the, if not THE most popular GNU/Linux distro. I've tried a slew, over the years, and granted things change, and generally (mostly) improve over time, it could be that these would be better to try now, but why would I when I'm happy with Mint? Those were Slackware, Knoppix, Fedora (RedHat's free version,) the defunct PearOS (a kind of Apple OS X lookalike,) Ubuntu, Debian, TinyLinux (or was it DamnSmall?), YellowDog Linux, CentOS, I think... BeOS/Haiku (not really Linux, but a different reimplementation of the Unix Specification,) probably a few others I'm forgetting, over a couple decades or so, finally coming around to settle on Mint, specifically MATE (as in Yerba Mate, a plant, pronounced "mah-TAY") version. (This refers to which package of graphical programs it comes with, where Mate is if I recall, based on Gnome 2, which was a fork of the Gnome Project, before THAT went to complete shit...)
If however, you don't want to have to learn to operate a UNIX-like OS, perhaps consider ReactOS. From www.reactos.org, it is a freeware reimplementation of MS Windows NT, and strives for full binary compatibility meaning you'd be able to run Win NT, XP, Vista and 7 programs natively without having to run MS Windows.
ReactOS claim to fame is that it was designed this way from scratch, and isn't simply GNU/Linux masquerading as Windows, using WINE or whatever. Last time I checked they hadn't officially reached beta yet, but they're chugging along and if you have a computer you can dedicate, you could always download a LiveCD from their site, and take it for a test-drive, and make sure it works on your hardware and will suit your purposes.
The biggest upsides are it's FREE, I believe it is Open Source, if I recall correctly, you don't have to pay a penny to those assholes in Redmond, and because it doesn't have to waste huge amounts of system resources decrypting itself, as a copy-prevention/anti-piracy measure, it is VERY small, and light on resource requirements, allowing you to use older hardware, perhaps including those that wouldn't be capable of running Windows 8 or 9, (or "10" as they hilariously call it, playing catch-up with Apple's OS X, 10.X.X.10.10.X or whatever they're calling THAT this week...) and I doubt they'd force updates on you.
I'm looking forward to the day when I have the free time to test-drive this myself.
Just some thoughts for you.
Incidentally, someone mentioned numbers and popularity, and you shouldn't let the relative popularity of any distro unduly influence your ultimate decision if you ARE going with a Linux distro. For one thing, it's really hard to track how many people use anything because for one thing, Ubuntu, is based on Debian, so unless something's changed in the past few years, all Ubuntu installations are really Debian installations. Similarly, Mint (www.linuxmint.org) is based on Ubuntu, as are a lot of other things, so a LinuxMint install COULD be claimed as both an Ubuntu install, AND a Debian Install.
Bottom line: when Debian updates one of the packages that it comes out with in a new release, it is quickly adopted by Ubuntu in their next release, which is probably on its heels, and then Mint I understand updates shortly thereafter, so you're not probably going to wait weeks or months for updates to the upstream distro to trickle down and make their way into the distros that are based on that.
There are also a variety of true Unices, descendants of the original AT&T/Bell Laboratories UNIX. These include all the BSDs, such as FreeBSD, (freebsd.org) and related ones like NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, PC-BSD, all based on a version, (the Berkeley Software Distribution 4.4 Lite tapes,) that had had all the code from AT&T that the court ruled they had to remove removed, (it was mostly BSD code by that point anyway, so it was just a matter of ripping those parts out, and coding replacements, and those became a
Despite what people think of Unity, I would have to say Ubuntu simply because it has a proprietary driver install utility. Yeah the open source stuff is fine for desktop, but falters massively when playing games.
I don't think it's beyond the remit of any distro to provide a FOSS utility in their mainline repos that configures and installs the proprietary drivers.
I know you specify Linux, but if by "shenanigans" you mean snooping then it does not get much more secure than OpenBSD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD
Of course, the cynics will say your machine will be secure because it won't boot, but select your hardware with care and you'll be fine.
You get more options (graphics drivers, peripherals compatibility) with Linux, but it depends on what you want...or don't want (SystemD...)
Anyway, take a look at the options here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_systems
Chrome OS is not a full OS. It is a "lightweight OS designed primarily for web-based computing within a browser window."
Is the Chromebook Really Just a "Google Spyware Machine"?
The best one is the one the person uses you are going to ask for help. e.g. if you have a cow orker that uses Debian, and he is somebody that will be helping you, use Debian.
When I started I had nobody to ask and Google did not exist yet, so what I did was try out several of the large distributions at the time and the one I likes/Worked was S.u.S.E. (Now openSUSE).
So take a weekend and try out several of them. If you can not make a weekend available, you won't like changing OS and you will be a User (nothing wrong with that), not an admin on your own machine. Ask why you want to move to Linux and find a pre-installed system or let somebody else install it. As you won't tinker with your system, but just have it working, that would be the best solution.
The more important question is if you want KDE, Gnome or XFCE. And when you have decided on that, look at how to install new software and how upgrades are done.
I like YaST from openSUSE, because it is consitant for a lot of different things, not just installing software. You can also easily install XFCE, Gnome and KDE at the same time at the beginning to check them out.
I dislike Ubuntu for the main reason of how they handle root situations. Yes, I know you are able to change it, I just don't like how they treat it as default.
So try out several of them. https://distrowatch.com/?langu... will give an idea of popularity.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Once systemd is removed it is quite a decent replacement for a Windows user
As a Teacher of Windows and Ubuntu to the elderly, Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is by far the best people friendly distro. It is so much like the 6.04-10.04 that we all used to love but with all the new bells and whistles. I get more complaints that Mint its a little harder to find stuff in. I'm close to 70 and don't program. Most of my students are older than I. Thanks to all of the Linux family everywhere for making life so great at our age.
CLinux is ideal. Customise exactly what you want and build...
UBUNTU -- Comes with GNOME - EASY WINE INSTALLATION and - Firefox -- BEst
I started with gentoo. Learning with gentoo installation was very educational process of essential linux skills and i was not tech guy then. No matter its installation took days and few iterations from me, it was still worth of it. Easiest to use way is not the best to learn.
It is not about he distro its more do you want to learn and how much effort you can put for it.
If not use mac.
Who are you and what are you using your PC for?
I started in 1979 on an Apple II, graduated to CP/M and then MS-DOS. In 1991 I decided to try that newfangled Linux thing and never looked back. The important thing, however, was that I was driven by my needs; in 1991 my need was a Unix clone that could run an certain program. I then found that an Unix environment suited my other needs of that time much better: LaTeX/BibTeX was superior to MS-Word for writing my thesis, the command line and the Unix tools supported the experiments I needed to run so much better than MS-DOS, X was smoother even in 1991 as MS-Windows or the Mac... where should I stop?
So if you use your PC for writing 'simple' texts, internet and games, Ubuntu or Mint will serve your needs as well as Microsoft or Apple, but certainly not better. If at any point you need to get off the trodden path, the power of the Unix environment will get you forward regardless of the Unix flavour you use. Heck! An Macbook wil work in that case!
Paai
And before I answer it, one thing in advance: It won't go without "tweaking". Yes, Linux went a long way from its "CLI only" days that became "CLI only, but we have some kinda-sorta frontends for some of the things, and a few of them actually work" to what we have now, a system that you can mostly configure without ever touching a command line.
Linux is still, though, an operating system that retails its command line roots. In other words, every GUI does, CLI can do better. Or easier. Or faster. Or with more options. Eventually, you will open that terminal window. We know you will.
Linux is also not a "fake it 'til you make it" OS where you guess your way through the menus, hoping that eventually you will find a way that lets you do what you want to do. Unlike Windows, where there are usually a few ways you can reach a goal, some more intelligent and efficient, some less, there is usually only one way to do something in Linux, and it needn't be the most intuitive one depending on the angle you're approaching from.
So, with this all said, the question which Linux distro is the right one for a newbie is answered by answering two questions:
1. With what Linux distribution will access to webpages on the internet work out of the box with near 100% certainty?
2. Which Linux distribution has the most informative and best Google-findable "how do I do stuff" pages?
The answer to those two questions would be Ubuntu. Yes, Mint works too, but Mint is a tiny bit different, and the last thing you need as a newbie is to wonder whether some cookbook you just follow is wrong, whether it's something on your end or whether it's one of the few things that differ between the textbook and your copy. And yes, Mint is a good system and in some areas actually better than Ubuntu, especially when it comes to support and tweaks for home entertainment, but I'd still stick with Ubuntu. Simply because you have a solid amount of good and helpful advice at your disposal that works for YOUR system.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
MATE fucking sucks. Mint Cinnamon is much better.
XUbuntu is very easy to install and maintain. It has a familiar Windows-like file manager and toolbar, and does away with the horrid UI that comes by default with Ubuntu. I've used that on a daily-driver development machine for a number of years. Download at http://xubuntu.org/
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
I started with GNU/Linux in 1992. I started with MCM Interrim and SLS. It was hard. You had to bootstrap the system yourself. As a result when you were done and looking at the login prompt after the reboot... not only did you feel like you accomplished something (minor value, but nice) but you had learned a great deal about the basics of how the system works.
Gentoo still works this way. Do not try to multiboot your daily driver PC for this, but grab a random old laptop and have at it. By the time you have your windowing system, and preferred desktop up you will have learned more about the basic underpinnings of Linux than you would from a couple months with your {debian,ubuntu,mint} distribution. You'll have accomplished a lot less 'using', but you will have learned a great deal. The compiling is slow, but that's where a lot of the learning lives.
As an old hat most of the Systems Administrators I have worked at in the last 2 decades have mostly come to Linux since the dawn of package managers and haven't had need to learn these lower level. I've been on a teams of between 5-10 people and at least twice a week, every week, I pass on a piece of information that was just common knowledge in the early days. It's useful. Is Gentoo the most painful way to learn Linux? Maybe, embedded's even more insane. (I'm doing Gentoo ON armv8, so... you can imagine the type of pain I enjoy.) But it's worth it, and you will be glad for the knowledge when it comes up.
Ubuntu and Mint both try to be newbie friendly and are large enough. ..well, back in 2.x days you used to get a question how you wanted to merge configuration files and stick with what you had or get the new one or whatever and that kinda felt like a pain. I don't know how it handles if you've done any changes and that's likely when you get the most problem with it (which may still not be a problem.)
Normal Debian which they are off-spring of (Mint grand-children) would likely do too though I know
OpenSUSE work just fine.
Fedora likely work just fine too.
Where they separate is how you upgrade, Debian can update from one version to the next from within the running system, I think Linux Mint used to suggest that you simply reinstall the new version but by doing that you of course need to keep your /home and any other files you want to keep separate or backed up. The advantage with the later approach is that you can introduce any changes whatsoever, including really large ones and the system will still work and it won't be a problem. If you keep some old stuff around you need to know how to migrate it to the new.
There also exist rolling distributions or releases from those who use numbered ones where the OS constantly evolve and you just upgrade all the time. Then you likely get more upgrades and in the case of trying to decide what to do with old configurations and such maybe you'll get more work there but you will never have to deal with going from one version to the next of the whole OS instead.
Multiple of them also don't want to include non-free software by default but remain clean/more clean from that and as such you may not get the proprietary video drivers, Adobe Flash, video and sound codecs and such installed from the beginning but information about how to get that software installed too is readily available so it won't be a problem to install it.
There's some other distributions why try to be the most friendly and easiest and would include such stuff too but the problem with those is that they will be smaller than the ones mentioned above and maybe they just die off or get updates slower than the large ones or will lack the documentation you want at some time or what you find isn't exactly matching the system you've got and so on.
Someone mentioned FreeBSD too before but FreeBSD isn't Linux, FreeBSD/Linux to some degree would be but you likely meant GNU/Linux. There's step by step guides for how to upgrade one version of FreeBSD to the next to there shouldn't be a problem as long as you follow that to do that either. Maybe a few more commands but you're unlikely to run into an issue doing it so it will likely carry on very smoothly anyway.
Someone also mentioned ChromeOS but if so then why not go full-blown Android instead? Though I think they was supposed to merge. Running Android wouldn't be the worst choice. Valve should just release a version which adds upon Android if necessary to make the Linux games run on it too.
What's The Easiest Linux Distro For A Newbie?
Just Debian, no derivatives.
I've had the least trouble with Debian. Mint just doesn't seem to like me, and I don't like Ubuntu.
Building Gentoo from source was fun, Fedora just didn't feel right, FreeBSD wouldn't even work in Virtualbox, and I've yet to experience the pleasure of Slackware.
If this is to control manufacturing/industrial equipment, you really should be employing someone with skills and experience. /advice
The first thing the person asking has to to realise is that this is a very loaded question about religion. You might as well ask which Christian/Muslim/Jewish sect has the 'one true' interpretation of it's respective religion's scripture. Having said that the parent is partly right, Debian or one of it's many derivatives is pretty easy on newbies, or at least as easy as Linux can be but then so is Fedora. Suse is also a good choice but less popular because it is meant to be a bit more Microsoft compatible and having anything to do with Microsoft is to Linux geeks what sunlight, holy water and garlic are to a vampire. When I worked with Suse I liked it because it has YaST setup and config utility which is a bit reminiscent of AIX's smitty (SMIT) command and lets you do lots of system configuration changes in one place and if you have to interact with Microsoft systems then Suse might be a good choice for you . For those looking at the enterprise sector you might want to consider CentOS which is functionally and (mostly) binary compatible with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offerings. I'm sure there are other Linux distos that are worth mentioning but these are the ones that I have worked with the most and think are good for newbies because of their features and/or community support. If you strip away all the sectarian bullshit that surrounds Linux distros the best advice you are left with is go for a big and widely used distribution like Debian/Ubuntu or Red Hat Fedora simply because there are lots of users and therefore lots of forums, blogs, help pages howto guides, etc... Of all the things that are mostt valuable thing to any Newbie the most important one is extensive community support. Suse and the host of Debian and Red hat based distributions all have extensive and helpful communities, especially the last two. You can always move on to something less widely used or hostile to newbies later.
If you're looking for ease-of-use and Out-of-the-box experiences, ElementaryOS is working with that exact goal in mind. https://elementary.io/ It's still in beta, but I've used it for a few years, though recently switched to Arch, but have been using Debian, Mint, etc for many years before that. ElementaryOS is the linux distro you can easily give your mother and not worry about her breaking it, while still retaining all power-user options.
Reading is not a strength on slashdot. The submission says "I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls", which seems to indicate that custom software is at play. In that case, especially if it is a non-standard interface, Linux may not be an option.
For general use I would recommend Ubuntu, too, but this does not seem to be general use.
I changed my video card to one that had HDMI audio. If I want to use my fancy sound card, I need to prevent the system
from defaulting to the HDMI interface. What's worse, even though the old sound card modules load on boot, the system
(Mint 18.1) fails to make the old interface available in any of its configuration options. Blacklist the HDMI module? Now
I don't get any sound configuration interface at all. I fumbled around on the forums for days. Nobody had a solution that
that worked, much less one that a noob could grok. Fuck Mint. Fuck Systemd, Fuck Debian. Not necessarily in that order.
You will end up using something that some of your friends recommended, so that you can get somewhat easy help for your OS-questions.
So why do you post a question about it here. It feels TOTALLY POINTLESS. Just bait for a igniting the age-old question of "which distro to select for a newbie" again. Google it.
any with a desktop environment by default will have a good out of box experience with most feature that you would expect and gui.
What I'm really looking for is Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking (ala early Windows flavors, 3.1, 95/98)
Really? if you think those didn't need constant tweaking, you have a distorted memory of using them (or you never used them at all).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
You know... if he's fed up I think he knows a thing or two about operating systems. Maybe he should have a look at OpenSUSE.
ruurd
A new user would never learn anything that way.
Mandrake was my first, then Slackware and gentoo because nothing will get you intimately familiar with the inner workings like failure
You also need to consider the Linux desktop and proprietary drivers in addition to selecting a distro,
Most distros support multiple desktop environments such as Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, KDE, and Gnome. They have various pro's and con's but my favorites are MATE and XFCE. They both have reasonably modest hardware requirements and, for me, they are both similar enough to Windows to make life easy for a newbie. (BTW, you usually pick the desktop by picking the right ISO from the distro's download site).
Proprietary driver support is (for me) also important. I don't want to start a flame war but, for me, its important to support drivers provided by your hardware vendor. I like Nvidia graphics cards and I want them to work to their fullest potential so I install Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Some distro's make this painless and others require you to figure it out for yourself. You don't want to manually manage vendor drivers if you're a newbie.
The distro that best addresses these requirements for me is Linux Mint with the MATE desktop.
I can be a newbie regarding OOP (for instance); Mint is OK for me, but I simply have not the patience to deal with Gentoo or even Arch -- though I read their how-tos (thank you very much, Arch folks).
My father hates computers, but will use Android to get photos of his grandson. He's a different kind of newbie. He does not understand English. Maybe he'd use something akin to Android.
My mother would use Skype or something to talk for hours with her daughters-in-law. She's also another kind of newbie.
My daughter can learn faster than me, but is not interested in computing -- except games and making cute things (even web pages!). She has very little patience like my father.
My wife uses well both a Linux computer and Android, though she has a usefulness-based approach: if it works, no matter what it is, she'll use it. Forget about talking about it (e.g. like talking about Linux) -- she's only there to look at the photos, or get messages or find a new crafts technique.
My little son wants to play games and maybe watch videos about games, or monster cars or ugly insects (which he says are cool). He likes to tinker with things and, had he his own computer, I'd probably would need to reinstall Linux now and then. He's at an age in which having an effect -- any effect -- is enough... no need to think about what he wants, since the world is full of nice possibilities.
All these people have different needs.
Some need Linux, for some Windows is enough, but some will require something easier like Android or iOS. Actually, even the latter seem to be dangerous in the hands of my kids...
I'd recommend that new users use The Hurd.
Can I subscribe to your newletter from your world?
CAP === 'inspects'
Win 3.1 and MacOS?? I know some CNC machines still use old software but wow - a blast from the past. I think the last release of MacOS was 9 right? I just re-bought a USB ZIP drive just to see what old files I still had on ZIP disks.
If I want a distro that "just works" I use Mint. Used to be Ubuntu until about Release 13, I was once amazed at the fact that I could re-purpose almost any PC including once a Pentium II 450 with a RIVA TNT card by simply inserting a Ubuntu install CD..then the hardware requirements got kind of uppity when they decided to go Unity. I guess I understand that they are trying to find a niche to make the company profitable enough to stay in business.
I recently tried pure debian and had to compile some stuff to make it work, plus they are strict on the "free software only".
Windows is so annoying because you ONLY get the OS, the mainstream pre-packaged distros are so nice because they come "out of the box" with most of the routine software people want to use already "pre-installed".
It's difficult to come up with a solution without knowing what the problem(s) is (are).
1) What is wrong with the apps you are running where the systems require "constant under-the-hood tweaking"? and what type of 'tweaking" is required?
2) You say you need "something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls". Are there apps to control the mechanical equipment that run on other platforms?
3) You are "not an IT tech". Who is going to plan, install, configure, and test the new platform?
4) Do you have managements' buy-in to do a wholesale change in the control of the mechanical equipment?
5) Can you afford the downtime required to install, configure, test, and move to production, the new platform?
6) ...and the outages while you, or someone else tweaks and adjusts the applications and operating systems?
7) Is there networking involved?
8) What is your back up plan and how do you test it?
9) What is your roll back plan?
10) What do you do in the event of a failure?
11) Who is creating the project plan?
12) How critical are these systems to your business?
These questions will lead you to the next set of questions, and they will in turn lead you to the next set of questions, and so on.
You need to better understand the requirements before you can come up with a solution. Everyone here is going to recommend what they think is best, or their favorite Linux distribution. They are all good recommendations based on their understanding of your problem, but they may not be the best solution to your problem(s). I like Centos and Puppy. The Ubuntu derivatives were too restricting for my personal tastes. If I'm on the system, I'm god. On those systems, I'm god, but I have one hand tied behind my back. I'm not saying they are bad, just not for me.
In addition, you can get Knoppix which incredibly allows a full system to run of a CD-ROM!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Windows 10
I've been lurking here for years and seen many recommendations for a Linux flavor that works. What I'm really looking for is Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking
I think the question really requires taking a step back and looking at what a distro is and does. Because if you're coming in from another OS I'd say there's three levels of changes and the distro-level is probably the least important.
1. Applications: Do your applications run under Linux or do they have functional equivalents like web services you'd be happy with. If you've heard about WINE, then stop because Windows emulation is full of quirks. It's a tool for users that really, really don't want to run Windows even if it has 10x the issues of running Windows software on Windows. No distro is going to help you if after banging your head on GIMP and Krita you realize that no, I really need Photoshop or anything else with less than a platinum rating on WINE. And even then it can break in the next update.
2. Desktop environment (DE), this is pretty much how the OS part of the interface will look like for you. No matter which one you pick it won't be like Windows or OS X. If a distro ships a DE, it'll probably look and feel pretty much the same across distros. If you don't like Gnome or KDE on Ubuntu there's not much point trying them again on SuSE, Mint or Debian. Granted, a few of these are almost like picking distros as I'd take Mint for Cinnamon and Ubuntu for Unity but far from all.
3. Quality of packaging, testing, support, upgrades, security patches, availability of backports and third party repositories, release schedule etc. basically a lot of the boring housekeeping and problem solving. For the most part, this is what distros do - they take what developers have made and wrap it up in packages for you. But if the developers haven't made the apps you want, you'll be tweaking your work process a lot. If they haven't made the DE the way you want, you'll be tweaking your OS interaction a lot. A good distro doesn't create fuss for you, but it doesn't really mean it'll work for you.
I'd just start with Ubuntu with Unity (the default) only because it's super common and see if you get past #1. If you do and don't like Unity I'd try Cinnamon, KDE, Gnome and XFCE, as far as I know they're all available as packages on Ubuntu. If you find something that looks right for you I'd move on to #3 and ask "What distro is the best to run [Cinnamon/Gnome/KDE/Unity/XFCE]?" Though I suspect that the answer will probably be one of the Mint or Ubuntu spins in most cases. There's not much point in going outside the beaten path if you just want to get started.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Preferably those with long time support (LTS).
I second this. Who will you call when your Linuxes is broken? It was free, only made by volunteers who couldn't sell their labor. It is a craigslist OS. Linux is command line, and command line means it's single tasking. You can only type one thing in at a time and then have to wait until it did what you told it to do before doing next thing.
Microsoft is multitasking, it can have many programs open at once, it is an Operating System that was made by computer programmers good enough to be paid by Microsoft, so by professionals. If you buy without computer, it costs several hundred dollars and many people pay this willingly. So it is a professional OS. It even runs spaceships and ATMs. Linux only runs calculators and toasters.
Do not use free OS, it is very expensive in the end. Free means fake. Linux is fake, toy OS.
Systemd functionality good design. Systemd usability seemingly made difficult on purpose.
Mandatory page breaks, having to hit q at end of plain systemd command hinders efficiency. Systemd makes it harder to find what you're looking for etc etc.
Watch out for that.
I once tried linux and it broke my brand new computer, smoke all over, then I had to buy new Windows computer. Avoid linux.
To be honest Gentoo. The documentation is so good and doing a full install is the best tutorial on Linux. You get to understand every part of Linux\GNU.
Solus
The same OS that makes you go into settings to run programs not downloaded through its proprietary services?
Crap like MacOS is the reason why Linux is so popular among tech savvy people. We're tired of it.
Personally I switch a few years ago to Fedora Desktop for my daily usage.What I like is that the system is stable and upgrades are working 99% of the time even distribution upgrades. The documentation is well done if you have any problem, the community is relatively big.
Provided Packages are recent enough.
Hardware support is good even for old hardware ( >5 years) --> this is also the case for most distributions.
The installation on this one is really easy, it installs in a few minutes.
After, distributions are a mater of taste, some are better for some usage (Desktop, Server, Embedded ...etc...) or if you use specific software/hardware.
Before diving into, may be try to setup a VM and install a few just to give you an idea
Installing an OS yourself will always require a little more tweaking than using the one preintalled. Any Linux distro you can download will always loose to Windows/MacOS in this regard. So buy a computer with Linux preinstalled and the tweaking needed to get the hardware working will already be done.
But to be honest, don't we all do the tweaking mostly because it's allowed, not so much because it's required. So a distro that forbids tweaking might be required to really compete with Windows and MacOS. So, ChromeOS maybe. Otherwise you might be doomed to tweaking hell.
on Raspberry Pi 3 computer https://www.raspberrypi.org/ . It is an OS and a computer with the link to the physical world via GPIO.
Without more details about this "mechanical equipment" we cannot give you an appropriate reply because we have no idea if any
Linux distro is even able to talk to and control this unknown "mechanical equipment".
If you're talking about a regular CNC mill/router/lathe then LinuxCNC should be appropriate.
#DeleteFacebook
The best possibility is to find a version of Linux that does what you want it to, install it, then keep it far away from any and all internet connections. That is the only hope you have that it won't try to update itself, install new versions or discover that external stuff it expected to find has mysteriously been moved or deleted by the notional owner.
He was asking about Linux, not Windows 10.
Eat the rich.
I'm not sure what the OP means when he says "mechanical equipment it controls" but assume he means the PC and it's peripherals.
1st off. It depends on what you want from your Linux flavor OS. Seems to me you want to get away from the Windows shenanigans but coming from a Windows ecosystem myself. I couldn't stand the Ubuntu/Fedora update your distro every 6-12 months. Windows just updates until it's time to switch to a new version some years later (until Windows 10 that is to say).
I'm probably going against the tide here but having gone the rolling release way, I don't see myself going back for personal needs to a major distro like Ubuntu. Manjaro is an easy to use rolling release distro to start with and once you feel comfortable, you can move to Arch Linux if you feel you need to be more of a poweruser.
Yeah, you probably ignore the above, mostly a bunch of lies.
E.g. this:
"All linux distros require hours upon of configuration to get basic things to work. Like your monitor. Think Ubuntu is easy? Look at their monitor setup:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution"
Total lies. You might have to do some specialist configuration if you've got three monitors or something weird, otherwise it'll just work (for two monitors you might have to do some simple gui based config - just like you would in windows).
The file that the anonymous retard is complaining above is a) Typically not required at all for most setups and b) If it is required, it's automatically generated so you don't even know it exists. What the anonymous retard is doing is the equivalent of me pointing at some random crap in the Windows registry and saying 'see this crap? windows is too hard for normal users', when of course normal users don't touch the registry manually and often don't even know it exists.
When I installed Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on this PC I'm posting from *everything* worked with *no* manual GUI based or command line configuration, including the ancient scanner which stopped working in Windows Vista. The install completed in under 20mins and the only info I had to supply was stuff like confirming my location and language, and a name and password for an initial user.
Ubuntu MATE is great if you want a traditional style desktop which runs well on even fairly old hardware and generally stays out of your face.
Actually having read the above comment fully now, I realize I've been thoroughly trolled, given that it ends with this: "That's why so many at slashdot hate Microsoft and Bill Gate, who everyone else recognizes as the first saint of the 21st century.". Well played, sir!
so why not tinker with something thats not going to revert the tinkering next month when the next mandatory updates hit you?
See: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/amp/
> The same OS that makes you go into settings to run programs not downloaded through its proprietary services?
This is bullshit.
The same OS that makes you go into settings to run programs not downloaded through its proprietary services?
Crap like MacOS is the reason why Linux is so popular among tech savvy people. We're tired of it.
You are misinformed. [Ctrl]-O or right clicking when you want to run an unsigned app is all that's needed. and for people who are non-techies, it's a good proteciton against potentially malicious software
Right Click -> "Open" is "going into settings to run programs"? Really?
The phase you're looking for to describe people like you is not "tech savvy," it's "idiot savants." Emphasis on the idiot.
The best possibility is to find a version of Linux that does what you want it to, install it, then keep it far away from any and all internet connections. That is the only hope you have that it won't try to update itself, install new versions or discover that external stuff it expected to find has mysteriously been moved or deleted by the notional owner.
This is a laughable bunch of lies. Linux will *never* force updates on you, it is *always* up to you how/when/whether/which updates are applied. It's windows that now forces updates on you and breaks things, and you have to take complex and ever-changing measures to stop it.
This is one of the areas where Linux really excels. You have a *choice* of stable, mature versions, supported for up to 10 years (RHEL/CENTOS etc.) which receive only important security updates, or (if you want) you can have a bleeding edge version (which will break things) or something in between. *You* decide your priorities and choose accordingly. With Windows, unless you have the Enterprise edition, you pretty much get what you're given and like it or lump, and if it breaks stuff, hard luck.
Welcome to the Mouse House, Please, have some cheese.
If you do your homework and buy good hardware you will need no fiddling. Dell is a good choice which I can recommend from experience. I'm told System77 is good too. Any model you chose, though, do a little googling before. Look especifically for problems.
All the common stuff works just as it does on Windows or Mac, but without the spyware. No fancy incantations to get email, browsing, connecting to your phone, office stuff, etcetera. Of course, if you chose to stay away from the command line you will miss most of the power Linux has to offer. That's the reason most Linux stuff is still CLI. It's where the real power is.
I have been frustrated by the 147 different distro's to pick from. Even within Mint there are various paths to go. Which one to pick? I gave up to be honest after trying about 7 different ones. I keep Kali on a VM for work/testing, but not a daily driver.
I have been using TrueOS, from trueos.org, recently and have to say it is a big step up. It is nice and clean, the install went smooth, and it has just worked with little to no touching in a VM and on stand alone hardware. In my case a MacBook Pro 2015. I give it two thumbs up. BSD is a well established OS and history. I would give it a try most definitely!!
Easy to install, great easy to understand installer.
https://mxlinux.org/
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=401246#p401246 the update on the newest release
It has a very non-attitude community for support.
https://forum.mxlinux.org/search.php?search_id=active_topics
Based on debian stable with lots of backported and updated packages.
Hardware support is excellent with lots of MX tools that automate common tasks easily for new users.
Comes with XFCE desktop, and the lighter ANitX has foru lighter desktops for older hardware.
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=388271#p388271
I use Mint too for most of my stuff (oldish but still good Lenovo W520): Eclipse IDE+Java, LibreOffice, Audacity, various browsers. Java + web programming, watching videos, listening to music, presentations and some documentation, Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects...
I've heard good things about the Xanadu distribution from people that previously used Mint (also Debian/Ubuntu parentage). Have not tried it myself though.
I don't disagree with other people that recommend Ubuntu or plain Debian - maybe try them all out?
Caveats:
Hardware may still be an issue, depending. I recently needed a scanner and went for the cheap but good Canon LIDE 220 (The SANE project shows complete compatibility). Even so, setting it up required some extensive googling for instructions. Even so, the proprietary Windows software has some nice, time-saving extra functions (e.g. detection of edge of picture, corrections, OCR, etc) so for a certain scanning task I'm busy with I still boot to Windows. Before you get ANY peripherals, make sure they will work with Linux (not always easy). Then again, most USB mice, keyboards, external drives and memsticks, as well as Bluetooth devices and Ethernet/Wifi devices just work. As do the earphones :-p
I may sound disloyal, but I still think MS Word is a very good program (as compared to Libre Write). Sure, simple docs with basic styles go well in Write, but for more serious layout and better looking graphics, I still fall back to MS. Other power(ish) users may feel the same about PowerPoint and to a lesser extend Excel.
Some small things like settings etc. are not obvious. Coming from a Windows environment, I often think "this used to be able to be changed in the controll panel" - but nothing similar on Linux. So lots of googling for instructions... Then again, someone probably has already asked "how do I do XXX on Linux?"
The standard interface does not always have all the polish that you may be used to from Win or OSX. Mostly it doesn't get in the way.
If you have Win-only software that you NEED to run, Wine may work, or it may not. Not always easy.
The main problem I find with getting help is that there are a lot of people providing help that are only slightly less clueless than you, so sometimes help you from bad to worse (or the step-by-step instructions don't work as well on the new version, but if they would just explain the concepts behind those instructions, any reasonably intelligent person could probably figure it out.)
On the positive side, I like:
Free - no money
No "telemetry" (but be sure about your chosen distro)
So fast as compared to Windows on the same hardware, even running the exact same installation (e.g. Eclipse)
Mostly just works - simplicity has its benefits as compared to all those bells/whistles/effects and handholding popups...
Posted AC because of some specific details in post.
... but shenanigans seem to be endemic to the human condition. Software architects, anyway.
That said I'd go with Mint to get your feet wet. It's not like switching is a big deal. The apps stay the same and it's not a bit deal, usually, to install components from a different desktop/distro into whatever you're using. No change is without some pain, face that, then go for the burn. You need remember only one word, "backups".
Holy shit, that was funny!
Joseph --
I run Linux as my Primary OS and have been doing so for 20 years now.
You posted a 'gotcha':
I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls.
What exactly does that mean ?
How do you presently 'work with the mechanical equipment it controls' ?.
Is it a 'Windows-ONLY' App, a Browser-Based WebApp, what ?
If it is Windows-ONLY, you're stuck with that Windows.exe program.
Maybe it will work in WINE or a VM but you have to figure that out for yourself,
If it is a Browser-Based WebApp, you'll probably be OK.
Then there are all the 'oh yeah, I do that too' Apps like OutLook and Word and the like.
Those will annoy you too.
I run Slackware Linux as my main OS and VMWare Workstation for all the nasty Windows-Only tools I have to have for my job.
Slackware is a little more work to set up, but once it's configured, you'll not suffer WTF's where things suddenly stop working for no good reason.
HTH
-- kjh
" I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls. "
Surprised nobody mentioned Raspberry Pi. The latest Linux build, Pixel, is much improved over Jessie, which was good as it was. You'll get software that'll help you control hardware via the Pi I/O.
And cheap. And small. Leave the laptop/desktop to running email and spamware.
Ubuntu has very good documentation and resources and is pretty straight forward. But for cleanliness and uncluttered interface I prefer its Parent - Debian (I like the mate version). You can expect a software update every other day, if you keep up. It only takes minutes. Debian has excellent documentation, and is the parent of many distributions. Once Debian has reached 'stable' and is released it is very very rock solid. For home use and record keeping I don't have to fiddle with it at all. ->Bill
If you are looking to surf the net, check email, stream movies/music, etc... then there are plenty of distros that work really well on standard hardware right out of the box. It's when you start tossing in non-standard hardware that you run into the problem.
You mentioned controlling mechanical equipment and if you have something that's not printer/scanner/fax then you would probably need to see what the manufacture of that hardware says.
I hate to sound flippant, but "it's complicated." To maximize the chances of a good user experience with Linux, we need to have an idea of what the Linux newbie wants to do.
This is not an easy question to answer off the top of your head because it requires you to anticipate things you might not do commonly but occasionally can be very important to you, like editing MS Word documents on an airplane or train (where you don't have a wifi or 4G connection).
Do you have Windows/Mac apps you will expect to run on your Linux box? What does your pattern of network usage look like -- do you mostly connect to a few wireless networks at home or the office, or do you hop around between hotels and coffee shops and three or four different work sites? Is your workstation even a laptop at all? How sophisticated are the documents you work with (I mean in terms macros, collaborative editing, templates, and the like -- I am sure the content you produce is plenty sophisticated regardless!). Are you watching video for fun or do you need to edit video for work?
Distrust any quick and simple answers from someone who doesn't show an interest in what your actual goals are as a user.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
At the end of the day, you are going to keep coming back to Ubuntu.
The real answer is: it depends. It depends on how old or weak the computer is you are planning to run Linux on. If it is old, run Mint with the Mate' option. If it is new than run Ubuntu. If you want something that looks like Mac OS X, run Elementary OS (Ubuntu rule applies). If you want something that looks like ancient Windows 2000/NT, run off a cliff.
Ubuntu, and it works great.
I had the same question, and maintain the same status: I am not a programmer. But I do value the integrity of my equipment, and I don't want it doing things I did not specifically tell it to do. A pretty handy friend set me up with Lubuntu, on a laptop used for recording audio, and Ubuntu (16.4, I think) on the laptop I'm using right now. It has done everything I need it to do (browse the internets, google stuff, watch things on youtube, play mp3s or whatever, netflix) flawlessley, without having to install anything or give any commands, right out of the box. From one not-a-tech to another, Ubuntu kills it.
PCLinuxos (PCLos) Most friendly and easy to install and set up, recognizes more hardware than most distros. You can have KDE, XCFE, Mate, LXQT, Enlightenment and other desktops. 64 bit only.
I know there are comments here that mention Slackware as a joke but I'm actually serious. OK; maybe the install procedure could be intimidating, but then one could use a live variant such as Eric Hameelers' Slackware Live in its Plasma 5 or MATE variants. These could run flawlessly from an USB stick without the need for a complex installation procedure.
Slackware, contrary to what many people assert, is fundamentally simple and easy to maintain. Most problems could be solved with simple commands or by editing text configuration files; and problems are rare. The distribution is rock-solid, stable and fast. And in many cases is a "non-distro", in the sense that what you usually get is unmodified upstream software, without any "optimizations" (?) applied by many distros. It's the Linux distribution which is closest to a classical Unix and thus it provides a great learning environment, but its simplicity and stability means peace of mind and freedom to learn.
And Slackware shines as a learning environment: a full set of dev tools, a vast array of desktop environments (most of them provided by third parties but very up to date) and a simple architecture that just works. And whatever you'll learn, it will be applicable in just about any Linux, not just Slackware. Try it, and you will not be disappointed.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
Quite a few distros are simple, kubuntu / ubuntu, mint, and elementary come to mind.
The nice thing is that it costs nothing to try. If you do not like the one you tried you can just wipe and reinstall another one.
Some of them do offer livedvds to enable you to try it first. Find the one you are comfortable with.
I once had 16 customers running ubuntu linux. I am a full time professional computer consultant with a few hundred regular residential customers. When Vista came out, I thought this was going to be the end of microsoft, so I started looking for alternatives and landed on Ubuntu. I setup a computer at home to learn it myself, and started installing it for customers that only needed a web browser. I spent WAY more time than was acceptable on issues like flash-based games and printer support and streaming TV that all should have "just worked" but didn't. I can't imagine supporting people that expect to do things like scanning and mail-merge and burning cd/dvd and editing videos and/or pictures and syncing with their iPhones like a lot of my other customers do effortlessly with their windows computers. I played with a few different popular flavors but never found one better than Ubuntu (at that time), so I finally decided Linux was not worth all the extra unbillable hours I was working, and switched all 16 customers back to windows. Every time a new distro makes it's way to the top of the list, my eyes get big, and sometimes i'll install it in a VM, but the "just works" factor just isn't there yet.
I still use headless linux servers in production for about 10 of my business customers for things like email servers, web servers, dns servers, but i'm starting to use it less there too because hMailServer smokes postfix and IIS smokes Apache in the "just works" factor, which became a lot more important to me after I had a kid and my time became more valuable to me. Webmin helps A LOT with the "just works" factor, and if it wasn't for webmin, I probably would have already switched most these linux servers back to windows servers. I love spending dozens of hours troubleshooting linux issues just as much as the next linux geek, but it's different when it's for a customer and I can't bill all those hours.
As much as I like FreeBSD, It's not really a workstation OS.
It's killer for server-side things, especially when run without a gui.
You can get a Chromebook and run packaged, maintanance free Android apps and games. If you want to develop, you can install Ubuntu/some other Linux disto as chroot (Crouton) without impacting stability/maintainance-free operation of the main OS.
Fedora, hands down. If you want an industrial grade setup, go Fedora: https://getfedora.org
It is very well integrated and its a bit like MacOSX with the default desktop. They do have spins (i.e. different USB stick image you can download) that has other desktops as well:
https://spins.fedoraproject.org/
However, if you want things to _just_ work, then get the default image. It is very well integrated and polished and it is the closest thing you will get to stable setup that has up-to-date software.
On the other hand, if you want to keep fiddling with silly problems, then by all means use something like ubuntu etc.
Personally, the only version of Linux that is really user friendly enough for an newbie or an end user right now is Android.
Sure, most Linux distros now have a pretty GUI for everyday use and basic configuration changes, but there are still too many instances where you need to hand edit configuration files or do additional configuration from the command line if something doesn't work right. I know that your average Slashdot reader isn't afraid of the command line, but most end users and newbies are.
I've tried a lot of distros in my time including Arch and Gentoo and while I can get them all working there is something about Mint that just works out of the box and I'm finding now I'm older I actually like that in my computer. My real advice here though is just be prepared to switch from time to time and see what works best for you.
Great default settings, excellent hardware support, easy-to-use, nice graphic system tools, friendly community support. The Mageia6 release in almost ready to release, but I've been using it for quite a while without problems. As nice as it is, I'm surprised it doesn't get more attention; it deserves the attention.
They provide install DVDs and a Live DVD (Just don't install from the live DVD. Dues to size limitations of the DVD media, some useful packages are left out of the live DVD.)
https://www.mageia.org/en/6/
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
As a long time Mac OS X user, I would recommend Mint.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Mint is unstable, the desktop failed and it fried several sub drives the two times I installed it.
Ubuntu Mate is the best distro I have seen and is stable and lightweight enough not to bog down my laptop
and still have what I need for a good desktop experience/
There have been wars fought over that...
My top pick would be Debian with the MATE desktop.
After that Ubuntu MATE and Mint MATE.
Gnome desktop is dead because the Gnome 3 developers abandoned their existing user base.
So, I have moved on to the MATE desktop. XFCE is good. I haven not tried Cinnamon, but I hear it is good.
I have found SUSE to be unstable.
I stay away from Redhat/Fedora based distributions because they do not like to act right with Linux standards. They do thier own thing and screw everyone else. They are the primary reason GNOME 3 sucks these days.
With a Linux for dummies book with a Redhat CD in the back.
Now, why do I recommend such documentation heavy distros? Documentation helps you learn, and without some knowledge of why X requires Y, or why setting foo is recommended when doing bar (or the machine breaks). if you do that for a while, you'll have a solid basis for what works, and you won't sound
Forum Etiquette
All these things help the community be a better place. Even if Linux doesn't work out for you, these guidelines above will help you at neowin, sevenforums, and the various other sites that help with windows. We wish you the best, whichever way you go.
"What I'm really looking for is Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking (ala early Windows flavors, 3.1, 95/98)"
No such version of Linux exists that you can download. Such a system would require hardware that the OS was designed in tandem with (i.e., iOS or ChromeOS). Windows works as well as it does with most hardware because Windows is so pervasive in the world that hardware manufacturers design hardware to work specifically (or at least best) with it by default. Any version of Linux you can download does not have this advantage, and will require customizations to get it running "right." For every user on this page that says "X distro installed for me just fine" there are five people out there frantically googling answers right now because their sound or networking suddenly stopped working on their particular Linux install.
Though, I differ with your assumption that early Windows flavors needed no under-the-hood tweaking (I remember having nothing but problems with Windows 3.1/95, etc, back in the day).
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Does that newbie want to just be a user or does that newbie want to learn?
User? Ubuntu hands down or it's variants like Mint.
to learn to become an expert in linux? Slackware, because you have to learn how to configure everything with minimal di it for you tools.
Slackware you will have a far FAR better understanding about linux once you get going.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can take your MacOS HFS file system and shove it up as far as it will go...
Why in the hell does this topic become a reoccurring post every handful of months? I'm not opposed to fielding a ranty opinion that will be voted down, shit on or maybe even considered, but do we really have to feed the bear on this?
Maybe I'm just rubbed the wrong way on the justification for the question:
1) OP seriously references Windows 3.1/95/98? When was the last time you used a 'computer'? And we're really entertaining this?
2) OP asked and used the word 'easy'. Well, Linux isn't 'easy', it's a kernel. If you want your experience and interaction with Linux 'easy', then say that. If everything was easy, everyone would be doing it. That just tells me you're lazy; this isn't 1990's like the OS's you referenced FFS, there's PLENTY of OS's to find blog reviews on with about 30 seconds of actual search engine use, or just try anything -- most have a bootable CD or USB .iso and just try it yourself. If the damn thing did everything for you that you wanted out-of-the-box, then I guess call it a win for yourself. You weren't ever going to use it on a level minus full-out GUI anyway.
I don't even know what mechanical whatever you want to monitor, control or whatever. But chances are, your environment will be Linux distro agnostic. Maybe you should have just said and explained that part of exactly what you wanted to do in a Linux userland environment, and it wouldn't been such a BSD vs. RPM-based vs. Gentoo vs. Debian-based vs. Inbreeds-of-Debian-based flame-war again.
Linux as a desktop environment is a failed ecosystem.
I do still have some Linux servers
But for the desktop, the real answer is how dirty do you want to get? If you just want to use something that works, Linux is not your solution.
Linux is fine, and a great learning tool if you want to tweak, debug, figure out why things don't work, spend hours researching weird issues, and enjoy scripting / programming. Linux is (c) 30 years old, I was messing with in the '90's. Updates shouldn't break systems. I'm not talking minor updates, just patches. A bit over a year ago, I tried Mint on a laptop - any update past the initial install resulted in a failure to boot. Come on, really... Other annoyances, needing to install second processor support manually, no support for Netflix (supposedly this has been recently addressed - but how long has Netflix been around?), flaky WiFi driver behavior... These are all things that were "fun" to try and trouble shoot 10 years ago, now, not so much. As a 25+ year tech veteran, honestly, i'm tired of it. It's the pain I had over a decade ago and it's only improved visually, not logistically. I realize I'm coming across as a gumbly old guy, but at this point in an OS's life cycle, stability and compatibility should be expected - Unfortunately, that's not the case.
Definitely go with Mint. Maybe go with KDE window manager or something similar that isn't too jarring for those used to Win/Mac. It's pretty easy, considering, and they release new versions pretty frequently. Oh and the community behind it is also pretty helpful and extensive.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
MacOS is a flavor of Unix and all of the terminal commands will transfer to Linux.
Learn a little vi (command line text editor) while you're at it.
Once a Linux box is set up to working, IMO it will not 'break,' in the way that Windows and Mac updates tend to break things sometimes. That said, hardware support is still better on WIndows because hardware manufacturers are motivated to make sure their billion non-techy Windows users have a good experience. Linux users are still few among consumer electronics customers and tend to be more tech-savvy at solving their own problems with less hand-holding, so hardware manufacturers don't spend as much time on Linux compatibility. Fortunately the Linux community is pretty awesome at finding solutions, so anything that's six months to a year old in consumer electronics probably works just fine in mainstream Linux distros.
I'd go with Ubuntu or Mint. Search "How do I [blank] in Ubuntu" and you get half a dozen solutions. And maybe most of those solutions are not really particular to Ubuntu and they work on Mint or any Debian distro... but you know what? They're posted on Ubuntu forums, because there are that many Ubuntu users asking newbie questions and that many Ubuntu users wiling to help them, and maybe some answers don't work on Debian. So just for having a large, newbie-friendly online community... Ubuntu, in my opinion.
I can name dozens of distros which don't require tweaking - provided you have compatible hardware of course. Linux drivers are better than they were, but there can still be a few issues. Just grab any of the live distros and see how they work for you, and if you like it then install the full version.
Any of the *buntu distros
Mint
Mageia
PCLinuxOS
Check out OpenSUSE. Good stable and mature (20 years+) distribution with everything working out of box (like wifi, webcam, usb modem, sound card etc).
It's so good and solid that even Linus Torvalds is using it when developing Linux - as he can focus on WORK instead struggling with system configuration.
Everyone has their opinions, I would suggest trying some out on your own using live distros (CD/DVD or USB drive). I have been using linux since 1998 at home, and it is great. Live distros are a beautiful thing.
You can boot into a fully running OS and try it out without installing it. It will also let you know if it is compatible with your hardware. It will run slower than if you installed it, but it will run and you can get the feel for it.
As you read through these comments, you'll see names of distros. All of them should have live versions you can try out.
Try them to see which desktop environment you like the best, that would be a good start. I use Mint XFCE. There is also Mint KDE, Mint Cinnamon, Mint Mate. Maybe others now too. Some distros, like Mint and Ubuntu have specific packaged versions with these desktop environments as the default. Others don't and you would hvae to install them and try them out. You can also have different desktop environments on the same machine and switch between them if you like once you install it.
For a beginner, I would say to stick with Ubuntu or Mint, which is based on Ubuntu. They have good guides/documentation, and large communities. You can also check out distrowatch.com, which shows the most popular in terms of downloads. I am sure there are some of the top ones I haven't tried yet.
That is the beauty of it - take some time and try them out.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Add the Windows Subsystem for Linux feature and then go to a command prompt and type "bash". Done.
That comment about needing his or her prospective future OS to work with the 'mechanical equipment it controls' is kind of vague. However, if you are talking about a general purpose desktop replacement OS here are my recommendations:
1. Windows user - Linux Mint with the Cinnamon or MATE interface. The GUI feels very Windows-esque and long-time users of Microsoft's flagship OS family will find it familiar and relatively easy to navigate.
2. Mac user - Elementary OS. It is designed to look and feel like OSX and does a reasonable job of it. The biggest trade offs that I have found are that the official package library is smaller and there are some default GUI settings that I don't like such as no minimize button. Both can be tweaked but if the user is tweaking averse, it may not be a good fit.
3. 'Lite' user - ChromeOS. If all you are doing is web browsing and checking email and the like, then ChromeOS may be a good fit. Very little tinkering is required and updates "just happen" without overt user interaction. Chromebooks are cheap too.
Definitely try Slackware 7.x super easy to install!!
If you want something that just works, go with Fedora. We have all but switched all of our boxes to Fedora at work. 50+ workstations.
I'd say you can't really go wrong with Ubuntu at least as a basic introduction to Linux. Probably the first thing you'll wanna do is install Cinnamon desktop environment and use it instead of the default Unity one though.
Once you get comfortable with that, then you can try other distros that may be more optimized for specific jobs or for more experienced users.
If you're looking for an easy to run Linux server, might I recommend Alpine Linux. It has a WebUI for everything that you'll need.
For Workstation, Elementary builds on Ubuntu's excellent hardware support with nice graphics.
HandyLinux is what my buddy uses for his grandparents' computer. It runs, they check email and facebook, and that's it.
p.s. It's in French so for English, you have to change the localization. I'm assuming that's straightforward.
My vote goes to Ubuntu-MATE, and its what I install to others in oem mode, so they can pick their own language/user/password on their own later.
Many people have used and loved gnome2 as a linux desktop, MATE is this, with bugs fixed and gtk3.
For newcomers the question comes: How you want your desktop to look like?: Windows like, Mac like, "linux" like? You just launch mate tweaks and have the desktop appearance rearranged with a single click (similar to Zorin).
There is also the Welcome screen; the must have things you need to do right after install. Proprietary drivers? Codecs? Language?, some extra app?, just click the green button and it takes you by the hand step by step. From it, you can single button install things like Chrome, Minecraft or Whatsapp.
Ubuntu-MATE only uses the normal Ubuntu repositories and can optionally use any PPAs you might need, so your support and access to software is the biggest. Unlike Mint, there is no extra layer on top and you don't need to deal with the dangerous Mint updater and certain "features" that make Mint too easy to break for a newbies. It also helps that you get updates immediately from Canonical and not after Mint reviews, and (hopefully) test them against their own changes from Ubuntu.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
But that's where the bulk of usage is. In the last 2 decades, the only people who went Linux were those who knew and loved the various shells, programming environments, UIs and so on. Those who wanted something to simply work went the Windows or Mac route.
It's a different story today. While there's still no reason to go from Mac to ChromeOS if you've already sunk money into a Mac, people were unhappy first w/ Windows 8, and now Windows 10. But their choices - if they want to look at a Mac, they'll normally find it out of their budget - if they're not the Photoshop buffs but are just interested in email and websites. If they look at Linux, they'd have to be wary about what might not get recognized during the installation.
ChromeOS gives them much of their use case, and once it has the ability to run Android apps, they'd have a leg up over even Linux. Only thing - the Chromebooks currently in the market are vastly underpowered. It would be nice if ChromeOS DVDs were available, so that if one wanted to install it on an i7 w/ 8GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, one could, and not be restricted to those entry level toys. Another thing - not everyone wants to store everything on 'the cloud', so it would be nice if the OS allowed you to store your photos, music and the like locally, particularly if you're not using an 8GB SSD.
I've been using Linux for almost 20 years (I'm old you see). I suggest some flavour of Ubuntu, either Ubuntu itself, Xubuntu (it's light), Gnome Ubuntu (it's what I run) or Mint (although I was never really happy with this when I used it.... quite some time ago)
Is it even in alpha release yet?
I'll say yes & no to this one. TrueOS is very simple to install, but you're right - it did not recognize my WiFi, and I use a standard Intel WiFi that comes with the chipset.
I have had upgrading issues recently, since February. I had originally ordered a DVD from OSdisk.com and installed it from there. The first few times, the upgrade was smooth, but in February, there was one, which after installing, my computer wouldn't boot. So I rebooted to a previous install, deleted that latest one and tried again. After a few times, I've given up.
Normally, I wouldn't bother, except that this latest release has support for Steam on WINE, which I want to play. Also, somehow, I'm unable to install any new software such as FreeCiv w/o installing to the latest release, which then invokes the above issues. I plan to at some point order a new DVD, which would presumably have the latest version, and install it from there. It's a shame, b'cos I never had these sorts of problems when TrueOS was PC-BSD. Lumina is great, but their updates leave a lot to be desired.
Quoting some Anonymous Coward: "The answer in my opinion is Mint, there shouldnt be tons of constant fiddling... However it is important to understand, Linux is still very much a power-user operating system... So far i havent seen any distro worth its salt that does alot of hand holidng."
A classic anti Linux Troll that could have been written in Redmond. It's understandably why you would post that anonymously. 'power-user operating system', you're taking nonsence. Straight out of the box, you get browsing, email, work processing and media player and that would have to be Ubuntu.
Okay, this is a serious questions and all us who know the power and importance of Linux should be give more complete answers. I see a few hear but none that feels complete so I'll give it a go:
For pure ease overall I would second the anonymous posting for Linux Mint. https://linuxmint.com/ It is overall the easiest to use for a newbies. The reason being that it has the best software package wizard/interface of the any distro I've seen to date. Runs virtually the entire Ubuntu spectrum, doesn't have odd experiments that we sometimes see in Ubuntu. I tend to prefer Mate (it's a bit older and uses fewer resources) but people wanting a more "slick" look will prefer Cinnamon. This is what you want if you are a pure desktop user. Especially for gaming. Plus Ubuntu has been caught doing desktop search data "deals" with Amazon (you can turn it off but it's not easy to find) so if privacy is a big concern, Linux Mint has to the best of my knowledge never given/sold data to Amazon. (see this link: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...). One thing I should point out, the Linux Mint team was until recently a bit laid back on security leading to their website being hacked. They are more diligent now but just something to bear in mind. But Linux mint is in my opinion the best distro for Windows Die hard users to look at to make the switch. (you have TONS of games from Gog.com and Steam.com for you gamers..) I'm not suggesting Ubuntu simply because Mint is more usable and when Ubuntu starting quietly selling user data to Amazon (they may not be doing it now, but once bitten), I felt they betrayed the community as they did not announce it openly but started doing it quietly and made the "off switch" as tricky to find as MS does with changing the default extension save option in MS Word/Excel.
That said, if you want similar ease but want to be able to do moderately easy admin style tweaking with a wide community help base, you use Mint Debian which uses a pure Debian file directory/location layout (Ubuntu and Linux Mint are Debian BASED but have a few tweaks/customizations that don't entirely match pure Debian specs but are compatible with the vast majority of Debian Linux packages/software).
once your are comfortable you can tweak the User interface to look like whatever you want. But...if you want a more Mac look/feel out of the box I'd suggest ElementaryOS. https://elementary.io/
ElementaryOs has the slickest look out of the box and while it says "for Windows users" I feel it's even easier for MacOS users making a switch. However, it is less mature which is probably why the packages are fewer and to expand that you need some knowledge a beginner would probably not have and the community base is significantly smaller (newer so this is to be expected.)
If you want a more server set of functions and flexibility, I'd suggest using Debian (http://www.debian.org) and set the login mode to Gnome Classic. It will disorient MS windows users at first but the transition is still easy and I've had office use it with no real complaints (just that it looks different but staff figured it out quite fast). The advantage that Debian has is it's a true server level OS (even with GUI) and the being the base of more "user friendly" distro has a HUGE community base that can get you through almost anything. I may be digressing a little but it's important to distinguish what you are using Linux for. others will say CentOS but for Windows users I'd say the Debian package system is more like what MS windows users are accustomed to as opposed to the RedHat package system which will feel more alien to MS windows users. Lots of business big wigs will say go RedHat based (CentOS, paid RedHat or Oracle Linux) and for some business solutions with specific business needs it is in some cases the only way to go. If you ever decide to uas a RedHat Pac
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Last year I finally installed Linux Mint. As a long time Windows user (since 3.0) I found Mint easy to install and comfortable to use. Remembering not to operate in Windows auto-pilot, and keeping track of the new (to me) ways Mint handles certain things, were the two biggest challenges. Be aware software (even open-source) that is comfortable and familiar in Windows (or Apple) sometimes feels quirky in Linux. As well, finding alternatives to some Windows programs, like Microsoft Office, may be a challenge. Worth noting: after doing some investigation, I decided finding and learning a viable (for me) Microsoft Office Professional replacement required more time and effort than I wanted to invest. I decided to go dual-boot - Windows 7 and Mint. Having the two operating systems, on the same computer, did create a few small problems. Most were easily fixed, but I had to to learn to live with the date/time stamp conflict.
Linux Mint. I have installed Mint 17.3 on an old Compaq laptop and Mint 18 on a new HP 15 laptop. Both work great and very similar to Win 7. The open source (free) programs available for linux is endless. The only thing is you have to pay attention to is updates. You get a little icon in the bottom tray that tells you when to update. However I think the newest release of Mint does the updating for you. What's amazing is that the touch screen works on my HP 15 laptop.
A very non-techie friend of mine installed Ubuntu 8.04 almost a decade ago and has only needed my help a couple times in that time period. Once he needed help with X config settings to hook up an old TV via HDMI. Another time it was a Comcast issue. Granted, my friend is on the high end of intelligence and he's not easily discouraged. His experience and lack of problems makes me believe Linux has been ready for the desktop for some time.
I'm assuming that you're not trolling, so here are a few things:
- Linux is command line only if you want it to be: otherwise, you have the widest choices of desktop environments to choose from. Some hold that bonanza of choices against it, claiming that users are left confused. If you want something like Windows, but lightweight, Razor-qt or LX/QT would be a good place to start
- If you are on a Linux command line, putting an '&' after your command and pressing enter will run that command in the background, and enable you to continue running other commands. Particularly if the first is something you know will take a while. There are other commands like bg or fg followed by the process ID that enable you to change the priorities of running commands. Incidentally, Microsoft too supports such things, using START and then the command name.
- Linux does have a lot of commercial software available for it, albeit at the server or workstation level. Things like Verilog or VHDL. The usual desktop software like LibreOffice is $0 only b'cos they are a lot worse than MS Office, particularly for Excel, PowerPoint and Access
Only thing you said that's right - the support. In Windows, when anything is broken, you call the PC vendor or take the PC back to the place you bought it, and they may help you. With Linux, since you got it for $0, there is no support involved unless you explicitly buy a short or long term support contract.
Plan 9
I'm sorry to say this, but if youre "not an IT person," stay with Windows or MacOS. Linux is STILL for those who either are an IT person and can deal with the inevitable issues. (And/or doesn't mind the idea of, "You know, I tried Mint but it just didn't ______. So I flipped to Puppy and that couldn't do it either. Finally I put in Slackware. That did the trick.)
Or if you've had a conversation with your IT person and he or she has said, "You could use ______ Linux for all that and it would work."
Or you're in an Enterprise envrionment or similar and your IT people are providing you with a particular distro and support for it.
You do NOT want to install a variety, have a problem, and then try to rely upon the morass of Linux users to help. Why? You'll get too much, "RTFM!" and, "well, go look at the other thirty threads where this question was asked and you'll find the answer somewhere. [But I won't tell you where to look or just C/P the answer in the 1,200 posts there - I obviously remember it, but you need to go find the answer yourself.]"
Plus, as others have said, you haven't told us what "equipment" you want to "control" with it. So that strongly makes me think you've already got something that works with you. Go with it, OK?
But, if I still haven't persuaded you.... You can try a Puppy Linux flavor, and install it to boot from USB on a trial basis to see if it works. Or get away from Linux and try PC-BSD.
Wise people would know they should be spending their smarts on solving useful problems, as opposed to fixing carelessly crafted operating systems.
That's probably why most smart developers I know use (sadly, 2015 or prior) Macbook Pros for their software development work.
Sure, when you have to deploy on linux servers, you might have to tweak a little linux now and then, but a lot of that kind of deployment has been automated now.
Linux is fun for those who like to tinker with an OS, but it should be recognized that 99% of humans are not in that category currently.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
And I'm semi-serious. I mean, lets get real, Linux has come a long way, but the value proposition for Linux is about things other than "easy". Linux will never have "easy" nailed. Windows and Mac have easy and integration nailed.
If the OP want to avoid the "shenanigans" of Windows and Mac, that's one thing. If the OP wants easy, that's another.
My vote is for Ubuntu with Mate desktop. Ultimately a typical user will judge an OS through the use of it's desktop environment. In case of UbuntuMate it is clean with good compromise between simplicity and features. It comes preloaded with apps that typical user would want. A large library of additional, ubuntu blessed, is apps is available as well.
go big or go home,
Opensuse beats all the others
This is one of the things that the Linux community just cannot accept, or so it seems. Forking is viewed as a universal good with no opportunity costs, yet there are opportunity costs. With so many distros, and so many tools to choose from, you wind up with a daunting universe of choice to confront.
The choice is good but let's count the opportunity costs too:
1). New users are put off by the excessive choices;
2). Developer effort is diluted by working on so many different distros and applications;
3). More focused effort could produce more progress on fewer choices. Yeah, don't bother flaming me, I'm not talking about one choice here! I just mean, fewer choices. How many text editors does any human being need? Do we really need two thousand text editors??
4). Excessive choice also results in the "herding of cats" syndrome. Linux has become the de-facto home of quirk, obsession, my-way-or-the-highway, the old ways are best, the new ways are best, eccentricity roolz and M$ are foolz!
Which leads to, "hey, I don't have the problem you are reporting. Maybe it's all in your head? Damn M$! Have you tried the Snarky Stonesoup distro? It's new but they have the best mouse cursors I've ever seen!"
In my experience, Linux is very easy to use. Even installing is easy.
Unless something goes wrong. Something often goes wrong--that's how computers are. This is the kicker. It's not really about "advanced users." It's about people who have the patience, know-how and inclination to solve problems. Not all people can do that. If you have a problem with your Windows machine, you can take it to your local tech guy, and he can solve your problem for you. With Linux, that guy does not exist. You're on your own. Most people can't handle that.
I have to say, I've had some very patient and generous people help me with issues via the Ubuntu forums. But that's still a very hands-on thing, and you can't count on getting help with every problem. Sometimes there's just no response. Most people just want to be able to say, "Here's some cash, make my problem go away." That support system isn't there.
This is somewhat unorthodox, and not a usual starter distro (so maybe a bit of a risky choice), but consider NixOS.
It is built on the Nix package manager, which has a rather unusual architecture allowing which allows multiple versions of the same package to be installed simultaneously. This means you can keep different NixOS system configurations at the same time. For a beginner the upshot of this is that NixOS can roll back updates if anything goes wrong, allowing you to experiment with more safety than with most.
At first you can use it in the imperative mode like most other distributions are used, typing commands as you go to install packages. Eventually you can switch to declarative configuration, allowing you to define a system configuration reproducibly in a set of files. This means to back up you whole system configuration, you can just backup the configuration files (this won't cover your data, but in linux this is as simple as copying your home folder).
The Nix Expression Language used to define configurations and packages is purely functional and lazy, so it may have a learning curve, but it is well made for its usecase: the Nix ecosystem allows for package and development environment configuration, deployment to the server / virtual machine / container with NixOps as well as disnix for distributed systems modeling for running clusters.
Fuck you. Learn something.
It's this kind of mentality that created stupid shit like systemd.
Die in a fire.
I keep hearing a lot of the same from other devs. If you want a Mint equivalent check out Korora.
Linux Mint is pre-configured for a Newbie.
Linux Mint can also run Windows software like the other Linux distros. Just install Wine or try Crossover Weaver. It's best to first try PlayOnLinux which will install wine for you and a list of Windows Software.
There is also Plethora of software for Linux Mint from the Debian and Ubuntu software repository plus Linux Mint's software repository.
Why try Linux?
The world is now headed towards Open Source Software.
Did you know that Android and Chrome Book is Linux? The core of the Operating System is called Linux.
Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint has lots of software for STEM.
Linux and BSD also has the highest Security when it's connected to the Internet.
Use that for maximum fun. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Raspberry pi os Raspbian, Debain derived, called PIXEL very clean and simple. They make a distribution for x86 machines just so Rasp Pi users can migrate to desktop familiarily. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/
Anything XFCE is much easier to understand than GNOME or Unity. Mate is ok, but I like XFCE panel options a whole lot more and the Whisker Menu is searchable.
Ubuntu's GUI (Called Unity, I think) really sucks ass, so go for Lubuntu, which is Ubuntu, but with a GUI for sane people. Also, you can run it live from a USB flash drive.
I use Ubuntu on my work laptop and I'm definitely a "power user" so I can't comment on the easiest distro for a newbie, but I will say that the biggest issue with choosing your Linux distro is making sure that it will work with the hardware you're going to run it on.
For example, Ubuntu is a fantastic OS, but if you're using LTS (the recommended release) on a new laptop/desktop with Thunderbolt 3 or the latest Intel graphics - be prepared for some under the hood tinkering. This is exactly why vendors like sytem76 exist - there's no guarantee that off the shelf hardware will work with your Linux distro until the driver updates get back into the mainline kernels.
You're going to hate me for saying this, but suck it up butter cup. Do not look for the easy way out. Pick up a copy of Debian and read the documentation. A talent of most Linux users is reference. Stop yearning to get ahead by taking shortcuts.
Second to mint is in my opinion, a tie between
UBUNTU or Fedora via Kororaproject.org or OpenSUSE.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
My experiences of the past several years have repeatedly shown that Linux is a viable OS choice for anyone, and Linux MINT, along with its Ubuntu roots, is a major reason. Linux is NOT "just for power users", and I've installed (or just helped the user install) Linux Mint with a number of neophytes and friends with only modest technical acumen. Without exception, all have appreciated the security and privacy protections while escaping all the persistently annoying symptoms of WinDisease, like pestering request popups, adware, malware, forced hardware replacement and the blatant vandalism of forced updates. As Linux distros like Mint provide a familiar and consistent interface, have fully capable tools for access to the internet and standardized file formats, have reliable and competent office productivity suites, and provide an enormous library of easily accessed and installed Liberated Open Source Softwares for all but the most specialized application arenas, there is absolutely no sane reason not to recommend Mint to anyone. All of the friends and relations (even the elderly an neophyte ones), whom I've converted to Mint or Ubuntu have been satisfied users needing little to no support past the installation.
Android is probably the least fussy, most widely used Linux based out there for consumers.
Seriously. Get an Android device and go to town.
Mint! It's awesome but does NOT actually smell like Mint.
Seriously.
Only boring people are ever bored.
You have to put your Chromebook into developer mode
And there's the deal breaker. The Chromebook firmware, when put into developer mode, practically invites anyone who turns it on to wipe the whole thing. At power on, it displays "OS verification is OFF -- Press Space to re-enable" (screenshot), but the owner's roommate doesn't know that she can push Ctrl+D to proceed with booting. Instead, she'll probably press Space, see a message to the effect "Reenabling OS verification will erase everything. Press Enter to continue" and do what it says.
I can handle the command line stuff. I can't handle the constant threat of loss of work that isn't committed yet and the use of the machine until I can return home to install media.
elementary OS gets my vote. Wikipedia entry.
I use it on my laptop, because I got it at a time when I had literally only an hour to install an OS, everything worked and I like the UI so I kept it. It's also easy to dive in to the console and the guts of the system if that is your cup of tea.
As one who came to Linux because I had to operate on computers in English (my usual language) but inside COMECON (Soviet times), I used Live Linux Knoppix, (3.5 inch floppies) it worked on any IBM the state companies owned, so I could disregard the Cyrillic keyboards, once I convinved them I was not 'adjusting' their IBMs.
This allowed me to get printers and machinery 'on line' while giving basic GUI applications and Terminal operation so I could print out instructions and controls.
Try Knoppix as Live Linux disc on old computer and see how it feels , then move to say OpenSUSE (very good contols in YaST) or Linux Mint (make sure you set up a root account on loading -if you intend to play with machinery) AND ensure your machinery can talk to Linux. A single proprietary driver fixed to Windows DOS or an IE6 browser could destroy any transfer unless you know what controls your machinery!
Regards Eion MacDonald
I use this on my pos terminal in my office. Employees pick it up and feel comfortable instantly, it's more intuitive than mac os with its hidden software, it's based on Ubuntu lts so any fixes or install guides apply, and they have custom ready to understand settings menus.
only problem is that sometimes updates break the interface, so it's a good idea to open a terminal first do that if everything goes stupid you can type in "reboot" and hit enter. But that's a small thing, it's happened way less often than I've had the start menu break in Windows 10
distros aren't the big issue -- ! the real difference is the desktop environment - to wit - GNOME 3 ruined GNOME forever and KDE5 was such an unstable, crashing mess i had to go to XFCE - so you can use whatever distro, but if your DE on top of it is a dumpster fire like KDE5, it just don't matter
Every time I see one of these I do a ctrl-f and never see it listed. It is the most works out of the box linux distro to me. https://zorinos.com/