none yet at the moment, mostly since i have no free usb anywhere in this house and other projects eating at my skull, but from reading everything around here, id probably end up trying out Mint on a USB to fiddle around when the opportunity comes up :D
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Generally if you’re just doing normal computer stuff on a big distro like Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, ZorinOS, etc., you won’t really have to do too much command-wise unless you get into programmer stuff (Node.js, specific interpreters, etc.) that’s about the same as it is on other platforms. As others have said definitely try it out on a USB first, it’s also helpful in detecting hardware incompatibilities like sometimes I’ll have a wifi card that doesn’t work with Linux (though that’s much less common now). Mainly just look around and try a few things, and also keep in mind that even though it may look similar to Windows, it isn’t. Be open to learning slightly different ways of working and that. I started off with Kubuntu on my laptop, but now I’m full-time Arch on my desktop which is something I never imagined doing before so it’s all just a learning experience that I found pretty fun getting up to this level of understanding.
Also try a few distros out, since you’re trying it out on a USB without installing there’s no real commitment til you actually install it
I’m not a beginner anymore so it’s hard for me to say what’s best for beginners.
I used Windows and Mac for a while and had several false starts in trying to switch to Linux, where I would use it for a week or so until running into some problem that drove me back to Windows/Mac, but eventually I powered through.
I guess the main tip would be to be patient with yourself and don’t give up if you run into a problem, but set aside time to intentionally work on “learning” Linux and solving the problem rather than getting frustrated when some annoying config issue is standing between you and getting your actual work done.
I think choice of distro matters in the sense that you want to stay away from “advanced” distros like Arch, Gentoo that require a lot of command-line configuration up front, and you also want to stay away from obscure/highly customized distros where it will be hard to Google your problem. But that still leaves a lot of good options that are, for my money, interchangeable:
- Ubuntu
- Debian
- Fedora
- OpenSUSE
- Mint
I am a bit of a maverick but I use and love Ubuntu. I would move to Debian in a pinch but I don’t like the release model of “functioning, latest version of packages, security updates: choose two.”
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I got my hands on some non-Nvidia hardware, solicited some outside help to navigate a couple days of troubleshooting, and finally got Linux Mint working for me! Now that it’s actually installed correctly, it’s been a delight. There are a few minor differences to get used to, but it feels great to use a computer that doesn’t feel like it’s spiritually at odds with me.*
(*I have to use a Windows 11 computer at work, and even with the Copilot chatbot uninstalled, it still has the logo plastered everywhere, as if my computer is trying to claw me into using it.)
On a more positive note, here are a few little things I’ve done to make Linux Mint feel more at home for me:
- Customized the “panel” (taskbar) to show the Window Name (ex. the browser tab text) when the program is open, to make it easier to see which programs are open and what’s just pinned.
- Turned on the Nightlight (color shift depending on time of day, so there’s less blue light at night).
- Changed the mouse cursor to a more traditional one. (The default one isn’t bad, just kinda rounded, and I like the familiar ones more.)
- Created a shortcut to bring up the System Monitor, which is like Windows Task Manager.
- Added my VPN to Startup Applications so that it appears first thing when I boot up the computer.
- Used Wine (the glove for handling Windows stuff with Linux) to install Notepad++.
- Installed some extra fonts.
- Changed clock away from 24-hour time.
- Created manual backups with Timeshift.
- Added an emoji picker.
- Edit: added a way to lower daytime screen brightness with QRedshift
Overall, Linux is still an adjustment, but I’m glad to get to experience it for myself! Definitely a relief to get acquainted with something besides Windows and iOS, and I’ve been having fun with it.
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this gives me some good ideas! All I’ve done is install Cinnamenu, make some font tweaks, and turn certain always-open tabs into web apps
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bahaha can i bump my own thread? i actually ended up reviving my old 10-inch laptop from ~2010 and installing MX Linux with XFCE as a desktop (it’s 2GB ram and for some reason Linux Mint was just not showing the icons on the USB boot to install it…), with the caveat that running any video crashes it completely LOL
idk if it’s an issue with not having the right intel driver or if it’s literally just that old that it can’t handle videos
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I haven’t used MX Linux but I know proprietary video codecs can be problematic on Linux.
Have you installed the proprietary codecs? I did a bit of searching and it looks like MX Linux comes with a tool to help with them: How to install restricted codecs on MXLinux - MX Codecs installer - Иван Благојевић
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huh, i’ve not tried it yet!! im still very baby to linux so i wouldnt be surprised if i did miss that. ill give it a shot when i have an opportunity and see if that fixes it!!
@sylviegirly, the link @Bog provided is geared mainly towards playing DVDs that are copy-protected and video formats specific to Windows. Can you tell us what sort of video you’re trying to watch and what app you’re using?
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i would try a beginner distro like fedora or mint. also, like a few people in this thread i would make a live usb with ventoy and boot into a couple different distros before choosing witch one you like best
initially it was just on youtube, then freetube (which all crashed), then downloading a video to attempt playing through VLC… which also crashed. crashing in the sense that it’d go black, and reset to the desktop login as if i had restarted it (but without the ‘shutting down and rebooting’ process)
i’m half thinking it’s either something with a driver missing, or my laptop is just too weak to even run a video regardless if it’s in browser or through a video player
OK, that’s weird, because I can watch YouTube videos in Firefox on a Thinkpad T60 with 3GB of RAM running Debian, and that laptop was manufactured in 2006. It just isn’t a good idea for me to do so.
When you downloaded the video, what file name did it get? I might be able to figure out what’s missing based on that.
ah shoot it was through yout’s download link, so iirc MP4 + the video name itself with dashes replacing the spaces. i was using librefox for mine, but even going through normal firefox it still also clams up completely when trying to play videos through youtube
You might have to turn off hardware acceleration in your browser and video player, unless you’ve already tried that.
Yes, that would be my suggestion… I had the same problem with Ubuntu on my iMac 27 and this fixed it.
unfortunately it seems like it still crashes on youtube even w/hardware acceleration being disabled in librefox. what a funky issue
That sucks. What if you install yt-dlp and mpv, and feed a YouTube URL into mpv? These are terminal apps, though.
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