My head tells me Linux Mint, but my heart says listen to your head. Why is this hard? 😂
Are you committing to having her Linux setup to do everything her windows can do? Mint would be good at that point.
What is the persons skill level and are both of you OK with you picking up the slack?
She’s a pretty proficient windows user who mentioned looking at kbuntu. She can probably handle some rough edges on her own, but I have no interest in long term support. So probably mint 🤣
I was going to recommend a kubuntu lts, maybe help install flatpak support
I use kubuntu. It’s a good choice for people who don’t have experience but are able and willing to search for answers.
KDE defaults are solid and utilizes a lot of Windows muscle memory, and being based on Ubuntu means that it’s really easy to search for answers on virtually any question you might have. Plus widespread package support
Whichever one you wind up with, Dolphin as a file manager blows the monstrosity that windows has out of the water. For someone who’s eeked out some power/efficiency out of windows usage it should be very pleasant finding out the standard software available for Linux these can almost always make you more efficient with less effort.
especially for new converts (or those that do not know what an OS is)… the curated store of applications makes it very easy to push people away from microsoft.
My head tells me Linux Mint
my heart says listen to your head
My head tells me Linux Mint
Head says Linux Mint
Heart says listen to the head
Tiling WM Arch
Linux Mint is by far the smoothest experience I’ve had so far in trying Nobara, Debian, Manjaro otherwise.
Does Mint have screensaver and locking issues with Cinnamon?
I install Mint on computers of people that don’t want Windows and that I have to help, but I personally use Debian and MATE. Recently I tried to use Cinnamon on Debian but the screensaver was not always working. Sometimes I was away for days and when I was coming back, my monitor was still on. And sometimes the screensaver got stuck, impossible to remove without restarting my session.
I have a friend that tried Mint too, and he basically told me the same thibg was happening to him.
I have not heard about this from other folks to whom I installed Mint, but since they’re all very basic users that turn off their computer every time they are done, it never came up.
It would be my only issue with Mint for beginners. If they leave their computer running and come back later, there’s a slight chance that the screensaver will either not be started, or very difficult to exit.
What the crap? Surely this can’t be a widespread issue?
I believe this is an X issue, not a Mint issue. Most other distros have switched to Wayland, but Mint will use X until Wayland is mature enough.
Not strictly a Mint issue, but it’s still sotfware from them.
The development of Cinnamon began by the Linux Mint team following the April 2011 release of GNOME 3…
Hannah Montana Linux, obviously.
Nah fucking hit em with the temple os.
This is the only answer, regardless of the question.
Ideally it would be a laptop/distro pairing that is officially supported by the laptop vendor. For better or worse, I think most often the distro is Ubuntu or Red Hat.
I’ve never used for-fee subscription distros like Ubuntu Pro or RHE, but if someone had the money to burn and a viable use case, I wouldn’t stop them.
RHEL is great for servers, but not an awesome experience for a user workstation, IMO
RHEL (and I’m assuming Ubuntu Pro) is really more for like your company’s servers than an end user’s desktop. There’s really no reason to go that route unless you really need to get security patches for a super long time but won’t just upgrade I guess
Whenever this question comes up, I think the distro is less important than the desktop environment. If they feel more comfortable in Windows, go with something that provides KDE. If Mac, go with Gnome. Once they get used to it, let them go through the rite of passage that is distro hopping.
That said, and I know everyone recommends Mint or Ubuntu, and they’re fine, but you could do better. I like the immutable distros for people who just want to use their computer without thinking about it. They aren’t able to mess with anything important that keeps the computer running, and as long as they restart the computer, it’s always up to date. It’s like a Chromebook, which is the level most people are with computers.
NixOS and tell them to figure it out.
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Bazzite for young people, Mint for old people would be my first thought
OK I’m nearly 40 but you don’t gotta remind me I’m old 🤣
Likely either mint or popos
They tend to be the most liked by newcomers. Enough so that they don’t miss windows, or want to try something else a week later.
I think popos definitely deserves mention here. Cosmic has come a long way in a short time and the nvidia support is really helpful.
I’ve been installing Fedora Silverblue on family member’s computers. No complaints so far. They’re all non-technical users.
Converted my non-tech wife to Mint without a single hiccup after her laptop crapped out - intuitive af for lifelong windows users - my kids will have never known another OS outside of their school issued chromebooks as they’re only just experiencing desktop environments
