#best linux distro for beginners

[darcksama]

Conheça essa nova versão do linux brasileiro, O mauana linux versão cristã.

[yubbi45]

My job role is changing for the third time in less than a year so I thought I would start looking into learning Linux just to solidify a path of my skills instead of being a blanket "technology support"

Turns out, even just picking a starting point is it's own maze!

[shinelikethunder]

Hello there! I hope you don’t mind me just dropping into your asks like this, but by all means def feel free to just delete this if so, it is kind of a weird ask.

This is the anon from the computer blog asking about a private laptop for collage! After doing (a small amount of) research into Linux, one thing that’s super confusing to me, is… how does one know which distro to use? You mentioned in the replies of the post that you use Ubuntu Linux, which seems to be one of the more popular ones. Would you recommend — and if so, why? Is it good for privacy, do you think? The best? Does the user need to have a good deal of experience with computers to keep it running? (I’ve never used a laptop before but I don’t mind trying to learn stuff)

Also this is an EXTREMELY stupid question my apologies, but how….. exactly do you put Linux on a laptop? OP from my ask said to buy a laptop with no OS but is that something you can do? I’d think so, since 0P works with computer and stuff as their job, but Reddit says that it’s not really possible and that you should just “buy like a Windows laptop and scrap the software”??? Is that… correct? How did you install Linux on your laptop — did y ou have to remove software off it or did you, as OP says, manage to find a laptop with no OS?

Again, feel free to ignore if you don’t wanna put in the time/effort to reply to this, I absolutely don’t mind — it’s a lot of stuff I’m asking and you didn’t invite it all, so ofc feel free to delete the ask if you’d like!

ha, you've zeroed in on one of the big reasons Linux is kind of a contrarian choice for me to recommend: the wild proliferation of distros, many of them hideously complex to work with. luckily, the fact that most of them are niche offshoots created by and for overly-technical nerds makes the choice easier: you don't want those. you want one of the largest, best-supported, most popular ones, with a reputation for being beginner-friendly. the two biggies are Ubuntu and Linux Mint; i'd recommend focusing your research there.

this isn't JUST a popularity-contest thing: the more people use it, the more likely you are to find answers if you're having trouble or plugging a weird error message into google, and the greater the variety of software you'll find packaged for easy install in that distro. some combination of professional and broad-based community support means you'll find better documentation and tutorials, glitches will be rarer and get fixed faster, and the OS is less likely to be finicky about what hardware it'll play nice with. the newbie-friendly ones are designed to be a breeze to install and to not require technical fiddling to run them for everyday tasks like web browsing, document editing, media viewing, file management, and such.

info on installation, privacy, personal endorsement, etc under the cut. tl;dr: most computers can make you a magic Linux-installing USB stick, most Linuces are blessedly not part of the problem on privacy, Ubuntu i can firsthand recommend but Mint is probably also good.

almost all Linux distros can be assumed to be better for privacy than Windows or MacOS, because they are working from a baseline of Not Being One Of The Things Spying On You; some are managed by corporations (Ubuntu is one of them), but even those corporations have to cater to a notoriously cantankerous userbase, so most phoning-home with usage data tends to be easy to turn off and sponsored bullshit kept minimally intrusive. the one big exception i know of is Google's bastard stepchild ChromeOS, which you really don't want to be using, for a wide variety of reasons. do NOT let someone talk you into installing fucking Qubes or something on claims that it's the "most private" or "most secure" OS; that's total user-unfriendly overkill unless you have like a nation-state spy agency or something targeting you, specifically.

how to install Linux is also not a dumb question! back in the day, if you wanted to, say, upgrade a desktop computer from Windows 95 to Windows 98, you'd receive a physical CD-ROM disc whose contents were formatted to tell the computer "hey, i'm not a music CD or a random pile of backup data or a piece of software for the OS to run, i want you to run me as the OS next time you boot up," and then that startup version would walk you through the install.

nowadays almost anyone with a computer can create a USB stick that'll do the same thing: you download an Ubuntu installer and a program that can perform that kind of formatting, plug in the USB stick, tell the program to put the installer on it and make it bootable, and then once it's done, plug the USB stick into the computer you want to Linuxify and turn it on.

Ubuntu has an excellent tutorial for every step of the install process, and an option to do a temporary test install so you can poke around and see how you like it without pulling the trigger irreversibly: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop

having a way to create a bootable USB stick is one reason to just get a Windows computer and then let the Linux installer nuke everything (which i think is the most common workflow), but in a pinch you can also create the USB on a borrowed/shared computer and uninstall the formatter program when you're done. i don't have strong opinions on what kind of laptop to get, except "if you do go for Linux, be sure to research in advance whether the distro is known to play nice with your hardware." i'm partial to ThinkPads but that's just, like, my opinion, man. lots of distros' installers also make it dead simple to create a dual-boot setup where you can pick between Windows and Linux at every startup, which is useful if you know you might have to use Windows-only software for school or something. keep in mind, though, that this creates two little fiefdoms whose files and hard-disk space aren't shared at all, and it is not a beginner-friendly task to go in later and change how much storage each OS has access to.

i've been using the distro i'm most familiar with as my go-to example throughout, but i don't really have a strong opinion on Ubuntu vs Mint, simply because i haven't played around with Mint enough to form one. Ubuntu i'll happily recommend as a beginner-friendly version of Linux that's reasonably private by default. (i think there's like one install step where Canonical offers paid options, telemetry, connecting online accounts, etc, and then respects your "fuck off" and doesn't bug you about it again.) by reputation, Mint has a friendlier UI, especially for people who are used to Windows, and its built-in app library/"store" is slicker but offers a slightly more limited ecosystem of point-and-click installs.

(unlike Apple and Google, there are zero standard Linux distros that give a shit if you manually install software from outside the app store, it's just a notoriously finicky process that could take two clicks or could have you tearing your hair out at 3am. worth trying if the need arises, but not worth stressing over if you can't get it to work.)

basic software starter-pack recommendations for any laptop (all available on Windows and Mac too): Firefox with the uBlock Origin and container tab add-ons, VLC media player, LibreOffice for document editing. the closest thing to a dealbreaking pain in the ass about Linux these days (imo) is that all the image and video editing software i know of is kinda janky in some way, so if that's non-negotiable you may have to dual-boot... GIMP is the godawfully-clunky-but-powerful Photoshop knockoff, and i've heard decent things about Pinta as a mid-weight image editor roughly equivalent to Paint.net for Windows.

[tuxankhamun]

Do you have a beginner's guide to Linux that you recommend

one with info on switching from Windows to Linux

I've tried doing such a beginner's guide before tbh but I always feel like they turn out inadequate lol. I've been using linux virtually all my life, so my "beginner's intro" to it is so far from my present mind that it can't even be called a "distant memory."

The best advice I can give, however, is, if you have an unused computer (or $100 to spare for a cheap second-hand computer), just try installing on there and see how it goes.

Personally, I use Fedora KDE, and it's what I would recommend for anyone who isn't a very new beginner but doesn't want to get into the weeds with things like Arch; the reason being, that most guides you'll find online will be written for users of a Debian based distro.

The go-to suggestion for new beginners is Linux Mint, and I can't disagree with that, though I personally have like less than an hour using it (and even that was just watching a game of handball on an internet TV app that came installed as default lmao). While adding that hyperlink, I saw that they even have a handy Installation Instructions link right there on the downloads page.

Really, all you need to install linux is some free time, a computer you don't mind messing around with (or, better yet, try it out in VirtualBox or a similar program! Though this isn't the best suggestion for technewbies, I believe), and a 16GB USB drive.

[kaos-sverige]

The Best Linux Distros for Simplicity – Beginners vs. Experienced Users (No BS Guide!) #linux #FOSS #CachyOS #Nobara

[winterinhimring]

Where do I learn how to code and use linux? I want to try it but I don't know anything about coding.

I will do my best to help! The answer to that question is very long if I write it all out here, but a lot of it has been answered by other people, so I'll give you an overview and link you to some resources along the way.

The good thing is that you don't need any programming knowledge to use Linux. If you just want to try out the Linux operating system and see what it's like, I would start by downloading a program like Oracle's VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/

This will allow you to basically run a second, simulated, computer on your actual computer. From there, you can download a Linux image and install it, run it inside VirtualBox, and get familiar with the operating system. This has the additional benefit that if you do something wonky to your Linux virtual machine (VM for short) by mistake, you can just delete it and recreate it and no harm will be done to your actual computer. For a step-by-step explanation, see: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/how-to-run-ubuntu-desktop-on-a-virtual-machine-using-virtualbox#1-overview

Short aside: Linux is not a monolithic operating system like Windows or MacOS. Linux, written by a man named Linus Torvalds, is a "kernel" made up of certain very basic computer functions, and the rest of the operating system, things like the graphical user interface (GUI, to nerds like me) doesn't come with it. To be usable by normal people, Linux has to have that functionality filled in by other programmers, which creates something called a distribution, or distro for short. Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat, Linux Mint, and OpenSUSE are all Linux distros. Different distros are designed for different purposes. Ubuntu and Mint are both pretty friendly to normal folks who want to write documents, check their email, etc. RedHat is for large companies. There's a distro called Kali that's for cybersecurity and penetration testing. Etc. etc. etc. There are tons of distros. If you don't know which one to pick, I recommend Ubuntu or Mint, as I have experience with both, and they're fairly easy to use.

From this point out, a search engine will be your best friend. There are lots of helpful tutorials online, and also answers to almost any question you can imagine. If you're unsure where to start, documentation from the website of an official Linux distribution, like Ubuntu, is usually reliable, though it can be kind of opaque if you're not used to reading tech-ese. The tutorials on Ubuntu's site, however, seem to be structured with beginners in mind, and I would run through this one to start with: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/command-line-for-beginners#1-overview

Once you get to the point of having specific questions about how a command works or how to make the operating system do something, I would take a good look at any answers from StackOverflow, which is basically a website for computer people of all skill levels to ask each other questions ranging from the basic to the ridiculously obscure. If you're wondering it, chances are good someone on StackOverflow has asked it.

Other than that, click around your new VM, create files, find programs, etc. If you really get stuck, I'll try and help, but keep in mind I may very well be searching StackOverflow myself. XD

The other cool thing about VMs is that you can try multiple operating systems, i.e. Linux Mint (https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) which is pretty user-friendly, as I recall.

Once you get to the point where you actually want to install Linux, you'll want to back up your computer to an external hard drive so you can restore from the backup if something goes wrong, and then follow the instructions for your chosen Linux distro. LibreOffice runs on Linux and can open most Microsoft file types, so you shouldn't need to move your files to a different type, you'll just need to copy them somewhere (like another external hard drive or a thumb drive) and then copy them back when you're done with the installation. Obligatory word of warning: installing Linux on your actual machine, as opposed to a VM, WILL OVERWRITE YOUR ENTIRE HARD DRIVE. Do this with caution. Restoring from a backup is possible, so as long as you backed everything up you will not lose any data, but it can be a pain in the neck and if you're not particularly tech-savvy, you may have to go to a computer repair store to get them to do it.

Now, as to your question about learning to code: this requires no VM and no new installation; you can start doing that today. There are almost infinite tutorials online about how to start coding. CodeCademy.com is a pretty decent one, as I recall, though it's been a long time since I used it. There's also a channel on YouTube called BroCode that puts up free 'how to get started in this programming language' tutorials, which are pretty beginner-friendly. I would recommend that you start with either Python or Java (NOT JavaScript; it's not the same thing as Java, and it's a really annoying programming language, so don't do that to yourself). Python has syntax that is more similar to English than most programming languages and it is pretty powerful, but it may confuse you when you start moving to other programming languages. Java is less immediately comprehensible but probably more representative of programming languages as a whole.

Hope this helps! Feel free to send me follow-up questions or ask for clarification if I lapsed into tech-speak and this doesn't make sense.

[abbiistabbii]

Hey sorry I saw your post about Linux being better/just as good as Windows for gaming PCs, and I was wondering which type you’d recommend downloading for a mid-tier PC? (I’m not super tech savvy tbh but I’m a fast learner and would rather download Linux at this point than Windows after all the shit it’s done lately). Also, did not know Android uses Linux that is cool!

If you're a beginner, either one of the Linux Mint flavours or one of the Ubuntu flavours, depending on how mid-tier we're talking about. Mint is based on Ubuntu but they're both ultimately based on Debian, which is the most stable and easy to use (in my experience) Distro. You'll find this a lot that a lot of distros are based on other distros, but if I were to talk about distros, the best ones tend to be debian based.

So Linux Mint is made to be as user friendly as possible and have most, if not everything, working out the box, and it's great, but it does use an older version of the Kernel so you need to bare that in mind (but as a beginner you don't need to worry too much, everything will still work). It comes in three versions: Cinnamon (using the Cinnamon desktop), MATE (using the Mate Desktop) and XFCE (using the xfce desktop). On a mid-tier PC any of these will work, even the heaviest of them has a recommended ram of 4GB but if you know your PC you might wanna try MATE (about 1GB ram recommended) or XFCE (512 MB).

However I would recommend Ubuntu (it's what I'm using rn). It's what Linux Mint is based on and is just as user friendly as Mint but with the big difference being it uses a newer Kernel version and has more flavors using different Desktop Environments and for different uses. The flavors however are on different websites but more or less work closely with Ubuntu itself.

Vanilla Ubuntu used Gnome as it's default which is okay, some people like it, but I don't and nor does a lot of my friends. Different flavors have different requirements and levels of usability but again, 4GB is enough to run any flavor. Other Flavors include:

Kubuntu: this is the one I use, and in my option it's better than Vanilla. It used KDE and it's suite of apps which are both user friendly, wide ranging and really nice looking. KDE is quite resource intensive (again that's not saying much compared to windows) but if you have a mid tier PC with more than 4GB ram, it should run fine and I recommend it. I'm a big KDE fangirl.

Xubuntu: This is one I used in the past. Xubuntu used XFCE which is designed to be lightweight without sacrificing functionality. It's not as flashy, but it's easy to use, functional, and great for lower-powered computers or just people who wanna save on computing power.

Ubuntu Cinnamon: This flavor uses Cinnamon (which the "main" version of Mint uses) but with Ubuntu as the distro. I used Cinnamon as my desktop when I used Mint and I loved it. It has all the functionality of Gnome with all the ease of use and flashiness of KDE, so if you try out Cinnamon on Mint but like Ubuntu, try it out.

Lubuntu: This is the lightest of Ubuntu flavors. It's light enough that it's ARM version can run on a Raspberry pi. This was designed for computers with not much power like those old netbooks (remember those?) and it's not as flashy or functional, but it's a good option if your computer is a potato.

Ubuntu Budgie: This is the one I know least about because I have never used budgie. I checked it out on distrosea but other than that all I know is from people who have tried it. Some like Budgie (which uses the Budgie desktop) some don't, but I think I might need to check it out before I pass judgement.

Each of these versions are distributed from their own websites so be sure to google.

As for gaming I would recommend that after installing it, if you have a separate graphics card, install the drivers either from the driver manager or from the website itself. Steam runs on Linux and follow the instructions from steam on how to activate Proton.

Happy nerding.

[soup-mother]

hi soup-mother can i ask you a question about linux. about distros? basically it's : why run debian-mint instead of ubuntu-mint ? and then why run the mint version of either, like why debian-mint instead of just debian? (wasn't ubuntu originally based on debian as well or am i misremembering)

i'm curious about your preferences/opinions basically

thanks bye

it's kinda a tricky one and also i am not an expert i literally just read things.

people like LMDE (linux mint debian edition) over mint (ubuntu version) either because they like that it's not reliant on ubuntu and won't potentially run into issues with canonical (company that runs ubuntu) doing weird things that fuck up distros based on ubuntu, or because they feel that it's more lightweight and responsive than regular mint.

people like Mint over ubuntu because of the ease of use and similarly to windows, the cinnamon desktop and because it doesn't have some of the weird design decisions ubuntu has (like using snaps for packages).

people like mint over debian because a lot of ppl see it as more beginner friendly and familiar, and because of the cinnamon desktop. so when someone likes debian but also likes mint, they'll sometimes use LMDE to "get the best of both worlds" kinda. and also to my understanding mint is updated way way more frequently than debian and so gets a lot of quality of life improvements faster, and ppl like the software packaged with mint.

incidentally there's a lot of reasons to prefer debian over mint especially if you want to use the KDE desktop but that's neither here nor there.

I've played around with a bunch of distros but I use mint on my laptop and desktop and don't really have any reason to change to anything else. i think the cinnamon desktop environment is my favourite and it doesn't look as good on normal debian, i do like debian I just don't really have a reason to use it over mint. (keep in mind that look and feel matters a lot to some people and they base their decisions mostly on how the distro looks way more than their actual use case)

I've not played around with LMDE but most ppl I've seen say there isn't really much of a noticeable difference so i guess it's mostly a philosophy thing about not being tied to ubuntu. (oh also yeah ubuntu is based on debian, a lot of distros are in the debian family tree, it's a pretty solid base and well supported)

hopefully that's helpful! again there's a big old [citation needed] for some of this but that's my thoughts on the matter. there's not much of a difference between mint and LMDE, and Debian is fairly solid as a distro but updated much slower 👍

[hellsite-yano]

Since you're the #1 person I know of when it comes to free and open source software, do you know of any good Linux distros for someone who's just looking for a good alternative to Windows that's free from Microsoft's bloatware? (P.s. Thanks for the posts about CryptPad and LibreOffice)

I'm by no means an expert of Linux distros and I've only just started getting into FOSS so I'm probably not the best person to ask, though I've heard Linux Mint is very good for beginners.

[fruttymoment]

Whoa linux user

Do you have a guide on how to switch to it? I have zero coding knowledge (i think that's required) and I trust you with my life

I perfectly understand the "linux is scary and requires very big brain and coding its too hard to use!" thought coming from a Windows/Mac guy, i really do! But in the end, a linux distro is just a computer kernel that also has a desktop environment and just does what you want it to do like an operating system

Coding on linux is not required. Linux has so many distros at this point that designed to be beginner friendly, requiring "no knowledge but TO gain knowledge while using it"

The linux terminal is the thing that scares most of the users, but trust me once you get used to it you'll realize how efficent it is to operate your computer and do certain tasks from THE terminal instead! In the end, the cold looking white text with black background terminals are the REAL face of computers. Desktop environment is made so EVERYONE can use computers!

The terminal of gnu/linux uses the bash language. In a nutshell, it is pretty easy to learn basic commands actually!

Super beginner friendly linux distros are designed for people (YOUU) who has no experience whatsoever with linux! They are designed and engineered so you dont have to use the terminal much! For example, Linux Mint is the best distro you should start with. It looks and feels like Windows, even! And Mint does not require much terminal usage. That is also their mission, to make an linux distro friendly enough that no terminal usage is needed!

As easy as this sounds, i actually do not recommend staying this far away from the linux terminal. Please start with Linux Mint if you gonna, its just the best for beginners, but also please dont avoid the terminal much! The linux terminal is important to learn because it also teaches you how a computer really works, and certain operations are much more efficent to do via terminal anyway!

Push yourself to interact with the terminal, even. Learn very basic commands like "shutdown now" , and the "sudo" privilege and how it works (linux always asks your password while doing stuff and you also cant do muc without the sudo privileges!)

"sudo" is the command that gives you the REAL admin privileges to do ANYTHING. With your password and sudo, you can even delete your bootloader lol. Linux wont stop you

This means to be extremely careful while using sudo, though! You can do ANYTHING with sudo privileges, and that also contains accidently trashing your computer! Unlike Windows, that doesnt even let you uninstall Edge, linux has no boundries. Its like "we are gonna assume you know what you are doing."

Of course, friendly distros DO warn you on certain stuff, so dont worry too much!

So ye. U can use linux with no coding knowledge, but i dont recommend staying like that. After starting to use linux, you GOTTA let it teach you stuff!

And to the "switching to linux for the first time" part;

I recommend not deleting your main Windows, actually. For first time using linux i heavily recommend the "dual booting" , which simply means booting operating systems more than one in an computer! You can use BOTH linux and windows in thay way! Although, you need to shudown your pc if you want to switch between them and do it in the booting menu

This is because if something goes wrong, or you get very confused, just let Windows be ready in there. Only make the switch the moment when you feel you can operate linux with no issues and easily!

Dual booting basically slices your disk and creates partitions for operating systems. For example if you have an 512GB SSD, in dual booting you can slice it and make Windows use 256GB and Linux use 256GB too! Ofc u can change the numbers here (linux mimt will help u,.)

Before completely switching to linux; be aware that its a bit of a different world. Sure, very popular softwares exists in linux too but some softwares may not suppor linux. Adobe products dont support linux, for example! You can of course just emulate them with Wine software heh, but that would be a bit of a work!

Another problem will be certain online games. Online games does not like linux becuse how easy it is to manipulate the system, so they just either dont run on linux or they ban/kick you when you try to emulate it on linux

An example is Valorant. Valorant does not tun on linux!

And any online game that has a cheap anticheat system will be a problem!

With that being said, linux now supports every single game from Steam, with the Proton software. Just be careful about them online ones! If an online game natively supports linux (TF2, for example!) , it wont be a problem! Check the steam game's info thingy for it!

Oh and official Minecraft works in linux lol

Discord, Spotify etc. popular softwares also work on linux!

Linux in fact has an "app manager" software in their distros, making you install stuff with no terminal whatsoever! Think like Google Play Store but on le pc!

Anyways hehe thats it fo me bascallya! If u wanna switch to linux with no experience, start with the Linux Mint distro i say and explore it well! Tamper everything before fully installing it, dont worry about it! Linux is free. Linux does not care if you want to kill the entire system, even. Linux is freedom

Also please research the dual booting! You'll gonna be needing an 4GB+ USB for it, and a software like Rufus!

The site of Linux Mint has everything you need in detail, step by step ^^ good luck!

[guiltiest-gear]

Just got a new laptop which unfortunately comes with windows 11, so I’m kinda tempted to throw Linux on it out of spite

Would that be a good idea, seeing as I have never to my knowledge used linux?

Ok so this is in my honest opinion, if you want something good for beginners, then Linux Mint is your best option

If you already know how to flash an ISO to a USB drive and boot to it and all that, then you don't have to click the read more button, but if you don't there's some more instructions below the cut

There's a really easy way to get started

First, get a torrent client like qBittorrent, Deluge, Transmission, whatever, they're all pretty good open source torrent clients (although I'm biased towards qBittorrent because that's my personal client of choice)

Then you're gonna wanna go to https://linuxmint.com and you're gonna wanna click that download button

You're gonna come across three different editions of Linux Mint, I recommend going with the first option, Cinnamon edition as Cinnamon is pretty good at helping you feel at home when coming from Windows

Hit the download button and then click the button that says Torrent Download: 64-bit, and you'll get a torrent file that you can open up in your torrent client

Or you could just do a direct download if you're gonna wipe the damn laptop, no point in trying to seed the ISO when Windows 11 is gonna get wiped

Anyway, let that iso download and then you're gonna wanna grab a piece of software called rufus

Go to https://rufus.ie/en/ and download the correct version for your platform

Now get a USB drive you don't mind wiping the data off of, because you need to flash the ISO to it

Then you're gonna wanna plug the USB drive into your computer and open up rufus and select the USB drive you just plugged in, if it didn't already do that

Then you're gonna wanna select the ISO you downloaded in Rufus

Leave all the settings as is, it'll be fine, but given you have a new laptop, I'm gonna assume it's one of the newer models and not something like a Thinkpad, so you should set the partition scheme to GPT

Then you just hit start, click through a couple of prompts, and then you just wait

At this point, just reboot your computer and figure out which key gets you into the boot menu, could be escape, f11, f12, delete, beats me, it's always something different

You may need to disable secureboot because it may prevent you from booting the USB, so there's that

Anyway, boot into the USB, hit enter to start Linux Mint and you'll be dropped into the live desktop

You can poke around and see if you like what you see, or if you don't, then that's alright, you can shutdown and pull the USB and flash a different edition or use a completely different distro

Just poke around in it, see what looks good to you, see what doesn't, you won't affect any of your disks until you decide to install

But yeah, there should be a CD looking icon on the desktop, and you can click it to start the install process

Once you go through it all and wiped Windows 11, there you go, Linux Mint on your computer

And if a video guide works better for you, then maybe this tutorial might help, it's a little old, but the same broad strokes still apply

Have fun on linux and enjoy the wild west of computing

[autolenaphilia]

LMDE 6 Beta First impressions.

I've been trying out the Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 public beta for little over a day now, and I have no complaints or bugs so far. LMDE is the version of Linux Mint that is based directly on Debian rather than Ubuntu, unlike the mainline Mint distro. LMDE 6, "Faye", is based on Debian 12. The point is to become as similar in features as the regular Ubuntu version. And it exists as a Plan B in case Ubuntu disappears or becomes unuseable as a base for Mint.

And It's good that this safety plan exists, because Canonical and Ubuntu are not that reliable. The Mint devs has had to rebel against Canonical's decisions multiple times, creating work for them. The Mint documentation has an entire page criticizing Canonical's preferred package format, Snap and why it's not included by default in Mint. The version of Firefox included in Mint is packaged by the devs themselves, since the Ubuntu version of Firefox is a snap (and if you try to install it via Apt, it will install a snap package instead). And ubuntu is moving more and more towards snaps, including an immutable all-snap Ubuntu. If that becomes the default Ubuntu release, derivative distros that don't use snap are pretty much finished.

I started my Linux journey with Mint, but moved upstream to Debian for awhile precisely because I was not comfortable with my operating system standing on such unsure ground. And unlike most Ubuntu-based distros (of which there are many), it's smart of the Mint team to realize that and create LMDE as a plan B. And now I'm on LMDE, because well that moves my computer off Ubuntu, while also enabling me to support Mint, which remains such an important part of the LInux ecosystem for being so beginner-friendly.

So how it is as a distro? How does it compare to mainline Ubuntu? and what does it add to its Debian base?

LMDE uses Debian stable, and as such the packages are outdated, but it's rocksolid stable. I'm running the beta, and because it's debian-based, the majority of the packages were well-tested by the time Debian 12 was released. So I haven't found any bugs so far. And Mint includes flatpaks by default, so you can get newer software in sandboxed containers without sacrificing overall system stability.

Mint adds to the basic Debian experience in many ways, the main addition is the many GUI tools Mint has developed. The software manager handles both debs and flatpaks by default with a slick interface. And the update manager handles updates with friendly non-pushy notifications, I've sang its praises before. Mint also provides tools to manage your software sources (to switch to a local mirror for example) and to create a backup of your home folder.

These tools are what make Mint so famously easy to use, as I written about before. For most common use cases, you never need to see the command line. It's similar to what MX Linux adds to Debian, which I've written about here. I think Mint probably has better looking and more intuitive GUI design than the MX equivalents, although the MX tools have more features. They are both great.

KDE Plasma and Gnome desktops does add somewhat similar functionality to base Debian, but I have reasons not to use those DEs. Gnome lacks customizability and forces a particular workflow, while I found Plasma to be a complete crashfest.

I ended up using xfce, which best met my needs, it's lightweight, easy to use and stable. And I didn't want to pollute it by pulling in bits of other desktops with all its dependencies. It did however require me to use the command line for things like installing and updating flatpaks, and i found running "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt upgrade" easier than using synaptic. I had figured out the command line by that point, so I could make do without the functionality of Mint, but the Mint tools are great to have. Having update notifications is great for an absent-minded person like me.

And they are sometimes objectively better than their Debian equivalents. For example the software sources manager that is in the Debian repos has been broken for months with a bug that leaves your apt.sources.list in a broken state that cuts your OS off from security updates, something I discovered the hard way and I had to manually edit my sources.list to fix it. The Mint equivalent works perfectly fine.

There is a lot of polish for desktop users In LMDE compared to base debian. It does add a lot of value that way.

How is it compared to ubuntu-based Mint (LMUE) though? And as someone who used LMUE cinnamon for months, I have to say the majority of functionality is all there. My experience is basically the same.

The only thing missing I could find is the driver manager, which can be very useful as it detects missing hardware drivers and pulls them in from either online or the installation media. The driver manager is to my understanding tied into Ubuntu's repos for additional drivers. Ubuntu has some of the best hardware support in the LInux distro world. Debian however has compromised their commitment to free software in favor of practicality, and now includes non-free drivers with their installation media by default, so maybe that functionality is not that necessary anymore. I've had no problems with wi-fi and blu-ray drivers on this laptop I'm typing this on, even with base Debian.

Another thing missing in LMDE is a choice of desktop environments by default. You only get cinnamon, the flagship DE developed by the Mint devs primarily for MInt. LMUE also offers Mate and Xfce by default. This is because LMDE is a "Plan B", and supporting multiple DEs on a second base would mean a too heavy workload for the devs. The Debian repos does however have Mate and Xfce in its massive package selection, plus several more DEs, and you can install them manually If you want, and still use the MInt tools, I tried it with xfce myself.

As a derivate distro, LMDE does also drag behind Debian releases quite a bit, when a new Debian drops it takes awhile for Mint to develop an LMDE version based on it. LMDE 6 was a quick turnaround by LMDE standards and it still took like three months after Debian 12's release. LMUE's turnaround for Ubuntu LTS releases is far quicker, because it remains a relative priority for the devs.

Still LMDE 6 is here now, and it's a great distro. It proves that Linux Mint is not relaint on Ubuntu, and adds useful functionalities to its Debian base.

[tuxankhamun]

if say a college student wanted to migrate to linux what do you think would be the best method of doing so, like I know there's libreoffice but what version of linux

https://linuxmint.com/

Linux Mint is basically the go-to distro recommendation for beginners and while I personally haven't used it much I'm not inclined to disagree.

It should come with things like LibreOffice and Firefox pre-installed, even. Installation these days is generally straight forward, but walkthroughs are very easy to find if you have difficulty.

If you want, you don't even need to install it to try it out, just slap it on a USB stick and boot from it and you can mess around to see what you think.

[kaos-sverige]

Best Beginners Linux Distro - Tier List #linux #FOSS #CachyOS #Nobara #EndeavourOS

[sentinelgundamn]

If your Windows support is ending, it's time to learn Linux. Here's the best distro for beginners

Source: ZDNET

https://search.app/DBFsX

Shared via the Google App

[frozenbassist]

ChromeOS -> Linux

ChromeOS is essentially a highly-customized and locked-down version of Linux (based on Gentoo Linux). It's similar to Android in that way, since Android is also Linux-based. While Linux can't natively run Linux apps, it has its own software repositories (depends on the distro) where you can install anything. And it's 100% free and open-source. Plus, many distros (distribution - like a flavor of Linux) are beginner-friendly and easy-to-use.

The best option for beginners is a Debian-based distro: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Pop! OS are some favorites among beginners

If you have a low-spec PC: AMD Athlon, Intel Pentium, Celeron, < 4 Gb RAM, there are modern distros like MX Linux or AntiX Linux that can run on low-spec hardware with as little as 512 Mb of RAM.

Also, if you want Linux to look like ChromeOS, you need to install a distro with KDE like Kubuntu, Debian with KDE, or KDE Neon and then install one of the many ChromeOS themes I linked below from the KDE store - not actually a store - they are all free like most things on Linux.

Google is going to start scraping all of their platforms to use for AI training. So, here are some alternatives for common Google tools!

Google Chrome -> Firefox

If you’re on tumblr, you’ve probably already been told this a thousand times. But FireFox is an open-source browser which is safe, fast and secure. Basically all other browsers are Chrome reskins. Try Firefox Profilemaker, Arkenfox and Librewolf! Alternatively, vanilla Firefox is alright, but get Ublock Origin, turn off pocket, and get Tabliss.

Google Search -> DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo very rarely tracks or stores your browsing data (though they have only been known to sell this info to Microsoft). Don’t use their browser; only their search engine. Domain visits in their browser get shared. Alternatively, you can also use Ecosia, which is a safe search engine that uses its income to plant trees! 🌲

Google Reverse Image Search -> Tineye

Tineye uses image identification tech rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks to find you the source of your image!

Gmail -> ProtonMail

All data stored on ProtonMail is encrypted, and it boasts self-destructing emails, text search, and a commitment to user privacy. Tutanota is also a good alternative!

Google Docs -> LibreOffice

LibreOffice is free and open-source software, which includes functions like writing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, formula editing and more.

Google Translate -> DeepL

DeepL is notable for its accuracy of translation, and is much better that Google Translate in this regard. It does cost money for unlimited usage, but it will let you translate 500,000 characters per month for free. If this is a dealbreaker, consider checking out the iTranslate app.

Google Forms -> ClickUp

ClickUp comes with a built-in form view, and also has a documents feature, which could make it a good option to take out two birds with one stone.

Google Drive -> Mega

Mega offers a better encryption method than Google Drive, which means it’s more secure.

YouTube -> PeerTube

YouTube is the most difficult to account for, because it has a functional monopoly on long-form video-sharing. That being said, PeerTube is open-source and decentralized. The Internet Archive also has a video section!

However, if you still want access to YouTube’s library, check out NewPipe and LibreTube! NewPipe scrapes YouTube’s API so you can watch YouTube videos without Google collecting your info. LibreTube does the same thing, but instead of using YouTube servers, it uses piped servers, so Google doesn’t even get your IP address. Both of these are free, don’t require sign-ins, and are open source!

Please feel free to drop your favorite alternatives to Google-owned products, too! And, if this topic interests you, consider checking out Glaze as well! It alters your artwork and photos so that it’s more difficult to use to train AI with! ⭐️