So like it says in the title. I’m looking to make a change. The only coding I ever did was like, some very light HTML on stuff like LiveJournal 20 years ago (because I’m ancient in internet years, haha) and even that I barely remember.
I’ve seen people talk about LinuxMint in other comment sections and how that one might be closest to something like Windows (in that a layman like myself can use it out of the box like buying a new laptop from Best Buy or whatever store). Is that actually a good one or is there something better for somebody like me?
I’ve seen enough people go ‘NO UBUNTU!!!’ to steer me away from that one, but otherwise I have no clue what would actually be good for somebody in my shoes.
I have a laptop that still technically runs Windows 8 that I just use for downloads so I’d be trying it on there so that if something goes wonky I’m not fucked. After looking at the LinuxMint website, the specs on that laptop meet the requirements for it.
Thanks so much!
depending on how complicated it is to swap out the hard disk, i’d swap out the windows drive and put in a new one (preferably an ssd, they make a big difference even in older computers) - this way you’ll keep the option to put it back if you’re really lost, you can back up stuff there
mint is a good place to start, no need for coding.
you do need to get adjusted a bit, the complaints about “how difficult it is to do things on linux” is often because people try doing stuff exactly like they did on windows, and sure, you can do exactly the same thing but you need to set up, sometimes compile tools for it - or you can search in the software manager or search on the web for “xy linux alternative”
for instance file sharing - yeah linux supports samba (the windows file sharing protocol), it works, but imo it kinda sucks (but tbf it sucked on windows too), so i started looking for alternatives and just allowing an ssh connection allows you to directly connect to machines with your username, and also allows sftp file transfers, and it works so much betterThe only time you might have issues with Ubuntu is when it comes time to update/upgrade it. I’ve seen people on Mastodon, every time an update rolls out, say that its broken something. But I think those cases are few and far between.
Mint is a good choice to get your feet wet. Install it with KDE Plasma so it will at least feel familiar to you. Cinnamon is fine but I always found it a little bit wonky. When I first started on linux I got kinda carried away with customizing Cinnamon and it totally just wrecked my install.
There’s a lot of documentation and support for Mint/Ubuntu so you can pick up stuff pretty quickly. Once you get comfy with it you can always switch your distro to something else. But yeah there’s nothing wrong with starting on Mint to get a feel for it.
I have zero coding skills and recentky switched to Linux. From what I can tell the difference between different distros is completely negligible unless you’re a developer or a hardcore gamer. I settled on Kubuntu because out of the dozen or so distros I tried, it worked best on my machine and was similar enough to Windows for me to get to grips with very quickly.
The only coding I ever did was like, some very light HTML on stuff like LiveJournal 20 years ago (because I’m ancient in internet years, haha) and even that I barely remember.
Hi,
Fear not: I switched to Mint when I was already in my 50s… and before that I had been a lifelong Apple user (got my first Apple computer back in the early 80s).
I tried a few distro before settling on Mint and the only reason I picked it up was because, back then at least, it was the only one that would let me use my… Airpods, seriously. Fast forward a few years, to this very day, and you can be assured I would not want to go back to Apple. And I still am using Mint, as I never had any issue with it, not a single one (beside me doing stupid things, but hey that’s how one learns :p). It works perfectly well for me.
Not saying that as way to push you to use Mint. I mean, like others have already suggested there are plenty excellent GNU/Linux available and Mint is just one of them, but to let you know there is no need to be an expert in order to use it.
BTW, Mint is based upon Ubuntu (which is based upon Debian), the hate towards Ubuntu is because they force certain tools/choice onto their users which, unlike with Apple or Microsoft, is not something a lot of people in the Free Software world will agree with (I certainly don’t, as that’s the main reason I quit using Apple ;). Ubuntu is still an excellent distribution, just their policy doesn’t sit well with the freedom & choice Linux is supposed to be promoting.
You don’t need to know how to code to use Linux. It helps to know how to use the terminal, but you don’t even really need to know that anymore either.
Mint is a great choice. Fedora is another great choice, and it’s what I use. IMHO, Cinnamon (Mint) and KDE are easier to use coming from Windows than Gnome (Fedora). So yeah, I’d agree with the sentiments you’ve read and cited in your post. You can also use Cinnamon or KDE on Fedora if you like though.
Agree with everything you’re saying. I’m using Mint for a year now and never had to open the terminal. It’s a great distro.
I too have very limited coding ability and started with mint about a year ago myself. I think it’s a good OS. The different nomenclature confused me in the beginning, but ChatGPT is pretty reliable troubleshooting issues and I met plenty very helpful people on here that offered to teach me. You will be fine. Just a tip: back up your important data or at least don’t keep it on the same drive as your OS, because I broke mine in many, many curious ways when starting out, and had to reinstall a few times xD
Mint is good. It might be worth trying a few different desktop environments to see what you like - you can probably run all of the major ones from a LiveBoot device.
BUT, and this is VERY important, ypu do not need to do any programming or coding on a Linux desktop. Ever.
If you’re not a programmer then you are never forced to peel that onion. You can do EVERYTHING from a GUI if you want.
You’ll lose the ability to run some games and software, but between alternatives and emulation, that list is getting smaller.
You can do EVERYTHING from a GUI if you want.
Until you run into any sort of problem and all the solutions you can find are “do this command that i won’t explain and that and paste this cryptic series of letters here and this there and chant this unspeakable spell to summon dread cthulhu and then run this command with these arguments. it’s very human design.”
Commands are usually just easier ways of doing the thing, so that is usually what is told to people with problems.
Like you can browse through 5 menus and find the thing or paste the command and be done. If you don’t want to paste the command, then just look through settings/menus.
Cool, I’m not against that. It’s just the opposite of beginner-friendly.
Like you can browse through 5 menus and find the thing
I sure would’ve appreciated a guide on how to do that for, I don’t know, something so exotic und unusual like installing my tablet driver, just to get the thing working. So that next time I can find things on my own, learn the structure of the system by exploring stuff and see what else there is, instead of just mindlessly copy pasting some command. Efficiency in doing things can come later, after I’m settled in.
Using the command prompt is not coding. You sometimes need to use the command prompt in Windows to solve certain problems, the terminal in Linux is just easier to use and more powerful so it’s often an easier way to solve problems or get information.
Also, they’re all explained, you just don’t care to read the explanations. One of the best things about the Linux terminal is that most commands have exhaustive and clear documentation.
The command prompt is not a GUI.
I WOULD have cared to read the explanations, there just weren’t any or they sent me down a billion rabbit holes. Just yesterday in fact I did try Linux Mint (after having tried various Linux distributions over the years, ending in confusion every time). I hate (HATE) just following instructions without knowing why I’m doing what I’m doing so I tried very hard to understand every step. It was nothing but frustrating because my earlier post is only a slight exaggeration.
I relate. There’s a lot of people on Lemmy that feel Linux is better in every way over MacOS or Windows and it’s simply not true. I’m following some vague instructions right now to bring a device up-to-date that appear to be re-compiling kernel unexpectedly. I just wanted my display to rotate correctly, and be able to play some games.
(sorry, rant incoming)
See, I’d be absolutely willing to learn that Linux is indeed “better” than Windows (in fact, I do suspect it probably is - once you know your way around it). What annoys me absolutely endlessly is how people go on and on about how eeeeasy it all is and modern distros are juuuust like your current OS, really, and there’s absolutely zero need to be intimidated because it’s all so very intuitive and you can’t do anything wrong*! It isn’t easy. And it doesn’t have to be easy, I’d be okay with looking shit up - if explanations and guides didn’t assume you already know your way around the OS (“do cryptic thing xYz, duh”), if they weren’t out of date because they were published an entire month ago and if people didn’t pretend.
* I almost broke my display tablet in my Mint experiment because while trying to get the driver to work, I followed a guide that explained nothing (so for every step I looked up another guide which lead to another guide to another guide to another guide…). No I don’t know what went wrong because I don’t know what the guide was making me do. Luckily, I’m tech savvy enough to fix it on my own - under Windows.
Thank god I’m not the only one. I was convinced it was me! i used Mint for two months, and when everything works it’s good, but the second you encounter a problem it becomes a nightmare.
It’s been great for standard use, but yeah some things just get weird sometimes in every OS. 2 mint cinnamon OS’s acted different, over and over with power and lid settings. pop-os had stupid shit with an old laptop that no matter what I did the airplane mode would enable when you opened the screen, not closed. I use RustDesk for remote access across my machines and phone, where you install from matters, if you install from the software manager their website or the flatpack… You will have different results/features. Run your own server for it, now the docker container is continuously restarting. Fix that and my file server, jellyfin server, Pihole server, or something else is doing something wonky. It’s 100% my fault I’m trying to run to much off of one device, but once I get it all working I say hmm… What if I try to run a Piefed instance off of it, and realize no matter how I run the reverse proxy the incoming ports may have overlap. So I need to divide things up more.
Using the command prompt is not coding.
Ackshually, whenever you write something into the command prompt and it works, you’re writing valid Bash (or whatever shell you’re using) code. Bash is a programming language, so technically you are coding.
For example, try typing the following into a terminal:
for ((i = 0; i < 10; i++)); do echo $i; doneYou just counted to nine using a loop and a variable!
False, everyone knows that each program contains at least one branching, one loop and one bug. This “code” has only one loop. Therefore it is not a code, therefore it is not considered programing.
/s just in case
…a loop that breaks is technically has branching…
Sudo I don’t accept your lies.
Mint is a good option, yeah. Should feel familiar if you’re coming from windows.
Note that coding experience isn’t really relevant. Only the most advanced users ever really need to write code for their system. 99% of linux users, including the experienced and power users, don’t have to regularly code, per se. Note that I’m referring to actually writing programs, not terminal use. Using a terminal isn’t coding but that may be what you were thinking of, it’s similar but imo not the same. If you wanna do more advances stuff, you’ll definitely want to learn the terminal, but for most stuff you’ll get by just fine with GUIs like you’re probably used to. Mint is particularly good at keeping stuff to GUIs.
Something to note: coming from windows, you’ll be used to getting programs by finding downloads on the internet. On linux, that’s generally best avoided - you should always look on your distro’s package manager first. On mint is believe it’s called something like “software center” or “software manager,” can’t remember off the top of my head but it will be preinstalled for you.
Mint is a great starting point. I might also recommend having a look at KDE (the desktop environment) which will feel very familiar coming from windows and is available on quite a few distributions. I use it with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - less beginner friendly than Mint, but still an ok plafe to start.
First and foremost, you don’t have to stay on the distro you start with. You can try a few, spend a week running it, and then reinstall with something else. Distro hopping is the process if changing distro frequently and is in my opinion a very useful start for learning Linux.
Second, Ubuntu is a perfectly fine distro. I don’t like or use it, but I also don’t really like chocolate but love licorice, it really is a matter of preference. If you never try it you will never know if it is good for you.
I think the best path would be to either use virtual machines on your main system or try a few distros out on your Windows 8 machine. I would recommend trying a few of the most popular distros including Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, EndeavourOS, elementary, and maybe Pop!OS. That should cover most of the different desktop environments, packaging systems, and overall design methodologies and give you a really rounded sense of what is out there. It should also give you opportunities to have things break a little and for you to try to solve those problems. I find that different distros present failures a little differently and their solutions also work differently, so finding one that works well for you is key.
I personally ended up switching from a vanilla Arch install to EndeavourOS a year or two ago because it had great sane defaults, good packaging, and fantastic performance. The clarity of the logs was better in my mind than what was available in Ubuntu based distros and while I love Arch it was a bit too demanding of my time to figure out each and every choice of package. EndeavourOS gave me good solid defaults and reduced my work load.
Just remember, your choice of distro is like your choice of underwear. You have to wear it, make it comfortable for you and your junk, not for someone else’s.
I think the Ubuntu haters are overly enthusiastic. It’s perfectly fine. Actually pretty good.
Mint is extremely popular as a recommendation for good reasons as well.
Both have excellent support communities, which is important. Linux in general has become a lot more “plug and play” in recent years, meaning that it will do more of what you want right out of the box. In all likelihood, you will want to do something with it that requires help, so having a robust community makes a big difference.
Ubuntu or mint is a good beginners choice.
Once you get annoyed with snap packages or something else you can change it.
Linux mint is a good compatible baseline yes.
I don’t understand coding either and I’ve installed different Linux distributions before! You can do it! Are you perhaps confusing coding with running commands in the command line? Because even running commands may not be necessary for a graphical installations like the aforementioned Linux Mint, Pop OS or similar.
I will say the nice thing about picking a popular distribution like Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop! OS, is that it’s easier to find solutions to problems, because it’s more likely that someone has posted about it online and found a solution
I’ll go against the grain here and suggest Kubuntu. It’s an official variant of Ubuntu which swaps out the GNOME desktop environment for KDE Plasma. KDE feels much more Windows-like than GNOME, so it’s a great migration option for Windows users.
KDE also really focuses on creating a cohesive desktop environment, much more than other DEs. There are over 200 applications built specifically for KDE (https://apps.kde.org/) which try to maintain a common look and feel. You can of course run any Linux application on KDE, but there’s something quite nice about having applications built specifically with the DE in mind.
