So i was surprised today when my fiancee told me she was thinking about switching over to linux. Surprised because she is absolutely not technically minded, but also because she was weary about having Microsoft AI slop forced on her PC every update. ( i’m so proud!)
Now i’ve used a little linux but i’ve always been a holdout. Won’t stop me from moving someone else over but i have too much going on in my setup to deal with that right now. So i’m not super versed but i was able to give her the basic rundown of what distros are, concerns when switching, what may and may not be available, shes still on board so we’re doing this! Knowing her she would like to not have to transition too much, whats something fairly hands off and easy to learn. I’ve heard some good things about mint from hanging around you nerds the past few years but also some not so good things, any suggestions?
next concern is what kind of transfer process is this going to be? i have some spare HDD’s so we can try and get everything ported over but i’m so busy with school right now i can’t quite allocate the time to really deep dive this.
Any help is appreciated, cheers!
I’d suggest 0 change at first : boot on a live USB then connect with her Web accounts (e.g. Firefox Profile) then get an easy win. Sure not 100% will work but she’ll be 80% there in minutes. If she hates it, logout, reboot, remove key and that’s it.
Debian or Ubuntu because they’re stable and well-funded. Makes a lot of stuff easier.
While I’m here, I might as well figure out one for me, I usually stick to gaming and graphic design programs since I’m an artist. but honestly I do anything under the Sun and whatever my whims fancy so flexibility is a must
To add one more thing about Bazzite Gnome, as suggested above/below: next to it looking like Fedora, it comes with a thing built in called Distrobox, which is a way of quickly running different mini versions of Linux within Bazzite. This means you can run little Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora/Arch installations and use their package managers. If an app is missing on Bazzite, start up distrobox and install it there instead. It even works for GUI apps.
(This is more of a pro feature though- you don’t explicitly need it, but it gives you massive flexibility, which is normally hidden away.)
Try them all on distrosea.com
I vastly prefer/recommend stable LTS distros. There are really 2 main families of distros for this:
- Linux Mint / Ubuntu LTS / Debian Stable (Ubuntu is based on Debian, Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS):
Basically endless amount of packages. Most people in the linux world have some familiarity with these so it shouldn’t be hard to get help if you need it.
- Rocky linux / Almalinux / RHEL (Rocky and Alma aim to be compatible with RHEL software):
For desktop systems people usually opt for fedora, but that distro does not meet my own criteria. Biggest reason you’d use these is for professional VFX software support. For whatever reason a lot of that stuff only has official support for this family of distros. Not sure why!
Get good at 1 of these families of distros. If you aren’t vibing with one its okay to switch to the other. Both have more cutting edge options if you desire them.
Linux Mint is a community favorite and very much is built with a desktop user in mind, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to subject someone to learning any of the others even if they are more server focused. Everything I listed has atleast 5 years of support! If your fiancee isn’t super tech literate, you’ll probably be the one doing a lot of the system maintenance so keeping those major updates sparse is a very good thing. And of course, if you don’t wanna learn 2 different sets of tools, try and keep in the same family of distros.
Also, for desktop environment don’t choose anything crazy obscure. KDE & Gnome are most common, Cinnamon & XFCE are less common but IMO fine. Venture into others at your own peril.
Transfer process depends on what you mean. Transferring your files will probably just take time. I’m hopelessly unorganized so for me backing stuff up takes a few days of combing through a bunch of junk and copying to a flashdrive or cloud storage. Other people might have more efficient ways of dealing with this though.
If you mean software Libreoffice is great local office software, SMplayer is imo a good media player, GIMP, Inkscape, and Krita got art stuff covered. We’re also at the point you can more or less run most windows software on linux with enough fiddling, but that obviously isn’t ideal.
Your biggest hurdle moving to linux full time will be understanding commands when you inevitably do need to change configuration of something with the terminal. If you need help there are usually forums, IRC, matrix, etc.
Happy computing!
I will say right now unfortunately she will not be touching the terminal, that job will be placed squarely on me when something doesn’t work, I’m fairly comfortable in that environment at least if not that syntax
I have been thinking this for a while too and it’s a toss up between Fedora and Debian for a regular user and if you are gaming then something like PopOS or Bazzite I would want someone non-techy using something that is not a rolling release distro like Arch.
This really depends on her hardware specs and what applications she needs to use.
Without knowing any of that, I would suggest Linux Mint. It is desktop user focussed and a good general OS. It includes drivers and common software in their version of an app store.
Debian is my distro of choice, but is not ideal for a new Linux user.
I would suggest checking what apps she needs and making sure they are available on Linux, or that a close equivalent is. Any apps that will be replaced, try the replacement out on Windows first if available. For example Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape, or MS Office to Libre Office.
For data transfer:
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As others have said. Backup the current computer fully. This in probably best done on an external hard drive. Make sure you know how to reinstall windows and restore from the backup.
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Copy all her data onto a different external hard drive. This is not the backup. It is a separate drive.
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Make sure all the data is actually on the external hard drive and readable from a different machine. Ideally boot from a Lunx live USB and check that the data can be accessed from the external drive.
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Install her distro of choice.
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Copy her data from the external HDD to her user account’s home folder of newly installed Linux.
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Personally, I don’t think anyone new to Linux at this point, who isn’t tech-minded, should be pointed to an X11 environment. So until Mint devs have ported Muffin into a Wayland compositor, I wouldn’t recommend it. They’re used to a shiny experience visually, so I’d go with Plasma 6 running on Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Yeah I think mint advice is extremely dated, Bazzite or base Fedora is the way to go
Not a mint user myself, but I have helped a friend install it. The install script at the time would silently crash if it had issues with the network card name. Researching it I found that this had been reported 8 months before my friend ran into it, and a PR submitted, but was not even looked at for a month after. Sure, these are all (largely) unpaid volunteers, but if your objective is to be beginner friendly, stuff like that really shouldn’t be left sitting for so long.
Just straight up Bazzite to be honest.
Fedora by itself is too Puritan for stuff not fully foss in their default repos
I second the atomic Fedora ones with Plasma. Very stable system, updates run automatically like she is used to, and the Bazaar software center is a great and well organized central repository for flatpaks.
Bazzite
I’m a fan of the uBlue distros Bazzite (gaming), Aurora (KDE), and Bluefin (Gnome and software devs). Other than that, Mint, Fedora, or Pop beta if you want to try the new Cosmic desktop
Distro:
- First choice: Mint Cinnamon
- If the GPU is very shitty: Elementary OS (Mint Cinnamon expects a basic level of GPU performance)
- If Mint/Elementary are too simple: Fedora KDE
Process:
- For fully switching: Obtain an external hard drive, copy the contents of the Windows partition(s) to it and install your preferred distro so that it takes over the entire computer. This is the most stable way.
- For dual booting: Buy an SSD for Linux, disconnect the Windows drive and install your distro of choice so that it takes up the entire space. Reconnect the Windows drive afterwards and set boot priorities in UEFI.
One More Tip: Don’t frontload them with information, but teach them one thing: How search for and install packages through the GUI (Mint Software Manager/Elementary Store/KDE Discover). Tell them that it’s more like a smartphone apps and downloading software from websites should be a last resort.
LMDE for future proofing and stability. Sort of a comedy option, but it’s my distro of choice. As easy as Mint, as stable as Debian. I just don’t trust Ubuntu and since it’s a Debian based distro, why not take one more step…
Mint has basically contained bad decision making by Ubuntu and individual versions are supported for 5 years. The average computer lasts 6 before replacement.
Mint is fairly future proof I think.
Oh, I agree, nothing wrong with mint. I just like the fact that the LMDE version is Debian based and works with everything I’ve thrown it at.
Figure proof of they ever decide to switch away from Ubuntu and mainline LMDE. Probably won’t happen, but makes me feel better anyway :).
I would suggest whatever you pick, it should be a similar base to what you run or are most familiar with.
If you run something Debian based, you should recommend something Debian based. Fedora, Arch, etc.
The same is also true for desktop environments, if you use KDE, recommend KDE. If you run something not necessarily beginner friendly, recommend what you’re familiar with.
At some point you’re going to be asked questions, so the more familiar you are, the better for both of you.
If older computer that works fine, I’d get a new 780m (Amd) mini pc. They support 3+ monitors, have 2 network ports allowing to “daisy chain” the old computer. No transfering of anything, or worrying about getting old stuff still working.
Deskflow is a mouse/keyboard sharing app. If you keep old computer in sleep mode you don’t need extra keyboard/mouse, but power outages, mean that if you don’t have a floor standing old pc you can stack old keyboard/mouse on top of, then you will need to occasionally plug in keyboard and mouse into old computer to get deskflow restarted (if you don’t put it as autostart).
It’s far more convenient than dual booting. Can use resources from both computers in network, and seemless mouse/keyboard focus. Switching 1 monitor for occasional use is better than dual booting, because rebooting on older computers especially is slow.
Deskflow needs a modern kernal linux distribution. Ubuntu 24.04 is recent enough. Linux mint has not upgraded kernel yet. AFAIU, the only difference between mint (recommended here) and Ubuntu is a slightly prettier version of kde.
That sounds super cool! Unfortunately I’m a student again so we don’t have the money for extra machines, I do have my mini pc but it’s currently a dedicated jellyfin server
Gentoo
Fedora. I would not have said that two years, but I am blown away by how easy and up to date it is.
And I am normally an Arch person.
I also supprised myself a few years back when I ditched Arch Linux (after 10 years) for Fedora! I now use Fedora Silverblue, but would also reccomend having a look at the uBlue variants for different flavoring.
Yeah I ran it up on distrosea and was surprised how intuitive it already looked
KDE works perfectly on the KDE version which is official now. Updates are straight forward, lots of software available.
