Hello!

I’m interested in moving my personal computer to running Linux but I’m not sure where to even begin. As background, I am a casual user and have a desktop with hardware from around 2014 running Windows. I am hoping to setup a NAS drive as a media server in the next year or so, offloading all of the files currently on the Windows desktop and have been interested in open source software such as Jellyfin. I also mostly game on an Xbox and Nintendo Switch, but have used the desktop in the past for gaming such as with an Oculus Rift Headset and some Steam games so not huge on getting games working on the computer. But, I do sometimes torrent using the computer so don’t want to lose that capability (especially with upkeep for the media server).

With all of that said, I didn’t know how to get started with choosing what Linux OS to use, setting it up, backing up my files to make sure I can use them with the new OS, etc. Making the switch seems to have great options for customization and “choosing a distro that works for you”, but I don’t know what would work for me or what will be user friendly for a beginner.

Any tips or pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

  • @Audacity9961@feddit.ch
    7•9 months ago

    I like Mint a lot, and have it running on one of my computers, even though it’s not my daily driver.

    However, I recently tried Zorin just to see what the fuss is about and honestly I can’t see many reasons to recommend Mint above Zorin to new users. Both are based on Ubuntu LTS and have a bunch of tools to allow purely graphical management and Zorin has several windows-like layouts (both 10 and 7) that are more polished in my view, but Zorin also has the benefit of a more modern compositor and DE base with Wayland support, being based on gnome and mutter.

    I’d be interested in your perspective, as from my end the only reason now to recommend mint (until muffin gets sufficiently modernised) would be if you knew a user would prefer cinnamon’s slightly more traditional feel (almost XP), or if in the future LMDE became more of an important feature.