I would recommend Linux Mint. Yes it’s faster to update than Debian, but it doesn’t push the envelope nearly as fast as Fedora or Arch based distros.
Linux mint is just super easy, user friendly, you could use Mint without ever touching a terminal if you wanted. BSD would be a great pet project to fiddle with, but if you’re looking for a rock solid backup machine with zero fuss, Mint is perfect for that.
I spent my first year of Linux installing a new distro, or same distro with a different DE probably every other week, sometimes more than once in a week. The Linux ecosystem rewards self starters with curiosity and the ability to search for answers.
LearnLinuxTV is an amazing YouTube channel, high quality distro tours and reviews, as well as tutorials at various levels of mastery. ItsFOSS and Phoronix are great sources for Linux news that help you build some awareness and vocabulary. The official forums of almost every distro are extremely helpful places to find solutions to problems. You just kinda have to be motivated to seek out the answers you need as they arise.
That’s one thing I find particularly neat about Fedora, it has all of these software package groups that can be either added on at install, or installed at any time, including:
3D Printing
Administration Tools
Audio Production
Authoring and Publishing
Books and Guides
C Development Tools and Libraries
Cloud Infrastructure
Cloud Management Tools
Container Management
D Development Tools and Libraries
Design Suite
Development Tools
Domain Membership
Fedora Eclipse
Editors
Educational Software
Electronic Lab
Engineering and Scientific
FreeIPA Server
Games and Entertainment
Headless Management
LibreOffice
MATE Applications
MATE Compiz
Medical Applications
Milkymist
Network Servers
Office/Productivity
Robotics
RPM Development Tools
Security Lab
Sound and Video
System Tools
Text-based Internet
Window Managers
I got a laptop with a touch screen for a young kid in my family, installed Fedora Workstation with its native Gnome desktop, and touch worked great without any tinkering.
Gnomes workflow is a big departure from windows, but with its gesture navigation on a trackpad, I think it’s a highly superior way to use a laptop. My desktop gets KDE Plasma, but if I had a laptop it would use gnome
It’s just a generally solid, stable, and easy to use distro. I use EndeavourOS nowadays, but when I was first getting started Mint was what I always returned to after spats of distro hopping. As far as it’s primary DE, Cinnamon, it’s less “windows like” and more “not gnome like”. Every DE that isn’t gnome could be called “windows like” in my experience.
Congrats and welcome. If you haven’t already, make an account on the forum. It’s super friendly and helpful. I’ve been on EOS for about three months now, and it’s the best Linux experience I’ve ever had.
I’ve been considering upgrading from my gaming laptop (intel/nvidia) with a secondary monitor to a monstrously specced out Thelio Major with a Ryzen 9 and RX7900. I have more money than time to build, I like the idea of coreboot and supporting system 76 as a company.
I’ve dealt with a slew of multi monitor issues already and my big hope for this new machine (aside from it being a gaming rig with some longevity spec wise) was that most of these display issues would be a thing of the past.
Reading this has me feeling a little crestfallen. Is this what I should expect from newer team red components? I usually run EndeavourOS and would probably install it before even booting Pop! which I’ve used and don’t really care for.
Thanks for the great share. I try to convince my loved ones of the value of even small, low effort ways to control their data slug trail. They don’t get it. Not even a little bit. And the vast majority of people won’t care until we’re all living in a black mirror episode.
Are we already living in a black mirror episode? Fuck.
Love it when people speak with authority and are confidently incorrect. Eugenia is right.
You could potentially use flatseal to grant the flatpak the necessary permissions, and you might find out what those permissions are by looking for other users experiences with the flatpak version.
Or, you find the .deb file and it installs natively without being sandboxed. OR, you can find a PPA repository for it, load said repository and install your software.
But those things require learning a little. Linux rewards self starters who can use a search engine and forums. Hope this maybe points you in the right direction.