I've always been a Windows guy, but the latest stuff from Microsoft about integrating AI into Windows has started me thinking about alternatives. Apple will surely be thinking along the same lines as Microsoft, which leaves Linux.Â
Does anyone have any Linux distro recommendations? I'm mostly interested in ease of use, and I would probably keep a Windows machine for things like Zwift.
Ubuntu and Mint are the obvious choices, both nice and easy to get running
I suspect if ease of use is the priority then it will be easier to stick with Windows and disable the features you don't want. TBH this has always been the case with Windows. Every time a new version there is a tonne of information and chat about how to disable all the new features.
That said, Linux is free to try so you might as well have a play and see.
I suspect if ease of use is the priority then it will be easier to stick with Windows and disable the features you don't want. TBH this has always been the case with Windows.
This.
What they said.
Remember with most distros you can build it to a bootable USB, so you can 'try before you buy' so to speak. Try a few and install what you're happy with.
 Zorin or Mint would be my suggestion. I agree with the others though, sticking with Win is by far the easier option. But no pain, no gain!
I've just switched from W11 to Fedora KDE for similar reasons as OP. It's beautiful and fast, but some technical expertise (or willingness to Google) is required. Zorin or Mint are much easier to get started with.Â
IMHO the quality of Windows has nosedived recently. I've had some pretty show stopping problems introduced by updates (e.g. completely broken login screen, start menu broken due to Copilot, tabbed explorer windows keep freezing).Â
I suspect if ease of use is the priority then it will be easier to stick with Windows and disable the features you don't want. TBH this has always been the case with Windows. Every time a new version there is a tonne of information and chat about how to disable all the new features.
That said, Linux is free to try so you might as well have a play and see.
And just to be awkward - absolutely not this.
I've no idea what people think installing and using a newish Linux distro is like but even for people reasonably familiar with windows the Linux process is much easier than playing AI/bullshit whackamole on windows 11.Â
I use Zorin OS across 3 computers but Mint is also pretty user-friendly, Ubuntu is a bit different but not difficult and Cosmic PopOS also seemed really easy to get on with and looks pretty funky. In order of preference I tend to go Zorin, Cosmic, mint, Ubuntu but you can6go wrong with any of them.
Also, whilst you can try before you "buy" with a usb live disc I'm increasingly of the opinion that you should just pick one of the four distros I've listed, at random if needs be, install it and go from there - you'll get full performance and if you want to try installing a new distro it still only takes 30mins max.
Thanks all. For a bit more context I'm not a complete technical noob, and my motive is a mix of increasing disillusionment with the enshittification of tech generally, wanting to be less dependent on big tech, and more recently US big tech in particular. And yes, I'm well aware of how the world basically runs on US big tech.Â
I occasionally think about doing this, but some of the stuff I use (games, mostly but also some photo and video software doesn't run on Linux, so I've never bothered.Â
There are versions of win 10 (still supported by MS) and Win 11 without all the bloatware and privacy concerns, google LTSC windows - might be another consideration ?
I swapped to linux nearly twenty years ago. Absolutely no regrets.
And just to be awkward - absolutely not this.
I've no idea what people think installing and using a newish Linux distro is like but even for people reasonably familiar with windows the Linux process is much easier than playing AI/bullshit whackamole on windows 11.Â
... in your opinion.
I know my way around Linux but I have 35 years experience with Windows at a technical level. Installing Linux can be fairly painless but I know where my confidences lie.
Also, whilst you can try before you "buy" with a usb live disc I'm increasingly of the opinion that you should just pick one of the four distros I've listed, at random if needs be, install it and go from there - you'll get full performance and if you want to try installing a new distro it still only takes 30mins max.
And if you don't get on with Linux at all, you've just nuked your Windows partition. Which isn't a showstopper but is a consideration.
"you've just nuked your windows partition"
Yes. Yes you have.
And this is why recommendations from fanboys is problematic.
I tried Ubuntu years back and it was ok but I couldn't update my Garmin satnav because they didn't have a Linux program. Ended up binning it off as the convenience of Windows was too strong.Â
I've just installed Zorin on an older laptop that the child is using for homework etc and it's soooo much nicer, smoother and quicker to use.
I have a 2012 i7 MacBook Air that can't run anything secure in the macOS world. After a few distro's today, I've settled on Fedora. It's a nice UI, pretty nippy compared to the Mac OS, and has most things I need- libra office, Firefox, etc. Can connect it to onedrive and the home NAS if I want to. It's just going to be sat in my shed at the moment for those "how to" video moments.
It's different enough tho from what I'm used to, I wouldn't swap my other devices over. But it's a great use for an old machine. Â Apart from some fenagling with WiFi support, it was really easy. Loads of help on the web. And I am not a unix expert.
Another thing to consider is any unix distro (from what IU've read) is pretty heavy on battery compared to native OS. This is a tired old batt but I'm getting 2-3 hours v 4-5 when I had it running macOS. Not an issue for me, but...
And this is why recommendations from fanboys is problematic.
Lol, I've never been a fanboy before - it's exciting!
linux is fine if you want to produce documents and browse. step off piste though and you're in to a world of forums. which is fine if using computers is your hobby. i've been admonished for posting links to 'dodgy software' before, so here's a link to an article on a reasonably well respected website : https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/22/windows_10_ltsc/
I've always been a Windows guy, but the latest stuff from Microsoft about integrating AI into Windows has started me thinking about alternatives. Apple will surely be thinking along the same lines as Microsoft, which leaves Linux.Â
Does anyone have any Linux distro recommendations? I'm mostly interested in ease of use, and I would probably keep a Windows machine for things like Zwift.
Obviously it depends what you want to do. If you're just browsing the web, reading emails and running a word processor (open/libre office) then it's very straight forward.
If you have any weird requirements or a printer that won't work on Windows, you'll have a less fun time. eg you want to run a specific windows program and can't use anything else. It'll probably work on wine, but it might be a pain to get working. Â
Make sure you take backups of anything before you do any installing. In fact take backups, it's a good idea regardless.
As for the distro, just stick with Ubuntu, it's the most popular by a long way. It's also the easiest to get support for due to it's popularity.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy again - Zorin will make suggestions for software alternatives if you search their app store for something they don't have a native version of.
This is usually what people mean when they say they "can't" do something on Linux, it's generally more like they won't use an alternative because they're used to a windows only option. Obviously some people are forced to use something by work etc but for a lot of people it's just habit and inertia.
I've just installed Zorin on an older laptop
Zorin looks interesting. It looks to be pitched as a Windows / MacOS replacement. I'll have to have a play with that.
Lol, I've never been a fanboy before - it's exciting!
It's the difference between objective and subjective advice. Â
here's a link to an article on a reasonably well respected website :
If you want to stay with Windows 10 - I did, mostly - then there are options. The El Reg article there is a reasonable pros & cons overview of a couple of them.
At this point in time I'm seeing less and less compelling arguments in favour of W11 at a general use level and more reasons not to; I do not believe that history will be kind to it. I have W11 machines here and there are areas where I need W11 (ironically its WSL2 integration is a lot cleaner), but for me personally I'm using W10 or Linux wherever practical.
"It's the difference between objective and subjective advice."
It's preferences on an OS inc ethics, corporate ownership and a multitude of other factors - it's pretty much subjective by definition.
Kinda my point, yes.
At this point in time I'm seeing less and less compelling arguments in favour of W11 at a general use level and more reasons not to; I do not believe that history will be kind to it. I have W11 machines here and there are areas where I need W11 (ironically its WSL2 integration is a lot cleaner), but for me personally I'm using W10 or Linux wherever practical.
For me 11 has been a bit of a step backwards. I really really like certain things on it - tabbed Explorer, more window snapping options, better HDR support, but other than that, not great.
I'm taking some liberties leaving out the NT line I guess but there does seem to be some truth to the meme...
95 good
98 dud
98SE good
millenium dud
xp good
vista dud
7 good
8 dud
10 good
11 dud
@IvanDobski - thanks for the Zorin plug. Installed on the old macbook air and selected the theme closest to macOS. Â Seems slick and fast. Even using the native Brave browser over FireFox. Battery life is at least 2x the other distro's I tried.
Well I'm very happy with Zorin. Running some kind of hooky whatsapp, youtube and a browser. Installed as Shed-AI 🙂
Even works with my Sonos Roam in there.Â
I've just switched from W11 to Fedora KDE for similar reasons as OP. It's beautiful and fast, but some technical expertise (or willingness to Google) is required. Zorin or Mint are much easier to get started with.Â
Quick update on my progress with Fedora / KDE version.Â
-All hardware is working. Performance is great, the desktop is silky smooth and very snappy. Right clicking something, the menu opens immediately for example.
-My laptop has onboard AMD graphics and an NVidia discrete GPU, I had to manually install the NVidia drivers since the laptop has Secure Boot enabled. Once done, it automatically uses the NVidia card for graphics apps and you can override this with a program called switcheroo (typical open source software name giving zero clues that it's anything to do with the GPU!)
-Fedora is quite bleeding edge so there are occasional problems with the software but nothing show-stopping. The most common is Dragon (video player) crashing when you close it after watching a movie, then also failing to submit a crash report. I just use VLC or SMPlayer instead.Â
-Power stuff all works (e.g. unplugging dims the screen and switches GPUs & CPU to low power mode), sleep works, etc.
-The HP closed source printer driver/GUI is not great
-LibreOffice is an imperial butt-tonne better than last time I used it. Fedora does not include the Microsoft fonts so you need to install those manually. Once that's done, all the documents I've opened have looked correct.
So overall, I would not recommend Fedora for a newbie or somebody needing Windows compatibility out of the box but very positive.Â
My only real complaint is power usage, it is definitely giving me a shorter battery life than W11 by 10-20%, and it seems to drain more when sleeping.
-The HP closed source printer driver/GUI is not great
To be fair, its Windows sibling is hardly a poster boy for quality appage either.
A few days of Zorin (after I sacked off Fedora) I am really happy with it. Snappy performance, intuitive as in close enough to what I'm used to to make it pretty seamless switching from a Mac. Thunderbird email client is good, doubt I'll use it much but all email accounts authenticated fine with little manual wrangling. No native Spoitfy of course, but I tend only to listen to podcasts in the shed and tehre's a good app for that, Â or I could use web spotify client which I've tested.
No current issues with hardware, wifi seems solid, audio drivers all good, battery life is stellar, getting around 5.5 hours (a lot less if I'm just watching vids) and that's a 12 year old battery with a lot of cycles.
I've never tried Fedora, as it's known to be a bit more nerdy to operate!
I've used mint, ubuntu, bazzite and Nobara all with good results... this threads reminded me actually, Ive got a spare 500gb drive in my machine that I used for linux but I need to reinstal one when I get round to it.
I think I'll continue to dual boot windows and linux but it's really at a point know where I can do 99% of what I want in linux, so I can basically use linux most of the time and fire up windows for the odd thing.
Is there a way to get a tablet experience with Linux?
I did try Zorin on USB in the past on a microsoft Surface Pro 3 and it worked well but very much a desktop visual. I use it for browsing and playing music only as it is old and the keyboard died years ago.
Is there a way to get a tablet experience with Linux?
I did try Zorin on USB in the past on a microsoft Surface Pro 3 and it worked well but very much a desktop visual. I use it for browsing and playing music only as it is old and the keyboard died years ago.
Basically yes, some info here:
https://linuxvox.com/blog/linux-for-surface-pro/
I suspect touchscreen might be the major thing to check, but that article seems to suggest Ubuntu. maybe do some googling, theres plenty of results searching for "linux on surface pro"
I'd run it from USB first before installing it properly to check stuff like that, but bear in mind runing an operating system from a flash drive wont perform aswell as if its installed properly.
No native Spoitfy of course, but I tend only to listen to podcasts in the shed and tehre's a good app for that, Â or I could use web spotify client which I've tested.
https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/
Must admit i haven't used it recently as I now always stream from my phone, but I used this years and years back and it was excellent
@multi21 thanks, I must have missed that. I'll give it a try although the web version works just fine.Â
@jp-t853 - I think if you get Zorin Pro, one of the extra themes is more tablet focused. Don't quote me on that and I'm not sure if it's tablet compatible as such or just looks like it is. Worth looking into though I'd say.
That said, I'm using an old Lenovo yoga flip laptop thing and the touchscreen works absolutely fine with that out of the box so it's imagine even if it is just a tablet theme it should work fairly well.
@Alex - not the same as an actual app but you can set websites up as web apps and treat them as you would an app app in terms of launching it etc.
Thanks for the updates
Touchscreen worked fine on Zorin and it would be ok but bigger buttons would be nice. I maybe just needed to play with the resolution or theme
I've recently started using Bazzite on a new build having not been on Linux since just after W7 released.
The whole experience feels much more mature from install onwards, and in terms of running games it is a massive leap forward. I've needed to search for a few fixes / run a few shell commands but that's not something exclusive to Linux.
Having just setup W11 on some older hardware for a friend, I had seemingly random crashes ;leading to a cycle of restarts & restores. The error code was pretty generic with about 5 different root causes to work through before I found the right fix. There was several CMD actions to run.
I think the one downside to Linux for a newbie is just the amount of choice, which can lead to confusion. It is also undoubtably one of the strengths once you get used to it though.
For example on Bazzite I can seemingly install things at least 3 ways, all of which I've had to use (and I am pretty sure there are more even on Bazzite e.g. a flatpak) i.e. the GUI package manager, using ujust command line and using an AppIamge.Â
One reason I don't recommend distros to noob much these days is because I've ended up on Arch (btw 😉 ), and not run Mint/Ubuntu/etc for ages.
PopOS was one I would have recommended (I actually have that on the lappy still), mainly because it's Ubuntu based (like Mint is, and Zorin?), and the fact that System76 need to fully support their own experience ot they go bust. But they spent a bit too much effort on their new GUI instead of keeping the very good experience fully up to date.
Problem with Package managers is that if ever there is a push to create the one true package manager for everything, you simply end up with N+1 package managers. Maybe, just maybe the Bazzite/Bluefin/Aurora family might be the trigger to make Homebrew the defacto cross-platform package manager. If not then they end up with 3 ways to install, and as someone who's used Linux since Debian was experimental, even I am not 100% sure which I am supposed to use or in which order. I think Flatpak, Homebrew, Distrobox (but I'm willing to be correct by those who have used Bazzite/Bluefin/Aurora)
I just got a new fake Chinese NUC for less money than one can buy the 32Gb of RAM that's inside it. Plan was to try Zorin cos I hear good things, and Bluefin on a different SSD (although if I was a gamer, then Bazzite, which is from the same team), to see if I get on with the different mentaility and overcome the issues I had with sandboxed apps before. Then I might be able to recommend something other than Mint.
I put Mint onto an old Dell laptop last night and everything seems to be working okay.
Gradually psyching myself up to switch my main laptop to Mint as well.
I have backed up all of the photos/music/documents, etc.
Just need to think what else I need to do before the big switch over.
I've just installed Zorin on an old windows laptop. I've set it up as a dual boot laptop. It was pretty straightforward to do. I can't see me using the Windows 11 OS too often now.
Spotify was in the software catalog and loaded through the UI. No terminal required. It also gave me a reason to tidy up that end of the shed which had become a bit of a dumping ground for random stuff I needed a home for. Â I even watched a vid when I was working on the BfE, way better than loading it on my phone.
Spotify was in the software catalog and loaded through the UI. No terminal required. It also gave me a reason to tidy up that end of the shed which had become a bit of a dumping ground for random stuff I needed a home for. Â I even watched a vid when I was working on the BfE, way better than loading it on my phone.
Yeah spotify is in the app store thingy for mint, also.
