Understanding Linux Switching: A Beginner's Manual (Your Input Valued)
Understanding Linux Switching: A Beginner's Manual (Your Input Valued)
There are a multitude of guides out there for picking a distro, installing Linux, and giving a very surface-level overview of how to get Linux onto your PC. What I've always felt was lacking was a guide that actually explained concepts to new users, and handed them the tools needed to confidently make the switch. This is my attempt to do just that. I've done my best not to make things overly technical, and not drown you in unfamiliar Linux terminology and concept s. Instead I've tried to just use plain language (even when it requires me to be a bit reductive) so that an average, 'tech literate but Linux novice' user can quickly intuit what I'm discussing. Your goal should not be to memorize everything in this guide all at once, but to get a rough understanding of how things work, and get a feel for what sounds like it is right for you. Useful Terminology: Spoiler Distro/Distribution - A complete operating system built around the Linux kernel, combining system tools, a package manager, defaults, and a philosophy. Different distros make different trade-offs (stability, ease of use, control, performance). Kernel - The innermost base of your operating system, where software calls get translated into hardware commands. This is where Linux bakes things like hardware support. Package Manager - A system tool that installs, updates, and removes software while managing dependencies automatically. It pulls software from trusted repositories rather than random websites. Repository - A curated collection of software packages maintained by a distro or third party. Package managers download software from repos. Desktop Environment - The full graphical interface: windows, panels, system settings, file manager, and default apps. This is what most people visually think of as “the OS.” ----- Release models for Linux: Spoiler There are a few categories, occasionally with blurred lines, which can help the user know what distros are worth investigating further. These aren't hard and fast defined categories, but my best attempt at grouping various distros based on how they operate day-to-day. Fixed Release (Conservative) These are distributions, which above all else, are emphasizing long-term support, stability, and a cautious update schedule to maximally reduce the chance of system breakage. This does come at the cost of a few things, especially support for new hardware releases, feature updates, and often, older versions of software. Notable Examples Include: Debian Stable, Ubuntu LTS, Linux Mint, Pop_OS!, ZorinOS, and Slackware Fixed Release (Leading-Edge) These are similar to the above category, but are separated by faster version updates, newer kernels, and more up-to-date software repositories. This still does come at the cost of the latest, *bleeding edge* updates, but generally provides a more balanced set of new features and stability. Notable Examples Include: Ubuntu, AnduinOS, Kubuntu, OpenSUSE Leap, Mageia, MX Linux Rolling Release These distributions are focused on providing continuous updates, as opposed to versioned releases. They sit at the bleeding edge of kernel development, and software revisions, and as such are the first place you will find support for new hardware, major bug-fixes, and new features. This in turn, means the user may encounter more breakage, bugs, stability issues, or regressions in performance. Notable Examples Include: Arch Linux, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, CatchyOS, Garuda Hybrid Release/Semi-rolling These are distributions, which as the name implies sit between Fixed Release and Rolling Release distributions. They may still offer major version releases, but may offer bleeding-edge in other areas, like software. Notable Examples Include: Fedora, Solus, KDE Neon, Debian Testing, Slackware-current, NixOS, Void Linux Immutable/Snapshot Releases These will generally fit in one of the above categories, but come with additional "protection" layers, like system snapshotting on updates, "Atomic" updates where all packages are upgraded at once, or the `/usr` directory is isolated from the rest of the system to help prevent breakage. Think of it as ways in which a distro is trying to reduce the chance for potential system breakage. This does occasionally feel restrictive if you want to be able to modify every part of your system. Notable Examples Include: Bazzite, Fedora Silverblue, VanillaOS, Bluefin You'll want to pick which category sounds best to you, and keep it in mind as you move to the next section. ----- Desktop Environments: Spoiler A Desktop Environment, or 'DE', is what most people associate with a given Linux distribution. It is responsible for the general "look and feel" of an operating system, as it is responsible for everything from how program windows look, to how settings are accessed, to even the default software options available to the user. Often, a particular distro and a DE are tightly entwined, with specific design philosophies overlapping and a small selection, or even a single DE being "officially" offered when you install your OS. GNOME GNOME aims for simple, intuitive, and accessible design, aiming to meet the needs of the widest group of users with minimal need for knowledge or training to use features. They do this by emphasizing simplicity in design, reduced effort to accomplish a specific task, a consistent look-and-feel, and robust accessibility features. Put another way, their goal is "Human-Centered Design". It's worth noting that GNOME only ships in it's "vanilla" state in a few distros, like Fedora Workstation, or when a user installs it on their own. Many users, and distros (like Ubuntu) will use a robust suite of extensions to add things like application docks, window controls, and themes. Screenshots: "Vanilla": Spoiler Ubuntu: Spoiler ZorinOS: Spoiler KDE Plasma KDE aims for a powerful, flexible, and a configurable desktop experience, right out of the box. They emphasize a consistent visual theme, with predictable UI patterns. They also empower the user with modular control, allowing the user to choose what tools, layout, and behaviors best suit their workflow. They also aim to bring an extremely robust application suite, all designed to integrate together for a rich, cohesive feature set. Screenshot: Spoiler XFCE XFCE aims to be lightweight, fast, and consume minimal system resources while providing the user with a complete desktop experience. It offers modular control over separate components, allowing you to combine them, or use them independently as desired while keeping a clean, composed experience. It also strives to be visually appealing, and consistent, while avoiding flashy animations or effects present in other DEs. Screenshot: Spoiler Cosmic Cosmic aims for powerful, flexible control of the desktop experience while supporting the latest features offered. It allows user-control over preferences like tiling versus floating windows, application dock and panel customization, and other workspace behavior while providing sensible defaults and reduced friction. Their goal is speed, and cohesion across a modern Linux Desktop. Screenshot: Spoiler Cinnamon Cinnamon was designed to give a 'conventional desktop layout' with a taskbar, and menu layout that is easy to learn. It offers a desktop experience with sensible defaults, smooth performance, and a user-friendly design. Their goal is a familiar experience to those with familiarity with previous desktops, like older Windows versions. Screenshot: Spoiler Budgie Budgie aims to provide a clean, straightforward, and visually clean desktop experience that avoids overwhelming users with options, or complexity. While the design of Budgie is intentionally familiar, there is care given to streamline layouts for maximal comfort and ease-of-use. Through cohesion, and a unified-experience, it aims to help users focus daily tasks and get work done, rather than fighting the environment. Screenshot: Spoiler Not technically a Desktop Environment, but still worth talking about would be: Window Managers/WM These are the components that control window behavior (placement, resizing, tiling). Instead of offering a full suite of applications, and settings, a WM simply aims to give a simple UI/UX functionality to running applications. Notable Examples Include: i3WM A tiling window manager for the long-standing X11 window system. It aims to put user-control at the center of design, leaving tiling behavior and window placement for the user to define in flexible configuration files. Another aim is its keyboard-centric design, emphasizing keyboard navigation and window management while leaving mouse-control as an optional extra. User customization, extendability, and efficiency are the key tenets of i3 design. Screenshot ( Credit /u/Programmeter Spoiler DWM A dynamic tiling manager for X11. Like other window managers, it aims to provide a lightweight, minimal and efficient experience. It does this by allowing users to rewrite and recompile a deliberately small source-code, eliminating complex configuration layers. DWM strives to dynamically swap between tiles, stacks, and monocle layouts, letting the environment adjust to running applications; instead of rigid layouts. Screenshot: Spoiler Hyprland A tiling window manager for the Wayland window system, which is gaining increased adoption. Tiling behavior and window placement is automatic, arranging windows in a dynamic layout. It aims for robust user customization, offered through editable configuration files. It also offers strong emphasis on smooth animations, and visual effects, also customization through configuration files. Screenshot ( Credit End4 ) : Spoiler Sway A tiling manager that intends to be a functional replacement for i3WM, brought to Wayland. The same user-definable design philosophy is front and center, emphasizing manual tiling, text-based configuration and customization, and optimization of workflows through keybindings. Screenshot: Spoiler Openbox A floating window manager for X11 designed to be small, fast, and run with minimal overhead. This makes it a strong fit for lightweight systems where simplicity and speed are the priority. Unlike tiling window managers, Openbox allows windows to "float" on-screen, as you'd experience in a traditional desktop. It does not provide traditional conveniences such as taskbars, trays, or panels, instead allowing the user to combine it with other desired programs to build the exact desired experience, rather than a monolithic desktop environment. Screenshot: Spoiler Got an idea of which one sounds best to you? Great! Combine "Release Model" + "Desktop Environment" and do a Google search, or head over to https://www.distrowatch.com/ to narrow down which distro fits your desired combo . ----- Installing Packages - Where does software come from?: Spoiler Unlike some traditional desktop operating systems, most Linux software is not distributed through fragmented executable files that you download from a website, and run to install. In practice, it operates a lot like what you'd experience on Android. There are centralized repositories of files (per distro) which your distro naturally point to, and can be installed either through your distro's appstore, or via the terminal. However, just like on Android, the "official" app store isn't the only way to get applications. Your distro will very likely just hand you whichever option is best suited for your system, but I feel it's useful to understand the differences in the different ways software is distributed. Repositories This is the 'default' set of applications your chosen distro will have access to. It is generally the preferred way to install an application. This is because they are tightly controlled, tested in your specific distribution, update with the rest of your system, and automatically will install any dependencies needed for the application to run. The only downside, is there is a slightly smaller subset of applications available, since it's generally not feasible to test every application with every update. Flatpaks These are another common, popular way to install applications. Instead of installing from your repositories, and installing all of the dependencies, Flatpaks are a 'sandboxed' application, compiled as a complete package that isolates itself from the rest of your system. This means it didn't have to be explicitly tested against your specific distro, while still offering a wide variety of applications. This significantly reduces the chance of system breakage if an app encounters a bug, or issue. These are often offered as an alternative, or additional method of installation inside your app store. There are however, a couple of downsides to flatpaks. One issue, is that because each application is "complete bundle", they will use more storage space per application than a more traditional program which can share system dependencies. The other, is that because they're sandboxed by default, there are occasionally permissions issues when accessing system directories and files until permissions are tweaked. Snaps Snaps are a Canonical (Ubuntu's parent company) alternative to flatpaks, intended for use across a wide variety of distributions, especially those deriving from Ubuntu. Like flatpaks, they are bundled applications, containing any needed resources, and are sandboxed/isolated programs. They are distributed through a centralized 'Snap Store' maintained by Canonical. There are, like flatpaks, some trade-offs. On Ubuntu-based distributions, it can be somewhat challenging to get repository-based applications, as opposed to the snap variant. They consume slightly more system resources, as the `snapd` service needs to be running at all times. They also tend to integrate less cleanly with system themes, and require similar permissions tweaks as flatpaks. AppImages AppImages are a portable application format for Linux, intended to let a piece of software to run on as many distributions as possible, without installation . AppImages don’t need root access or system changes. You can run them from your home directory, an external drive, or even a USB stick. Since the same AppImage can often run across many distributions and versions, it makes it easy for developers to distribute software without maintaining multiple packages. Because nothing is installed system-wide, there are no dependency conflicts, no risk of breaking the system, and no background services. They're also incredibly easy to remove, as deleting the file removes the application entirely. There are, of course, some downsides. AppImages don’t update themselves unless the developer implements an updater or the user uses external tools. Apps are typically downloaded from individual project websites, meaning you must trust the source. Like Flatpaks, or Snaps, they take up more disk space than repo-installed applications. They also are not sandboxed by default, making the trust of the source even more essential. AUR Exclusive to Arch-based distributions, the AUR or Arch User Repository is a collection of unofficial applications submitted by users, not verified or maintained by the Arch team. This allows for an extremely broad selection of software for the user to install, without the size bloat, version lag, permissions issues, or system resource cost of Flatpaks or Snaps. Like everything else, it comes with downsides. A primary downside is that because the Arch maintainers do not validate AUR package compatibility, it is possible for AUR applications, and even the OS itself to run into significant bugs, or stability issues. The more tightly integrated the application (like drivers), the higher the potential risk. Another clear downside is that you rely on community policing for malicious software. There has been malware distributed with the AUR in the past, and new users should be cautioned about installing unknown packages. Compilation Users may also find applications on resources like GitHub, and compile the program themselves. This is often the initial source for applications available on the AUR, and is one of the ways non-Arch distributions can gain access to these projects. This also allows for users to be more selective with installation options, installing only the pieces needed to get an application running. Some distributions, like Gentoo, even take things a step further and compile the entire distribution from source, allowing the user complete control over what components are, or are not installed. It also allows greater transparency and auditing of applications for security conscious users, or for those just curious how a piece of software works. Obviously, this is also the least user-friendly method of application installation. Compiling from source offers maximum flexibility and transparency, at the cost of time, responsibility, and maintenance effort. It also requires much of the same trust and verification needed for the AUR, but without the easy-update nature of AUR packages. It's not the first recommendation for a user, especially a new one, but it is a powerful option. You as a new user probably won't need to interact with all of these. As I said, your distro will generally make the choice for you, handing you a sensible default. Personally, my preference tends to be along the lines of: Repository, Flatpak, AUR, AppImage, then everything else . That seems to have been the best balance of stability, security, and ease of use. ----- Useful Resources - I need help, but I'm not sure how to find solutions?: Spoiler Linux is often intimidating to new users, because of a perception of complexity. In a world of limitless customization, there's a lot to navigate. The good news, is that most things you're likely to encounter are meticulously documented, with dedicated userbases, and active online communities. My intention with this guide has been to help guide you towards reasonable, well-known options. That way if you encounter a problem, there is documentation to read, threads to peruse, and users to ask for assistance. In that spirit, here are a few great resources to help nudge you in the right direction when you're stuck. ProtonDB Many people are hopping from Windows, but still want to play Windows games. ProtonDB is a robust resource with user feedback on how you can expect Steam games to run using proton. Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? Linux gaming's biggest hurdle, anti-cheat software holds back many popular multiplayer games from working on the OS. AWACY tracks what anti-cheat software already works, is working on support, or has refused to support Linux entirely. Archwiki The best documented Linux wiki out there. If you have a question regarding how a system component works, how a configuration file is set up, or even installation instructions for common software, the Archwiki has you covered. Even for non-Arch-based distros, it is an invaluable resource. /r/Linux4Noobs - As the name implies, this is a community dedicated to trying to help answer questions for new Linux users, assist in troubleshooting, and generally be a resource. When you're asking questions, just be sure to do it in such a way that gets answers . /r/Linux_Gaming Similar to Linux4Noobs, but with a focus on gaming on Linux. New game just released, and you're having issues getting it to run? Check here, you'll likely find a thread of people working through the issues. Official distro documentation Whether you're on Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Debian, Arch, OpenSUSE or some other distro, there's very likely some official documentation to be found if you go looking for it. Never hurts to at least give some keywords a quick CTRL+F to see if you can find more information. Official distro forums Most of the Linux communities I have participated in have been extremely helpful, and enthusiastic about assisting new users. Obviously "asking proper questions", just like before, is strongly recommended. Go search the forum, or ask a new question. Chances are someone is willing to help you out. LLMs This comes with some caveats, but LLMs are an extremely useful tool for diagnosing and troubleshooting Linux issues. You can give it errors, paste logs, and ask questions, and it will do it's best to parse things out and point you in the correct direction. Many simple Linux questions can be quickly solved by just asking an LLM. The important caveat would be not to blindly trust it's output, and just run random commands. I recommend asking it to search the internet, and try to point you to documentation that can help you solve your problem. This way you learn, and you can be more confident whatever answer you're given isn't just hallucinated nonsense. ----- Useful Software - My favorite programs aren't on Linux!: Spoiler This will hardly be an exhaustive list, but I'll try to give my favorite programs in a handful of categories I'd suggest you try. Browser Zen Browser Librewolf Brave Browser Ungoogled Chromium Video Player Celluloid Music Player Clementine Strawberry Office Suite LibreOffice OnlyOffice Collabora PDF Viewer Okular Notes Obsidian Messaging (Discord) Vesktop Game Launchers Steam - Steam Games Heroic Games Launcher - Epic, Amazon, GOG Lutris - Windows Apps/Games, CDs, .EXEs, Install Scripts Faugus Launcher - Windows Apps/Games Game Performance Overlay MangoHud Backup Tool Pika Backup Timeshift Snapper Video Editor KdenLive Davinci Resolve Video Converter Handbrake Video Downloader Video Downloader (Unrud) Parabolic Screenshot Flameshot Spectacle Video Screen Capture OBS GPU Screen Recorder (dec05eba) Photo Editor Affinity Photo (WINE) GIMP Photopea (Browser/Webapp) Pinta Windows Apps WINE Bottles Windows Virtual Machine Local Fileshare Localsend Syncthing Filezilla Warpinator Password Manager Bitwarden KeepassXD Utilities Btop - Resource/Process Monitor Winetricks - WINE editor Flatseal - Flatpak Permissions Editor Ghostty - Terminal Emulator Kitty - Terminal Emulator Web Apps - Linux Mint team's Web App creator Fedora Media Writer - create live USBs LACT - GPU Controller GPUViewer - GPU Information QDirStat - Storage Space Analyzer Torrent Client Qbittorrent Email Client Betterbird Evolution Remote Desktop Rust Desk App Launcher ULauncher Albert Walker Rofi KRunner ----- Linux sounds great, but surely there are downsides?: Spoiler You are 100% correct. It is unrealistic to expect Linux to be a direct 1-to-1 equivalent with other operating systems. Just like how Windows and Mac OS handle software, file management, and software support differently, Linux will be different from other operating systems. While there are a multitude of positive things that come from this difference, there are also some downsides that should be pointed out. Anti-Cheat This will hold many people back from wanting to adopt Linux. While I'd be happy to engage in a spirited debate on whether or not we should allow companies this level access to our systems, the reality is most anti-cheat software does not currently run on Linux. We have also seen some companies, like EA, take games which previously ran just fine and pull Linux support. Major franchises like League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Rainbow Six Siege, GTA V, and more WILL NOT work on Linux. You will either need to accept this, dual boot Windows, use game streaming, or stay on Windows. While we hope this changes as Linux adoption increases, this is the current reality. Adobe Suite This is another "software category" that currently isn't particularly easy to get working in Linux. There has been progress made recently but historically fixes like this have been somewhat fragile, so only time will tell if this is the fix Linux users have been waiting for. Generally, the solution is either to run this software in a VM, dual boot, use an alternative (such as some of what I listed above), or just stay on Windows. Microsoft Office While OnlyOffice has done quite a bit of work making sure formatting easily carries over between itself, and Microsoft Office, there really isn't a total replacement for Microsoft's Suite. You can use the browser version, you can use older versions in WINE, and you can use alternatives like I listed previously. If you truly rely on rock solid Microsoft Office support for your daily computing tasks, you might reconsider the swap to Linux. Hardware Support Hardware support in Linux is excellent , and has only gotten better over the years, but it is imperfect. Especially in devices like wireless cards, docking stations/docks, audio interfaces, and fingerprint readers, support issues do crop up now and again. It is strongly recommended that you research your particular setup, and test things in a live-USB before choosing to swap over. Sometimes it's just a matter of installing an extra driver package, sometimes it's more work than it's worth to get something working. Finding the headaches before you make your computer painful to use, however, is recommended. ----- I keep hearing about Nvidia driver issues, what's the deal with that? Spoiler There's a few different types of driver support in Linux. The reason Nvidia stands out is that among the GPU manufacturers, they're the only ones making things complicated. Kernel Drivers Most "drivers" as you'd think of them within Windows, are built directly into the Linux kernel. This means instead of needing to manually install discrete drivers for each vendor's card, support will be baked directly into kernel versions as they're released. amdgpu AMD is generally extremely cooperative when it comes to open source support. This makes it more simple for features to become available, for bugs to be found, and for general usage to work out of box reliably for most users. i915/xe Intel treats things in much the same way. They develop open source kernel drivers, work directly with the Linux kernel, and have fairly robust support for general usage right out of the box. nouveau This is the area where things get mildly more complex. While there is support for Nvidia cards built into the kernel, they've historically been less enthusiastic about open source support. While the amdgpu + Mesa aims for feature parity with the Windows driver versions, Nvidia refuses to give access to the firmware and documentation required to implement more advanced features, like dynamic clocking, and power management. It does work for graphical display, video playback and so forth, but is very limited when compared to the proprietary version. Userspace Drivers What is userspace? This is where all the normal programs run. Your DE, games, web browsers, media players all run in this layer. The userspace driver's role is to take commands from games, programs, etc, and translate that into work the GPU can process. Mesa Mesa is the exact layer I just described. It's the open source userspace graphical stack. It works in conjunction with amdgpu or nouveau to translate graphics APIs like OpenGL and Vulkan into work the GPU can process. Basically, [your game] talks to Mesa --> Mesa talks to amdgpu/nouveau --> amdgpu/nouveau gives commands to hardware. Nvidia Proprietary IMPORTANT NOTE: You do **NOT** generally want to install them from the website. Drivers installed through your distribution integrate better, and will update more smoothly. This is where Nvidia hides all the fancy features we appreciate them for, and what most users are recommended to install. Because Nvidia controls the entire stack, these drivers gain access to the advanced hardware features, better performance for graphical and compute loads, full power management, and things like CUDA. Generally you install these drivers through your distribution, often by enabling additional repositories. When these are installed, your system will default to them instead of the Mesa stack. So why am I hearing about performance disparities ? A few reasons. Version lag -- this has gotten better , but it's not uncommon for the Linux proprietary driver to lag slightly behind the Windows driver for feature updates and fixes. DX12 -- This gets pretty technical, but I'll try to explain it as straightforwardly as I can. The normal translation layer that translates API calls from DirectX into Vulkan commands the system can run on Linux (DXVK) is different for DX8-11 than it is for DX12. Instead, DX12 uses a different protocol called VKD3D-Proton. This process has not been as optimized, and it's not uncommon to see a 15-30% performance hit when compared to Windows. Notably, the same performance stack on AMD GPUs does not seem to exhibit the same behavior, so the issue lies somewhere in how the Nvidia driver interacts with the translation layer, and Vulkan. The good news is that this has been acknowledged and is being actively worked on by Nvidia, with some fixes already showing promising results in community testing. Hybrid Graphics Only generally relevant for laptops, where you typically have a low-power iGPU for low power consumption, and a high-power discrete GPU for demanding 3D workloads. This is generally similar to the Nvidia Optimus drivers in Windows. AMD handles this automatically out of the box, and for Nvidia this generally works once you get the proprietary drivers installed. PRIME Render Offload - A fancy utility that allows you to run individual apps on the discrete GPU, while leaving the iGPU for lower power needs, like the desktop. This is broadly the recommended way to handle hybrid graphics on modern Linux. Reverse PRIME - This only applies to a handful of laptop designs, but some laptops make things a bit more complex if you want to connect to an external display and wire the HDMI/Displayport only to the discrete GPU at the hardware level. This means it can take a little bit of extra configuration to get this working properly. There is quite a lot of documentation on how to get this set up, if you need to learn more. ----- Wayland? X11? What is a display server? Spoiler This is a subject most users won't have to spend too much time thinking about, if at all. The display server is the OS layer that sits between applications and your screen. It's responsible for drawing windows, handling keyboard and mouse input, and making sure programs can display graphics on your monitor. Basically, it decides what gets drawn, where it appears, and how input is delivered to the right program. There are two display systems that most users will encounter. X11, and Wayland. X11 X11, sometimes called XORG, is a very long-standing display server. It has been the backbone of Linux desktops for decades . It's mature, extremely compatible, and almost everything supports it. The downsides of X11 is while it is mature, it is also bringing with it decades of design baggage. This extends to everything from being less secure (by modern standards) to being much harder for developers to improve without breaking things. This means "obvious" features like fractional scaling, HDR, and VRR are unsupported, or supported through fragile workarounds. Wayland Wayland is the new kid on the block, designed to replace X11. It aims to cut out some of the "bloat" allowing the compositor to talk more directly to programs. This results in smoother rendering, and fewer weird edge cases. It more cleanly handles modern features like high-resolution displays, mixed refresh rates, touchpads and gestures. It also has a very forward thinking design philosophy, and is striving for robust support for HDR, VRR, and other future technologies. Obviously, it hasn't been without hiccups. Apps, for decades, have been designed with X11 in mind. This means older apps behave differently, or need compatibility layers like XWayland to bridge the gap. Screen recording, remote desktop, overlays, etc, have all had rough edges during development. This understandably turned many people off from Wayland in it's current state. Nvidia support also historically lagged behind in Wayland, as they've focused X11 development until quite recently. Thankfully Nvidia support is improving rapidly, and isn't something most users will likely need to concern themselves with. Do I need to pick X11 or Wayland? No, not generally. Your distro will usually select one or the other for you. You can also install both, and swap freely between them without needing to reinstall your OS. It *seems* as though most distros are trending towards Wayland. Valve has opted to use it for SteamOS. Nate Graham of KDE has said that 73% of KDE Plasma 6 users are using Wayland. Adoption of Wayland is only expected to rise as distributions like Ubuntu and Mint move over. ----- I read all this, I'm still not sure what I want. Can you just tell me what distro to install?: Spoiler I'd really prefer not to. I've tried to instead give you the tools you need to pick what sounds like it best fits your needs. I understand some people are going to get decision paralysis though, so I'll give a few extremely opinionated suggestions. If you don't like my pick, you should really consider returning to the release model and desktop environment sections of this guide, and finding a distro that matches which sounds most like what you want. ZorinOS (Basic) - ZorinOS is extremely beginner friendly, customizable, and is designed for new users coming to Linux. This is as close as you are likely to get to "it just works". Bazzite - Bazzite is everything good about SteamOS, but with the option for more broad hardware support, like Nvidia graphics cards, out of the box. It's immutable nature makes it difficult for new users to accidentally break things, and it's dedicated userbase is a great resource if you get stuck. Fedora KDE - KDE is user-friendly, customizable, and familiar to those coming from Windows. Fedora strikes a great balance between stable version releases, and a rolling selection of software that allows new features to arrive more frequently than what you'd typically find on stable distros. Just be aware, if you have an Nvidia card you'll need to enable the RPMFusion repository to get the better, proprietary drivers installed. There is an excellent guide available on Fedora's website. EndeavourOS - "Arch Linux with a good installer" is how I'd describe EndeavourOS. It is a nearly vanilla Arch Linux install, with the option for several desktop environments, and a few minor QoL tweaks that help reduce the overall setup time of Arch Linux. This is a distro where using the terminal is not going to be optional, but will give you the opportunity to learn more about how Linux works. While it's not my first pick for a new user, maybe it's exactly what you're looking for. Still not happy with my suggestions? Good news! There are 1000 other guides out there will insist you're "using Linux wrong" unless you pick a distro they happen to like. The reality is, it doesn't matter that much what distro you choose. Many decisions, like your desktop environment, can be changed down the road if you change your mind. Linux will take you a bit of time to get used to, but I find it to be a rewarding way to engage with tech. Just pick something, and give it a try! Sidenote: Apologies for any formatting weirdness. I originally typed this out in Obsidian, but had to redo a bunch of that formatting for the forum. I've tried to catch any weirdness, but if I've missed something at least you'll know why. Edit: Added some photos, as suggested by @Dutch_Master and incorporated some of the suggestions from @Potatoes__ also added more detailed GPU driver info, as suggested by a few people now.
Create a short clip highlighting your work, keep the images engaging and clear
Absolutely, this was a tough one. I kept revisiting it many times to see what could be cut without losing clarity. It's challenging to simplify a complicated subject with so many elements into something concise. Hopefully, the forum had better support for collapsible headers like Obsidian, which would have made it much easier to read.
It's clear what needs fixing. I should have considered it earlier. Nice move.
The method described is more effective, similar to the approach shown on the website you linked.
They reference it in a few earlier posts. Javascript is restricted to staff members.
Imagine seeing a sleek Ubuntu interface with the Gnome desktop, paired with a short video showing each main chapter in action. This visual guide would make exploring the content much more engaging!
It seems the subject is often confusing because people expect simple choices. Linux is powerful and reliable, yet switching can feel daunting. For most users, especially in a small team or business setting, sticking with familiar systems like Windows makes more sense. I understand the frustration—balancing learning new tools while managing daily tasks is tough. If you're open to it, we can explore ways to make Linux more approachable without abandoning the ease of Windows.