Are there any good resources for helping someone getting into Linux? One of my friends I never thought would get into Linux is asking me for help. He specifically is an advanced Windows power user. I also had someone who was a complete noob, even to Windows.
For the noob, I suggested LMDE and Kubuntu and they’ve been having some issues installing LMDE.
For the power user, I suggested the easy distros such as lmde, kubuntu, nobara but also told them if they wanted to jump into the deep end, arch is cool.
However, my suggestions don’t even cover DEs, WMs or what they even are. I just wish there was a good guide out there. I think that’s the biggest hurdle, so many options and not knowing what to pick.
The best way to get into Linux is just to use it. Overthinking it or trying to find nuggets of important info with guides will just make it harder. I’m saying this as someone who was Windows only until a few years ago. I didn’t need to know what DEs or WMs were until I wanted to interact with them, so overwhelming a newbie with info dumps will probably just dissuade them from using Linux.
Right now, I highly recommend Neon right over those two other distros for beginners and I’ll explain why.
LMDE is fine but it uses Cinnamon as its DE, which is only really used in LM and therefore has a lot of idiosyncrasies that make it hard to compare to more popular DEs like Plasma and Gnome. A lot of people recommend LM for beginners but I feel like that’s a big mistake predicated on it being the most like Windows.
Kubuntu is fine but it uses Snaps for its packages, which are unique to Ubuntu and, again, have their own idiosyncrasies compared to Deb packages or Flatpaks. It kinda sets newbies up for that ecosystem which I think is a bad way to learn.
Neon is my recommendation because it ships with the (mostly) sensible defaults of Ubuntu, but uses Deb packages and Flatpaks instead of Snaps. It also uses Plasma as its DE which is great for beginners but also extremely flexible, deep, and popular. Only downside is that a new major version of Plasma just released so there may be bugs, but from my experience using it for a few months the only ones I’ve encountered are minor visual ones that usually resolve themselves.