I was hoping someone could give a recommendation for a noob friendly distro that works well on my laptop, an HP Envy x360 Convertible 15m-es0xxx, i7 16 GB RAM. Thanks for your help and I apologize if these questions aren’t allowed here

  • Lettuce eat lettuce
    8•4 days ago

    Noob friendly? Linux Mint. It’s not the prettiest, but it looks nice enough, especially if you tweak the themes a little, which is super easy.

    It’s a fantastic all-around distro, and if you use the default Cinnamon desktop environment, it’s rock stable and super easy to navigate.

    It’s what I use on all my personal laptops and also what I set my parents up with when I switched them from Windows to Linux.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•4 days ago

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZf1-bLIHY

      This is a pretty good start to make Mint (Cinnamon) look better.

      Its basically mall built-in tools.

      I ended up just putting icons in the middle (to prepare for works Win11 enshitification).

      I also put a user button near the time to allow shutdown and removed the god awful power icons from the start menu (or whatever the app launcher is called).

      Theres also an extend thin for a bigger start menu more like a grid but thats personal preference.

      I think mint should do some of these things so its not so off putting. It held me back forming for so long but IRS much better.

      I prefer mint over fedora. Fedora dosnt seem to have as many apps in the store. Yes you can use a terminal but thats not helping linux become mainstream, mint is.

      +1 mint also prompts new users to setup timeshift backups.

    • @[email protected]
      1•4 days ago

      Also OP, if you want pretty and Cinnamon can’t do it for ya, you can always install KDE (my fav!) or GNOME or what have you right on top of your existing system.

      Research before doing so! But it’s possible. :)