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

  • @[email protected]
    15•1 month ago

    everybody recommending mint skipped over the fact that this is a convertible, i.e. has touch. mint/cinnamon/mate isn’t terribly optimized in that regard and is rocking X11, a headache a beginner doesn’t need nowadays. mint is a phenomenal choice for older laptops, but not this one.

    with a heavy heart, I’m recommending Ubuntu. it runs Gnome, which is a way more modern DE, runs on Wayland so has solid gestures and touch support, and lastly, it is very beginner friendly. you’ll be able to sort out any potential issue as that’s the most widely used distro and has solutions and tutorials for practically everything.

    once you’ve crossed over and gain some experience, you’ll inevitably start banging your head on the ceiling (snaps and such). by then you’ll have enough experience and knowledge to move to something better.

    • @[email protected]
      9•1 month ago

      honestly Ubuntu is getting too much shit by the Linux forum dwellers. it works great, is newbie friendly, and a lot of very specialized industry software, if they support any Linux whatsoever, it’s gonna be Ubuntu. I’ve started out with Ubuntu and if it wasn’t for them, i might not have sticked to it long enough to make it to arch by now

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 month ago

      The KDE spin of Fedora could be a good option if you want to avoid Canonical. KDE is also Wayland, though probably less touchscreen oriented than GNOME (which you can install on Fedora obviously, but a requirement to install a DE is not the most noob-friendly)

      • @[email protected]
        2•1 month ago

        I’m gonna disagree on both counts.

        I run fedora on my desktop and a bunch of laptops and have done so for years; I would never recommend it to a beginner, or even do the install and all the laborious post-install steps and then hand it over.

        Plasma is closer to a standard desktop paradigm, but it has its stupid choices that aren’t welcome on a laptop - FOUR finger gestures, really? why?! also, it’s way too configurable so it’s super-easy to fuck up something without an easy way to reset it.

        so, both the options you mentioned are natural progressions for an intermediate user, someone who started with an easy option like Ubuntu + Gnome, and then progressed because they don’t need the kiddie wheels no more; but not as first distro.