The standard version of Linux mint is with Cinnamon. Desktop environments are basically how your desktop looks. Cinnamon looks similar to Windows, and Mint is newbie friendly, so you will have no problem moving.
Linux has a bunch of different “desktop environments” (user interfaces that look and act somewhat different). Cinnamon is one of them that happens to feel relatively familiar to folks migrating from Windows.
(If you want to get a feel for what different DEs are like, try downloading different variants of the Ubuntu distribution — plain Ubuntu (with the GNOME DE), Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE), etc. — which differ only in which DE they come with by default. Run them straight off a flash drive to try them out.)
Personally, I tend to use KDE, but it’s a choice very much based on personal taste rather than any objective superiority of one DE over another.
Starting out I’d say linux mint with a cinnamon desktop.
What’s a cinnamon desktop?
The standard version of Linux mint is with Cinnamon. Desktop environments are basically how your desktop looks. Cinnamon looks similar to Windows, and Mint is newbie friendly, so you will have no problem moving.
Linux has a bunch of different “desktop environments” (user interfaces that look and act somewhat different). Cinnamon is one of them that happens to feel relatively familiar to folks migrating from Windows.
(If you want to get a feel for what different DEs are like, try downloading different variants of the Ubuntu distribution — plain Ubuntu (with the GNOME DE), Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE), etc. — which differ only in which DE they come with by default. Run them straight off a flash drive to try them out.)
Personally, I tend to use KDE, but it’s a choice very much based on personal taste rather than any objective superiority of one DE over another.