So ive use windows pretty much for everything and ive kinda had a enough of windows. i was thinking of trying linux on an old laptop that i just upgraded to 8gb of ram and im not sure wha tos to put on it. i was thinking something lightweight maybe ubuntu mate? i need somethign like windows that will allow me to game and do other things liek gaming maybe even streaming or reading? idk. also what are some neede dsoftware, browser so rthigs needed for linux. i com efrom a family who has never trie dlinux and hates it because its “the smar advanced coders os” somethign liek that.
anyways im a noob so go easy on me please als i may have ben linux distro hopping but i still feel lost.
Linux mint is often recommended for new people, and has a interface very similar to windows. In my own experience, it’s very fast to get it up and running.
I’ll second this. When I finally switched to using Linux exclusively on my personal PC, I found that Mint had everything working perfectly right out of the box. The most complicated part was switching the driver for my dedicated graphics card (which was provided in a neat little list for me to choose from).
I use the terminal because I’m familiar with it, but you could easily set up and use Mint without ever opening a terminal.
Driver support has always been excellent on Mint. My MacBook air Wifi adapter would normally not work on other distros, but Mint was out of the box fine.
I am a gnome user. However, for my parents I went with mint. It was quite stable. I think both desktop environments do not give you choices hell. That’s something I hated with kde. Too many choices. Although it’s been a while.