Yes, I started off with Pop! As my first distro back when I started to use Linux. TBH you can’t really go wrong with Pop! Or Mint as your first choice.

I found Pop! quite good for gaming, since it has a fairly recent kernel and the drivers built in. (Not as good as Arch, which I’m using now - it has cutting-edge everything and great documentation, but is not for newbies - some of its derivatives sand off the rough installation edges.) I do find the Gnome3 interface infuriating, but speaking as a Linux dev at a Linux company, there’s loads of my colleagues that have no problems with it, so YMMV.

Before shelling out on a laptop, I’d get yourself a Virtual Machine setup on Windows (VirtualBox works for me) and try out a few Linux instances. Dead easy to set them up, test various distros, and throw them away again, and if you foul it up, then no harm is done. Installation and setup will teach you a lot. Completely free, as well.

Documentation - the Debian adminstrator’s handbook is available free online, and the Arch documentation is extremely comprehensive and up-to-date.

And good luck!

You don’t need to buy a new computer just to learn Linux. You can create a bootable flash drive and install it on an external SSD and boot from the SSD when you need to use Linux. If you don’t want an external SSD, you can dual-boot and keep Linux on a separate partition on your machine.

In terms of distros, I’d recommend Ubuntu or Pop!_OS to get started with. Other distros like Elementary OS, Linux Mint, or Debian can be suitable as well.

Pop is a great starting point. Others have mentioned Mate, Cinnamon, or Ubuntu, and those are likewise pretty easy to start with. Pop is the one that I install on my kids’ and parents’ computers, because it’s that easy, and it’s also the one that I use daily because it has some key features (I’ll say below).

Hopefully by now you’ve already read or watched some videos about differences between using Windows and various Linux distributions. If not, here’s one channel on TilVids (a fediverse version of youtube) that I think has some useful stuff: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

This video from System76 also gives a short and straightforward intro to the pop desktop environment:

[Edit: actually, I should link to the pop os info page because the explanations there are more up to date.]

Here are my key features, in order of how I think a new user might care about them:

• the launcher: Other linux distros have a similar one, but pop’s is a little more streamlined. On pop and the other distros with launchers, it’s a little different and I think a lot better than the Windows/Mac versions. It’s worth learning about and using.
• virtual desktops: All linux distros have this, and if you haven’t used them before I highly recommend taking the time to get used to them. Pop has some nice features to make switching workspaces a little easier, but they might be the same or similar to other distros (I’m not sure).
• pop shop: Most linux distros have a similar thing, and actually I think Pop’s version is a little worse (a little more laggy/buggy). But, as an interface for finding the software you actually want to install, it’s way better than the windows/mac app stores. This is another thing that’s worth learning and using, even though it’s different. You might have seen a lot of arguments online about flatpak v.s. snap v.s. appimage (if not, don’t bother). For a beginner, I think it’s now worth suggesting to just use flatpak apps whenever possible, and you can find them in the pop shop.
• nvidia drivers: Only relevant if you have nvidia graphics, but if you do, the pop disk image with those drivers already integrated is much easier than figuring out how to set them up in other distros.
• window tiling: Pop is the only distro that makes this so easy to set up and use; at first I thought it would be terrible, because it’s so different from what I was used to, but for productivity it’s actually much better. Now that I’m used to it, I really miss it in other desktop environments. (It’s possible to install a similar thing on other distros–this is linux after all–but my impression is that it’s kind of a hassle.)

I think you would find a system76 machine to be a good choice overall, but if you are just learning you might want to start with the OS in a VM in windows and then progress before investing in hardware. You can try Pop out there if you like, or even with the live boot option to get a feel for it.

Personally I use my Thelio with gaming and the windows compatibility tools in steam. It works beyond great.

I put Pop!_OS on a laptop for my (elderly) mum and she used it for years, never had any issues, every now and then I’d tell it to update to the new version and everything was just fine. In the same time period I would have had to fix a windows install several times.

My two cents - install it on virtual machine (VirtualBox is an open-spurce cross-platform software) and play with it a little.

Also, thanks to Valve the company behind Steam, gaming became very good (AFAIK, I’m not a gamer) on Linux.

On Linux, unlike Windows and MacOS, you can choose how the graphic part looks like. It’s called desktop environment (DE). More than the distribution (Linux ‘flavor’) itself, you should check if you’re comfortable with the DE.

GL :)

Thank you everyone for their input! I’m impressed by how thoughtful you all are here on Lemmy. I will read up on the links some of you provided and I’ll give a shot at trying Pop!_OS on a VM on my windows machine. If all goes well, I’m still leaning on either a Meerkat or Thelio since I know they will work out of the box. Again, thanks everyone!

I got a Thelio and loved it–despite being incredibly powerful, it is so quiet that I can’t tell whether it is even on or not unless I am near it and listening closely. This is only true when running Pop!_OS, though; in Windows or other Linux distributions it’s a lot noisier, presumably because Pop!_OS has carefully calibrated their kernel to make this work.

However, even on non-System76 hardware I’ve been using Pop!_OS as my It Just Works Linux distribution, and have generally had success with it, including for most of my gaming needs. There have been a couple of times where an upgrade borked things so that the system no longer booted, which is definitely not a good thing, but fortunately one of the installation options is “Refresh” which replaces all system files while leaving everything else in place so I’ve gone from unable to boot to back and running within 30 minutes, which is a big deal because I’ve had other Linux distributions spontaneously bork things before but I’ve never had it be so easy to recover when this happens. I did have to reinstall some system software packages, but the largest things on my hard drive are my games and those didn’t have to be reinstalled because they live in my home directory so it wasn’t a big deal.

On the flip side, just so you don’t think I’m a System76 fanboy, I tried their Oryx Pro laptop, despite it being incredibly expensive, because I love my desktop and was expecting a similar level of experience, and it was terrible; sleep mode was buggy because it only ever worked when I first plugged in the laptop and then unplugged it, which makes the feature pretty useless when you’re on the go, which is exactly when you need a working sleep mode, and even then it only used a partial sleep mode so it would consume 10% of the battery per hour. I tried contacting support about this and got really bizarre responses about things that were completely unrelated to my questions, as if they weren’t actually reading my tickets. The whole situation was so bad that within about a week or two I just sent it back. A little while later bought a laptop at less than half the price which runs Pop!_OS just fine and more than meets my needs so in a way I’m glad that the more expensive laptop didn’t work out.

I find Pop!_OS to be the best general purpose, non-server OS. Encryption out of the box, amazing low-level optimizations for desktop/laptop usage, native flatpak support, and their tiling/desktop hybrid is beyond awesome. Great for beginners but also great for anyone who wants a great Linux experience without all the hassle.

I think Pop OS Is the right distro to start and to stay for a long time

I bought one of the tall meerkats in 2021 and have had no issues with it so far. The thing is fantastic for a work from home setup. It barely takes up any space on my desk and runs so smoothly for anything from basic office tasks (libreoffice, only office, office365 pwa whatever ya use), to analyzing MRI datasets, to light gaming, i.e. Stardew valley type games. Absolutely love the thing!

Edit: would also like to add that pop is super user friendly and a great choice as a beginner distro

I stopped distro-hopping after using Pop_OS. It always works right out of the box for me. It is easy to use, reliable & easy to maintain. Flatpak support plus native Debian files - makes for a large source of apps. Being Debian based, a lot of what you learn is transferable to any Debian derivatives like Ubuntu. Try installing it on Virtualbox just to get a feel for it.

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