So like it says in the title. I’m looking to make a change. The only coding I ever did was like, some very light HTML on stuff like LiveJournal 20 years ago (because I’m ancient in internet years, haha) and even that I barely remember.

I’ve seen people talk about LinuxMint in other comment sections and how that one might be closest to something like Windows (in that a layman like myself can use it out of the box like buying a new laptop from Best Buy or whatever store). Is that actually a good one or is there something better for somebody like me?

I’ve seen enough people go ‘NO UBUNTU!!!’ to steer me away from that one, but otherwise I have no clue what would actually be good for somebody in my shoes.

I have a laptop that still technically runs Windows 8 that I just use for downloads so I’d be trying it on there so that if something goes wonky I’m not fucked. After looking at the LinuxMint website, the specs on that laptop meet the requirements for it.

Thanks so much!

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    5·
    4 hours ago

    Mint is a great distro for beginners. Coding is not required, but coders prefer Linux because it makes our lives easier in some ways.

    I would like to take the opportunity to give you two advices that I think everyone who wants to use Linux should hear:

    Install from package manager

    In windows the way to install something is to look it up on a browser, open a sketchy website, downloading a binary and executing it on your machine. That is definitely NOT the way to do stuff on Linux. Think on Linux the same way you do Android (which is actually a Linux distro), if you want to install something you look it up on the play store, and only if it’s not there you consider alternatives like downloading a random .APK from the internet. Linux should be the same, except there are several alternatives before downloading a binary from the internet, like adding a PPA in debian based distros (Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian, so this applies to you) which essentially gives extra packages to the package manager or using flatpak/snaps (two different technologies that try to do the same, i.e. a new way of packaging software for Linux)

    Keep /home in a different partition

    In Linux any folder can be in any hard-drive/partition. So it’s possible when you’re installing your system to have what you would normally think as C:\ (which is called / in Linux) in one partition and /home (i.e. the folder home inside /) in another. This is great because it allows you to reinstall or change your Linux distro without losing your personal data.