References
Linux for normal people
WARNING!: Just like with all other topics I've covered, I am not a Linux expert nor do I claim to be anywhere close to one. Linux is simply something I'm passionate about and want to share with other people. You may find information presented here to be partially incomplete, dramatically oversimplified, or even straight up incorrect. It is written to the best of my abilities. Proceed at your own risk.
Intro
I'm a little late to the party, but Windows 10 recently went end of life which means it's not gonna get security updates anymore, and If you're not already running Windows 11, Microsoft is really gonna push you to update to it. There's a number of reasons you might not want to do this that we will talk about shortly, but regardless if you do or not there's really only a few ways to move forward. You can choose to update to 11, which might require you to buy a new computer thanks to Microsoft's mostly artificial hardware limitations. You can continue using Windows 10 and pay $30 USD for a year of extra security updates, which really only delays the inevitable. You can keep using Windows 10 without security updates which is really not a good idea. Or you can go with my favorite option and the one that this video is about, switch to an alternative operating system! There's a couple options worth looking into, but today as the title suggests, we're gonna take a look at Linux based operating systems.
I decided I wanted to talk about this because it's something I feel passionate about and want to share with people. People tend to have this idea of Linux being very difficult to learn, that it's only for mega nerds and tech wizards, it takes an hour just to turn your PC on before you can even get any work done, and that it's just plain unfit for the use of the general public. And that's only if they have an idea of it at all because at least in my life, it seems like most people I know have never even heard of it.
That's exactly why I wanted to make this video. If you go to YouTube and look up videos about switching to Linux, most every video you'll find operates under the assumption that you already know what it is and that you know what they're talking about which makes a rough barrier for entry, but that's not this video. My goal here is to help normal every day people understand that they have another option besides Windows and Mac. I want people to know what Linux can do for them, to understand that for a lot of use cases it can be a drop in replacement for Windows, or even an improvement upon it. It can help you enjoy using your tech a lot more or be even more productive than you normally are, and a lot of other things. So, how about we get into it?
You might not want to use Windows 11 anyways
But before we talk about fully switching to a new operating system, I wanna talk about some problems that Windows 11 has, and the primary reasons why I decided I wanted to stop using it. A lot of this is going to feel like an attack on Microsoft, and that's because for the most part it is. Because of that I want to preface by saying I definitely have a bit of bias.
I wasn't always a hater of Microsoft and Windows, I was actually a pretty big fan. I was integrated into their ecosystem the same way die-hard Apple users are. My every day computer is a Surface Laptop Studio, it's the second Surface device I've owned and honestly might not be the last because I really like the hardware they make, I used OneDrive for all my cloud storage and backups and on occasion still use it. Edge was even my main browser for about a year . But then I learned about some crappy things Microsoft does, I learned about Linux and realized that Windows isn't a perfect operating system, and I almost felt betrayed.
So yeah, I might be airing out a little bit of a grudge. Just keep in mind that this is from the perspective of someone that was an avid Windows user that ended up switching to Linux out of frustration and disappointment. I tried my best to keep everything honest and accurate, even if it's coming from a bit of an aggressive angle.
Planned obsolescence
I actually already mentioned one of the biggest reasons you might want to skip out on Windows 11, and it's fairly likely it applies to you. Windows 11 introduced some strict hardware requirements. It requires that your computer has a TPM 2.0 chip, this enables the use of things like hardware backed bitlocker encryption, biometric unlock, and secure boot. If you don't know what those things are that's okay, it's basically just some extra hardware level security features, they're nice to have but are not 100% necessary. Your computer will still be very capable and functional without these things. What's interesting is that TPM 2.0 was introduced in November of 2019, and if you found yourself thinking that November of 2019 wasn't that long ago, you would be absolutely right.
In a survey with data taken from over 30 million Windows computers done by lansweeper.com, it was reported that only 52.55% of devices met the TPM 2.0 requirement. Just with that data alone we know that there's over 15 million Windows 10 devices that can't update to Windows 11 and that'll probably just be left as e-waste. It doesn't matter if they were perfectly usable for every day computing tasks, and could be more than capable of running Windows 11 if it weren't for these non-essential requirements, Microsoft won't let you update. There are some workarounds to run Windows 11 anyways, but they're only temporary, and Microsoft is trying their best to get rid of them.
This is a prime example of what's called planned obsolescence, it's a pseudo conspiracy theory basically describing the concept that certain products are artificially limited and designed to fail after some time so that you have to replace them. It's just like when everybody was talking about Apple slowing down old iPhone's with software updates so you'd feel encouraged to buy a newer and faster one. If Microsoft puts these limitations in place it's evident that a lot of people will have to upgrade or buy entirely new computers. That in combination with them really pushing their Surface line as the ideal way to experience their operating system, means that they'll make money off of customers paying not only for the operating system but for the hardware it's running on too.
Behavior like this is very anti-consumer, if you ask me we should be able to use the things that we own right? You shouldn't have to buy a new computer to meet some arbitrary requirement just because a company worth almost 4 trillion dollars wants to get a little bit more money from you. Especially if what you have is working just fine, that's kind of ridiculous.
Windows 11 is full of ads, and doesn't respect me as a user
Something you might not think about especially if you only buy pre-built desktop computers or laptops, is that Windows is not a free operating system. It's always just included in the price of whatever computer you bought, but if you buy just the operating system it goes for $139 USD. That's not cheap, but charging for software, especially something essential like the operating system, isn't entirely unreasonable. But I do think that filling it with ads after you already paid a pretty hefty price, is unreasonable.
This might not be a big deal to everybody but it certainly bothers me. Windows 10 had ads as well, but I feel like Windows 11 ads are almost invasive. If you buy a brand new computer with Windows 11 installed, when you open the start menu your gonna have a lot of random software that paid to be there, things like Netflix, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, the list goes on, all sitting there pinned in your start menu so they can be easily downloaded to your computer when you click on them. I don't know about you but I don't really use any of these things, nor do I want them on my computer. I can't stand having random things downloaded making my desktop feel all messy, so I always take the time to get rid of them. But what I find even worse is that these things will be back in your start menu under the recommended section after a while. And I haven't even mentioned the random popup ads you'll get for things like Xbox Gamepass. Are you really getting ads in your paid operating system? Yes, yes you are.
But what really makes me angry is when Windows skips advertising and just installs software to my computer without my knowledge. I got my Surface laptop before Copilot was introduced, so I used Windows 11 without issue for quite for a while. I remember when Copilot released and I thought to myself "Wow! I'm never going to use that." I updated my laptop, Copilot was installed, and I uninstalled it. The end. Except for that every couple months, Copilot would be back. This made me so mad, I never instructed my computer to do this, it just did. And I'd have to go back and remove it, over and over and over again. It made me feel like I made the mistake of thinking that this laptop I bought belonged to me. But with the way that Windows operates, it feels more and more like no, this computer isn't mine. It belongs to Microsoft, and they're just letting me use it.
Windows Recall
On the topic of Copilot and random AI powered garbage, let's talk about Windows Recall.
If you haven't heard about it, "Recall" is a new AI powered feature that Microsoft is planning on introducing to Windows 11. It's a tool that's supposed to act as a sort of memory for everything you do on your computer. It does this by essentially taking a screenshot of whatever you're doing on your computer every couple seconds when it detects a change on screen. It then analyzes these screenshots with AI to decipher what it is you're doing. You can then chat with Copilot and ask things like "What was the name of that minigolf gameshow I was reading about last week?" and it will reference past screenshots to answer your question.
You can also look at a timeline of these screenshots, and choose a point to jump back to, kind of like you're traveling back in time on your computer. I'll admit it, it might kind of sound like a cool idea, but you should probably have some red flags going off, because this is a huge privacy concern.
You might have the mentality that you have nothing to hide, and you don't really see any reason to be worried about something like this. But think about it like this for a second. We use our computers to do pretty sensitive stuff. We use computers to do things like banking and filling out forms with our personal identification info, we put in all our passwords and have private conversations. All of these private and sensitive moments are going to be recorded in a screenshot and archived. Microsoft says that this information will only be stored locally on your computer, but coming from the same company that won't let you use your "old" devices and is making you buy a new machine, do you really believe that?
Maybe it is true and everything will be will be stored locally. Well even if that's the case, it's possible your devices could somehow be compromised. There's ways to get around encryption, and if someone can get access to your machine physically or remotely they can force it to be decrypted and then steal all of this personal information. And just because it might start with your data only being stored locally, Microsoft could nonchalantly update their privacy policy and have everything stored on their servers. If they're able to watch everything you do, they can build crazy accurate profiles and make a lot of money selling to advertisers. Not to mention that if this data were to be stored on Microsoft servers, it would make them a huge target for cyber attacks and hackers. If any attacks against them were successful, it would lead to what could potentially be one of the biggest and most dangerous data leaks we've ever seen!
Of course this is all hypothetical, but hopefully this puts into perspective how dangerous this could be if it's mishandled.
What's the solution? (Linux Explained)
That's just some of the bigger problems I have with Windows and the direction that Windows 11 has been taking it in. Your computers operating system used to be about letting you access and use what is yours, but now Microsoft is making Windows yet another way to collect and sell data off of you. It feels like we're progressing further and further away from Windows doing what we want and letting us use our computer, it's like it's actively working against us. And whether you're with me and you're fed up with all of this or you're just a little curious about what other options you have, there is a solution I'd love to introduce you to. Linux!
What is Linux?
Imagine that your operating system is a hamburger, where all the toppings are the programs, apps, and settings that it comes with. Windows is like a big fancy restaurant backed by a giant company promising you the best burger you've ever had. The problem is, their menu only has one burger on it that you can't modify in any way, and it's $139. They'll update it every now and then, maybe move some toppings around, make it look a little different, but it's still just the same, unchangeable burger it was last time. Some people really like the toppings that they give, and they absolutely swear that this is the absolute best burger money can buy, but man if you don't like pickles, or you want to add bacon, or you're confused by why Microsoft is suddenly giving you an AI powered burger, you're out of luck because the chef is not accommodating. At the end of the day it's a passable burger, but unless you like all the toppings they've chosen and don't mind not being able to customize it, in the back of your mind you'll know "I could probably get a better burger somewhere else."
Linux on the other hand, is like a smaller local burger shop, and they've got thousands of different burgers on the menu with all kinds of different toppings, so you're bound to find one that works just right for you if you take a little bit of time to look at the menu. Plus, you can modify anything you want! Don't like tomatoes? You can just ask for them to take them off. Add whatever toppings you want, they don't care. Get it with cheese, choose the type of cheese, get the beef well done instead of medium, and so on. Heck, if you know your way around the kitchen they'll even let you make your own burger and add it to the menu. This is the only burger shop where you can get a burger that perfectly matches your tastes. And the best part, almost every burger on the menu is free! Not because it's low quality or shady, but because these cooks aren't doing it for the profit but for the love of making burgers. They might not charge, but they'll usually have a little tip jar out for you to support them if you'd like to.
This is how Linux works. It's not just one operating system, it's a whole menu of operating systems, each with its own flavor and purpose. We call these different versions "Distributions" or "Distros" for short. A lot of the most popular distros are meant for general everyday use. Work and productivity, browsing the web, that kind of stuff. But some are meant for more specific use cases. For example, there are a number of distros made with gaming in mind, some for privacy and security, some are made for ethical hacking, and so on. All of these exist because Linux is an open source operating system. Anybody can look at the code, see how it works, make a copy of it and change it how they see fit. This is how all these different distributions came to be, and why there are new ones being made all the time.
How Linux fixes my problems with Windows
So I've already pretty well established a lot of problems I had with Windows as my operating system, and how it pushed me to explore alternatives. And I'm happy to report that most of, if not all of the issues I had are gone now that I use Linux. Linux is incredibly lightweight and especially with the help of some specific distros, can run on almost any hardware, even something that's older than 10 years can feel new with Linux installed. Microsoft might tell you that your computer isn't worth anything and you should just get a new one to keep using their software, but instead of running to throw your computer away, why not just run to Linux instead? Your hardware is probably still perfectly usable, but it might be held back by Windows. Linux will let you unleash the power it has, and give any older hardware, or something that's just not quite compatible with Windows 11 a second life.
What I appreciate even more is that Linux really respects me as a user. It's not full of ads, at most you might get a little popup when you first install asking you to donate to the project, but you can close it and you'll never see it again. I also never have random software installed on my computer without my consent. The only programs on my computer are the ones that I want there, on here I don't have to deal with Copilot randomly showing up repeatedly, or a web browser that I can't uninstall even if I'm never going to use it. Linux even let's you control when you want to update your system. Gone are the days of trying to quickly restart your computer, only to have to wait for an update you didn't ask for. Update whenever you want to on your time, and if you prefer auto-updates you can turn that on too.
And of course, being an operating system that's not Windows, Recall isn't here and never will be, but that's kind of a given. The main thing is that I trust Linux to stay privacy respecting, largely due to its open source nature. If anyone tries to implement anything shady, because anyone can look at the code, it will be noticed and taken care of very quickly. And if I don't like the direction a specific distro is going in, I can easily switch to a different one, or even remove any offending features myself if I really wanted to. You can't get that kind of security or control anywhere else.
Some other benefits Linux brings
Linux is incredibly lightweight
Linux is a great way not only to continue using any hardware old enough to be deemed unfit for Windows 11, but it can even breathe life into even older hardware. A lot of machines from the Windows 7 era are perfectly capable of running some modern distros. Heck, with the help of some specialized distributions you can even get some Windows XP era devices running again. Hardware this old is dang near prehistoric, but with a distro like Puppy Linux it can absolutely still run.
This is possible because most Linux distributions are incredibly lightweight, especially when compared to Windows. Because of this, every day use can feel a lot smoother. Linux doesn't run any random preloaded software in the background like Windows does, meaning it can focus more power on the things you're actually doing. If you have one of those computers that sounds like it's gonna fly away after you open a few tabs in your web browser, running Linux can more than likely help calm things down.
Linux gaming is better than it's ever been
Linux is also a great operating system for gaming, and it only continues to improve in this area. According to protondb.com, 90% of 1000 most popular games on Steam are playable on Linux, often with equal or even better performance than on Windows. This boost in performance, if any, is often times completely negligible but with some games can be pretty significant. If you're the kind of person that wants to squeeze out every drop of FPS your system can get, it might be worth looking into.
Managing software on Linux is a breeze
Another thing that I really like about Linux is that it's very easy to find, install, and manage software. Most Linux distributions will include a software manager that essentially acts like an app store, like the Microsoft store on Windows but you'll actually want to use this one. It'll allow you to browse, search for, and install applications with ease just like on your phone. What's available in the software center will differ between distributions, but generally you can find almost anything you're looking for. There's a wide selection of web browsers. You can usually find Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, ironically enough you can even get Microsoft Edge. You can likely find a lot of your essentials to, like Discord, Steam, Spotify, OBS, and plenty more. There's of course also basic utilities like email clients, video and music players, note taking apps, screenshot tools, basic drawing programs like MS Paint, sticky notes, and so on.
For the safety and security of your system, it's generally recommended to try your best to only download from the software center. For example, if you want to use Google Chrome, you should probably download it from your software manager rather than going to the download page and getting it from there. That's not to say you should absolutely never download anything from an external source, but just make sure you're staying careful if you do. Spend a bit of time researching first, and if you feel unsure, maybe ask for some advice before doing it.
The software manager is also where you do updates, both for your applications and your system. Whenever an update is ready you'll usually get a notification that it's available, but again like I briefly mentioned earlier, it won't ever make you update, you just do it on your own time whenever you want to. When you are ready to update, you can open your software manager and update your entire system with one click. Every piece of software, every piece of your system, all from one place. Isn't that kind of nice? It's much easier than on Windows where it feels like every piece of software has its own updater. And one of the best parts in my opinion, is that you can keep using your system while it's updating, you won't just be stuck on a loading screen until it's over, you can keep doing whatever you were doing. Often times you won't even have to restart when it's done, a lot of things can just be applied in the background.
Some drawbacks of Linux
Nothing is perfect, and Linux is not an exception. I think Linux is great, I like to use it and I think it could be a very good fit for a lot of people, but I can't in good faith say that it's a good fit for absolutely everybody. So now I want to talk about a few issues you should keep in mind when deciding if you want to switch to Linux, and if any of the issues mentioned here seem like a deal breaker I'd still ask that you wait till the end of this video, because I might have a solution for you.
Windows software isn't supported
Windows software does not run natively on Linux. This makes sense, because Linux is not Windows, it's the same reason that you can Safari on MacOS but not on Windows. Some software does have a Linux release, but many do not. If the work you do with your computer is dependent on software like the Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, or other industry professional software, you will have some issues with Linux. There are a few ways to try and make Windows software run on Linux, and sometimes it will work very well, while other times it won't work at all. I'm not really gonna talk about it here because it's a topic that could be a video of it's own, but if you'd like to look into it, just do some research on tools like "Wine", "Bottles", and "Winboat".
Your best bet is to look into open source, Linux friendly alternatives. For example, Libre Office is an office suite that can fill the gap Microsoft Office leaves pretty dang well. If you're just a single user and you don't use Microsoft Office in a team environment, I'd even recommend it over paying for Microsoft Office, even if you're using Windows. GIMP can be a replacement for the image editing aspects of Photoshop, and if you use Photoshop for drawing or Painting, Krita is a great alternative, and one you've likely already heard of if you're a digital artist. If you use Premiere Pro a lot, KDEnlive is a non linear video editor that works out of the box on Linux, and Davinci Resolve is actually natively supported by Linux though it tends to require some tinkering.
That's just a couple recommendations for some of the big ones people usually look for, but there's a lot of alternatives for a lot of proprietary software out there, so it's worth doing a bit of research if you want to. With that being said though, if you absolutely need a piece of Windows software that doesn't run well on Linux, Linux might not be for you. But, we'll talk about something that might help a bit later.
Games with anti-cheat
As I said before, gaming on Linux has come a very long way, 90% of popular games on steam are supported, but let's talk about the 10% that unfortunately aren't. A lot of competitive multiplayer games aren't supported because of their anti-cheat software, like EAC and BattlEye. This anti-cheat software operates at a kernel level, which basically means that it's just running at the very deepest level of your system, the part that communicates with the computer hardware directly, to detect cheating.
Linux handles this part of the system differently than Windows does, so this is not supported even with compatibility workarounds. There are ways to get this stuff working but it has to be done on the game developers side, and if you try to work around it yourself, you might be detected as a cheater which could get you banned. If you play Destiny 2, Apex Legends, Valorant, Fortnite, and other games that use Anti-Cheat, you unfortunately can't play them on Linux. You might be able to in the future, and if enough people start gaming on Linux the problem will have to be fixed, but for now it's a no go.
Hardware compatibility
Now for the most part, hardware compatibility on Linux is great, it's come a long way from where it once was. But there are some things that might not work, especially if it's very new or just not very common. There's a good chance that if you try to run Linux everything will work out of the box just fine, but you might have some trouble with things like getting your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth working, maybe a printer doesn't work properly, or if you have a newly released graphics card you might have to wait for support to be added. The good news is that you can usually get these things to work, it'll just take a bit of time and effort and usually you can get things working smoothly.
I'm running Linux on my Microsoft Surface Studio Laptop, and for the most part everything works just fine, the only thing that doesn't work out of the box is the touchscreen and pen input, because it's just not very common. But there are resources to make this part work just as well as it does on Windows, and it only took me like 15 minutes to do it. If you're not super tech savvy it might be a bit more of a struggle, but if you turn to the Linux community for help I'm sure you can figure it out. It might be a controversial suggestion, but ChatGPT is also a great tool for troubleshooting problems on Linux.
The terminal is intimidating
Now this is a big one, and one I'm a little afraid of talking about. For any existing Linux users watching this, putting it in the drawbacks section is basically blasphemy, I know. But the terminal, console, command line, whatever you want to call it, is a big part of Linux, and it can be a little scary. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you learn how to use it, the terminal can help you be very efficient and powerful with your computer use, but I also understand that it's not for everybody, especially if you're coming from Windows and don't have any experience with anything like it. For this reason, I just want to let you know now that with the Distros I'm going to recommend you check out later, I personally feel that for the most part you'll be able to do most of what you want to do without having to open the terminal.
However, just know that at some point or another, you might have to use the terminal at least a little bit. Whether it's because there's something you want to do that will require it, maybe you'll encounter an issue where the terminal is the easiest way to fix it, I don't know, it could happen for a lot of reasons. If and when you do, don't let it scare you. I'd just encourage that you try to learn and understand what the commands you're putting in there are actually doing. This will be a tremendous help to you understanding why you're using the terminal, and be a little more confident in doing so.
Just as a quick example, let's say that I want to install a program called "TLDR" on my Fedora Linux operating system. To do this I would open a terminal, and run this command: sudo dnf install tldr. Let's break down what's happening here. sudo is a prefix that tells the terminal that I want to run this command at a high level. If you've ever been on windows and it gave you a popup saying something needs to be run as administrator, this is basically same thing. Running at a high level is required to do anything that would modify or add to system files, if I didn't add sudo first it wouldn't be able to install the program. On Fedora, dnf is the software manager, so if I run a dnf command I'm basically telling the terminal that what I'm doing is related to the software manager. From there it's pretty clear what's happening, I'm installing TLDR. After I type this and press enter, two things will happen. Since I ran it as sudo, it'll ask me to put in my password. Then it'll use dnf to retrieve the information about the software I want to install, tldr. It'll tell me if any dependencies will be installed with it, and then give me the total size of the install. It'll ask me to confirm by saying "y" for yes and "n" for no. Once I type y and hit enter again, it'll install. The terminal will show us everything that it's doing to install our software, and once it's done it'll confirm and now we're free to use what we just installed.
In case you were wondering what TLDR is, it adds a command to your terminal that we can now use to learn about other commands. For example, if we want to learn more about "sudo", we can type tldr sudo into our terminal and hit enter, and it'll tell us all about sudo in basic terms to help us learn more about what sudo is and how it works. I'd highly recommend installing TLDR to any of you if you want to learn more about how the terminal works and how you can use it, but if you want to avoid using the terminal as much as possible, I have good news for you because we're done talking about it now.
What does Linux actually look like?
If you have any kind of pre-existing idea of what Linux is, there's a good chance you have this image in your mind of some hacker guy in a dark room with a hoodie on, typing green text into a black terminal box. That's what I kind of thought before I started using it anyways, and yeah you absolutely can use Linux like this, but for normal every day use it looks like this:
For the most part, it just looks like a normal every day desktop, just like Windows or MacOS. You've almost always got windows, folders, icons, and so on. But unlike Windows or MacOS, Linux is dang near infinitely customizable. You get to decide how everything looks and behaves, or even switch out the entire user interface with a new one. These different user interfaces are called Desktop Environments, and they provide you with the visual way that you interact with your computer, and the basic applications you need like your file explorer, settings, apps for opening photos and videos, and so on. As I stated before, these desktop environments, or simply DEs for short, are fully interchangeable.
For example, the distro that I use is called Fedora. The default version of Fedora is called "Fedora Workstation", and it ships with a desktop environment called Gnome, it looks like this:
But Fedora also ships many other editions with many different desktop environments, they call these Fedora Spins. I can look through all the different desktop environment options and install one that looks good to me. And if I want to use a different desktop, I can just install a new one without having to reinstall the entire operating system. They're all the same operating system, they just have a different UI.
Bringing it back to the burger metaphor, the Desktop Environment of your system is like the burger buns holding everything together. On Windows and MacOS you just use whatever standard burger buns they give you, but on Linux you have all the choice in the world. Use brioche buns or a potato roll, switch it out for lettuce for a healthier option, or go crazy and use big onion slices like the Flying Dutchman from In-N-Out or whatever. Everything between the buns, or the core operating system, is still the same on the inside. But switching out the buns, or the desktop environment, changes how everything is presented, viewed, and experienced.
Getting this out of the way early while explaining Linux will be very helpful. Coming from an operating system like Windows or MacOS where you don't have the ability to switch out your desktop environment gives you the impression that your desktop environment and your operating system are synonymous, because on these proprietary operating systems that's basically true. On Linux though, it isn't. No matter what Linux distro you choose, you can use almost any desktop environment you want, and switch it out for something else whenever you want. You can even use more than one desktop environment at once, and pick which one you want to boot into when you log in to your account.
Desktop environment and Distro recommendations
But with that being said, the easiest option for newcomers is to find a a distro that comes with the desktop environment that you like by default. For that reason, next I want to go through a couple different desktop environments you might be interested in checking out, and a recommended distro that ships with that DE by default.
Cinnamon Desktop / Linux Mint
If you are first entering the Linux community and go asking for entry level distribution recommendations, one of the most frequent responses you will get is for Linux Mint. This is not without reason, it really is a great place to start for a lot of people.
On the Linux Mint website, they self describe their distro as "an operating system for desktop and laptop computers. It is designed to work 'out of the box' and comes fully equipped with the apps most people need." This includes all the things you'd expect, the aforementioned Libre office suite, Firefox for a web browser, the email client Thunderbird, a video player, music player, a small drawing app, a tool for quick notes, all that basic stuff. But it's also very easy to download more programs for whatever you might need with the software center, the app store thing I talked about earlier.
Similar to Fedora and the different "spins" I mentioned earlier, Linux Mint has three different versions each with a different Desktop Environment. But the flagship version that they recommend is called Linux Mint Cinnamon, because it ships with the Cinnamon Desktop Environment. Linux Mint Cinnamon is a little bit of a special case, because Cinnamon is actually made by the Linux Mint team, you can get Cinnamon on other distributions, but running it on Mint is pretty much how it's intended to be used. Cinnamon is one of the biggest reasons that people recommend Linux Mint to newcomers, because if you take a look at it, it looks pretty similar to Windows. You have a taskbar at the bottom, your main menu is opened with an icon on the left side, you have applications pinned in the middle, and the time along with some basic system controls and tray icons on the right. The settings are all pretty self explanatory and intuitive to navigate, both application and system updates are handled from a central update manager, the whole system is just really quite simple.
This is why it's so frequently recommended, especially to those moving from Windows. If you're looking to get started with Linux and you have a history with using Windows, then you'll definitely feel at least a little familiar when you use Linux mint. It makes it a bit easier to give it a try if you know you're not gonna feel like you're just dropped in the middle of a foreign place you have no knowledge of, and if that sounds like the best option for you I'd definitely recommend Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop for you.
However, with that being said, I just want to share something that I learned from my own experience. Linux Mint is the first distro I tried, I messed around with it in a virtual machine, installed it on an old laptop, but I didn't really like it a whole lot. I found myself getting frustrated and confused, and I think this was because when using the cinnamon desktop, I understood that it kind of looked like Windows, so I think that lead to me expecting it to work like Windows. This isn't really the case, it's an entirely different operating system and it's gonna work a little bit different. When I tried to do things the way I knew how, it just made me angry when it didn't really work that way. As long as you have this understanding, I'd say go for it, it might be a really good fit for you. But next we're going to talk about what I think worked for me.
Gnome Desktop / Fedora Workstation & Ubuntu
I have a lot to say about Gnome since it's what I personally use, so apologies in advance if it comes off as me rambling, it's because I am.
Gnome is a completely different desktop environment than anything I've ever really used before. If you take a quick look at it, it's gonna feel pretty foreign. It's not very Windows like, it's not even super close to what MacOS is like. But that's kind of what I like about it. Cinnamon is a good recommendation if you want something that feels very familiar, but I feel like the best way to describe Gnome, is that it's intentional. It's really doing its own thing, and in a weird way that made it easier for me to learn and understand Linux. None of my previous knowledge really felt super useful here, so I essentially had to start from scratch. That might sound bad, but it also helped me avoid any of the frustration I was experiencing with Cinnamon. I didn't have any cases of trying and failing because things weren't exactly the same, I was basically just learning new things. That might be for you, that might not be for you, either way is okay! But this is what helped me learn how to love Linux.
Gnome isn't very traditional, by default you don't have a desktop with Icons and you don't have a taskbar. You instead have what they call the overview. When you press the Super key (Quick explanation, most keyboards will have what's called the Windows key. Since we're not using Windows, most Linux users usually refer to this as the super key, or meta key) your desktop is going zoom out and show all of your open windows, a big app drawer where you can view and launch all of your programs, and a search bar where you can search for applications, settings, documents, and more. If you've ever used the spotlight search on MacOS, it's essentially the same thing.
The overview also provides you with a quick look at all of your virtual desktops, and this is what I like a lot about Gnome. If you don't know what virtual desktops are, they're essentially exactly what they sound like. It's basically like having extra screens that can have their own apps running and open so you have more space for multitasking, or organizing things based on their use case. Sometimes they're also called workspaces, and that's how I'm gonna refer to them going forward.
Did you even know that your Windows computer or your Mac can do this? If you're like me, you probably had no idea. I can't speak for what it's like on MacOS because I haven't used it too much, but on Windows this feature doesn't really feel too great. The individual workspaces feel isolated from each other, moving stuff between them is weirdly complicated. I guess this serves its own purpose but it's not really for me. It also kinda feels like a secret. I don't really see anybody utilize it at all, and the operating system itself doesn't really encourage it or tell you about it, it kind of feels like an afterthought. But Gnome is pretty much entirely built around this feature. Gnome makes it really easy to organize things into different workspaces, and it shows you which workspace you're on and how many you have with these dots in the top right of the screen. You're always aware of them and it's really easy to make use of them when you want to.
I, do not have a desktop computer. As I mentioned before, my main computer is a Surface Laptop Studio, which as the name suggests is a Laptop. I use this laptop for everything, I play games on it, I use it for school, I write, edit and upload these videos on it, literally everything. I often use it plugged in and connected to another monitor at my desk, but I also often use it out and about by itself. When you do as much random multitasking as I do with a million different random things open at the same time, screen real estate is pretty important. A lot of people tend to just have floating windows arranged next to each other, but I like to have everything full screen. On Gnome, I'll frequently have Obsidian open in my first workspace where I'll be working on a script or taking notes for school, and then I can swipe over to the next one where I have my web browser open, where I'm doing research or studying. Then, I can swipe over again where I have something like Discord or my Music player open. This works really well for my workflow and helps me feel a lot more productive.
If Gnome sounds interesting to you then I'd recommend using the distro that I use myself, Fedora Workstation. This is the "default" Fedora desktop distribution and it's also pretty much the flagship Gnome distribution. Fedora Workstation gives you the Gnome desktop as is with little to no modifications, meaning it's a very smooth and seamless experience of what the Gnome desktop is. It also updates pretty frequently, every 6 months or so roughly. This means that as long as your system is up to date, you'll pretty much always be experiencing the latest and greatest the Gnome desktop has to offer while still being stable.
Gnome is also the default desktop that ships with Ubuntu. Even if you don't know anything about Linux, it's at least decently likely you have heard of Ubuntu it's pretty popular. The desktop it ships with is Gnome, but it's a slightly modified version of it. It has a few extensions to add things like desktop icons and a little dock/taskbar hybrid thing along the side. If you think it looks like something you want to use absolutely feel free to. It's not updated as frequently as Fedora is, but you do get the benefits of there being a very large community around Ubuntu specifically. You can find an answer to almost any question you could think of on askubuntu.com, and any tutorial you find online will have instructions for Ubuntu. For a lot of reasons it's not really my first recommendation, but I wouldn't blame you for choosing it, it is a pretty compelling option.
KDE Plasma / Fedora KDE & Kubuntu
Plasma is probably the most popular Linux desktop environment, along with Gnome. It's developed by KDE, they're the creators of a lot of applications, some of which you might be familiar with already, like Krita or Kdenlive. Plasma is another project of their's, and it just so happens to be a desktop environment for Linux. If you're a gamer you might already recognize it, because this is the desktop environment that the steam deck uses when you boot it into desktop mode.
At first glance you might think to yourself "huh, this kinda looks like Windows, and Cinnamon already kinda looks like Windows. What's the point?" And I wouldn't blame you for thinking that. When I was first getting into Linux I didn't even realize that Plasma and Cinnamon were different things. But while Cinnamon has a focus on simplicity and ease of use, KDE Plasma has a different approach. You can use Plasma as is and keep it pretty simple, but it can be customized almost endlessly to meet your needs, and in this aspect it is incredibly powerful. You can use KDE plasma to near perfectly mimic the look of Windows or MacOS, you can even mimic the other desktop environment's we've talked about so far but that's a bit silly. But that's all just to illustrate how powerfully customizable it is, with a little time and effort, you can make your KDE desktop incredibly unique to you.
I could spend a lot of time talking about what you can do to customize it, but half of the fun is exploring and figuring that out for yourself. There are a lot of long videos dedicated to just this alone, and this isn't a Plasma customization tutorial video, so unfortunately I'd encourage looking elsewhere. But just to drive home how crazy the stuff you can do with it is, here's some examples:
If you want to try out KDE plasma I would recommend checking out the KDE plasma spin of Fedora or Kubuntu, a version of Ubuntu with KDE Plasma. Just to reiterate again, these are the same core operating systems as their Gnome counterparts, they just look a little different. If you want something that's pretty stable while still getting frequent updates, choose Fedora. If you want something that's rock solid stable with a large community to help you learn, choose Kubuntu. Both are great options, it's really just a personal preference.
Special distro recommendations
I generally would recommend picking a desktop environment that you like and then picking a distribution that comes with that desktop, but there's one thing I should note when making this decision. If you have a computer with an NVIDIA graphics card that you use for intensive workloads like gaming and rendering, you might encounter some trouble getting it to work properly on Linux. This is because the NVIDIA drivers are closed source, so most distributions don't come with them by default. But, some do, and quite a few make it very easy to get them up and running with little to no effort.
For example, Linux Mint might be worth a closer look, it comes with a driver manager that will automatically scan your hardware and recommend the correct drivers to get your system working to the best of its abilities.
Pop!_OS is an Ubuntu based distribution, and if you have an NVIDIA card you can just download the NVIDIA specific image to make sure it'll work great on your hardware. Similarly, Bazzite is a Fedora based Gaming distro designed to work like SteamOS on the Steam Deck, with a dedicated gaming view and everything. When you go to download it, it'll ask you if your GPU is AMD or NVIDIA so you can make sure you download what's right for you.
If you're using an AMD card or just don't really know what I'm talking about, good news! You'll probably be fine just not worrying about it. And if you want to make sure everything works properly, then Linux Mint with its driver manager tool will probably be the best fit for you, if for no other reason than just having peace of mind that your system will be working properly.
If you are wanting to move to Linux from a device running MacOS, there are some things to note. If your Mac device is from 2019 or older, you should be fine to use just about any Linux distribution you want. If your device is from 2020 or newer, you've got a bit of a special case on your hands, because this is when the M1 chip was introduced. This is a niche hardware situation, and there's really only one distribution that supports it, called Asahi Linux. It's a special distribution based on Fedora that is aimed at bringing Linux to apple silicon. Right now it supports almost all of the M1 and M2 devices, and further support is in continued development.
A few things to note before installing Linux
Now that we've talked about why you'd want to use Linux and how to choose a distribution that's right for you, let's talk about how you'll actually get it on your computer and start using it for yourself.
Try it out before committing
If you feel a bit intimidated or worried about moving forward, either because you're not sure if your 100% certain of what Distribution you want to pick, or maybe you don't know if you can use all the software you want on Linux, or maybe you're just not quite ready to commit, then I've got some good news for you. Linux has something that I think is basically a super power, and it's that it can run completely off of a USB drive without having to install anything. Most mainstream distributions will give you a full desktop environment, the ability to install and use applications, the whole shabang it's a fully functional system. This is called a Live USB.
This is usually the first thing that you interact with when you start the install process, and it's the perfect place to just give Linux a quick go. If you're not sure which desktop or distribution is right for you, this is the perfect place to just try them out before dedicating to anything. Load up Linux Mint onto a flash drive, try living out of it for a bit and see if you like it. Give GNOME a try or mess around with KDE Plasma, whatever catches your interest. In just a bit when we start the installation guide, I'll even show you how to put multiple distros on a single drive so you can test a couple that you're interested in at once with ease. If you don't end up liking whatever you tried, then you have no reason to worry! All you have to do is turn your computer off and pull the USB drive out, after you turn it back on you'll be back in Windows like nothing ever happened.
It's also a great way to make sure that all your devices work properly. Try out your mouse and keyboard, make sure bluetooth and wifi work, try all the random peripherals you use and make sure they work too. It'd be really frustrating if you installed Linux only to find out a month later that some uncommon device you use like a racing wheel or MIDI controller doesn't work for some reason, it's better to get those discoveries out of the way earlier.
Just keep in mind that if you spend a lot of time in the Live USB environment, nothing you do is going to be saved. Think of it as just a quick demo that resets after you're done. If you customize it or download apps and sign in to a bunch of stuff, and decide that you want to go through with installing Linux, just be prepared to do all of that over again, things will not transfer over from your Live USB to your finished Linux install.
For what we're doing today these are the primary reasons you'll be using a Live USB, but there are some other reasons as well. Keeping a Live USB with your Linux Distro of choice handy can be helpful in a number of ways. If for whatever reason your computer stops working, booting into a Live USB will give you a safe environment where you can fix it. Live USBs can be a helpful tool for Windows machines too, pretty recently I used a Live USB to help a friend get back into their Windows computer after somebody changed their password. I didn't install Linux on it or anything, it just gave me a way to get into their computer, access the necessary components, and reset their password so they could keep using it like normal, isn't that pretty neat?
Dual Booting
Earlier, when we were talking about Windows Software, I mentioned there being something we can do to help you move to Linux if there's still Windows software you use and won't be able to run on Linux, and that's dual booting. Dual booting let's you install and use more than one operating system on the same computer, so if you have some software that you just can't live without, or you want to play games that Linux doesn't yet support, but still want to give Linux a go, this might be for you. Once it's set up, you just choose when you turn your computer on if you want to boot into Linux or Windows, and then you boot into your operating system of choice just like normal. From within Linux, you can even open and browse your files on Windows, however the opposite is not true.
I currently use my laptop with a dual boot setup. I spend probably 95% of my time in Linux, but on occasion still go running back to Windows, shocking after how much I complained about it I know. I'm not proud. I use Windows almost exclusively for Davinci Resolve, try as I might I just haven't gotten it to work well. As far as I can tell this is just because it is a Microsoft made machine and the hardware is just niche, but again I'm not an expert I'm not 100% sure. (P.S: if you're watching this and know how to fix my problem please do let me know I'm very ineterested.) But the point is, dual booting is very helpful for me so that I can continue using some of the software I need, and it can be helpful for you too.
Before I show you how to get ready for a dual boot setup, even though this should be the safest way to go about it, maybe take some time to back things up just in case things go wrong.
Dual boot preparation
If you do choose to go with a dualboot setup, there's a couple different ways you might want to go about it. If you're like me and you're using a laptop, or if you only have one drive in your computer, you'll want to boot into Windows assuming it's already installed, open the search menu, and look up "disk management". If you get an option that brings up something called "create and format disk paritions", that's what we're looking for. Once it opens up, you'll see your disk visualized and split into a bunch of little sections, find the one labeled as (C:), right click on it, and choose "Shrink Volume". From there it'll try and figure out how much space we can safely take away, and then let us choose how much we want to remove.
It'll list four numbers, the top is the total size before shrinking, second is the size available for shrinking, third is the amount we want to shrink, and the fourth is the total size after shrinking. We're basically just gonna look at these numbers and decide how much we want to give to Linux. For example, if we just want to split it 50/50, we'll try to input as close to half of the top number as we can, and click shrink. Once we do, we'll see a new section labeled as "unallocated space", and we're just gonna leave it there. That's our space that we're going to give to Linux when we install it. This might seem a little scary, but you don't have to worry. Windows won't let you shrink any more than you can safely get away with, and you can just as easily give that space back to Windows if you choose to.
If your computer has more than one drive, if you can it's probably best to dedicate an entire drive to Linux, and an entire drive to Windows. If you are in a situation where you have a new computer that does not yet have an operating system installed, and you want to put it together with a dualbooted Linux and Windows setup, it's important that you install Windows first and Linux second. The Windows installation process has a tendency to mess with some things it shouldn't, and could potentially erase your Linux install.
How to install Linux
Okay, now that we know we can try Linux out before installing and setup a dualboot, let's go through how to create a Live USB and install Linux on our system. I'm gonna go through this alongside you to show you what it actually looks like, it's a much simpler process than it might initially seem, breaking down into about 5 steps. All you will need is your computer with a working operating system, I'm assuming that'll be Windows, and a USB drive with at least 8 gigs of space, but ideally more for the setup we will be doing today.
Today I will be installing Linux on a little mini PC called a Wintel pro, I don't know very much about it one of my friends gave it to me a couple months ago and I haven't really touched it yet. It has 4 gigabytes of Ram, 64 Gigabytes of internal storage, and I believe comes it comes pre-loaded with Windows 10. My understanding is that this is a device mostly used to power digital displays, playing video content showing digital menus and stuff like that, but it should make for a more than usable Linux desktop for basic web browsing, word processing, and stuff like that. I might eventually turn it into a server running pihole or something like that, if that's something you'd be interested in learning how to do that I'll link my video about it in the description below.
Step 1: Installing Ventoy onto your flash drive
The first thing we're going to do is install a tool called Ventoy onto our USB drive. Ventoy is what is going to let us put multiple Linux distributions on the same flash drive, for easy testing and switching.
We're going to plug in our USB drive and before you do anything else make sure you back up this flash drive because it will be wiped! Then, open up a web browser and go to https://ventoy.net. in this top bar go to downloads and click the option ending with windows.zip, once it's downloaded right click it in your file explorer and select extract. Open the file it created double click on ventoy2disk.exe, make sure your USB drive is selected in the drop down menu, and click install. It's gonna warn you and make you confirm twice to make sure you really want to format this device, and once you do it'll do its thing and now you have a ventoy USB. Congrats!
Now that we have this installed we can open it up in our file explorer to find, a blank USB drive. This is normal, that's how it's supposed to look. What's cool is that now we can drag and drop whatever Linux distribution we want onto here without having to install them one at a time. So now we're just going to navigate to the download page of whatever Linux distro we want, download the .ISO file, and drag it on to this empty flash drive. On mine, I think I will throw on Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and Fedora, but you can do whatever you want. Throw on all of the distros I mentioned, do just one, do none of them and grab a distro you found on your own, it's up to you. Once you have Ventoy installed on your flash drive with all the distros you want to try on there, we're ready to move on to the next step.
Step 2: Boot into the Ventoy installation.
Next, while leaving our flash drive plugged in, we are going to turn off the computer and boot into the BIOS. The BIOS is a small built in program that controls really basic things about your computer, including where it boots from. We need to access this to tell it to boot from our flash drive instead of the main drive where Windows is installed. To do this, we're going to repeatedly mash the bios key while we press the power button and wait for the machine to turn on. Which key is the BIOS key I hear you ask? Well I can't tell you for certain, because it varies between different computer manufacturers, and I don't know who made your computer. Some computers will tell you what it is while it's booting, but if it doesn't, common BIOS keys are DEL, F2, F10, F12, or ESC. For this Wintel Pro it's X, for my laptop it's F4, if nothing seems to be working for you you can usually find it with a quick internet search.
Great, now we are in the BIOS. Yours might look like this, or like this, or maybe it looks like mine. Regardless of what it looks like we're looking for the same thing, an option called something like "boot order" or "boot sequence". We're going to select this option and look in the list of boot devices, making sure that our flash drive is at the top, so that we boot into it instead of booting into Windows. After doing that, we're going to change one more option, we're looking for something called "Secure Boot", it might be under the boot settings where we just changed the boot order, or it could be under security. Do some looking around, and once you find it make sure it's turned off. If that sounds scary to you, you shouldn't really have to worry. As long as you're not downloading any super sketchy, obscure strange Linux Distributions, there's not really any reason to worry everything will be safe. But as a rule of thumb, always make sure you are on the official website for any Linux distro you are downloading, and the file you download should always be an ISO file. If you go to download a distro and it gives you a .exe or something like that, don't run it and do not attempt to install it on your system.
Now with those settings change, we can restart our computer one more time and we'll boot right into our Ventoy flash drive. Here we'll be presented with a list of all the distributions you added to the drive, and we can pick one to boot into by navigating with the arrow keys and pressing enter, for this guide I'm gonna go with Linux Mint.
Step 3: Trying Linux from the Live USB (optional)
Once you select a distro you want to boot into, you might find another screen asking you to make a selection. the live environment of the Linux distro you've chosen, now is your chance to mess around and give it a try. Test out all your devices and make sure things work, mess around with the desktop environment and see if you like it, all that stuff we talked about earlier. This part is technically optional, if you wanted to you can absolutely just skip to the install process, but I'd definitely recommend spending a bit of time with it before you dedicate to installing.
And here is another reminder that, your Live USB is not persistent. When you move forward with installation or boot back into it after shutting it off, it will be reset to its original state.
Now is the best time to try out a couple different desktops and distributions too. If you have them loaded up on your Ventoy flash drive, all you have to do is restart your computer and pick a different option when you boot into Ventoy. Give everything you find interesting a quick go, find what you like, and then we'll move on.
Step 4: Installing the operating system
Now it's time to go through with the install, how exciting! But, heed this warning. Going forward there's potential to lose your files if something goes wrong, prepare as though you are wiping your entire drive even if that's not exactly what you're doing. Be very careful when partitioning your drive, and make sure you have backups in place just in case.
From the live desktop, you should be able to find some kind of application called something like "Install". On Linux Mint, it's right on the desktop with a little disc icon, if you're installing something like Fedora where you don't have desktop icons you can find it in the overview. Regardless of your distribution it shouldn't be too hard to find, and the steps will be fairly similar to what we're gonna do here on Mint. Just read everything it asks you and it should be a fairly intuitive process.
For Linux Mint Cinnamon specifically, it'll first ask you for your language, then your keyboard layout. Pretty simple stuff so far! Next it'll ask if you want to install optional multimedia codecs, as the installer states these are needed to play some video formats and properly display some websites. I'd recommend checking this, if for some reason you don't want to you'll always have the option to install them later. Next we're going to choose how we want to partition our drive, if you have chosen to install alongside Windows, you should see an option to have the installer do this for you. If you just want to completely wipe your drive and lean full into Linux, you can choose to do that as well. Then we'll put our timezone in.
After this we're going to put in our name, the name of our computer, our desired username and password, and tell it if we want to be logged in automatically or if we want to put our password in to unlock the computer. We'll also have the option to encrypt our home folder for extra security. This stuff is all up to your personal preference.
After that, we will begin the installation! This will take a bit of time, but once it's complete we will remove restart the system and remove the flash drive. You'll probably be faced with a menu called Grub bootloader for a moment, if you're choosing to dualboot with Windows alongside Linux, this is where you'll choose what operating system to boot into. It'll go into Linux by default, and if you want to boot into Windows instead all you have to do is scroll down to the Windows boot manager option below it with your arrow keys and press enter. If you just leave it be for a moment it'll automatically continue booting and you'll be welcomed in to your Linux desktop!
Step 5: Some post install things
When your system comes back you'll probably be faced with a menu called Grub bootloader for a moment, if you're choosing to dualboot with Windows alongside Linux, this is where you'll choose what operating system to boot into. It'll go into Linux by default, and if you want to boot into Windows instead all you have to do is scroll down to the Windows boot manager option below it with your arrow keys and press enter. If you just leave it be for a moment it'll automatically continue booting and you'll be welcomed in to your Linux desktop!
The very first thing you should do with any Linux install after logging in for the first time is update the system. You can do this by navigating to the Software center on Gnome, the update manager on Cinnamon, or Discover on KDE Plasma. Give it a moment to detect what needs to be updated, and click update. This might take a bit of time as well since dang near everything will have to update, but once it's done you can feel free to go crazy and do whatever you want. Install all your programs, sign in to everything, and get started using a computer that's truly yours!