this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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This weekend. I’ve asked my significant other to check through and backup any files she may need but we’re switching off Microslops ecosystem this coming week. Got it down to Ubuntu or Mint for an ease of use while not jumping in the hole too deep. But we are in agreement at least to turn away.
:: EDIT 17/01/2026 ::
Thanks Everyone. We went with Mint Cinnamon Distro. The hardest part being how to get into the BIOS and turn on the USB boot. Everything that was installed windows wise is now installed mint wise and got the other halfs’ bookmarks up and running in a browser for her (Vivaldi if anyone’s interested). VPNs up and working and so far so good. Didn’t get spammed to death with subscriptions windows which is a major plus.
Go with Mint, Pop!_Os, or Bazzite.
Ubuntu is only really a good choice if you want corporate/business level support. And even then there are other options.
Avoid Ubuntu - it's made by the Microsoft of the Linux world. If you want an easy transition from Windows specifically, then you really ought to run KDE Plasma as your desktop environment, as that is by far the most similar to Windows in terms of look, layout and workflow, and it is very flexible in what can be changed and adjusted. GNOME is the other big one, but it feels more Mac-like or tablet-like.
It's preferable to pick one of those two, as they support the modern Wayland protocol, whereas other desktop environments still only support X11 or only partially support Wayland - I don't want to infodump on you right now, but suffice to say that Wayland is more secure, and is widely regarded as the future of Linux, while the old X11 has security issues, and is only in maintenance mode now.
Mint, for whatever reason, and unlike almost every other distro, doesn't come with KDE Plasma as an option. I would recommend Fedora - it's very solid and well developed, an all purposes workhorse that can do anything you need it to, and it's a first class citizen anywhere, since it is one of the most commonly used distros by far. My runner-up would be OpenSUSE. If you're dead set on something Ubuntu-based, then I would take a look at Tuxedo OS, or perhaps just going back to the roots, and install Debian.
I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough to contrast and compare linux distros but I'll chime in with my experience for two years now on Pop!_OS.
So far, I'm super happy! Was simple to install and setup. Aside from Photoshop, there's nothing I miss, and when in a pinch I've got photopea ready to go. I've got steam on there for gaming with little to no issues. My ds4 Bluetooth works out of the box, better than it did on windows. The options for how to install apps are great (love the pop shop 'app store').
I do a lot of go development using vscode (happy to try an alternative but the go ecosystem and plugin support is fantastic for vscode) and it's smooth sailing.
My biggest hiccups were trying to use experimental nvidia drivers but rolling back to stable releases wasn't too painful.
Vscodium might be an option for you
Second vote for Fedora. I set up my wife's laptop with Fedora KDE, and she uses it with no issues. She gets easily frustrated by tech hiccups, and Fedora KDE just works for her.
The only issue with Fedora, and it isn't a big one, is that the maintainers are adament about only including OSS. This isn't much of an issue except that it doesn't come with some video codecs IIRC. This meant that some videos online wouldn't play until you add the codec. This isn't hard, but it is a small frustration point for casual users.
Go with Bazzite. It's built off of Bluefin which is an atomic version of Fedora.
Bazzite has all the accoutrements for gaming built into it.
its not because they are adamant about OSS, but because the H.264 and H.265 codecs have software patents that require distributors paying a license fee. the situation is a bit unclear, that's why some distros choose to distribute these drivers. Besides fedora, opensuse and others too do not distribute these drivers.
but flatpak versions of software will get downloaded along with these drivers, and that will work on any distro, because flathub decided they can distribute these drivers. bit of a courageous move, but I guess they know what they are doing.
Linux Mint is a fantastic place to start (I would say the best place, personally). It's especially good if you use an Nvidia card, as it makes the driver install trivial with the built-in driver installer tool.
What if I do have an Nvidia card? I've been to and fro on switching for such a long time. I have so much random shit on my PC that it's making the overhead to leave daunting.
Then I would suggest the standard Linux Mint Cinnamon, which as I said makes it extremely easy to install the Nvidia driver.
Mint is good. Avoid Ubuntu; snaps just make your life hard. You don't need to know what those are, and if you avoid Ubuntu you never will need to know.
Isn't Mint a version of Ubuntu?
Yes. Though the parts that make Ubuntu bad aren't the base code. The parts that make it bad are the Ubuntu-specific things Canonical puts on top, like Snaps. Mint doesn't include those poor choices.
Damnit I just switched to Ubuntu. That explains why I kept getting lost. What about Debian?
Debian and Mint are both good. The former is aimed at servers and the latter is aimed at desktop use. They are otherwise very similar under the hood.
Anything specific I could help out with?
Hmm, okay. Yeah I was trying to set up an environment to dabble with machine vision and had trouble finding good instructions or guidance for programming env setup. I think in college we used something-Unix but it's been so long I don't really have a frame of reference anymore. So I'm looking for a low-overhead daily driver that's also relatively common or amenable to maker communities
If that makes sense.
What did you use before? You might be able to use many of the same things, or find open-source alternatives that work the same.
If you install Ubuntu already your fine.
Personally I don't want to spend time working on my computer (that's work me), so I use mint. Just about any flavor of Linux can have a basic development env configuration done.
Cool thanks, I'll stick with it! At least until I'm familiar and want to try something new
Hmmm, now that is not something I'm qualified to answer. Hopefully someone else speaks up.
Tried both, Mint wasn't great for me for gaming because of older kernels and such so I switched to Nobara.
It can be hard to convince partners and family, so congrats on the success. My partner worked in IT support but is not a computer person and does not own a PC. I simply provide a family Linux computer and some hosted services to be used by anyone in the family, usually EndeavorOS with KDE. They are aware of world happenings to understand why it is important and the biggest complaint I received was that I need to apply more scaling because the text is too small. :D
With all that said, I think both our situations are anomalous, though becoming more common.