Looking to dip my toes into Linux for the first time. I have a 2016 Intel MacBook Pro with pretty solid specs collecting dust right now that I think I’m going to use. Research so far has indicated to me that the two best options for me are likely Mint or Elementary OS. Does anyone have any insight? Also open to other OS’s. I would consider myself decently tech savvy but I am not a programmer or anything. Comfortable dipping into the terminal when the need arises and all that.

@linux #linux

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    TL;Dr elementary will give you what you want if you like Mac’s interface. Depending on the complexity of the thing you’re doing you won’t need to dip into the terminal too much

    Elementary was my favourite out of all of em until I moved to NixOS so I’d recommend that especially coming from Mac

    Realistically distro doesn’t really matter that much with a few exceptions (arch, NixOS, qubes all do something different) the thing you’ll want to pay more attention to is desktop environment

    Main 3 imo are GNOME (looks kinda like android, everything is setup sensibly but not much customisation) KDE (looks like windows 10 out of the box and functions in a similar way, very customisable) XFCE (looks kinda like windows XP/7, one of the most lightweight ones)

    Elementary uses a modified version of gnome (I believe) called Pantheon

    Pop uses their own spin on gnome though they’re currently writing their own

    Mint uses their own DE called Cinnanon

    Ubuntu and fedora I believe both use gnome by default but can also be installed with others