So i was surprised today when my fiancee told me she was thinking about switching over to linux. Surprised because she is absolutely not technically minded, but also because she was weary about having Microsoft AI slop forced on her PC every update. ( i’m so proud!)

Now i’ve used a little linux but i’ve always been a holdout. Won’t stop me from moving someone else over but i have too much going on in my setup to deal with that right now. So i’m not super versed but i was able to give her the basic rundown of what distros are, concerns when switching, what may and may not be available, shes still on board so we’re doing this! Knowing her she would like to not have to transition too much, whats something fairly hands off and easy to learn. I’ve heard some good things about mint from hanging around you nerds the past few years but also some not so good things, any suggestions?

next concern is what kind of transfer process is this going to be? i have some spare HDD’s so we can try and get everything ported over but i’m so busy with school right now i can’t quite allocate the time to really deep dive this.

Any help is appreciated, cheers!

  • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
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    14 hours ago

    While Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro, it tries to un-fuck the worst of Canonical. Other Ubuntu spins with a different desktop environment don’t do this, like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. They end up as just Ubuntu on a different DE, with all the decisions made by canonical.

    Base Debian might work, but afaik, is “not as beginner friendly” compared to Mint.

    • 4grams@awful.systems
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      6 hours ago

      Seconding LMDE. It’s Debian based rather than Ubuntu so no canonical to un-f. It’s my favorite distro. LMDE for desktop, vanilla Debian for servers.

    • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      Two points: Mint has a Debian version (LMDE), but also base Debian, especially the KDE flavor, has made enormous gains in beginner friendliness.