I’m on board that we need to become independent from big tech. As someone who is fond of the Mac user experience, from choosing hardware to how you navigate through apps, I need a guide to make the switch, so if you know of any great guides for Mac users, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Edit: you have all been very useful. I now know a bit more how to start and what it would mean to switch!
For a nice experience I would start with elementary OS or Linux mint.
The first will please your aesthetic from the get go.
I hear a lot of people say stuff like that “start with”. But is it so easy to switch of you picked one? Like don’t you have to get all your files in an external drive and delete a full computer before you can reinstall a different disto?
Note that you can have a separate partition for the
/homedirectory, under which your user directory is located. Then you could wipe just the system partition and install a new distro there, keeping/homeas it is. But this requires some basic knowledge of partitions and a little attention during setup. In any case, having a backup is always recommended, especially when dealing with operations that can delete all your data.It’s a lot easier to switch Distros than switching from Windows or MacOS to Linux in the first place.
But you’re still going to be reinstalling the OS and all your programs again.
However - You can try most Linux distros without installing them, like give it a go for a night, if you don’t like it at all, nothing has changed. If you do, maybe try another night (and another) if you really like it, make the choice.
It’s not easy to switch, but it can be made easier if you keep all your important files in one place.
Yes. But you don’t have to switch.
People say “start” with simpler distros because if you go past just using it as-is, and grow to understand linux closer to the system level, you’ll likely eventually end up preferring something more complex.
There’s little point to starting at the deep end, like arch, since you don’t know whether you’ll end up staying in the shallows yet. Either way, it’s the start. It can also be the end, but that is unknowable.
If you seek that kind of advice don’t better don’t format your drive with all of your data. Try installing distro of your choice on some old hardware you have and use it occasionally and understand if linux in general and specific distro in particular is what you want.
For a start you would have a bootable pen drive, just to take a look around. If a certain distro doesn’t suit you, don’t install it. After installation, the hurdles get bigger, just as you say.
The two mentioned distros are already tailored towards easy use, but there are many ways to skin the cat. The distributions work with different desktop managers, each with different philosophies. On some distro you can choose or change the desktop manager afterwards (and potentially break your system).
Take the popular cachyOS. Its most useable desktop manager is KDE Plasma, but it has support for a several others (17). Some better, some worse.
Here a tier list of desktop environments showing some desktop manager und Debian 13.
EDIT: Keep in mind, that you can further customize and tailor desktop environments to your needs.
You don’t have to switch if you like what you found. Some people distro hop, some stay on the same one their whole life.
Too answer your question: Keeping your data is not hard and you should have a backup. Keeping your configuration/customization is a different story; if you don’t like the defaults, the tweaking is practically lost when you swap distros or DEs.
Too address the elefant in the room: Those beginner-friendly distros (e.g. Mint, Ubuntu, …) that you “start with” are actual full-fledged Linux distros under the hood. They usually try to create a UI that’s easier to navigate for someone switching from Windows (rarely from mac) and have a friendly community. They are opionated on some design choices but otherwise 99% identical to the underlying generic purpose distro.
Ubuntu is based on Debian. Mint is based on Ubuntu. Most Everything build for Debian will also work on Ubuntu or Mint. If you like Mint and it works on your hardware, there’s no objective need to switch to Debian (or Arch or Gentoo) ever. People switch as a learning exercise or for bragging rights.
The main purpose of trying different distro is to find your style. Experts could probably configure Debian to look and behave just like Mint, but it’s easier and more consistent if you get it all of the box.
You would have to do that, yes. In all likelihood, you’ll be fine with just picking a distro. As the Señor says, elementary has a Mac-like aesthetic.
I have no experience with that distro myself, but I’d imagine that it allows running a live environment directly from the USB, that will let you test it without installing so you can see if everything that you need to work will work, and also whether you actually like it (running a live environment from a USB will be slower than if you had it installed, so don’t base your “liking it” off of that).
It’s not so much just an aesthetic, you can make KDE and even GNOME look much more like MacOS than eOS will and KDE can even to an extent act like Finder (GNOME not so much, they’re too ideologically different)
But Pantheon is designed to act like Finder. (whilst trying to not infringe on Apple’s designs) It’s the closest thing functionally to the modern Finder outside OpenSTEP.
Many distros you don’t even have to do anything but install packages to switch desktop environments, which are really what people are recommending when they’re trying to say what is similar to mac
Ok so what I understand is that the disto has more to do with compatibilities, optimization and updates whole desktop environment is more the UX and user experience?
Yeah the DE is your desktop, launcher, window manager, setting manager etc. So Gnome, KDE Plasma, mutter, etc. It is what most people will notice.
The distro is basically a package manager and assembly of packages. So if you were to use ubuntu for instance, there is a default DE, but you’ll notice there are a bunch of “flavors” available. These are mostly different desktop environments and default applications, but all of the stuff in any of them are in the package lists and available to install regardless of flavor.
The main differences between distros are
The thing is, when you reach that point, you’ll be doing that because you want to. The reason it’s “starts with” is because your desire to try that next distro now that you get the fundamentals will be greater than your distain for doing a backup and wipe.
This is as much of an assurance as it is a warning.