Poll: which non-mint linux distro would you recommend to people switching from windows 8.1 to linux?

[151tom]

I know someone who was an Apple user and bought a System 76 desktop computer with POP OS installed on it and clam that's it better and easier to use than their Apple desktop computer.

2) https://distrochooser.de/ has a warning about Pop! OS saying "The privacy policy of the distribution should be read carefully during installation".
Do either of you happen to know what that's about?

It sounds as though it's suggesting that a user read the privacy policy of the distribution because Pop OS may be collecting user personal data information although not really sure.

I haven't tried Pop OS yet however I believe I'll give Pop OS a test run and see what I think.

[MurphCID]

I have installed it on quiet a few laptops, and have never seen anything which would lead me to a privacy concern of any sort. Its Gnome desktop, while still Gnome, is somewhat less offensive than "pure Gnome", but apparently System 76 has had a large issue with the GNOME project people, to the point that they are telling Gnome to pound sand, and are developing their Cosmic desktop in Rust. POP!_OS seems to get hardware support very quickly (but they make the hardware as well).

I have it on one laptop (it could not see the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports under Mint 21), and it works fine, and at least on their hardware, it seems battery life is pretty good. Their Cinnamon version is both old and ugly which is why I do not use it. I LOVE, and I mean LOVE their putting in the ability to encrypt your drive during installation! This is flipping brilliant!

My personal experience is that people I give laptops to find POP!_OS easy to navigate, easy to use, and have no problems with it. In the installations I have done for people, they have the minimize button active, but I activate the maximize button. Also they have the firmware updater (use at your own risk). and they can save a complete install on the drive in case you Zorch your system. No one has called me and told me they cannot understand it.

I am still a personal Mint user, but I find that for new users POP!_OS seems to do pretty well.

[Valsodar]

Arch. Or at least Arco cuz it's the closest thing to a vanilla Arch. After some tweaks post installation it can become a vanilla Arch.
Manjaro is a thorn in the rear end, so I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemy.

[Hoser Rob]

... My two cents on Pop! OS are:

1) It is recommended for gaming by Lutris, whose developer kind of Popped! Off (if you'll indulge my pun) and went on a strange quasi rant against mint:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comment ... t/g0uwvz6/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comment ... t/g0w24so/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comment ... t/g1cfbu9/
...

WHat's strange about it? He obviously knows what he's talking about, and he's not the only developer who's saying it.

[MurphCID]

... My two cents on Pop! OS are:

1) It is recommended for gaming by Lutris, whose developer kind of Popped! Off (if you'll indulge my pun) and went on a strange quasi rant against mint:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comment ... t/g0uwvz6/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comment ... t/g0w24so/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comment ... t/g1cfbu9/
...

WHat's strange about it? He obviously knows what he's talking about, and he's not the only developer who's saying it.

I did not see anything about POP!_OS just how bad Mint LInux is on Lutris. Am I missing something? The author apparently is fond of Ubuntu MATE.

[Iceberg]

Why would someone go to a distro and ask if someone would recommend another distro? Mint has served me well and I just don't understand why. I realize it wasn't the question but WHY?

Mint, like most distros, sometimes struggle on issues to work with proprietary drivers for printers, video cards, and other closed hardwares, plus some closed softwares if there aren't any alternatives yet created. Not their fault, its those greedy manufacturers of hardwares and softwares in collaboration with tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, Google, including specific proprietary OS like Red Hat. Even Ubuntu is now pushing for ads. Thus, more users are trying to do more by moving away from anything proprietary to freedom, like switching to Trisquel which is a fork of Ubuntu. Same with switching to Librewolf or Abrowser from Firefox. However 100% free like freeBSD has restrictions which rejects anything that's propietrary if that's user's goal (not dealing with the devil) while OpenBSD is more flexible accepting either free or propietrary.

[Portreve]

Y'know, here it is, straight-up and unfiltered:

I think most distros out there are absolute crap.

Most distros, even the seriously commercial ones like RedHat and SUSE, are in no way, shape, or form as professionally executed as Linux Mint.

I am by no means a technology n00b, and so I'm perfectly capable of figuring out the ungainly crud that is CentOS's, or openSUSE's (to name just two) software installer. I also know how to figure out how to search for solutions to most situations that at first blush I don't know what to do with, and frankly all of that comes from me having the background I do and growing up in the eras I have, etc.

But just because I can figure out SUSE's garbage program for installing software (hey, SUSE, the 90s are calling and they want their software packaging and management systems back!) that doesn't mean it's any good.

People switching from Windows 8.1 (or, honestly, any version of Windows) who don't already have a Linux background would crash and burn so bad that not only would it do them no good, all it would do is give the Linux community a black eye. And for what? To stroke the l33t hax0r ego of some basement-dwelling anti-social nerd?

The only really decent and professional setup I've seen out there is the one which Ubuntu and its derivatives use. The biggest problem with Ubuntu, strictly from a new-user-usability perspective, is Gnome 3.x. Desktop users (which is the demographic we're talking about here) are looking for a good desktop computer UI paradigm. Gnome ain't it. That means you have to know a lot of extra stuff, such as: what a "spin" is, that spins exist, that Ubuntu has them, what sort of spins Ubuntu has, and that one of them is a better UI choice than Gnome 3.x. That's a heck of a lot to ask from a Linux-inexperienced switcher.

But, if forced to pick something other than Linux Mint, I guess Ubuntu Cinnamon, or perhaps Ubuntu Xfce. A runner-up might be Elementary OS or Solus OS. However, the only practical choice for most users is to pick a distro with a repository system that is well-supported by software out there, and so that means Debian and its derivatives, Fedora and its derivatives, or openSUSE (are there openSUSE derivatives?) because the path with the least amount of friction is the one which contains all the libre software titles which people (regardless of their awareness) need.

[The Muffin Man]

My "other" would be KDE Neon

[Termy]

[...]

I wouldn't recommend KDE Neon to such an audience, because it's essentially a bleeding-edge testing ground for KDE. I'd suggest Kubuntu, which is essentially the same thing, but with hopefully more of a stable KDE release. Granted, KDE doesn't seem to be well known for stability, something which I imagine would put off many new users to Linux, despite how pretty and customizable it is. I think KDE Neon is great for KDE developers or people with a passion for KDE, though.

[all41]

Well--still on Win8 imeans they didn't drink the kool-aid.

This demographic will find a soft landing with Mint--most will choose Cinnamon.
Mint has a lot to offer for disenchanted Win users (do we not all fit that description?)

Distros come and go. Mint has a solid history.

[Termy]

[...]

When I was on Windows 8.1 (almost a decade ago), Linux Mint didn't work well for me at all, sadly, despite how hard I tried. Nowadays though? Definitely!

[The Muffin Man]

[...]

I wouldn't recommend KDE Neon to such an audience, because it's essentially a bleeding-edge testing ground for KDE. I'd suggest Kubuntu, which is essentially the same thing, but with hopefully more of a stable KDE release. Granted, KDE doesn't seem to be well known for stability, something which I imagine would put off many new users to Linux, despite how pretty and customizable it is. I think KDE Neon is great for KDE developers or people with a passion for KDE, though.

Neon is based on Ubuntu LTS. KDE is spot on.
I don't think you can make that type of call unless you've run it as I have on a primary laptop for over 5 years for everyday usage.
When COVID hit, I bought a (yet another) laptop and installed (yet again) Neon and used if for my work (over 2 years) pc until I got a Macbook for work.
Additionally, my daughters ran it instead of Windows.

[sleeper12]

I use Sparkylinux on my old 32 bit machines, works well:
https://sparkylinux.org/

[Portreve]

...it's essentially a bleeding-edge testing ground for KDE...

Since when? I've always understood KDE Neon to be to KDE installations what Fedora Gnome is to Gnome desktop setups: a clean, vanilla to-spec setup which represents KDE's baseline vision for KDE.

...KDE doesn't seem to be well known for stability, something which I imagine would put off many new users to Linux, despite how pretty and customizable it is. I think KDE Neon is great for KDE developers or people with a passion for KDE, though.

KDE's stability issues I think stem largely from it's free-form organization structure, and how different releases of different components or even whole subsystems land at different points in time, and so it's hard for any particular "snapshot" to truly represent the latest solid and stable software stack.

It's hard to really say with any great certainty how all of these "Windows 8.1 switchers" would react to KDE's UI, and I would not pretend to know. Personally, I've always felt that KDE was very "Windows-like" because of how "by geeks for geeks" it seems to me, whereas Gnome 1.x, 2.x, even 3.x in a number of ways, and of course naturally Cinnamon, are very much more Mac OS Finder-like.

Well--still on Win8 imeans they didn't drink the kool-aid.

They drank the kool-aid just to be using Windows in the first place.

This demographic will find a soft landing with Mint--most will choose Cinnamon.

Probably true, and in my view Cinnamon's — to say nothing of Linux Mint's — polish makes it the "professional-looking OS" that the Linux community needs, should it actually want to be taken seriously as a desktop OS contender and grow its ranks.

Mint has a lot to offer for disenchanted Win users (do we not all fit that description?)

Certainly not!

[Termy]

Since when?

It's the latest KDE slapped onto ol' faithful Ubuntu, making it ideal for KDE development and those super interested in up-to-date KDE. I guess I could water my sentiment down to simply saying it's bleeding edge, then let you decide what that entails. If I were programming for KDE, I know for sure I'd have a KDE Neon virtual machine around, and if I were really into it, I'd probably be on KDE Neon as my main distribution, so I could always test my software works with their latest changes, using older KDE releases in VMs.

[old_noob]

Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate. A familiar GUI and good stability. My 2nd tier would be MX or Manjaro xfce.

I love the look and feel of KDE but something always breaks after a week or 2, otherwise Kubuntu would be in the mix.

[The Muffin Man]

For many many years, Debian sid only used KDE due to Gnome instabilities.(ie, it wouldn't reliably build) I'm not starting a KDE/Gnome war. I'm stating that many of the KDE aversions are out of date.

[old_noob]

For many many years, Debian sid only used KDE due to Gnome instabilities.(ie, it wouldn't reliably build) I'm not starting a KDE/Gnome war. I'm stating that many of the KDE aversions are out of date.

Well, I do have a machine running Manjaro KDE in my home gym/ home brewery and it has been stable for over 6 weeks. It is my media center for music and video and has performed flawlessly. However. I'm only there 3-4 hours a week, maybe 8-10 if I brew, so it 's not heavy use. I will leave it alone and see how it does.

Maybe it's because I mostly use secondhand equipment. My newest laptop is a 2-1/2 year old HP. Also have 2 5 year old Dells and a 6 year old Fujitsu at the moment (btw, the Fujitsu has a detachable keyboard and Mint Cinnamon works beautifully in tablet mode).

Certainly nothing against Gnome, just maybe not great for a Windows refugee. Need to try it on my touchscreen. That could be quite nice.

[The Muffin Man]

I love Manjaro KDE. However the package management takes some getting used to.

[MurphCID]

I love Manjaro KDE. However the package management takes some getting used to.

No kidding. I found it alright, but I actually liked Fedora Cinnamon better.