Linux Mint is probably your best choice for the Windows like experience. I don’t necessarily like it but it has the “feel” of Windows.
You’ll need a program called Balena Etcher to write a bootable usb, download the version of Linux you want by going directly to the site. Most casual users like Ubuntu, smaller percentage use versions like Mint.
Balena Etcher will do all the work of getting the usb ready. Then back up all of your important files.
You can dual boot but there are some issues with that.
For gamers, last I checked Nobara is still one of the better distros for plug and play though any game with an anticheat will likely screw you over unless they explicitly whitelist Linux. Another option is what it is built off of, Fedora or Bazzite. Bazzite seems to be more up and coming in this space, as it seems to do a better job handling what Fedora sets out to do (as it is also built on Fedora).
All of these work for workstation use, although the inclusion of gaming related software (Steam, Lutris, etc.) would just be bloat if that's your main use case.
I'm not personally team Balena Etcher though, I tend to prefer Ventoy since I keep OS backups for Windows, Linux (especially SteamOS) etc. on it and Ventoy is a simple drag and drop process, and lets you use the stick for things outside of being a bootable disk.
For Mint vs Ubuntu though, a lot of prevailing opinion seems to generally be that Mint is flat out better for most average users. It's been a minute since I looked in on those conversations, but a quick search seems to yield basically the same sentiments.
I don't think average users can go wrong with Mint.
I can say that Mint, from a zero experience Linux person was really easy to kick off and install on an older Thinkpad. All drivers were there for every day functionality. I was able to load and specialty driver for one of my printers as well. Overall, mint for a newbie installed and functioned with ease, highly recommend. I have been on windows since the 3.0 / 3.11 days.
Note- this experience is solely based on a stand alone PC, no 3rd party apps other than a zebra driver.
Yeah, Mint and Bazzite in particular sound like some of the better installation experiences I've seen from Linux.
I had a few problems from Nobara, and Wayland always gave me problems on desktop that I couldn't successfully rid myself of and at the time IIRC Wayland was the only thing that worked properly with GSync/FreeSync, or it was driver related issues with the RTX 4090 which is not uncommon with Linux.
Hilariously, I think Thinkpads are probably still one of the favorites for installing Linux on when it comes to workstation / every day use.
I'm riding my Windows 7 key out until Microsoft finally tries to make me pay directly for it, and then I'll probably end up jumping to Bazzite for my personal PC personally. Provided that everything functions properly which is a hit or miss on high end components.
Linux is probably one of my favorite OS platforms to look at, KDE Plasma and Gnome are both pretty damn neat with so many options.
Cinnamon (the most popular desktop environment for Mint, apparently) also looks close enough to Windows that I would be inclined to agree that transition should be pretty smooth in terms of visual familiarity.
Yes I may be nerding out right now about Linux and I definitely don't have 20 different tabs open catching up on things that have changed since I last used it.
I made my Cinnamon Desktop look like the Gnome desktop with a Dock.
Main Panel on top, made it smaller, put the clock in the middle, added an extra „power off“ applet in the top right corner and added a dock (Plank) on the lower edge, plus replaced the icons with a more appealing set - couldn‘t be happier.
Edit: I have to add, I started with Mint a month ago, then tried out CachyOS (Arch based) and Fedora KDE and Fedora Gnome, but nothing came close in stabilty and useability to Mint. If you don‘t have the newest hardware, Mint completely delivers. Might be a bit different with the latest GPU or other components, because most of the drivers are implemented in the Kernel of the distribution. And Mint is on a bit older Kernel, so not quite up to date with the latest and newest hardware.
As a rule of thumb, if your hardware is older than about 2 years, Mint should work just fine. If it‘s newer, a more up to date distro like Fedora (Nobara, Bazzite) or Arch (EndevourOS, CachyOS, Manjaro) might be better.
It's all I have ever used it seems like. Used dell for a bit and HP. My corp switched to HP, I stuck with my old thinkpad (X240) versus upgrading. It's so bad since I can only use a laptop with the pointer on the keyboard. When I had an HP for a bit, I bought and swapped out my keypad to one with a pointer built in. Old habits are hard to break. They're tanks. Back to Mint, it's one and done on my thinkpads. I will never go back to windows. I also need to get a deeper understanding of Linux as well. Implementing a NAS at home and most seem to be some flavor of Linux.
My friend installed Ubuntu on his Mac and thought it was alright, but then he tried Mint and liked it better. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but goes an extra step to win over converts.
I just have to add, almost any linux distro is good for gaming. I‘m gaming on Mint, with an nVidia GPU, and thanks to the in-built driver manager of Linux Mint, setting up the GPU was a breeze.
For windows games, just install Steam from the Repository, or Heroic for Epic and GoG games, and lutris for the rest.
And you can also run most (not all unfortunately) windows programs with WINE, a compatibilty layer that „translates“ between Linux and the programs. There‘s an application called „Bottles“ which makes setting up WINE pretty easy.
Yeah, you can make it work but if your express purpose is gaming, the distros I listed are more focused and also come bundled with necessary drivers and other software like Gamescope (Valve's micro compositor) and also makes it a breeze to update everything required.
Gaming on Linux is also better in 99% of instances if you have it working properly.
Linux is nowhere near as bloated as Windows, so that frame pacing yum.
Yes, I was tempted to go for a custom gaming distro, but with Mint, everything just worked. Network printer? There it is. (formerly) NTFS formatted drives? Non problem (had some trouble with that on the gaming-centric CachyOS distro). Gaming correctly chosing on which display to show? Works. And a few little things more.
Seriousl, installing the latest nVidia driver from the driver manager app, installing steam and setting „compatibilty mode“ to „all games“ isn‘t really difficult or bothersome, and Mint is rock-solid, stable and just works.
And it‘s true that games sometimes run better. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs better in Linux than in my windows install.
All I‘m saying is, don‘t sleep on Mint for gaming. If you don‘t have the latest and newest hardware, Mint just works for many people, and is really easy to understand and use. Heck, you don‘t even have to use the terminal, and the options are all there in the GUI, sensibly arranged in the menus etc. .
Mint is a beginner friendly distro, which isn‘t to be confused with beginner-distro.
As a previous SLES and Mint user I have been championing the HOLO iso steam OS for gaming PCs. It's an arch linux distro that steam uses for their steam deck and runs amazingly on PC hardware. It has a familiar windows feel to the desktop, full nvidia support built in and it's extremely easy to install from a thumb drive. I cannot recommend this enough.
HoloISO is also an immutable OS, which does make it easier for the end user to ensure that updating the OS retains its functionality. Although some people prefer not to go down that route, it's probably one of the best things for newbies.
Mint Ubuntu Etcher Ventoy Bezzite Fedora Nobara....Call me cynical, but I'm thinking yah really are going to lose most the public that has a hard time understanding the difference between USB-A and USB-C. Although it does sound like a good time to rework my network & passwords right now for some reason, no matter how bad I cringe at the thought.
Linux Mint is probably your best choice for the Windows like experience. I don’t necessarily like it but it has the “feel” of Windows.
You’ll need a program called Balena Etcher to write a bootable usb, download the version of Linux you want by going directly to the site. Most casual users like Ubuntu, smaller percentage use versions like Mint.
Balena Etcher will do all the work of getting the usb ready. Then back up all of your important files.
You can dual boot but there are some issues with that.
Linux Mint is pretty mint for sure.
For gamers, last I checked Nobara is still one of the better distros for plug and play though any game with an anticheat will likely screw you over unless they explicitly whitelist Linux. Another option is what it is built off of, Fedora or Bazzite. Bazzite seems to be more up and coming in this space, as it seems to do a better job handling what Fedora sets out to do (as it is also built on Fedora).
All of these work for workstation use, although the inclusion of gaming related software (Steam, Lutris, etc.) would just be bloat if that's your main use case.
I'm not personally team Balena Etcher though, I tend to prefer Ventoy since I keep OS backups for Windows, Linux (especially SteamOS) etc. on it and Ventoy is a simple drag and drop process, and lets you use the stick for things outside of being a bootable disk.
For Mint vs Ubuntu though, a lot of prevailing opinion seems to generally be that Mint is flat out better for most average users. It's been a minute since I looked in on those conversations, but a quick search seems to yield basically the same sentiments.
I don't think average users can go wrong with Mint.
I can say that Mint, from a zero experience Linux person was really easy to kick off and install on an older Thinkpad. All drivers were there for every day functionality. I was able to load and specialty driver for one of my printers as well. Overall, mint for a newbie installed and functioned with ease, highly recommend. I have been on windows since the 3.0 / 3.11 days.
Note- this experience is solely based on a stand alone PC, no 3rd party apps other than a zebra driver.
Yeah, Mint and Bazzite in particular sound like some of the better installation experiences I've seen from Linux.
I had a few problems from Nobara, and Wayland always gave me problems on desktop that I couldn't successfully rid myself of and at the time IIRC Wayland was the only thing that worked properly with GSync/FreeSync, or it was driver related issues with the RTX 4090 which is not uncommon with Linux.
Hilariously, I think Thinkpads are probably still one of the favorites for installing Linux on when it comes to workstation / every day use.
I'm riding my Windows 7 key out until Microsoft finally tries to make me pay directly for it, and then I'll probably end up jumping to Bazzite for my personal PC personally. Provided that everything functions properly which is a hit or miss on high end components.
Linux is probably one of my favorite OS platforms to look at, KDE Plasma and Gnome are both pretty damn neat with so many options.
Cinnamon (the most popular desktop environment for Mint, apparently) also looks close enough to Windows that I would be inclined to agree that transition should be pretty smooth in terms of visual familiarity.
Yes I may be nerding out right now about Linux and I definitely don't have 20 different tabs open catching up on things that have changed since I last used it.
I made my Cinnamon Desktop look like the Gnome desktop with a Dock.
Main Panel on top, made it smaller, put the clock in the middle, added an extra „power off“ applet in the top right corner and added a dock (Plank) on the lower edge, plus replaced the icons with a more appealing set - couldn‘t be happier.
Edit: I have to add, I started with Mint a month ago, then tried out CachyOS (Arch based) and Fedora KDE and Fedora Gnome, but nothing came close in stabilty and useability to Mint. If you don‘t have the newest hardware, Mint completely delivers. Might be a bit different with the latest GPU or other components, because most of the drivers are implemented in the Kernel of the distribution. And Mint is on a bit older Kernel, so not quite up to date with the latest and newest hardware.
As a rule of thumb, if your hardware is older than about 2 years, Mint should work just fine. If it‘s newer, a more up to date distro like Fedora (Nobara, Bazzite) or Arch (EndevourOS, CachyOS, Manjaro) might be better.
It's all I have ever used it seems like. Used dell for a bit and HP. My corp switched to HP, I stuck with my old thinkpad (X240) versus upgrading. It's so bad since I can only use a laptop with the pointer on the keyboard. When I had an HP for a bit, I bought and swapped out my keypad to one with a pointer built in. Old habits are hard to break. They're tanks. Back to Mint, it's one and done on my thinkpads. I will never go back to windows. I also need to get a deeper understanding of Linux as well. Implementing a NAS at home and most seem to be some flavor of Linux.
My friend installed Ubuntu on his Mac and thought it was alright, but then he tried Mint and liked it better. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but goes an extra step to win over converts.
I just have to add, almost any linux distro is good for gaming. I‘m gaming on Mint, with an nVidia GPU, and thanks to the in-built driver manager of Linux Mint, setting up the GPU was a breeze.
For windows games, just install Steam from the Repository, or Heroic for Epic and GoG games, and lutris for the rest.
And you can also run most (not all unfortunately) windows programs with WINE, a compatibilty layer that „translates“ between Linux and the programs. There‘s an application called „Bottles“ which makes setting up WINE pretty easy.
Yeah, you can make it work but if your express purpose is gaming, the distros I listed are more focused and also come bundled with necessary drivers and other software like Gamescope (Valve's micro compositor) and also makes it a breeze to update everything required.
Gaming on Linux is also better in 99% of instances if you have it working properly.
Linux is nowhere near as bloated as Windows, so that frame pacing yum.
Yes, I was tempted to go for a custom gaming distro, but with Mint, everything just worked. Network printer? There it is. (formerly) NTFS formatted drives? Non problem (had some trouble with that on the gaming-centric CachyOS distro). Gaming correctly chosing on which display to show? Works. And a few little things more.
Seriousl, installing the latest nVidia driver from the driver manager app, installing steam and setting „compatibilty mode“ to „all games“ isn‘t really difficult or bothersome, and Mint is rock-solid, stable and just works.
And it‘s true that games sometimes run better. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs better in Linux than in my windows install.
All I‘m saying is, don‘t sleep on Mint for gaming. If you don‘t have the latest and newest hardware, Mint just works for many people, and is really easy to understand and use. Heck, you don‘t even have to use the terminal, and the options are all there in the GUI, sensibly arranged in the menus etc. .
Mint is a beginner friendly distro, which isn‘t to be confused with beginner-distro.
As a previous SLES and Mint user I have been championing the HOLO iso steam OS for gaming PCs. It's an arch linux distro that steam uses for their steam deck and runs amazingly on PC hardware. It has a familiar windows feel to the desktop, full nvidia support built in and it's extremely easy to install from a thumb drive. I cannot recommend this enough.
HoloISO is also an immutable OS, which does make it easier for the end user to ensure that updating the OS retains its functionality. Although some people prefer not to go down that route, it's probably one of the best things for newbies.
I forgot to include HoloISO for sure!
Mint Ubuntu Etcher Ventoy Bezzite Fedora Nobara....Call me cynical, but I'm thinking yah really are going to lose most the public that has a hard time understanding the difference between USB-A and USB-C. Although it does sound like a good time to rework my network & passwords right now for some reason, no matter how bad I cringe at the thought.
Some people like to go deeper into it or have a more focused use case 😂
It's never a bad time to verify your security though!
Thank you.
This is way over my pay grade.
I am friends with our IT guy at work. I asked him to navigate through this with me.