My head tells me Linux Mint, but my heart says listen to your head. Why is this hard? 😂

especially for new converts (or those that do not know what an OS is).. the curated store of applications makes it very easy to push people away from microsoft.

What is the persons skill level and are both of you OK with you picking up the slack?

Mint has been my go-to, except for a couple of people who ended up with pop!_os.. mostly cause I showed them some options and that's the one they thought looked cool lol

Depends what their level of technical comfort is. A friend of mine just got switched over to Kubuntu because it was Windows flavored enough for him to make the jump. He's more comfortable with tech but wasn't a Linux daily driver prior to that though.

For others, yeah, Mint is probably what I'd aim for. It kinda depends on the target demographic.

My head tells me Linux Mint

my heart says listen to your head

My head tells me Linux Mint

Mint is always my go to safe suggestion.

She's a pretty proficient windows user who mentioned looking at kbuntu. She can probably handle some rough edges on her own, but I have no interest in long term support. So probably mint 🤣

if it helps, as a lifetime Windows user I installed Linux Mint on an old laptop a few weeks ago, and used it for a week while travelling, and it went well :D It's just different enough from Windows to have a bit of a learning curve, but nothing too scary.

Are you committing to having her Linux setup to do everything her windows can do? Mint would be good at that point.

If like most people they only really need a browser, Linux Mint. If they're more of a power user, let them try a few DEs (Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Cosmic, XFCE) and choose a distro based on which they prefer.

There is a good reason Mint is recommended as the no nonsense beginner distro. For someone more technical and willing to learn I might recommend Fedora.

One you get past those two distros you are pretty much in the realm where someone should be technical enough to choose their own distro and know what that means.

Does Mint have screensaver and locking issues with Cinnamon?

I install Mint on computers of people that don't want Windows and that I have to help, but I personally use Debian and MATE. Recently I tried to use Cinnamon on Debian but the screensaver was not always working. Sometimes I was away for days and when I was coming back, my monitor was still on. And sometimes the screensaver got stuck, impossible to remove without restarting my session.

I have a friend that tried Mint too, and he basically told me the same thibg was happening to him.

I have not heard about this from other folks to whom I installed Mint, but since they're all very basic users that turn off their computer every time they are done, it never came up.

It would be my only issue with Mint for beginners. If they leave their computer running and come back later, there's a slight chance that the screensaver will either not be started, or very difficult to exit.

At my work, I convinced my boss to let us use Linux on a couple machines and, you guessed it: Mint. Everyone pretty much knows where to find things and it’s stable as a rock.

Ideally it would be a laptop/distro pairing that is officially supported by the laptop vendor. For better or worse, I think most often the distro is Ubuntu or Red Hat.

I’ve never used for-fee subscription distros like Ubuntu Pro or RHE, but if someone had the money to burn and a viable use case, I wouldn’t stop them.

What are this options? I just switched to mint yesterday. I had a spare hard drive and a 12 year old computer not being used. The 120gb ssd is lightning fast compared to the old 1tb HD and it turned this old broken uselessness into a slick new machine. But I'm almost a complete newbie at Linux so mint/cinnamon it is.

Linux Mint is by far the smoothest experience I've had so far in trying Nobara, Debian, Manjaro otherwise.

Hannah Montana Linux, obviously.

This is the only answer, regardless of the question.

NixOS and tell them to figure it out.

RHEL is great for servers, but not an awesome experience for a user workstation, IMO

Whenever this question comes up, I think the distro is less important than the desktop environment. If they feel more comfortable in Windows, go with something that provides KDE. If Mac, go with Gnome. Once they get used to it, let them go through the rite of passage that is distro hopping.

That said, and I know everyone recommends Mint or Ubuntu, and they're fine, but you could do better. I like the immutable distros for people who just want to use their computer without thinking about it. They aren't able to mess with anything important that keeps the computer running, and as long as they restart the computer, it's always up to date. It's like a Chromebook, which is the level most people are with computers.

CachyOS, as it's the one I'm using.

By installing it for them, I can only expect I'll be also called upon to support it. Thus choosing the one I'm most familiar with right now.

What the crap? Surely this can’t be a widespread issue?

I don't want to spam multiple links with examples, but you can look this up on your favourite search engine to find multiple current problems with Cinnamon's screensaver. It seems pretty common and that's why I'm asking.

Here's a link that's from a month ago listing all the possible causes.

Here's another one from a few months ago.

My Couch PC runs mint, and sometimes I forget to turn it off.

I'm not running a classic screensaver though, it just turns of the video output after a while, and eventually the tv turns off too.

I haven't had any issues with getting the video output back once I return, but the longest its been left alone is about 8h...

Converted my non-tech wife to Mint without a single hiccup after her laptop crapped out - intuitive af for lifelong windows users - my kids will have never known another OS outside of their school issued chromebooks as they’re only just experiencing desktop environments

Likely either mint or popos

They tend to be the most liked by newcomers. Enough so that they don't miss windows, or want to try something else a week later.

Never happens for me, across a laptop and three PCs

Bazzite for young people, Mint for old people would be my first thought

OK I'm nearly 40 but you don't gotta remind me I'm old 🤣

Bodhi!

I've been installing Fedora Silverblue on family member's computers. No complaints so far. They're all non-technical users.

I think popos definitely deserves mention here. Cosmic has come a long way in a short time and the nvidia support is really helpful.

I'm on maybe an old version of Mint at work and it is kind of miserable.

Icons don't work right, the panel is weird, the software center is not very easy to use.

I'm hoping that new versions are better.

I was going to recommend a kubuntu lts, maybe help install flatpak support

Initially I went with Ubuntu for my father in law, but he wouldnt stop messing with it and breaking things. So, last time it broke I installed arch with gnome, and now he doesnt know how to break it. Its been solid for over 2 years now on his 2010 macbook pro.

If you want to do the least amount of tech support: Fedora Kinoite.

I believe this is an X issue, not a Mint issue. Most other distros have switched to Wayland, but Mint will use X until Wayland is mature enough.

A lot of them are debian/ubuntu based ones. Mint, zorin; pop!_os used to be in the list as well, but less so now, since COSMIC is kinda under baked (even if I myself am a big fan).. then for people who know what a computer is I also usually throw in some non-debian distros like fedora/nobara, and for people I actively trust to be capable of using a computer (which is mostly my friends who work in IT/computing or related fields) and who run bleeding edge hardware they also sometimes had ones like cachy or endevour thrown in.. the bleeding edge hardware feels less relevant now tho, with no one being able to afford a computer :p

Anywho, mint is fine, there's no reason to not stick to it

I work in an environment with a lot of people that are not very technically skilled. We run Ubuntu (GNOME) in their Laptops.

If I install Linux for family members etc. I install Ubuntu.

My reasoning is:
Ubuntu/.deb based systems are very wifely supported. If you google "how do u do X on Linux" most likely an answer tailored to Ubuntu may come up. Which is however mostly important if the Users will be doing some stuff themselves.

Also, I believe Desktops make a huge difference because that's how people interact with their Computer. And in my opinion it's not super important what desktop you start people on, its important it stays cohesive. My parents PC's run MATE for that stability* (and for the "classic" usage scheme they learned back in the XP days) but even GNOME has a pretty stable usage paradigm these days ...

Tl;dr: My reccomendation always is Ubuntu with a Desktop that resembles what they are used to.

* though with the MATE project seeming less active these days I've been looking for an alternative with low switching friction

Not strictly a Mint issue, but it's still sotfware from them.

The development of Cinnamon began by the Linux Mint team following the April 2011 release of GNOME 3...

A Fedora variant of some sort since they are up-to-date in terms of features and have a low learning curve

My mom won't update Mint despite me showing her how, so I switched it to CachyOS since I'd be the one updating it anyway. At least it's not nearly as annoying for me to work on.

Head says Linux Mint
Heart says listen to the head
Tiling WM Arch

I'd put LMDE on it, the familiarity of Mint with the stability of Debian and no fucking snaps.

I put Mint on my brother’s laptop when his hard drive died, he’s not a techie sort of person at all and has had no complaints.

Fedora Atomic.

Updates are stable.

They can't fuck it up.

https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon-screensaver/issues/93

If this was the issue you're talking about.

Respectfully huge disagree. Standard Fedora would be better (and is my personal recommendation) since a bunch of administrative command syntax would be different with Atomic. The internet's going to show troubleshooting advice for the former 9 times out of 10.

I would definitely choose Linux Mint 100% :p

I started off with it and its learning curve wasn't too steep. It uses Calamares for installation, features a built-in app store, and is very familiar to those coming from Windows.