That’s a neat thing about Linux, the look and feel is actually totally separate from the distro. Everyone focuses on distros when really, that’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, the look and feel is the desktop environment.
KDE is windows-10-like (out of the box, you can also rearrange the crap out of it, ours is set up more like Mac!) and also happens to be one of the most full-featured desktop environments, so you won’t be missing stuff (like HDR support or whatever).
So, a distro with KDE.
Debian is great if you want something that Does Not Break on you. Ever. It will never throw you a curveball with an update. That also means you just won’t really get updates very much, outside of a Big Major Upgrade every couple of years. If you’re tired of Windows Update screwing with you, Debian’s perfect.
Fedora is pretty good if you want the new shinies all the time. Major updates every 6 months. Debian has a bigger appstore and even stuff that isn’t in there often provides .deb packages, which Fedora can’t run, but it’s not a huge deal.
Mint doesn’t have a convenient KDE version (but you can install KDE after the fact). It has its own desktop called Cinnamon. More Windows 7 vibes. It’s based on Debian so you get the Debian compatibility, as well, and they put work into making sure you have GUI apps for stuff like installing drivers (Debian you might need a terminal command or three during initial setup).
There’s also immutable distros like Bazzite, which is basically SteamOS But Desktop. It also comes with similar restrictions to SteamOS, though. Good for an Appliance Computer, an absolute fucking pain if you ever need to install drivers/VR stuff/other system software or what-have-you. I’d avoid for your main computer.
It’s recommended to run a ‘live usb’ first to see if there are any problems with hardware compatibility. Nowadays many distros have their installers as live usbs anyway, but idk about Debian.
Debian is weird in even having non-live ISOs, but they do have various live ones with different desktops! (Don’t grab the one from the homepage, grab one of the live ones instead.)
And honestly, in the coming age of “OSes that don’t spy on you will be illegal!!”, I’m really, really glad for that. We’ve got the entire 27-ISO set of Debian 13.0.0 squirreled away. There’s even more discs for the sources, and they go to great lengths to ensure that everything can be built with no external dependencies that aren’t available in the archive.
You don’t want the “netinst” ISO on the main page. It technically works, but it’s a pain to use and needs internet access to install. Its only redeeming quality is the small download size and fitting on a CD (if you’re burning it to a CD-R which is unlikely).
I just installed Debian with Plasma, and have been using a system with Mint and Plasma as my daily driver for a few months now. I used the default Cinnamon for about a year. Plasma is definitely way more polished and allows almost everything to be done via menus which is NOT a given with most Linux things. It does work most of the time but expect to run into some basic task you didn’t even think about on Windows and having a frustrating experience chasing solutions to untangle how to do it.
I’m never going back to Windows but the amount of times I’ve had to do something convoluted to attempt something you’d think would be easy is too damn high.
You’ve just lost 90 percent of the population. They didn’t understand a word you said. That’s the problem with Linux and its developers. They assume people know all this stuff.
I mean, I could just go “TLDR grab Debian’s live KDE edition” if that’s easier!
The whole point in me explaining all that is that people don’t know all this stuff. That’s why I’m explaining it. I did gloss over the fact that distros exist, but it seems like the person I’m replying to already knows that multiple versions of Linux are a thing so that’s not a huge issue.
And going “here’s some options to pick from” helps if it turns out you’ve got different priorities than we do. But yeah, “TLDR Debian” is also good if you’re overwhelmed.
@starlinguk@forestbeasts meh… he wanted to give you all the info and all the options, that may be confusing for someone that only option was windows until now… Nowadays I dont give options, just try Kubuntu and see if you like it.
Which one is “literally just legally distinct windows 10”?
Anything with the KDE desktop!
That’s a neat thing about Linux, the look and feel is actually totally separate from the distro. Everyone focuses on distros when really, that’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, the look and feel is the desktop environment.
KDE is windows-10-like (out of the box, you can also rearrange the crap out of it, ours is set up more like Mac!) and also happens to be one of the most full-featured desktop environments, so you won’t be missing stuff (like HDR support or whatever).
So, a distro with KDE.
Debian is great if you want something that Does Not Break on you. Ever. It will never throw you a curveball with an update. That also means you just won’t really get updates very much, outside of a Big Major Upgrade every couple of years. If you’re tired of Windows Update screwing with you, Debian’s perfect.
Fedora is pretty good if you want the new shinies all the time. Major updates every 6 months. Debian has a bigger appstore and even stuff that isn’t in there often provides .deb packages, which Fedora can’t run, but it’s not a huge deal.
Mint doesn’t have a convenient KDE version (but you can install KDE after the fact). It has its own desktop called Cinnamon. More Windows 7 vibes. It’s based on Debian so you get the Debian compatibility, as well, and they put work into making sure you have GUI apps for stuff like installing drivers (Debian you might need a terminal command or three during initial setup).
There’s also immutable distros like Bazzite, which is basically SteamOS But Desktop. It also comes with similar restrictions to SteamOS, though. Good for an Appliance Computer, an absolute fucking pain if you ever need to install drivers/VR stuff/other system software or what-have-you. I’d avoid for your main computer.
– Frost
It looks like debian with KDE would be worth looking at. How do I obtain this?
Edit: Oh it’s free, I just googled it and it came up.
Haha. I often forget to mention that part!
A ton of really good software is also free. I found the hardest part was choosing which software was right for me.
My least favorite thing about Linux is that I can’t pirate it
It’s recommended to run a ‘live usb’ first to see if there are any problems with hardware compatibility. Nowadays many distros have their installers as live usbs anyway, but idk about Debian.
Debian is weird in even having non-live ISOs, but they do have various live ones with different desktops! (Don’t grab the one from the homepage, grab one of the live ones instead.)
I see the model of ‘burn seven dvds to then have every package under the sun’ is alive and well.
And honestly, in the coming age of “OSes that don’t spy on you will be illegal!!”, I’m really, really glad for that. We’ve got the entire 27-ISO set of Debian 13.0.0 squirreled away. There’s even more discs for the sources, and they go to great lengths to ensure that everything can be built with no external dependencies that aren’t available in the archive.
Debian: It’s Apocalypse-Proof.™
– Frost
Yeah! https://www.debian.org/CD/live/, the little teeny “live KDE” link. =^.^=
You don’t want the “netinst” ISO on the main page. It technically works, but it’s a pain to use and needs internet access to install. Its only redeeming quality is the small download size and fitting on a CD (if you’re burning it to a CD-R which is unlikely).
I just installed Debian with Plasma, and have been using a system with Mint and Plasma as my daily driver for a few months now. I used the default Cinnamon for about a year. Plasma is definitely way more polished and allows almost everything to be done via menus which is NOT a given with most Linux things. It does work most of the time but expect to run into some basic task you didn’t even think about on Windows and having a frustrating experience chasing solutions to untangle how to do it.
I’m never going back to Windows but the amount of times I’ve had to do something convoluted to attempt something you’d think would be easy is too damn high.
You’ve just lost 90 percent of the population. They didn’t understand a word you said. That’s the problem with Linux and its developers. They assume people know all this stuff.
I’m out of touch, not stupid. I understood them just fine.
I mean, I could just go “TLDR grab Debian’s live KDE edition” if that’s easier!
The whole point in me explaining all that is that people don’t know all this stuff. That’s why I’m explaining it. I did gloss over the fact that distros exist, but it seems like the person I’m replying to already knows that multiple versions of Linux are a thing so that’s not a huge issue.
And going “here’s some options to pick from” helps if it turns out you’ve got different priorities than we do. But yeah, “TLDR Debian” is also good if you’re overwhelmed.
@starlinguk @forestbeasts meh… he wanted to give you all the info and all the options, that may be confusing for someone that only option was windows until now… Nowadays I dont give options, just try Kubuntu and see if you like it.