I have no experience with Linux, but I’d like to give it a try. I’m looking at the System76 Meerkat and Thelio with the Pop!_OS option.

I don’t see myself gaming on it because I have a Windows machine for just that. I’d mostly be using it for learning Linux and doing basic things like web surfing and word processing (Libreoffice perhaps).

Any recommendations or advice? Thanks!

  • zipsglacier@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Pop is a great starting point. Others have mentioned Mate, Cinnamon, or Ubuntu, and those are likewise pretty easy to start with. Pop is the one that I install on my kids’ and parents’ computers, because it’s that easy, and it’s also the one that I use daily because it has some key features (I’ll say below).

    Hopefully by now you’ve already read or watched some videos about differences between using Windows and various Linux distributions. If not, here’s one channel on TilVids (a fediverse version of youtube) that I think has some useful stuff: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

    This video from System76 also gives a short and straightforward intro to the pop desktop environment:

    [Edit: actually, I should link to the pop os info page because the explanations there are more up to date.]

    Here are my key features, in order of how I think a new user might care about them:

    • the launcher: Other linux distros have a similar one, but pop’s is a little more streamlined. On pop and the other distros with launchers, it’s a little different and I think a lot better than the Windows/Mac versions. It’s worth learning about and using.
    • virtual desktops: All linux distros have this, and if you haven’t used them before I highly recommend taking the time to get used to them. Pop has some nice features to make switching workspaces a little easier, but they might be the same or similar to other distros (I’m not sure).
    • pop shop: Most linux distros have a similar thing, and actually I think Pop’s version is a little worse (a little more laggy/buggy). But, as an interface for finding the software you actually want to install, it’s way better than the windows/mac app stores. This is another thing that’s worth learning and using, even though it’s different. You might have seen a lot of arguments online about flatpak v.s. snap v.s. appimage (if not, don’t bother). For a beginner, I think it’s now worth suggesting to just use flatpak apps whenever possible, and you can find them in the pop shop.
    • nvidia drivers: Only relevant if you have nvidia graphics, but if you do, the pop disk image with those drivers already integrated is much easier than figuring out how to set them up in other distros.
    • window tiling: Pop is the only distro that makes this so easy to set up and use; at first I thought it would be terrible, because it’s so different from what I was used to, but for productivity it’s actually much better. Now that I’m used to it, I really miss it in other desktop environments. (It’s possible to install a similar thing on other distros–this is linux after all–but my impression is that it’s kind of a hassle.)
    • constantokra@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Pop’s implementation of tiling is worth mentioning again. It’s incredibly intuitive, so if you fool with it for a few minutes you will get the hang of it, and you will almost definitely miss it if you turn it off, but you can turn it off so easily that even if you hate tiling it’s not a problem. The virtual desktop implementation is similarly polished and intuitive.

      I agree the pop shop is slow, but it’s also the most usable GUI app store i’ve seen in 25 years of using linux. I find myself frequently opting to use it instead of the CLI, and coming from me that’s high praise.

      • zipsglacier@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh yeah, ease of switching between tiling and floating is another good point. And the “floating window exceptions” for the handful of applications I don’t want to tile (like the steam library) are easy to set up and work really well now.