Thinking of using Linux mint, anything else?

OP, I have an entire guide for Linux/Windows computing, having been a couple decades old user of Windows. I am using Linux for the past 6+ years, and am using Debian as of now.

Start with Ubuntu LTS. Your priority is being able to search your solutions easily on AskUbuntu, StackOverflow or similar websites within the first few search results, and NOT needing to interact with and/or get harassed by the toxic evangelists in Linux community. I assume you already got a taste of that evangelism with the comments here.

Also, it is essential to require optimal corporate and community software support, and maximum stability/compatibility with WINE, without your system breaking upon automatic/random updates. This lessens the need for you to go around scrambling on the internet for solutions. Make sure to utilise whatever you need, Snaps, AppImages, regardless of what people say, to make your Linux life easier.

https://lemmy.ml/post/511377

Linux mint

I have a blog article about this. Here is the short version:

I can tell you how not to choose a distro: what its screenshots look like or what its default desktop environment is. Many begin shopping around for a distro that suits them best, which means visiting a website like DistroWatch.com, looking at the various screen shots, and picking one that looks nice. But any Linux distro can be made to look like any other distro without too much effort, what you see in the screen shots is just the default look. Really, the the screen shots should be the least of your concerns.

So don’t worry about Xfce, KDE, Gnome, LXDE, LXQt or whatever else right now, you can try all of those in good time. First, just get Linux and, worry about figuring out which apps that you can get that work best for your work flow. Almost none of the apps you use now are available in Linux, the hardest part is figuring out how to replace the apps you use daily right now.

You should choose the distribution with the best web service, and the best apps.

• Is the service reliable? Do they have a good team of people making sure the packages are always online, and making sure they are providing timely security updates?

• Do they have corporate, or non-profit, sources of funding? Do you trust the people who are running it?

• Do they have the apps you want, are the apps up to date? Do they have things you need, like word processing, presentation software, photo scrap booking, file sharing, video editing, music editing, personal organizers, video conferencing (can you install Zoom, for example?). Can you easily install Flatpaks or AppImages?

Many of the really big Linux distros all provide completely reliable service, which satisfy the above requirements, but I recommend any of the following four:

• Mint
• Fedora
• Ubuntu
• Pop!_OS

Mint and Fedora are community-run with backing from various sponsors, Ubuntu is run by the Canonical corporation, Pop!_OS is developed by the System 76 company (a medium sized US-based business that sells laptops and PCs).

Mint is my recommendation, having using it myself for many years now.

If you have a Nvidia GPU, a case could be made for POP! due to the built in drivers, but installing Nvidia drivers is rather painless in Mint.

From my experience, download many distros from Linux Mint to Zorin, maybe Fedora and OpenSuse if you want something non Ubuntu bases, or Manjaro and Endeavor OS if you are up for a challenge.

Then install them in a Virtual Machine like Virtual Box. This way you can test which OS you like, and see if the software you want works.

In my experience the Desktop Environment makes the biggest impact on your user experience.

Followed by the package manager (app store)

Then available software (steam lutris libre office)

Finally the terminal for when things go south (or you installed arch)