Jesus. Another one of these? Every freaking day. (Promise it’s different)
I personally like mint and pop!os for new users, but for this user I want to try something windows like with more sex appeal. I don’t want to have to touch this computer again. Proprietary software is not an issue/consideration. User is techier than most. What has your experience been with kbuntu? Pros/cons? Other suggestions?
Focus on the DE instead of the distro. There used to be one that has “windows look” as a goal.
I’m pretty sure that’s Zorin. I’ve never used it myself, but from what I’ve heard it might be a good choice for OP’s person.
Zorin is too walled off IMO. Too many features locked in Pro version.
There is nothing locked outside Pro version that you can’t get by installing it manually :)
The true Windows experience.
I wasn’t aware that there’s a paid version. Based on their website it does look like they have a lot of standard stuff locked behind Pro. Is it just like an additional repo or something? I’m also not too keen on the fact that the upgrade doesn’t carry over to the next major version.
Yeah the entire existence of any “pro” version of anything is cancer.
I disagree with you however I find it attrocious than when you upgrade (exemple from ZorinOS 16 to 17) if you own a Pro licence you have to buy a new licence (with a discount) and can’t “downgrade” to non-Pro (except from reinstalling it from scratch). I think the way the Pro is sold shouldn’t put upgrade behind a paywall.
Selling a (bloated) Pro version to bring cash isn’t necesseraly cancer it really depend on what you get and how you’re treated. And with ZorinOS I was somewhat disapointed…
It is can’t because this is how the door gets pushed open to making more and more paid versions of the operating system.
This invites more capitalistic practices into the “market”, and is what starts the downward trend.
I’m ok with selling software. But selling the OS at all just seems like a big step that should never be taken.
Selling a paid upgrade is kind of a gray area, but it should be an extra piece that gets installed separately, cross-compatible where possible, and shouldn’t affect your ability to upgrade versions for damn sure. I’ve never dealt with it directly, but if it’s like you said and you need to do a complete reinstall to upgrade versions but downgrade from pro to regular, then you’ve already detected the first tumor.
In my opinion OS is software, many people are working on it and I don’t think their work is worth 0$ (maybe Windows being the exception lol).
I learn a ton on Nobara, but I’m not so sure it’s a forever distro
ChromeOS Flex. Very low maintenance.
Not really a Linux distro. Based on Gentoo but not really a Linux distro, just like Android.
ChromeOS Flex is designed as a desktop OS. Android is not.
Ubuntu Touch is still a Linux distro. I was referring to how Linux-like the experience is.
ChromeOS Flex can install and run desktop Linux software and has a terminal. What else makes it Linux-like?
endless os is somewhat chromeos like, but based on debian. read-only ostree debian stable base, flatpak applications, simplified desktop and ui.
use the 4gb ‘basic’ installer iso unless you want a lot of extra programs and offline content included right out of the box. and note it’s definitely not those who like to tinker and change everything. endless is locked down pretty tight so it’s harder to break, but that means less flexibility and very few customization options.
Mint is da only way
I think you should cruise this guy’s channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg6gPGh8HU2U01vaFCAsvmQ
He’s very fair and uses all operating systems. I’m almost certain he’s had a video on this exact question.
Debian is always the forgotten choice. You can install kde at time of install. It’s stable and can be upgraded in the background automatically even between major versions. Doesn’t have snaps making hell for the user. For any apps they need the newest version of Flatpak is right there in Discover software center.
Sometimes I think “if debian had a flashy website and a few tweaks for user friendliness, then it would be just as attractive as linux mint or ubuntu for new users”, and other times I think “isn’t this exactly what most debian based distros are already?” Would there be a benefit if those projects worked under the debian name, something like debian workstation pure blend, or debian corporate pure blend? I don’t know.
The thing you have to remember is debian packaging is ment to be the most vanilla from upstream with only minor modifications to follow debian packaging guidelines. So tweaking for user friendliness would give you the same problems that debian’s children have. Plus 90% of that user friendliness came from bundling Nvidia firmware in the installer. Which debian does now by default. The only thing you have to do now is maybe install the nvidia-driver package and that’s it.
Another vote for Aurora.
Universal Blue in general has been really solid, I remember one time in the last year or two when there’s been any need for manual intervention. And that came with a notification after boot, with a link to instructions that were all copy-pastable as-is to the terminal.
If you want windows with sex apeal, the KDE desktop environment’s treated me pretty well. I’m using Fedora, though you could get it from other distros too
You’re asking for a distro to best fit certain criteria; what’s better for you.
What you’re going to get is everyone waving the flag of their favourite distro and selling you on it as a solution; what’s better for them.
Yea lol
Kubuntu is excellent for the stability imo. Super sane and low-demand defaults make for a reliable/enjoyable experience
I only use gentoo now so I can’t offer suggestions other than maybe alpine for serversI just switched to a ublue distro (bluefin) and think it’s great. These are designed from the ground up to be an “install it for a family member or friend and never have to touch it again” experience. They are based on Fedora. Bluefin has been the most trouble-free install of linux I’ve ever tried. I can’t say enough good things about it.
I would go with Aurora (essentially bluefin but with KDE instead of Gnome), unless they do a lot of gaming, in which case Bazzite-kde would probably work best (bazzite is more up-to-date which can mean more instability).
These are set up to use flatpak with a software center, so all gui apps can be installed from there and is similar to windows. It updates everything automatically in the background and only requires rebooting whenever you want to switch to the updated system. Also the immutable nature makes it hard to break, but if something does go wrong it makes it easy to roll back to the previous working install. There are also GTS versions of bluefin and aurora available, which are pinned to more stable releases so there’s even less chance of breakage.
Live USB installs aren’t stable yet so that might be an issue if you want to make sure hardware works before install, but you can install to a usb harddrive and boot off of that to check it out that way.
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I personally like mint and pop!os for new users, but for this user I want to try something windows like with more sex appeal.
what don’t you mean by “sex appeal”?
They want this person to be sexually attracted to their computer.
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I’d honestly just recommend Debian stable at this point.
