Beginner in Linux, no idea what im doing, please help with general questions

[grave wigeon]

hello, im going to buy a new laptop in the VERY near future (HP 15s Ryzen 7 5700u with no OS) and I was considering to download windows because windows 10 will be discontinued in the future and windows 11 just generally sucks, i heard Mint is a good distro that looks and acts like windows 10 but with less bloat and usage of ram, are there any other good distros that act and look like windows 10 or are best for beginners? (also id want more clear system settings and controls since i like to change shit up in them)
also how would linux work with AMD?
also how would steam work? would there be any games that aren't supported? i heard some anticheats dont work, which ones are they? is there anything in general i should know? (all my life ive used windows and stuck to windows 10 so i dont know much abt linux)

[urban light]

first off, you'd have to be willing and patient to learn about a whole new operating system, and get used to its differences.

although the graphical environment and file management can be very similar to Windows, things are definitely done a bit differently.

Linux tends to work out of the box with a lot of popular and common hardware, including AMD. (not so much for super-riced things like rgb lighting on memory sticks, or fancy-ass keyboards or "gamer" mice

for basic stuff it all just works, readily since drivers are already programmed into the linux kernel

the Cinnamon desktop environment, which comes with the main edition of Mint, and is also available for Ubuntu, and Debian, and Fedora has a very simple Settings window, much like the icon Control panel of Windows 2000/XP

it is a well polished environment, with easily searchable "start menu"

Steam is available for Linux Mint and/or Ubuntu and other major distros via their 'Software Manager' or 'software store'

• final note: most distros these days (except Arch) come with a "live environment" ISO, which offers an installer icon within it, but more importantly, it offers the ability to test drive the operating system purely off the USB stick or DVD that the ISO was "burned" on. This lets u play around, get the feel of where everything is, and test the sound/network/video and other hardware and performance.

some other distros to check out: Zorin core, MX Linux (xfce or KDE), Ubuntu Cinnamon, Linux Lite, Tuxedo OS, Spiral OS (is basically Debian with some handy tweaks and your choice of Desktop to pick the ISO of)

[urban light]

See this video to learn how to make a boot drive for testing, installing, or troubleshooting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuonyS3xdwg

[unborn palm]

If you want to run windows programs or games outside of steam use "Lutris" or "bottles" I find nice and simple to use

[hazy obsidian]

Just get full AMD hardware. It will work fine. Then, use mint 22. Read #762787812184555530

[midnight shale]

To that list I would add OpenSUSE if Zypper does not feel like it's too much of an issue (it is the slowest package manager there is, by far. But as far as I could tell, the OpenSUSE overall experience is good)

But in the end of the day, you don't necessarily want to spend days chposing a distribution. Something that will matter for a big part of your user experience is which desktop environment you choose.
I personally enjoy KDE Plasma and Cinnamon, those two also being the closest there is to Windows as far as I'm concerned.

[midnight shale]

Also you may want to wait for the stable release to be released, at least so that you avoid major bugs

[hazy obsidian]

Don't ping but OP

[midnight shale]

Oh sorry >< it was a mistake

[unborn palm]

i just tried KDE Neon and Kubuntu I had issues with both like major bugs. also I need bottles

I really wish KDE Neon worked better its so pretty with kde plasma 6

[midnight shale]

welp
that's a shame... Hopefully those issues will be fixed soon

[hazy obsidian]

tuxedoOS

[unborn palm]

do you know if you can get bottles on it

[hazy obsidian]

yes

[unborn palm]

. now i have to try it.

do you use multi monitor?

i had issues with kubuntu and kdeo neon with trying to switch which monitor is my main

[hazy obsidian]

no

[unborn palm]

what about high refresh rate?

[hazy obsidian]

60fps

[unborn palm]

damn. i had issue on those other 2 distros with high refresh rate

[hazy obsidian]

use wayland

[unborn palm]

what does that do exactly

i see it but im unsure what it does

[hazy obsidian]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland

[urban light]

Win+P easily gives you that in Plasma

[unborn palm]

ok i get it. ive been learning about different linux parts and what they do. i only yesterday learned what x window was.

[urban light]

and in cinnamon, and xfce

why Win+P? because ever since laptops came with a VGA port to connect to a Projector, Windows started implementing that shortcut.. probably over 2 decades ago. Linux distros (most) keep that handy shortcut to send video to other devices

[unborn palm]

ive been searching for the best distro to use for gaming. so far i have only had linux mint work for almost everything.
Windows is getting more and more big brother on users. I also need to find a good server distro to use for game servers, plex, and network drives

[hazy obsidian]

just use mint

[unborn palm]

but kde plasma 6 is so pretty 😅

im gonna try tuxedo out tonight. if it works great if not then mint it is

[hazy obsidian]

then use tuxedo. it's like using fedora but debian base

it ships with plasma 6.1

[unborn palm]

right now my main system is still windows 11. but i have 3-4 system i play with for various other things. ive been using mint on one of them as a ttest to see if i can get everythging to run from windows over to linux

[tardy shell]

question is how much motivated are you ? to make everything work you have to find replacements for some of your apps , it might consume some time. If you are motivated to abandon bimbows ship just do it, if you keep dualboot it will be like this: