Best Approaches to Choosing Your First Linux Distro (Beginner’s Guide)

linuxiac ^ | 14 June 2022 | Bobby Borisov

[Jamestown1630]

Jeez. Now I’m going to have to make a big decision - a Cricut, or the shortwave receiver I’ve been lusting after...

[M Kehoe]

Hi.

I’m a neophyte.

What hardware platform would you load the Linux distros on?

For a laptop with doing every day stuff to mining Bitcoin?

From memory and hard drives to graphics and accessories.

Thanks.

5.56mm

[ShadowAce]

My wife has a Dell laptop that I put Linux on, though Dell does sell a laptop line with Linux pre-loaded.

I have a System76 laptop, though they also sell desktops. They sell a full line--from entry level to monster server replacements--of laptops. Their desktops and servers are pretty beefy also.

[M Kehoe]

System 76 looks like a good purchase. Thanks for the information.

5.56mm

[Openurmind]

“Now I’m going to have to make a big decision”

lol... Been there. :)

[Openurmind]

You can install it on just about anything. I have installed it on old Emachines and used it as a simple websurfing machine.

There are techies who have installed light versions on old 286 and 386 PCs.

[tanstaafl.72555]

I have several machines running linux here at the homestead. THey are split between Mint (KDE Plasma) and MX 21 (also Plasma). I really like the slick interface of KDE, and those two are just the distros I have the most familiarity with. I have one Win 11 box and the only reason I have it is b/c of the trading interface of Schwab. However, they bot out TD Ameritrade, and the ThinkorSwim interface works pretty well in Linux, so I can’t see keeping it.

[TChad]

Yep... My first thoughts were “This is almost Win 7!”

Also, "This is not Red Hat or openSUSE!"

[Openurmind]

Yes, I tried Red Hat years and years ago and it was just too much labor and in depth learning to work it. It was like a step backwards to DOS again. But that was long before MS finally went full stupid with Win 10 and I had to take a new look at Linux. I was pleasantly surprised, and have not looked back at MS since.

[Jamestown1630]

I suspect that dumbing things down has a lot to do with it...