Why not the best? Why not Linux Mint?

You can use Pen Drive Linux(windows version) to make a live usb from a linux ISO file you download(most versions, not all), stick it in your pc, make sure you can boot off usb(usually hit F12 on starup to choose boot device), and test drive it.

If you like it, it can install itself beside windows. It will use spare hard drive space you you can choose how much space. When linux is running in Live mode, there’s an install icon on the desktop. It’s best to run a few Live versions and play with them for a while to test out different ones. Also, it’s never a bad idea to run disk defragmenter on windows first. I assume win10 still has that. It packs everything to the beginning of the hard drive rather than being slightly scattered as windows tends to do.

It won’t touch any hidden restore partitions. You end up with a menu during startup to select which operating system you want to boot to, windows or linux/ubuntu. There’s also some advanced startup menu items that most people would never use. I hate that they put them there.

You’ll be able to see all your windows files from within linux. (and if it’s a password protected directory or pdf, linux doesn’t care:) So if you have pics or docs you want to pull over, it’s easy. Can’t see linux files from the windows side though.

There’s really no shortage of software to replace windows versions, aside from games and some obscure things. MS word/excel have Libre Office for linux and it will work with the native MS files like xls, doc, docx, xlsx etc.

There’s a linux version of firefox, Chrome(Chromium which is what Chrome is before google gets there data mining grubby little paws on it), Opera, VLC media player.

Thunderbird replaces outlook or if you use a calendar extensively, there’s korganizer. GIMP does pretty much everything photoshop does. Inkscape for vector graphics.

Several file managers aka Explorer
Several Text Editors like Notepad or Notepad++
Several other media players
Several other browsers
Choice of archive aka zip file progs but they’ll also handle also rar, tar.gz and other formats

There’s plenty of tutorials out there for setting up a dual boot system like above. I used to pretty much split my hard drive space in half but now I leave the windows side smaller. I still always keep a windows side for the heck of it.

There’s a few specialized versions too. Educational versions, multimedia versions, windows look alike versions, very small versions to run on older computers, versions that will work on a single-board computer, Home Theater/Streaming media versions and some you can buy pre-installed on a small box you plug into your TV and with one of them, you can still use it like a desktop.

KDE Connect will allow you to connect a cell phone via bluetooth to pull pics off etc.

Every bit of it free. All program code is open for the public to see. Pretty much all programs are in an official repository. 98% of the time, if you want a program, you don’t surf the web. You open a program where you search for and install software from these repositories.

Take your time, try a bunch of them, see if you find one you like and check out some articles and tutorials from the web. With the Live USB fired up, you can sign into your wifi or plug in the network cable and surf immediately. If you’ve got an older computer laying around you can practice installing and test drive them longer before putting one on your win10 machine. Nothing gets saved in the Live USB version unless you specifically save it to a usb thumb drive or something. No settings or history saved though, only files. Best to get a “light version of linux” for older or slower machines but it gives you an idea.

sorry about the length - I despise windows, walmart, google and every other conniving conglomerate.

Took a quick look at it. Not bad. It ain’t Visio, but it seems pretty useful.

lol. Game, set and match.

Install, stupid easy. Easier than Windows. Use, in some cases, but not always. Like, ooh, I want a screen resolution that’s not on the list (which you could never do with Windows at all, but at least the list is a lot bigger). It’s off for a lengthy session with the command line. Don’t get me wrong, it’s come a tremendous way, I think it will continue to do so, and that’s where I think I’ll end up eventually, but there are some mundane tasks that seem unnecessarily complex.

And DNS servers are something hacked would love to hijack.

Thx so much...not sure I understand all that but I may start playing around with it on a jump drive...I’ll backup first!

Why, because it is over hyped relative to what it provides (more than Windows) to the desktop user. Like Google Chrome vs. Firefox, it is fine for basic computing, but for power users Linux Mint cannot come close to what you can do with Windows via safe freeware and a little learning.

Want to remap CapsLock to Ctrl + C, and easily create shortcuts keys" You have AutoHot Key . Nothing comparable in Linux Mint (not AutoKey), and its own keyboard customization is limited.

Last time i used LM, you could not even right click on an icon in the Start Menu (or whatever they call it) and go to the source).

Want a far better clock, with multiple options? White-Tiger/T-Clock Redux . I found nothing close to it in Linux.

Want to add numerous items to your right click menus? There is right click extender .

And if one does not like the W/10 interface, first install Classic Shell

There is much more, thank God, and then you have the problems Linux can have with wireless and printers. The Linux forums attest to such being a real issue, relative to the number of users. And i myself have tried every major and many minor Linux distros.

1st question...how much space should I “choose” on hard drive?

Thank you for the info.. am checking it out now ;^)

I just saw yesterday that “mintUpdate” update manager, when I click on “View” the pulldown menu has an option for “Linux kernels”. You may find your answer there.

I have attempted many times to use that (it is one of two ways suggested on Mint forums).. but it will not allow me to delete, for some reason. It only shows 'install' :/

Thank you for the help, I've tried.. but it doesn't work the way it is supposed to:

THIS is how it is supposed to be:

The remove button would be nice..

This is what I get (for options):

Missing the remove button (getting install button instead) :^p

Update.. the section he has under that part of the assistance has a script he wrote that worked flawlessly ;^D

Have been reading that the recent Kubuntu is going downhill (with bugs) quickly :/

Was looking at Neon, but I agree with you, I prefer stable over cutting edge (Will look at in in VBox though).

I have seen Maui, but was put off by one of their release names (”Cuba Libre”), but I suppose I shouldn’t be so judgmental ;)

Overall, I was debating over Manjaro and Neon, but waiting on more result comments.

D’oh!

I see the error of my ways (lol).. All this time that I thought that I had all of those kernels.. I misread it :p

The ones that are installed DO give the option to remove them >.<

I feel really dumb now o.O

I’ll have to keep that in mind. I think they’re spreading themselves too thin. They’re trying to build an open source phone with Plasma.

I just read on wikiped tonight that KDE has pretty much been taken over by some German org.

The other distro I really liked was Ubuntu Studio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

It looks good, has some eye candy and is a stable workhorse. It’s geared towards multimedia production. It was the first time I was ever able to use to do a screen record video, encode it and upload to youtube. This is on a Thinkpad W500 that has a Windows Vista sticker on it. This was less than two years ago. I’m still running the same machine so I might have to swap back.

There’s a ton of multimedia software that 99.6% of people will never use and iirc, all that software was optional while installing but I didn’t see that option last time I played with it. Can always uninstall stuff.

I wonder if it’s the kubuntu people or the KDE people. They overlap a lot, share some server space etc but KDE is the larger endeavor. Maybe Plasma and mobile devices have them sidetracked and that could last years.

When/if I start having problems with kubuntu, I’ll go back to Ubuntu Studio or maybe by that time, straight up Ubuntu, if they add some settings and control to the gnome desktop that they’re swapping to. It needs major work though. I’ll give things a year.

Linux devs are scrambling right now due to all the new “devices” out there. Touch AND a good interface for it.

Meanwhile Android runs on the linux kernel. Highly modified to work on devices and vacuum your life in the form of data.

Sadly, I will have to dump Mint soon since they are dumping KDE :(

I must not be paying attention. I didn't know they were dumping KDE. When is that happening? That's suckage for me, as I really prefer KDE and have been using it since I moved from CDE (real old-timers will recognise that ghastly environment.

...and then you have the problems Linux can have with wireless and printers.

I haven't had a problem with wireless or printers for over a decade.

And the price is right!

Windows installs for 8/10 are not that easy if you need a decent real desktop. I had to futz with my windows 8.1 laptop quite a bit before I got the desktop set up so it worked kind of normal. XFCE Mint comes out of the box just the way I like to. And, it does not drag all that tile crap and spyware with it.

Mint 18.3 is the last of Mint's KDE. It will extend to the last of the LTS (2021).
I will probably use it until around then, but, in the meantime, I am searching for a replacement :p

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418

KDE Edition

In continuation with what’s been done in the past, Linux Mint 18.3 will feature a KDE edition, but it will be the last release to do so.

I would like to thank Kubuntu for the amazing work they have done. The quality of Plasma 5 in Xenial made backports a necessity. The rapid pace of development upstream from the KDE project made this very challenging, yet they managed to provide a stable flow of updates for us and we were able to ship good KDE editions thanks to that. I don’t think this would have been possible without them.

KDE is a fantastic environment but it’s also a different world, one which evolves away from us and away from everything we focus on. Their apps, their ecosystem and the QT toolkit which is central there have very little in common with what we’re working on.

We’re not just shipping releases and distributing upstream software. We’re a product distribution and we see ourselves as a complete desktop operating system. We like to integrate solutions, develop what’s missing, adapt what’s not fitting perfectly, and we do a great deal of that not only around our own Cinnamon desktop environment but also thanks to cross-DE frameworks we put in place to support similar environments, such as MATE and Xfce.

When we work on tools like Xed, Blueberry, Mintlocale, the Slick Greeter, we’re developing features which benefit these 3 desktops, but unfortunately not KDE.

Users of the KDE edition represent a portion of our user base. I know from their feedback that they really enjoy it. They will be able to install KDE on top of Linux Mint 19 of course and I’m sure the Kubuntu PPA will continue to be available. They will be able to port Mint software to Kubuntu itself also, or they might want to trade a bit of stability away and move to to a bleeding edge distribution such as Arch to follow upstream KDE more closely.

Our own mission isn’t to diversify as much as possible in an effort to attract a bigger chunk of the Linux market, and it’s with a bit of sadness that we’re letting this edition go. We focus on things we do well and we love doing to get better and better at doing them. KDE is amazing but it’s not what we want to focus on.

With Linux Mint 18.3, we’ll release one more KDE edition. I wanted this announcement to come before the release. It will hurt its popularity of course, but I wanted to give users time, either to react right now or to take their time, upgrade and adapt to this later on. I’m sure this edition will be missed and I hope its users understand our decision.

:/
I want to stick with Plasma because it has come a long way.. and no matter what the Gnome peeps say, KDE (Plasma) is WAY way lower on resources (RAM) than ever before, and it even is now lower on them than Gnome. Gnome, on the other hand, is going the other way... UP on resources :p

And KDE is the best one if you want to have the most control of your DE.