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What can we do to keep the web open?
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You don't need to "be smart" to switch to Linux. Linux for the most part 'just works' these days of you choose the 'right' distro.
Agreed but you do need to be willing to tinker a bit. Even ubuntu required a lot of tinkering to get working on my system. I'm all for getting people to switch, and it's much easier than it was 15 years ago when I started, but for most people they're not going to just install linux. We definitely are in the <1% of users.
If you have bleeding edge hardware, that can be a problem from time to time, but if I'm being honest, I haven't seen any real issues since the early 00's needed tweaking to work. To suggest that Windows is tweak free is disingenuous, and Apple is a walled garden that is designed to 'just work' but Apple expects their users to just buy a new device when something becomes mildly inconvenient to them.
Yeah, but you can't tell me that the levels of tweaking are the same.
For example. I have never had to go in and modify conf files for nvidia drivers on Windows to be able to run basic games. My ubuntu install? Definitely had to.
Sounds ‘ominous’
I was trying to convey that there is no right or wrong answer to which distro to choose, but some distros are more advances than others, so if the most applicable distro is selected it should be fine. But I get what you're saying.
Well, it all comes down to tastes and preferences, but Linux Mint is made to be a very easy transition for (ex-)Windows users. It works out of the box, looks intuitive and has great support on their forums. Give it a try and if you feel like you want to try out other distros later, it all gets easier once you are familiar with Linux overall.
And yes, what you mean is dual booting and Mint asks you on install if you want to choose that option and sets everything up for you.
Ubuntu or Linux mint are good options. There are other newbie friendly distros out there, but I only tried these 2.
Yes you can dual-boot. When you start your computer, it will show you a menu where you can choose between Linux or Windows.
Ubuntu has gotten a reputation for doing intrusive bullshit too, so I wouldn't recommend that to someone looking to get away from it.
I'm aware of that. But perfect is enemy of good. A lot of the newbie friendly docs are written for Ubuntu. So I think it's a good place to start and then go deeper once they are comfortable.
I started with Ubuntu and distro hopped for a while. Although it's not my favourite distro, it's still what I'd recommend for a first timer.