2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
RIP Windows 7, long live Linux Mint Xfce
I highly recommend Linux Mint (cinnamon) as an entry level Linux distro. It looks and feels similar to Windows, and it's based on Ubuntu, so it has a lot of support and compatibility.
Really liked Mint, unfortunately the kernel was not new enough to support my 7900 XTX when I upgraded GPU so I ended up switching to Pop_OS which works fine as well.
A SO that moves you to Linux? Sign me up! ❤️
The meme that will never ever go away.
Noo please don't Ubuntu. Just plain debian or mint debian instead for the closest thing without canonical. Ubuntu is based on debian and all the actual reasons to use it over debian ended probably like a decade or so ago.
I don't think there are many distro specific proton issues, if they exist at all. I've switched from arch to tumbleweed to bazzite(ublue/fedora based) and the only issues were unrelated to gaming. Proton would work on a toaster if it had a display and a vulkan compatible GPU.
Debian is the way
did the same transition when switched to Lemmy. Very wise decision to take.
The only reason my windows partition still lives is so I can stream VR to the quest 2, literally everything else I do in Linux and I'm so close to 100% I can taste it!
You should try plain Debian and KDE Plasma (the desktop it's one of the options of the shelf, you just pick it with the installer). I have been doing that and it's great, even with old hardware. Ubuntu is way too much bloated. And of course proton works like magic.
If your friend ends up not liking the GNOME desktop environment because it's so radically different from the Windows UI, then maybe add the K in Ubuntu, I guess.
I use Arch btw
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