I would dare say the “average person”, as in, Windows refugee, probably doesn’t want to tinker, they do want things to just kinda work as expected and just want freedom and options.
I don’t see why Zorin couldn’t be a valid jumping off point for new users to get their feet wet. As much as I love more tinkery distros, I will usually onboard somebody with something like Mint because it’s just familiar enough but still lets you explore the how and why, without requiring it.
I didn’t say “average person” and end the sentence. I said the average person installing linux. The type of person who installs Linux in the first place is already extremely far from average.
I would consider act of installing Linux itself to be “tinkering”.
If I wanted an “easy” Linux distro to do things like run a home server and media storage - I mean, it sounds perfect for that??? With kids, I don’t have TIME to tinker with OS stuff anymore, I just need something that works and is more stable than Windows.
The best news is that most distros would be good for those kinds of tasks! :D
I can’t personally speak to Zorin, although it looks fine! People say it comes with lots of stuff out of the box. Worth trying out!
Mint is really user friendly with an excellent forum and tons of support. The Cinnamon desktop environment is very Windows-esque in a usability way, and it tends to be slow to adopt new features that could break things, so by the time you update, most things should be fixed.
It doesn’t require terminal usage at all, but I started to enjoy using it because it makes “computing” feel really fun. :)
That being said, some folks want more up to date stuff. Mint’s answer to this is to encourage using Flatpak, which is basically “run the latest version of this software with its dependencies included, in a box.” It’s not perfect but for the majority of the time it’s dandy.
For a home media server that’d be running all the time that can be a little bit of a hobby…(But a rewarding one!)
Definitely hit up online communities too, like searching for “selfhosted” here on lemmy! That’s where you start learning to run stuff like Jellyfin for watching your movies and such. :)
BUT… LET’S KEEP IT EASY for starters: You could totally just share SAMBA folders off any Linux machine if you wanted. Boom, technically a file server. Pretty sure this is easy in Mint with GUI.
I’m sure smarter people than me have better ideas but sky’s the limit! The important takeaway is that starting is really simple. Just be patient and try things, and make sure your data is always backed up. :D
Before you install anything bare metal, you could fire up DistroBox and get a hang of installing both OSs in it and messing around with them. Alternatively, both have a “Live USB” feature where you can see how they’d be on your system without actually installing anything. (Which is REALLY cool.)
Sorry for the super long reply! I hope I didn’t firehose too much!
I would dare say the “average person”, as in, Windows refugee, probably doesn’t want to tinker, they do want things to just kinda work as expected and just want freedom and options.
I don’t see why Zorin couldn’t be a valid jumping off point for new users to get their feet wet. As much as I love more tinkery distros, I will usually onboard somebody with something like Mint because it’s just familiar enough but still lets you explore the how and why, without requiring it.
I didn’t say “average person” and end the sentence. I said the average person installing linux. The type of person who installs Linux in the first place is already extremely far from average.
I would consider act of installing Linux itself to be “tinkering”.
If I wanted an “easy” Linux distro to do things like run a home server and media storage - I mean, it sounds perfect for that??? With kids, I don’t have TIME to tinker with OS stuff anymore, I just need something that works and is more stable than Windows.
The best news is that most distros would be good for those kinds of tasks! :D
I can’t personally speak to Zorin, although it looks fine! People say it comes with lots of stuff out of the box. Worth trying out!
Mint is really user friendly with an excellent forum and tons of support. The Cinnamon desktop environment is very Windows-esque in a usability way, and it tends to be slow to adopt new features that could break things, so by the time you update, most things should be fixed.
It doesn’t require terminal usage at all, but I started to enjoy using it because it makes “computing” feel really fun. :)
That being said, some folks want more up to date stuff. Mint’s answer to this is to encourage using Flatpak, which is basically “run the latest version of this software with its dependencies included, in a box.” It’s not perfect but for the majority of the time it’s dandy.
For a home media server that’d be running all the time that can be a little bit of a hobby…(But a rewarding one!)
Definitely hit up online communities too, like searching for “selfhosted” here on lemmy! That’s where you start learning to run stuff like Jellyfin for watching your movies and such. :)
BUT… LET’S KEEP IT EASY for starters: You could totally just share SAMBA folders off any Linux machine if you wanted. Boom, technically a file server. Pretty sure this is easy in Mint with GUI.
I’m sure smarter people than me have better ideas but sky’s the limit! The important takeaway is that starting is really simple. Just be patient and try things, and make sure your data is always backed up. :D
Before you install anything bare metal, you could fire up DistroBox and get a hang of installing both OSs in it and messing around with them. Alternatively, both have a “Live USB” feature where you can see how they’d be on your system without actually installing anything. (Which is REALLY cool.)
Sorry for the super long reply! I hope I didn’t firehose too much!