I’m a middle-aged truck driver. I’ve been using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) now for about seven years as my only operating system (without dual booting) since Windows XP Pro became totally obsolete. Granted, I’m a hobbyist programmer and lifelong computer enthusiast. However, there are definitely some easy to install and use distros out there these days.

I would suggest Linux Mint Cinnamon. It’s very Windows like, and just works. It’s a great distro to get started. I started on it, and many others have. Non-techy relatives really took to it also.

This may not work for everyone, but the only way to truly embrace Linux was to wipe the windows partition and start using Linux. That’s it, you no longer have to option to run back to your dual booted Windows if shit doesnt work. You sit down and figure it out.

• Recommended distribution coming from Windows: Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. linuxmint.com Why? Very consistent over many versions, no experiments, comfortable, very classic Windows-like desktop. Actually amazingly designed and very helpful “welcome” tool after installation, to help new users set up the system well. The Mint team develops and maintains useful and cool applications. Based on Ubuntu, so most problems you can web-search for both Mint or Ubuntu and find solutions. It’s based on the long-term-support version of Ubuntu, so it gets 5 years of security updates for each version. It has Flatpak enabled by default, which is a modern, widely accepted software container format, so programs can run independently of the distribution. Flatpaks are more up to date than traditional packages from a distribution’s software repositories. With things like gaming, you want the latest software to benefit from new features, enhancements and compatibiliy, so make use of Flatpak for your applications where possible.

• Easy tool to write a .ISO or .IMG file to a USB stick in order to boot Linux from it: Balena Etcher or Fedora Media Writer (it can write other images than Fedora too and lets you format / restore the USB stick with a single button, great tool).

• Definitely back up all your files on at least a large USB stick, but better an external HDD or SSD (USB sticks might at some point become corrupt or break, they are not as reliable). Having your pictures, documents, videos, etc. always on an external disk means you can easily reinstall any OS and just copy your stuff over. Update this backup from time to time. This will give you the safety net to confidently discover and experiment.

• If you have only one computer, prepare a Windows installation USB stick before your Linux adventures, just in case something breaks and you want to repair it or go back to Windows.

• Dual boot can be annoying, and sometimes one OS may ruin the bootloader of another. I recommend a separate machine, or at the very least a separate physical SSD per OS.

• Don’t try to make Windows applications work on Linux unless you absolutely have no other alternative and choice but to use them. Pretty much anything you may be used to is either available as a Flatpak, a traditional package in the distro’s repository or has great open source or Linux-compatible alternatives. Learn to web-search for those alternatives and install them from the software center app that comes with your distro. On Linux, you don’t have to go to websites and download setup files. Everything sits inside a giant software repository and gets updated along with your OS when you look for updates. A Linux Distribution has a repository for its own packages, and Flatpak containers come from a separate repository, most commonly flathub.org. On desktop-centric distributions, you get appstore-like graphical tools to search, install, remove and update everything from one place.

• If you absolutely have to make a Windows app work on Linux, have a look at “Bottles”. It’s a UI that makes it a bit easier and more comfortable to work with the Windows compatibility layer called WINE.

• Don’t try to search for driver setups on websites unless something really doesn’t work. Most common hardware is supported out of the box, as a ton of general purpose drivers are shipped with the distro as kernel modules already. If you have a Nvidia GPU, expect some issues and consider buying AMD graphics in the future. AMD drivers are inside the Linux kernel these days and open source, whereas Nvidia has a history of not cooperating with the open source crowd, so the open drivers are reverse-engineered, hacky, not-so-great solutions. Desktop-focused distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Pop! OS have built-in tools to easily enable / select proprietary Nvidia drivers. For gaming, they are pretty much required. On other distros that don’t offer this comfort, you’ll have to manually install the proprietary Nvidia drivers and that is a nightmare, likely to brick your system on your first few attempts. With AMD or Intel graphics, you don’t have to do anything, they just work.

• If you’re a German reader, you’re in luck. There is an amazing, free online book if you really want to dive deep into Linux: https://openbook.rheinwerk-verlag.de/linux/ Unfortunately, I don’t know an english equivalent, if you know one, please link it to me.

• In case you might be a PC gamer, you’ll likely have a Steam account. Valve does an amazing job, they take the Windows compatibility layer WINE, add some magic to it, the result is called Proton. To enable it, you just have to go to the Steam settings - Compatibility - Enable Steam Play for all other titles. You can now simply install and run Windows games, thousands of them just work and the list grows continously. See protondb.com to check which game works or might have issues and how to fix them. For other places like GOG, Epic, Ubisoft, etc. check out Lutris. It’s a very cool launcher that helps you set up all these accounts in one place. Advanced tip: a guy called Glorious Eggroll patches things into Proton that Valve can’t add for licensing reasons and offers improved, unofficial Proton versions called GE-Proton. If you have issues getting a game to run with the normal Proton versions, GE-Proton might make a difference. A neat little tool to install GE-Proton is “ProtonUp-Qt”: https://flathub.org/de/apps/net.davidotek.pupgui2

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Before I could fully leave windows, I spent a lot of time being lost in Linux distrohopping and ricing without even fully understanding what I was doing. Without a solid setup to live in, Linux had a weird experimental feel and it got frustrating when I wanted stuff done.

Coming to your case, there are 2 different priorities here: daily driving and Linux proficiency. You’re tied into windows for the daily driving bit for now so your main focus should be learning, and that probably won’t need a dual boot right away.

First up is understanding why there are so many distributions. Linux is the kernel, the common skeleton that you can’t use on its own. There are other modular bits that go on top to make a full fledged OS, and the choices of what those are is what makes a distribution. Learn more about the options available for the modular bits - the ones that you should concern yourself with for now are:

• package managers: the program responsible for installing and managing software. This is one of the main differences between the major popular variants of Linux(Debian, Arch, fedora etc). For example, on Debian and distros based on it, you’d use apt. That’s why you would’ve probably used apt on Ubuntu, it’s based on Debian.
• desktop environment: all the programs involved with the user interface - the main UI itself. This is a subjective thing and people use different desktop environments based on their workflow.

Once you get this modularity based perspective, distributions wont be overwhelming and vague. You’ll understand why people are recommending mint or popOS:

• it’s Ubuntu based and there are many popular Debian and Ubuntu based distros out there. You’ll be able to get software easily and if there’s some problem you need to debug, there’s a relevant question and answer out there
• mint’s desktop environment is cinnamon, which is simple, clean and not too jarring for people coming from windows

You’ll also know, you can choose whatever you want as long as it’s Ubuntu based for your learning phase. Only at that point I think it will make sense to dual boot. You can boot in for particular reasons instead of a vague “let me understand Linux”. The reasons will be finding alternative software to daily drive, learning how to use the terminal or just getting comfortable with Linux in general. From there, you can find your own way or reach out to the community with questions specific for your use cases.

Start with something like Pop!_OS and learn by working out how you do all your daily tasks. Once you are competent with that, try tweaking a few things to run how you want, or try new technology. Enabling wayland for example. Then before you know it you’ll have a large beard and preach the benefits of free software

And every time you need to run a command, work out what it does. Use the built in manual (man command)

My advice is, learning new things can be a pleasure, so try to improve your learning skills. Everything is possible then.

I just made the full time switch to pop os and I’ve been happy so far

I personally finally made the fulltime switch in November 2021 after years of on again off again attempts. The one I was finally able to stick with was Endeavour OS with KDE desktop. It’s basically just an arch distro with a good installer and som QoL apps. Easy to maintain and a good community if you need assistance.

And with the creation of Bottles running windows software has been surprisingly easy. I do some home studio recording and just got EZdrummer setup as a vst in Ardour, and it just works.

Kubuntu or Mint are great distro’s to begin with when starting your linux journey. It’s good to know down the road these should really be moved on from, but they’re great to get the ball rollin for sure!

Ubuntu my dude. I started fiddling with it years ago and it’s my go to when I need a good desktop / gaming system. Any distro is gonna be a steep learning curve and a great way to go about it is to get a crapola system and start banging Linux on it. You’ll be frustrated and then search and find that there is a massive amount of community support for most distros. I use a Raspberry PI 4 running Ubuntu 64 for all my AV needs… Drives the projector and stereo and also serves as a retro gaming over the projector deal. We’re all fed up with windows.

You’ve had some good advice here already, all I’d add is that you should install the package tldr as it’s a very noob-friendly accessible version of man pages (the manuals which come with every piece of software on Linux).

Pop OS is a good beginner friendly Linux distro. Like Ubuntu, it is also debian based. This would make it easier to get used to for you since you have some experience with Ubuntu.

Eh, just use a super really easy linux distro like ZorinOS or Mint and stick with it.

t. Currently 39 years old and been using Linux since around 10 years ago.