I’m looking for a distro to contribute to finally make 'year of Linux desktop, to happen. For me, I see that as full UI/UX behaviour that behaves almost identical to Windows/Mac (eg no middle click to paste).
Which distro comes closest to it?
lol, sorry but in what world do you live in? NONE of the OS “just works”.
I’m sorry but this is such a trope. I watched someone using an up to date iOS phone. That thing is LOCKED down to no end, countless people claim that Apple are some kind of UX geniuses … well you look somebody trying to do anything as complex as watching a video on this and it’s a damn struggle.
Sorry for going on a rant here but the very concept is a lie. It’s like Windows being easier to use, it’s absolutely not BUT people have trained, at school (sigh) or at work, on how to use it. They somehow “forget” that they went through hours or even days of training and somehow they believe it feels “natural”. That’s entirely dishonest but why do I insist on this so much? Because it’s unfair to then compare Linux distributions to things that do not exist!
What “just works” but STILL is not perfect or flawless, is SteamOS on the SteamDeck not due to any “magic” from Valve but rather because :
- the hardware is very limited (basically selected to work well for it)
- the use case is very limited (start Steam, play)
and as soon as one start to tinker with SteamOS on SteamDeck by replacing part, adding USB-C devices, remote the r/w restriction on the OS, etc then again “just works” becomes “worked at some point”.
Solid rant. The amazing thing is how quickly people learn to live with whatever they currently have. It explains iPhone users.
Linux Mint. Everything including full system version upgrades and GPU driver installations can be done via GUI.
The default look and feel is Windows-y, and the Mint team does a great job of pre-loading their distro with all the basic apps most people need, including a good printer app, scanner app, PDF viewer, media player, etc.
it really depends on what demands you are going to place upon the system…
gaming? have weird hardware? you’re gonna visit a command line and have to ‘research’ things…
but just basic tasks and well-supported hardware? many can give a mostly or even entirely ‘point and click’ experience.
i have a number of users on silverblue and endless that would be terrified if they ever had to open a terminal, and i rarely open a terminal on my own desktops (xfce manjaro, cinnamint, endless, silverblue)
I mean pretty much any distro can achieve that even Arch based ones. For example with CachyOS you could essentially run it with say KDE and never need to open a terminal at all. Cachy includes Octopi as its GUI package manager and it works well. KDE can also potentially handle the updating for you.
you could also run say something like Bazzite or Nobara which is essentially the same. Nobara does have it’s own updater but i’ll be honest it’s kinda wonky sometimes and generally only starts off with access to its own repos.
Essentially at the end of the day the Distro doesn’t really matter in most cases. As long as it can utilize a GUI package manager or some sort of “app store” and allows easy installation of something like KDE then you’re good to go. The exceptions to this I would say would be like Gentoo or NixOS but as someone who uses NixOS…technically…it could potentially fit the bill. But that would require a bit of work to get it to that point.
Actually now that I think about it getting something like working on NixOS would be an interesting side hobby project to work on.
You won’t get what you’re asking for, because what you want is windows to not suck, not for Linux to have GUI. Me too tbf.
I started playing around with linux back in the Ubuntu 11.04 days. I was a tween with computers as a hobby and linux repeatedly humbled me and left me troubleshooting for hours. I had fun playing with it but I stayed with Windows on my main PC.
When I finally could not take it anymore in 2021, I started using fedora, which I grew to hate then moved to opensuse, which I grew to hate so I moved to Debian, and I’ve more or less stayed struggling in the Debian sphere since.
I’m a regular person, I don’t code. I can’t even hello world in python without help. I just need my laptop to be able to serve me the slop that I crave. If you’re that person too, you’re just gonna have to suck it up and learn how linux works. Suffer through it. You’ve been using windows probably since you were eating boogers, don’t expect to just pickup linux over night. I moved to linux for political reasons, and I suspect you’re doing so for similar reasons. It doesn’t get easier, you just get better at using Linux.
If you want my suggestion, pick something based on an LTS distro. I like Debian, but I’m sure there is good stuff based on RHEL, SUSE, whatever. People will sit here and tell you how “out of date” Debian is. You’re coming from windows, you probably regularly use software that nobody has maintained since 2009, you don’t care if bonzibuddy.exe got an AI update, you just want to turn computer on, watch youtube, play vidya game. Don’t let user johnthunderfuck69 in r/linux tell you his arch install has never broken in 20 years of using it. He is built different and you are not johnthunderfuck69.
I’ve had good luck with some of the gui tools included in MX Linux, SparkyLinux, and LMDE(mint debian edition). If you look hard enough between those 3 you’ll probably find a big red button that you can click to order pizza to your house.
Choose Cinnamon, XFCE, or KDE as a desktop environment.
I installed Ubuntu on my father in law laptop years ago and it is still kicking. ( he’s 85 this year) He does whatever he was doing before. My smallest which is 12 has zorin installed in her first peesonal pc and never asked any help. I think that the response greatly vary by the use of the computer you have.
Exactly.
My parents are fully on Linux since early dual core CPUs & the only things that didn’t work or they didn’t know how to do was after upgrades. “They” hopped many distros (some very niche, but lots of years on Debians) & I soon came to realise that I don’t need to explain to them what I did when I would change distros.
They run Tumbleweed for quite a few years (5?) now with 0 work on my side (yay!!).
Then again, they (and other family and friends) aren’t demanding power users, they don’t even game.
I use the cli on macos often, because some apps need to be manually signed from the terminal. Power users on windows also use the terminal. However, the best of what you ask is Linux Mint.
What is the LTT Linux test? I know its a reference to the LTT YouTube channel and the fail they experienced. But how do we a LTT Linux test and report it as a success?
LTT test pass: the distro must assume you can’t read.
LOL fair enough. I guess a more friendly description of that would be “the distro must assume you don’t read everything”. Okay so that makes sense, given what happened.
What happened?
LTT - Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel tried out Linux, PopOS!. And there was a horrible outcome, where he tried to uninstall or install Steam and the dependencies would remove the entire desktop for whatever reason. Rendering the installation broken and unusable obviously. There was a big warning in the terminal, but he didn’t read and ignored it and continued.
There was lot of debate, but ultimately it was fault from both sides: ignoring warning that explains what happens, and no safeguards from the distro so this bug should not make it unusable.
Sounds like you are asking for an iPad or a locked down Android pad. The commercial pad offerings to the non-technical public are GUI only, they spend a huge amount of man hours to create the UX. Even if the Linux desktops are getting better every year, you are accepting a limited experience without the terminal.
I haven’t kept up with that clown but if that’s a reference to the time he attempted to switch, that was a top-gear-like slapstick show, consisting of making wrong turns at every fork and having outliers galore in the form of some hardware he and one other dude on the entire planet got. that show of his is infotainment, as in not a reliable source of information.
you go with the beginner-friendliest distro, with the widest distribution which is ubuntu. that ain’t the distro I’m running, but it’s something you need to go through to figure out how this shit runs. after you’ve been around the block a time or two and you start bumping your head at the ceiling, you’ll have enough experience to switch to something better.
I see that as full UI/UX behaviour that behaves almost identical to Windows/Mac (is no middle click to paste).
Linux is not Windows. Stop trying to make it work like Windows. Windows is crap and I don’t want Linux to work like it.
Expecting Linux to work like Windows is how new people get frustrated. Have you heard anyone say that macOS needs to be like Windows to succeed? Of course not. So stop saying that about Linux.
Also, “no middle-click to paste” is astonishingly stupid, I’ve been using it hundreds of times per day for way over a decade now. It’s one of the most useful and helpful features I’ve ever used.
Mostly agree, middle-click to paste should be configurable, though.
Getting hung up on feature parity with Windows and Mac is both a waste of time and literally impossible given the major differences between those two UIs. KDE already does most of that legwork anyway, and you can disable middle click paste easily.
IMO your time would be best spent making GUI tooling that doesn’t already exist. Identify a pain point for you that forces you to the terminal and start there.
Why would you want to disable middle-click-paste???
I couldn’t live without it.
Really great advice, was thinking of that myself recently. I’m considering making some GUI apps to address my terminal journeys. While I enjoy terminal, not everyone should.
deleted by creator
The distro shouldn’t matter too much, but the desktop environment will.
I recommend using KDE if you want something similar to Windows, and GNOME if you want something similar to macOS.
Using a GUI also isn’t really dependent on the DE either for most programs. It’s dependent on whether or not a GUI for it exists in the first place.
and it usually does, but software discoverability is still bad on linux
Would suggest Linux Mint
I suggest LMDE not regular mint. Normal mint updates often and ocassionally with bugs while rare and mostly I see for gaming they do happen. Stability and reliability are king. So LMDE aka Linux mint debian edition. Its entirely the same as normal mint made by the same people but it’s rock solid unlike Ubuntu version.
Sincerely I’ve used both to game and daily pc usage even work. LMDE no questions.
lmde does not have all the pref panels like normal mint does. I always suggest against it, especially for nvidia users.
Regular Mint is much closer to what the OP is asking for. It removes the crappy Ubuntu stuff but gets to benefit from the good stuff like better hardware support, GUIs for drivers/updates and PPA support which is especially important if you have an AMD GPU as it’s how you’ll get up-to-date Mesa.
Up to date mesa is in regular mint but only sort of. You have to manually go bleeding edge if you want by installing mesa drivers manually. Base Mint is a few versions behind on purpose, stability and I would say your kernel version makes a bigger difference in the end given how good mint is I recommend 6.14 kernel especially on fresh hardware, you can change your kernel version anytime in the update manager preferences, 6.8 is old but stable. 6.14 is newer, faster in gaming. Unless your on brand new, brand new released hardware this a non issue truly.
Most people will be fine with stock mint and you can’t go wrong much with either. I game on stock mint full time! Windows only for BF6/dual boot. It’s all I knew for several years was mint before going to NIXos and fedora and more… My hardware is 7900xt 7600x. Full AMD on my rigs though I’ve built intel Nvidia… I’ve built dozens of PCs/laptops/servers as I build and sell them. You honestly can’t go wrong with either version but all I am saying is that if you hate bugs, updates ocassionally doing odd things especially to steam and proton. LMDE. I’ve been on mint for years this is just my 2 cents. I also value not fucking with my OS anymore I dislike command line memorization. I’m done tinkering and fixing shit all the time and prefer GUI or shit to just work ideally I’ll trouble shoot for a few minutes then I stop, no more days tied up over dumb shit. With windows or Linux. LMDE is my choice. Best of luck.
Up to date mesa is in regular mint but only sort of. You have to manually go bleeding edge if you want by installing mesa drivers manually.
Yeah, there’s a big difference to a beginner between adding a PPA in Mint (GUI) and all the fuckery of trying to get the latest Mesa in Debian (terminal with risk) even though both could technically be described as “manual”.
Mint, (?)ubuntu, and Pop!_OS are what I suggest because 1) most software install guides target these distros. Anything that uses a package manager other than apt means extra googling and pain for those who just want an OS that works and could care less about the miniscule advantages of one over another 2) stable releases and driver support and 3) similar UI to whatever they’re coming over from. Someone else ITT mentioned KDE for Windows and Gnome(or Cosmic once it’s stable) for Mac folk and I think that tracks well
Is MacOs “absolutely no cli”? It wasn’t when I was using it (admittedly, some 10yrs ago), except maybe for the basic things which any mainstream linux distro also provides.
What about Windows? Back in the day I would have paid to have a semi-decent CLI instead of being forced to use regedit (I hear regedit is still going strong, but I’ve not touched windows for an even longer period than MacOs)
What about Windows?
Every Microsoft forum suggestion:
sfc /scannow
Windows hasn’t been “No CLI” since the requirements for TPM were added to Win 11 at the latest. Arguably, it’s been even longer if you wanted to get any customization beyond “changing window border colors and desktop background,” or if you wanted to do “hacker” stuff like remove start menu ads, but I guess most average users just didn’t bother.
Resentment aside, this is more attacking the letter of the query than the spirit. At best, OP admits the terminal isn’t bad and scary but still wants a distro that works best for GUI-focused people, at worst their eyes glazed over and they stopped reading everything you said after “when I was using it”
Well, if you prentend iterm does not exist, you can probably still use a mac to browse the web.
