6mo ago

switching from windows to linux, can you give some advice?

I need some advice regarding which distro to choose. I tried installing fedora workstation on my laptop as test and it seemed quite annoying to get the user interface right.

I dont mind the technical differences, in fact i'm looking forward to them as linux is more secure and better designed.

The problem i'm having is that i want the good things from windows desktop. for example; tray icons, being able to control filesystem easily with gui, shortcuts on desktop.

Every distro i have tried or seen has been really basic regarding this out of the box with very little customization options. I prefer not having to download million extensions for every little feature that might stop working at every major update or if developer doesnt feel like continuing.

I also would like to be able to easily backup customization settings so i dont have to do everything again if i need to reinstall. I like being able to easily customize everything so having a lot of settings is good thing for me.

I read somewhere about kde plasma and screenshots seemed promising and downloaded kde fedora. Haven't installed it yet but am I on the right track for what i'm looking for? Are there other even better choices? I'd like to nail this from the start so I dont have to reinstall later. I really dont want to wade through every possible distro.

Thank you all, you have been big help

50 comments

What you're looking for is not about distro, but desktop environment.
Since you want tray icons and an environment that isn't just basic, avoid GNOME.
You are on the right track in considering KDE Plasma. It's good, rich in features, and very customizable. A few distros use it by default, and most will let you install it as an alternative to (or replacement for) whatever they use by default.
- the kde website has bunch of distributions. opensuse, neon, fedora, manjaro, kubuntu. Does it matter which I pick? I chose fedora mostly on a whim. I have understood that plasma is something separate to this and probably included in anything kde related..? What is the fundamendal difference between these?
  
  The difference isn't very significant. Software is packaged slightly differently, and there might be slight philosophical opinion design differences in the system, but for the most part it doesn't matter.
  Fedora is fine. Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, same thing with a different interface) is fine. They're very common choices so there will be plenty of community support.
  
  Fedora is an incredibly well run distro. By default it only ships foss software so remember to enable the non foss repo if you can't find an app.
  Look for Fedora kde on their website
  
  Plasma is largely plasma, regardless of where you get it from. Distro wise, the biggest difference tends to be theming and default settings. All things you should easily be able to change yourself to make it work the same no matter where it's from. The only real gripe I have with plasma. Is distributions that enable the global menu by default. No easy way to turn it back off. And while I don't mind the global menus. It's the inconsistency of the global menus that's that issue. Any plasma or QT application works fine generally that anything gtk or otherwise and it gets to be a mess. Not Plasma's fault.
  But in general it doesn't matter what distribution it comes from
  
  +1 for the fedora KDE spin. Fedora has been rock solid for me. (Though I am currently using workstation with GNOME)
  
  I like Debian-based distros, so I usually suggest Linux Mint or Linux Mint Debian Edition to beginners.
  Regarding the ones you mentioned: Fedora has a strong following, so you would probably find plenty of community around it, if you're okay with a distro so closely linked to Red Hat corporate decisions. (I am not.) Kubuntu conveniently uses KDE Plasma by default, so you wouldn't have to install it yourself, but recent Ubuntu variants impose some controversial things like Snap packaging; it's a matter of preference. Manjaro and Neon have relatively poor track records in the stability department. I don't have any experience with openSUSE.
  It doesn't matter very much which one you pick, because you can always install a different one later if the first one you try doesn't suit you. The only way to get a feel for that is to try them.
  When people say "KDE", they generally mean KDE Plasma, which is the desktop environment that was originally just called KDE. (Kool Desktop Environment.) It was renamed somewhat recently, I think so that "KDE" could refer to the organization that also develops applications and other software.
  
  Plasma is just the name of the latest KDE release, I believe. Might I suggest Kubuntu? Ubuntu is the most popular distro in general, and Kubuntu is the KDE/Plasma Version of it.
  Because Ubuntu is so popular, it is easy to find support online. I had my husband try Kubuntu, and so far he's loving it. He has a bit less Linux experience than I do.
  You can always change your distro again later!
Linux Mint is quite popular amongst beginners. But the main thing I want to say is: I recommend you to try the KDE desktop if you're used to MS Windows. It has a tray, start menu, icons, scortcuts and everything. And it looks kind of familiar to Windows users.
- For Mint and Windows users, Cinnamon is a pretty smooth transition too.
  I switched from Windows to LMDE and Cinnamon a bit more than a year ago, and I enjoy it.
  
  Yeah as a new penguin Cinnamon Mint has been dirt easy to get used to. I'm thinking about trying other DEs for the fun of it but Mint has worked great out of the box.
- I second Mint. (This is aimed at OP, not you, Hendrik). Not because I like it, myself, but because it's a really easy transition from Windows.
  I saw someone recommending Nix. That must have been a troll, because they may as well have suggested starting with Linux From Scratch. Don't start with Arch, either - not even the EndeavorOS flavor. Arch is my preferred distro, but I've been running Linux since the late 90's and it doesn't feel like Linux to me if there's nothing I have to fuss with by hand.
  Just start with Mint. It'll give you a really easy, mostly familiar environment with few surprises and - most importantly - everything will just work out of the box. It's stable and solid. You can always change later after you get comfortable with The Linux Way - or not! I gave my octogenarian dad a laptop with Mint on it 5 years ago; earlier this year he bought himself a new laptop and - without booting into Windows - installed Mint by himself, with me on the phone for moral support. He's perfectly happy with it.
- I really think we need to stop recommending mint to beginners, not because mint isn't great, but because immutability is extremely important for beginners.
  I really do hope they release an immutable mint variant at some point, but until then, bazzite is my top pick for beginners.
  
  Thanks for the input. I'll have a look at it. I'm usually a bit hesitant about immutable distros. Since they work a bit differently. And someone starting out with Linux, administering their own machine and following a general tutorial will inevitably run into issues. They often have to follow special procedures, learn about the differences and it's just a steep learning curve. A lot of that will be blamed on Linux, and it's an additional hurdle we put in their path. Even if they're willing to learn and try to get their esoteric document scanner working on their own. I think we're better off with something like Mint. Even if that's not completely indestructible, I think it's better in some aspects that are important to a newcomer. It's a trade-off.
  Plus we have a few issues with Flatpaks, like themes not applying and Linux looks like it's stuck in the early 2000s when all your desktop is in dark mode and one application will be bright white with completely different look. Or the password manager not working due to the sandboxing of the browser Flatpak...
  All of those issues add up and they're not trivial to solve. And kind of unnecessary in my opinion.
  And I really like the concept of traditional distributions, where people get maintained packages by the distribution's team. With updates pretty much guaranteed, everything tied into the system and desktop and tested to work there. In case of Debian also with tracking libraries removed etc... I think that's what beginners want instead of pulling Flatpaks directly from upstream, whatever that project does behind the scenes.
  I'm really not sure if I want to recommend immutable distros to beginners at this point. They're a valid thing, but come with downsides. But I'm willing to have a closer look. I've yet to try most of them, including the one you mentioned.
Just to reinforce the previous replies, KDE Plasma is the desktop environment you are looking for. Is the most similar interface to the Windows desktop. They recently got huge donations and is in the uprising in developement compared to the Gnome desktop environment which unfortunately had some layoffs and funding has decreased.
And as for the distribution you would want something that supports your hardware well and packages the software you need/want(you can always fill the gaps with flatpaks). I can only recommend for you to check their respective packaging information.
My guess is that Debian with KDE Plasma as your desktop should suffice your all needs.
(Coming from a guy who has used Ubuntu, Debian, Manjaro, Void, EndeavorOS, Manjaro, Arch and most desktop environments.)
- Today, I have decided to switch the entire Family to Linux. I was just starting my research and bam, first comment in the first post is exactly my answer.
  
  good man!
The problem i’m having is that i want the good things from windows desktop. for example; tray icons, being able to control filesystem easily with gui, shortcuts on desktop.
KDE uses a system tray for various status indicators, so that's probably what you're looking for. You should know that on Linux the OS and the desktop environment are modular components. You can have multiple DEs and choose which one you want to log into. You can try different DEs, in parallel, without reinstalling your entire OS. It will still be the same OS/file system underneath. All you have to do is find and install the corresponding desktop environment packages in your package manager.
KDE is probably the most feature-rich DE, though depending on the specific distro it may not have the entire range of KDE applications installed by default. Your distro should have KDE group packages like "kdebase", "kdegames", "kdeutils", etc, which provided groups of applications based on functional areas. I recommend these over installing every application individually, and you can always trim down later if there are things you don't need.
There are other DEs, like XFCE and LXQt, but most of them are geared around minimalism or creating a specific look/feel and don't have the feature depth of KDE.
GUI file manager should be no problem in any DE/distro, though you will be limited in what you can edit from your user account (please don't run as root for normal use).
As far as desktop icons, most DEs favor an organized application launcher over icons. Do you use desktop icons more for launching applications or for opening files?
As for retaining your settings, my recommendation would be to create /home as a separate partition from / (root) when you do your OS install. All of your user configuration and your files will be in /home, which gives you the freedom to reformat and reinstall the OS in / without affecting your user files (when you run the OS installer, you'll need to manually configure the partitions, then tell it to use the existing /home but not format it). This also adds some safety for your personal files in case you are making changes to the OS and you end up breaking it - you can just replace it without losing your stuff.
Also if you're considering running multiple distros (Fedora, Debian, Arch, w/e), you can give each of them a separate root partition and have them all use the same /home partition, so your files will be available in all of them. In this case I recommend also making a separate /boot partition, which would be shared across all distros.
- I use gui more for file management. I dont like using the terminal for that since I have to remember everything constantly.
  Why isnt the /home separate from /root by default? Frankly I dont see any benefits from it being in there.
  Also, what is your opinion on kubuntu vs fedora regarding this? I'm quite torn between them, kubuntu seems nice and easy to use but I fear its developers might do stupid decisions if they are already annoying people with the snaps. Fedora seems more secure but it might require a lot of tinkering to get things to work and might be more prone to problems that need troubleshooting.
  
  Why isnt the /home separate from /root by default?
  Because then you either waste free space for root or completely fill it up and can't install any native packages easily.
  
  I use gui more for file management. I dont like using the terminal for that since I have to remember everything constantly.
  Well of course. The only time terminal is really useful for file management is when you want to do mass operations (e.g. find all filenames that match a pattern and rename them with another pattern) or when you're managing a remote/headless system.
  Why isnt the /home separate from /root by default? Frankly I dont see any benefits from it being in there.
  It complicates the setup process to make multiple partitions. Generally speaking I wouldn't want an automated process to mess with partitioning a drive for me, I would either be satisfied with the basic single-partition setup or else set up the partitions manually.
  If you do set up your partitions manually, make sure you create a swap partition of at minimum 2GB, though if you plan to use hibernation you'll need enough swap to store your entire RAM contents, plus additional space for the swap itself.
  Your OS partition doesn't need to be all that big, Linux tends to be pretty efficient. 30GB is probably enough to provide room for growth.
  Also, what is your opinion on kubuntu vs fedora regarding this?
  I used Kubuntu for many years, but I don't really like the recent changes in Ubuntu, especially the move away from standard repository package management in favor of snaps.
  Fedora is a solid choice, and may be particularly useful if you plan to do anything career-wise with Linux. There's a lot of RedHat/Fedora/CentOS in industrial and enterprise computing.
  Personally I've recently started using EndeavourOS, and I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's an Arch variant, but designed to be useful out-of-the-box. The only thing I miss occasionally is Synaptic, there really isn't anything comparably competent for any of the non-Debian distros unfortunately.
Major desktop environments are KDE as you mentioned and Gnome.
Arch wiki is a good resource even if not running arch. You may want to look into their dotfiles page to back up your settings: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dotfiles.
NixOS ended up being my distro of choice for reproducible installs but it has a high learning curve and poor documentation so I wouldn't recommend to start with. That said you can still use Nix on other distros with home manager to manage dotfiles and install non-system apps.
Distros just pick the default things to install. You can always use the package manager to install something else like a better file manager.
A lot of choices are simply subjective so its hard to recommend any one distro. Mint is close to windows, based on Ubuntu and uses Gnome. Ubuntu based on Debian I find to be user friendly. Not used a Fedora based distro in ages but there is also Silverblue I've heard mentioned positively.
Distros like Arch and NixOS are more design your own system setups. Pick what you want. I used arch for a bit, but got annoyed at keeping all my systems in sync. Had a huge wiki of all the tweaks I made. Then scripts to automate some of it. I started looking at automation tooling like ansible when I found nix.
If you are a little keen on learning the ins-and-outs of Linux, I highly recommend staying with Fedora. In my opinion, it has a great balance of stability and cutting-edge software selection in its repositories. The problems you have outlined are due to the default desktop environment choice of GNOME in Workstation Edition. The developers of GNOME are kind of perfectionists and have their own vision of what a desktop environment should be like. This often leads to having some common functionality most people want missing, at least without community-made extensions. KDE Plasma, on the other hand, is quite receptive to feature-requests and has all the functionality you mentioned, while being just as well supported development-wise.
Yeah Fedora with KDE is a good choice, it's what I run. It seems fairly windows-y (but better imo), and has the things you mentioned at least. Customization is mostly going to be your dotfiles in .config, .var, and you can write scripts to do it (like I have one to redownload everything I need on my personal system if I reinstall, vlc, librewolf, qbittorrent, etc).
Sounds like you tried Linux distros that use Gnome as desktop environment (very little customization out of the box, no desktop icons, unfamiliar interface).
What you're looking for is really KDE Plasma Desktop. Yes, Fedora KDE is a good option.
Zorin is a good transition point from Windows to Linux, since it's an easy distro to install and it's pretty Windows-like from a UX perspective.
Here's a more general recommendation: start off by installing a VM platform (VirtualBox or similar) on your Windows system and spinning up a few VMs, each one with a different beginner-friendly distro on it (Zorin, Mint, etc). That way you can play around with them, get more comfortable, and choose the one you like best, before you go all in.
Endeavor OS w/ KDE Plasma. Use btrfs file system and set up timeshift and timeshift auto snap
Incredible distro!
If you have any trouble, I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to do infinite support help on matrix, feel free to ask and I can give you a complete rundown and answer any questions you have about any distro.
I highly recommend going with an immutable distribution, such as bazzite, you'll also probably want KDE like you said, which is the desktop environment
You can think of it this way:
the distribution is a separate app store, which app store you have determines what apps are available (apps are called packages in linux, essentially, so, we call the management of these package management)
Fedora is an app store that prioritizes being quick to release new software versions, but also, being a little bit behind to check for bugs
Arch is an app store that doesn't care about being user-friendly, and wants to ship the most up to date stuff, and expects you to do everything yourself.
Debian is an app store that's super slow and prioritizes not missing ANY bugs at all costs, they'll wait years before they update software.
But note that these app stores have nothing to do with the thing you interact with, which is the desktop environment:
for desktop environments, there's KDE, which is basically just the closest thing to windows, but much more customizable, they give you as many ways to do things as is comfortable
Gnome is like macos, they think there should only be one way to do things, and they want you to do things their way, for the sake of user-friendliness and minimizing surface area for mistakes.
I wouldn't worry about the other desktop environments unless you're experienced.
Now, immutability is extremely important for new users, immutability means that there's a core system that's separate from the things you install, essentially. So, you can't fundamentally break things without trying really hard, as a new user you might uninstall something and it turns out it's important for your desktop to work and you're stuck in a command line. You don't want that. (this famously happened to linus tech tips)
Feel free to ask for more help or message me on matrix for whatever you need.
https://bazzite.gg/
^^this is a KDE fedora immutable distribution that i highly recommend, there's also fedora kinoite, but I recommend this over it, because there's some patent issues with fedora since they're a US-based company, and as a result twitch.tv and some other things don't work out of the box. Bazzite just fixes that, along with some other things for user friendliness.
- thanks, that distro looks better for me, and now i'll have reason to install matrix too :D
  
  Always happy to help!
For backing up settings i would def load your dotfiles into github. Then you can clone the repository with all your settings And copy them into place.
As others have said, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, and Fedora are probably going to be your big three, though I would include openSUSE. All three are very well established and mostly stable (not Debian stable, but they all strike a good balance between stability and not running 2-year old releases!). All 4 of these will have extensive support communities, the SUSE is mainly popular in Europe if that matters. All of them are relatively user friendly for new users, too.
Personally, I prefer Fedora, but that’s mainly because most of my professional work is in Red Hat and it’s related distros. Finding a distro that suits you is part of learning Linux. Pick one and use it for awhile. Like others have said, separate out your home directory to its own partition so you can easily reinstall and keep your files. Distro-hopping is a time-honored tradition in the community! It’s unlikely that any distro will be “perfect” for you out of the box. You’ll have to make it your own, and that’s the beauty of it all: You can!
Dual boot, don't switch
- i'll use virtualmachines for things that i cant get to work without windows and separate pc for those that dont work even then. I dont want windows to have any access to my main pc.
  
  I dont want windows to have any access to my main pc.
  You don't have to attain that state immediately, you can progress towards it over time.

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