no longer receive security update

MFW I revert to Windows 2000

😎

"no, wait, not like that!"

It's scheduled to stop receiving them October 14, 2025.

Exactly. Us Linux users, as a collective, tend to shoot ourselves in the foot here because we can't decide on the "best" distro for beginners. If we all just said one thing, with confidence and without arguments, and without saying "it depends...", more would probably make the switch.

No major outlets that the average user would frequent are likely to sell laptops with any Linux distro pre installed. Many non-technical users wouldn't even reinstall Windows by themselves, let alone Linux.

Any of the usual starter distros would be a good choice because once they are in the ecosystem they can find their own path. When a non technical person asks how to get Linux, there is no worse answer than a barrage of information followed by more questions. Just pick one, say it confidently, and assist them to make it happen.

It's actually pretty easy with the guided installer currently shipping with arch, and there are actually numerous guides on how to install Arch.

Choosing not to is perfectly reasonable, but it's not for lack of effort from the Linux community trying to make things easier and more accessible.

There's a bunch of beginner friendly distros, it's just that when you want to make things work as well as they did on Windows then you hit a wall.

I'm using Mint (which is as beginner friendly as it gets)... Because my display signal dropped whenever there was load on the GPU on Bazzite (Fedora based) which is also supposed to be beginner friendly...

No easy way to disable the audio outputs I don't actually use. On Windows? Couple of clicks, all done through GUI.

Wifi antenna didn't work, had to install unofficial drivers from GitHub.

I've got a multi display setup and sometimes I want to switch where things are displayed. On Windows I downloaded Monitor profile switcher and it does everything for me, just had to save the setup to a profile and assign a keyboard shortcut (which isn't essential as there's a shortcut to switch it on the taskbar), it's all done inside the program. On Mint I had to create a script to choose what to display with what resolution and create a new keyboard shortcut in a separate program because the alternative was to have to open the file explorer to open the folder where the script it saved to execute it.

Playing games is easier than ever! Except that games that have both a Linux and Windows version fuck up when it comes to cloud saving on Steam because the save game folder isn't necessarily the same (and the Deck installs the Windows version by default so fuck compatibility between that Linux running machine and Linux PCs!) so you still have to force install the windows version even though there's a perfectly playable Linux version!

Don't want to use the terminal? "Everything can be done without it but using it makes things easier..." When people say that they mean that you can browse the web and write stuff on LibreOffice but as soon as you deviate from stuff that you can accomplish with a simple Android tablet you're fucked because you'll have issues you couldn't imagine. If you don't want to use the terminal at that point you need to write scripts outside the terminal and then execute them so technically you didn't do what you needed to do in the terminal but the end result is the same!

Arch would be a bad idea, as if a user finds installing Fedora too hard Arch ain't doing them any favors.

And there are guides. Youtube "how to install (linux distro)," if it's popular there's already 500 guides.

As for data loss this should come as no surprise: back it up. Preferably on an external hdd/ssd, or your choice of cloud service if you're one of those people. Erasing your entire hard drive and installing a new OS will perhaps unsurprisingly wipe all your data without a backup. Frankly you should already have backups, idk why people pretend data loss is impossible on windows but it has happened to me and I can't be the only one.

Its all about teh enjagement.

Thats why its dated 2025

Yeah I've always been a very casual Linux enthusiast (key word is casual) since I was a teen. Setup and things "just working" out of the box have absolutely never been the case, even in 2024, and even though people like to say it does. In an ideal situation on an ideal computer with ideal hardware, you don't have to tweak anything. But for most people, there are going to be some annoying issues and tweaks you have to work through.

If a Linux system has already been set up and tested for the end user, then it is a great alternative. But in my experience, these systems absolutely never work perfectly out of the box and it takes some technical know how to get to that point. Ever since Windows 7, Windows has "just worked" out of the box... especially because it comes pre-loaded on your device.

I have been dealing with some issues with my Bluetooth module in Windows. I had eventually solved the problem, but the fix seemed to have reverted itself somewhat recently. Annoyed, I thought I'd finally commit to a switch to Linux on my daily driver since my laptop doesn't support Win 11. Well, I chose Linux Mint since it doesn't use Wayland which for some reason has poor compatibility with my common Logitech mouse. Everything had been fine but then I found instead of the Bluetooth module crashing like in Windows, which just makes me have to reset the module, the entire system crashes in Linux instead and requires me to reboot it. Frustrating to say the least.

And then, as you've brought up, gaming on Linux is just generally not a good experience unless you have all of your games on Steam.

Linux can be awesome but it's absolutely not for everyone...especially people with less technical knowledge (unless it is set up for them), people who want something to "just work" without any fiddling, or people who do a lot of gaming outside of Steam.

I was lazy and went with pop!_os. Required minimal tweaking, and so far there are very few games I couldn't run

I recall them saying Windows 10 would be a rolling release and it would be the last one you ever had to buy. Could be wrong though. I don't pay much attention because I haven't used it since Windows 7. I don't have a link to back this up, just my hazy memory.

Currently writing from a Mint laptop, works perfectly with minimal setup and no command line whatsoever, the only annoying thing is that the caps lock key behaves differently. Though Linux's reputation is that it can probably be modded out.

I also installed Diodon to recover the cool clipboard function that Windows has.

I could probably get the customizeable start menu, but i actually don't miss it that much

I would disagree on the basis that Linux upgrades don't require hardware upgrades (unless you have a very low end hardware that's hanging by a thread already)

For example, I don't remember seeing all this fuss about upgrading when people were moving from 8.1 to 10 (but it could just be me on my bubble)