Wait… I’m just about to switch over to Linux on a laptop and was going to use Ubuntu. This looks kind of cursed though?
Tbf, Unbuntu works, but they’re ran by a company which has made some questionable choices. You can still go with it if you don’t care too much, it has the advantages of being user friendly and well documented.
If you’d rather not, but you want something not too far and equally easy, you can go with Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu but disables snaps. They also offer differently choices of desktop environments, the default being Cinnamon (which looks a bit more like windows), and another being Mate, which is closer to Gnome.
They also have a “Debian Edition”, which aims to stop being dependant on Ubuntu and may or may not replace the default edition someday, but so far it’s not the one they recommend for new users.
Switching to Ubuntu is way, way better than staying on Windows.
That being said, Ubuntu is maintained by the Canonical company, and they have made some really sus decisions in the past. Things like putting Amazon ads in the application launcher and then trying to gaslight people when the inevitable backlash arrived.
The meme above refers to Canonical’s own Snap packaging format (think of it like UWP/Microsoft Store apps vs. “regular” Win32 apps), and the way they’re pushing for its adoption. Snap is installed by default on Ubuntu and official Ubuntu flavors. You can uninstall it manually, but Canonical has modified the APT package manager so that when an application is available as a Snap package, it automatically installs the Snap back-end and the application as a Snap package without notifying the user (instead of installing the .deb-packaged applications, which is what happens on all other distributions that use APT). Canonical recently also ordered that official Ubuntu flavors (which are maintained by independent groups) can’t include Flatpak, a universal packaging format that directly competes with Snap, in their default installations.
You could try out Linux Mint¹, they’re Ubuntu based and disable Snap by default².
Linux mint has no GNOME or KDE variant, so while they fix many Ubuntu issues, they are still on XOrg.
So? There’s nothing preventing someone from installing either, and they’re adding Wayland support to Cinnamon.
It’s not as bad as it looks, especially if you aren’t hardcore, but for long-term linux users it’s not great.
Debian has become what Ubuntu wanted to be: An easy, clean distribution that basically just works, which is a major reversal.
Also consider fedora.
But don’t be worried about Ubuntu, it’s still completely usable.
KDE Neon or EndeavorOS are also options, depending on whats important to you in a distro. I recommend getting a live usb so you can boot into linux and try it before installing the whole system.
Can’t recommend EOS. Awful community when something breaks. Definitely not something for people coming from Windows.
Awful community? Its Arch, which is regarded as having one of the most comprehensive guides and as long as you find someone willing to not be a dick, the community is great!
Ignore the noise and go with Ubuntu LTS. When you get comfortable with that, you could try Debian.
You could play it backwards too. Try Debian, if you can’t get it to do what you want, wipe and do Ubuntu LTS. But I do not recommend this path if you have no idea what you’re doing. People underestimate how difficult it is to do simple things when you don’t know how to, no matter how trivial.
Nah, this is just the same “hivemind hates thing” leaking over from Reddit. It’s not that different to the systemd hate. There’s a core of a point, but if a small fraction of the energy spent on the daily Two Minutes Hate were redirected towards fixing the things those folks don’t like, they wouldn’t have any molehills to treat as mountains.
