this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I just found out my fiancee wants to switch to linux, lets start a distro war, what should be her first? + other questions (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago by StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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So i was surprised today when my fiancee told me she was thinking about switching over to linux. Surprised because she is absolutely not technically minded, but also because she was weary about having Microsoft AI slop forced on her PC every update. ( i'm so proud!)

Now i've used a little linux but i've always been a holdout. Won't stop me from moving someone else over but i have too much going on in my setup to deal with that right now. So i'm not super versed but i was able to give her the basic rundown of what distros are, concerns when switching, what may and may not be available, shes still on board so we're doing this! Knowing her she would like to not have to transition too much, whats something fairly hands off and easy to learn. I've heard some good things about mint from hanging around you nerds the past few years but also some not so good things, any suggestions?

next concern is what kind of transfer process is this going to be? i have some spare HDD's so we can try and get everything ported over but i'm so busy with school right now i can't quite allocate the time to really deep dive this.

Any help is appreciated, cheers!

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[–] Echolynx@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What's the adjustment like with immutable systems?

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Its not particularly crazy, most things can be installed via flathub. If something isnt there, install it through distrobox (you can install things through the AUR, packages like rpm and deb, etc). And if that doesn't work, install the app directly through rpm-ostree (only thing I did this with was a vpn app, you can point to a .rpm file for this). I use flathub for the vast majority of things, I think I only have two apps installed outside of it.

What's great is nothing ever breaks this way. Ever. It all works. Broken upgrades haven't happened to me after a year of using this, meanwhile I had plenty on debian and small distros like manjaro, mint, cachyos, nobara.

[–] Echolynx@lemmy.zip 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

What are some examples of broken upgrades? I can't really think of any of Kubuntu, except that the recent major distro update broke my fan's RGB and they run proprietary Windows-only control programs so I can't fix it.

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Mmm sometimes if you don't update for a long time you can't really update at all without following specific instructions. Nobara for instance had a major breakage between 41 and 42 versions that required you to debug from a boot drive iirc. One of my friends just had debian break on their not very used laptop and it can't upgrade. Bazzite will not have these issues, image based upgrades solve the broken upgrade and config drift problems. And if for some reason it does break, it's always solved by a one line rpm-ostree rebase command. Whereas with other distros the process to fix it is very involved usually