Hi all, thanks in advance for indulging a complete newbie! I’d like to try Linux on an 11-year-old MacBook Pro (gifted by a relative), but I don’t know where to start. What distribution would you recommend based on my background?
-Coming from the Mac world; haven’t used a PC/Windows since before the pandemic. I’d prefer something that feels similar to MacOS.
-Not a techie. I’ve forgotten everything (everything!) I ever learned about command line because I never ended up needing to use it, and I haven’t had to debug anything in a long time.
-What I’ll be using it for: accessing the internet, various kinds of creative projects that I’ll probably try making with FOSS software (something I’ve only recently started to look into), and making another attempt at learning programming (my interest will probably peter out before I get anywhere with it, though, because that’s what happened the last two times). Probably won’t be gaming. I’d prefer having the option to use mainstream office software in case anything happens to my current computer, but I don’t actually expect anything to happen to it in the next few years, so that’s just a nice-to-have.
-Priorities: works on old Mac hardware, good for privacy, decent software availability, not buggy, ability to avoid generative AI (i.e., no repeat of Apple installing the Image Playground app on my computer along with a software update, without the ability to remove it.)
It seems like a lot of people recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint to beginners, but I’m seeing some people complaining that Ubuntu is has spyware(?) and forces things users don’t want, and it seems like Linux Mint is usually recommended to people coming from Windows, so IDK if either of those make sense for me. Advice/recommendations appreciated!
Thanks for all of this! Yeah, I’m not sure whether I’ll need to dual boot or not since this won’t be my main work computer, but I’ll keep that in mind.
Everyone seems to be recommending Gnome. I’ll check out Cosmic too. At first glance, it looks pretty cool, but I don’t totally know what I’m looking for yet since I haven’t really had to look at desktop environment choices before.
re Fedora - very well maintained and stable sounds excellent! I’m assuming this applies to both Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Cosmic? Might look into Pop!_OS as well, if it’s popular I’m guessing I could find resources to troubleshoot anything that goes wrong.
I’m curious about Atomic options. That sounds like a great option for someone who’s kinda worried about screwing things up, especially if I really do get into programming this time and fall into the rabbit hole of fiddling with computer things. I’ll definitely read up on that.