What is THE absolutely, positively easiest linux distro?

I plan to buy an el cheapo laptop and set it up to dual boot to 1) Win7 & 2) easiest linux distro. Goal is to learn linux by guess & by golly.

Is there a distro that is truly TRULY as easy to use as Win7? If not, then I trash this project & collect stamps, instead.

BOTTOM LINE:
Q1-- If it even exists, what is the absolute easiest linux distro?
Q2-- Put it another way... Is there a linux distro that is as easy to learn & use as Win7?
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By the way, win7 costs over $200 at amazon. Gooood grief!!!

 

I would say it depends what you mean by easy and generally what do you need.
Some are quite well equipped out-of-box. I don't know whether installed programs are enough for you, because I don't know what you need.
Some other are less equipped out-of-box, but you can configure repositories and install programs from rich collection of packages.

Maybe you only need web-based programs, so the only think you need is the web browser. It is probably the best scenario, because both Firefox and Chrome are officially released for Gnu/Linux. There are also other less known browsers.

Just give it a try, because it is probably the only method you would know for sure.

 

I just now ordered from Amazon 3 beginners books re linux. I am seriously in pursuit. I hope for your help.

 

I wait to hear from your experiences.

 

There is no answer to your q, no right one at least as it boils down to your perception/ experiences vs needs/ requirements etc

The one solution I was more than rewarded for was VirtualBox - you download and subsequently install as many distros as yo wish, you toy with them and then pick the one that suits you appropriately.

That's it.

In my case it took loads of time, tens of installations and starting with 2010 I ended up with Manjaro KDE in 2017.

I am picky

 

Here's my first foray into Linux.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/linux-for-beginners.386874/

 

Linux mint gets my vote

 

Mint. Afair Mint has a strong forum as well & that can be very welcome at times.

 

Keeping in mind the "el cheapo" part, I would go with the XFCE desktop environment in the distro of your choice: Linux Mint or Xubuntu.

 

Bellgamin, as a recent user, tester, and believer in Linux myself, I have been using the following distros as of late with great success and satisfaction:
Mint MATE, Mint KDE, Ubuntu, MX 17, and KUbuntu.
Now, back to your question - Which is the absolute easiest to use (and install): IMO, you might want to put Mint MATE and KDE on USB flash drives, boot both and see what desktop presentation you prefer. I found both distros to be straightforward and quite usable after an admittedly fairly steep learning curve; learning a whole new system does take a while and I don't think I will ever be at the Expert Level, but I'm getting better at it every day. It is enjoyable to use Linux systems that are secure, FAST, FREE, have pain-free regular updates that work, and do most of what I need on a daily basis. As a beginner myself, I have found the Unix forum here to be of immense help, especially the fantastic reviews and comments by The Man Himself: Mrkvonic. We are here to help you and hopefully you will enjoy your adventure into the world of Linux!

 

I moved a few of my customers who couldn't afford to replace their Vista machines to Linux Mint. One has a Core 2 Duo with a decent Passmark and 4GB of RAM, so I installed the Cinnamon version; the others, with lower-spec machines, the XFCE version. Before she passed I even had my 90-year-old mother-in-law on Mint. None is/was very computer literate, yet I never hear a peep out of any of them except how much they love their new Linux computer. I wholeheartedly recommend Mint.

 

For me it was Mint. I've moved completely over to Linux this past year and have no regrets in doing so. I'm running Mint Sylvia 18.3 Cinnamon 64b.

 

I started learning Linux with Mint, tried almost all distros and ended with Kubuntu.
however i never found on linux , the "fun" i have with Windows.

I see see linux as a big onion with layers, Mint being in the upper layers, then more you learn, deeper you go with more "stripped" distros.

 

Funny you put it that way, I feel just the same.

 

What's wrong with you two!! Linux is not supposed to be fun!! It's supposed to make you get frustrated and cry!!
Seriously though I agree with pretty much everyone Mint and Ubuntu are as good a choice as any.
It all comes down to how many of the Linux command line tools have been updated to a modern GUI.
Windows would be the same as Linux from a users point of view if you had to bring up a terminal every time you need to change some settings and by the same token Linux would be the same as Windows if the devs would make GUI's for all the command line tools.
Creating GUI's is a fun part of developing and the easy part and the creative part, someone else already did the hardcore coding so I really don't understand why the big developers like canonical didn't already do that.
For a simple example take Windows netstat. You type in a command at the Windows terminal to see the active connections or you can use an app with buttons that send the commands and display the results.
Both use the same netstat to do the work and it means nothing to say,
"well I don't need a button because I know the command that the button sends to netstat so I can type it in myself"
So what? Who cares?
What do you want, a gold star ?
But that has been the stupid argument for decades, that command line is better than GUI.
It's the same damn thing, except the GUI saves time learning something unneccesssary to learn, by sending the commands for you.

 

Popular Gnu/Linux distributions have basic GUI tools for most day to day tasks, but it is not enough for you - you need to read manuals and use command line.

It is possible to make non-intuitive GUI. Especially if tool has very large amount of options to choose from. Some tools assume user know what is going on under the hood. In that case user is supposed to read the documentation, manual for the tool, even if this is GUI tool.

Tools may have some options that are interdependent on the others. Number of combinations of them may rise exponentially (very fast).
To make intuitive, easy to use, idiot-proof GUI developers would need to extract some most used combinations. But that means a whole lot of less used combinations (but needed in some use cases) would be not existent.

As I said earlier don't be scared, because: Popular Gnu/Linux distributions have basic GUI tools for most day to day tasks.

 

I could make a GUI for any command line tool out there that would include all the most used basic options on the basic screen while including all possible available combinations of options on an advanced screen that would take a few minutes to learn how to achieve the objective as opposed to hours or days of trawling through manuals and websites to find the commands and what they do.
I

 

Hours or days? Most manuals are 2 or 3 page (A4 format) long. Some are longer, around 10 pages, but it doesn't take days to read 10 pages. English is not native language for me (sorry for all mistakes and grammar), but even I can read a few pages in a 20 minutes. And you usually don't need to read it all.
Probably most efficient, yet safe, way to do something command line is to search WWW and find potential commands. Then open manual for that command, read about the options it is provided with.

I believe in basic part, but I don't believe in advanced part. There are some commands that it could be true, but you said "any command line tool".
It is worth to note results from one command can be delivered as input or arguments to another command. Writing scripts can become soft-core programming.

 

Something silly, stupid, puzzling etc.

Years ago I was using Linux (PCLinuxOS I think) 95%+ vs W7P64 5%.

I flipped that cause Linux was too easy to accomplish my daily tasks. I had too much time on my hands & I missed the Windows drama. F----d Up I know.

Another excuse was I rehabbing, fixing & servicing W7 laptops. So I used that as an excuse to totally flip back to the dark side instead of adding just a bit more time on W7.

When M$ gets legal permission to blow up all W7 PCs connected to the internet. Maybe then ....

 

I can't speak for others, but to answer your question: What is wrong with ME? A lotta things actually. Where do you want me to start? Physically, mentally, emotionally, environmentally?? For sure I am a retired crazy man, no question about THAT.

Back on the subject you raised, Yes, I have learned a few Unix commands along my short journey; not many but enough to get the job done. Also some editing of GRUB Root Linux startup files as necessary; again, just enough to get the job done.

 

Yes if you already have a manual and the procedure is properly documented. It's a whole different story when you first have to first find that manual then discover it is out of date, so then you trawl through forums trying to disseminate between, people who post stuff when they don't know what they are talking about, people who post stuff that is ten years ago, contradictory information etc. That is why it can take hours or days to find the correct information and procedures.

Yes but it is not so difficult as it sounds.
For example.
Take command that had 20 switches, some can be used in combination some cannot.
Sounds like a big problem for GUI?
You take the switches, make buttons for each. If one is pressed, any that cannot be used in combination with it, you grey them out. Simple right?
If output from that combination of switches can be used as input for others you do it procedurally.
One way is user clicks next, then the output from the previous choices is available on new screen of options.
It's really not that hard to create simple to use GUI with a seemingly complex array of options and of course in GUI you can easily document what each option does, with tooltips and other built in documentation.

 

Actually just to get back on topic I apologies to OP for digressing If you plan to use cheapo low spec laptop use a distro with a fast desktop like Mint Sylvia with XFCE desktop (one of my favorites) It will remind you of Window XP. No BS animated sliding menus popping out of every nook and cranny just because you touched something, just easy access to applications customisable start menu style interface and smooth, even on really old hardware.
I put XFCE on Debian that was my favorite desktop distro actually. It's hard to mess up Debian no matter how much stuff you pile onto it from the Debian repository, it just plays along with it.

 

Information on websites can be outdated, but manual is installed with commands. Just type:
man command. For example how to find manual for apt-get command:

Code:

man apt-get

How to find manual for man command:

Code:

man man

 

Bellgamin, when you say you want to learn Linux, I don't know if you mean (a) to just be able to do normal things as a desktop user or (b) to really understand the guts of Linux. I would suggest that if the goal is (a) then you really won't need to learn much about the command line and you won't really need to read books -- Linux, particularly Mint or a similar distribution, has gotten much more user-friendly over the last several years for a regular desktop user.

However, either way, there is one thing that you should read carefully, twice: Dedoimedo's Ultimate Guide to Linux for Windows Users. While there's lots of introductory material out there -- including a free course at edx.org from the Linux Foundation -- Dedoimedo's guide is definitely the place to start.

 

Don't even think about Linux, if you are allergic to doing things by command line.
As soon as you have to fix something in Linux, or get your printer to work, or sometimes just to install a program, you will need that console and you will be scouring the linux forums for help.

Basic users can use Linux, because they don't change anything on their system, and make do with the few simple programs they already have. But tinkerers will need to learn to love command lines.