Linux Mint

The nice thing about it is that you can download the ISO and 'burn' it to a USB stick - when you boot it, it runs a live version of the operating system so you can actually try it out and test basic compatibility before you commit to actually installing it.

Download the ISO from Mint's website and then use either balenaEtcher or Rufus to write it to a USB stick.
 
Linux is not Windows. That said, you'll find it lean and fast. Your preferred browser (Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Opera, whatever) is still available. You have LibreOffice for word processing etc, and you can even install Steam. Spotify, VLC media player and various other things you may know and use will be available. Stuff like MS Office, obviously, isn't.

Just give it a go in live mode. You can 'burn' the image to a USB using Etcher, and simply boot from the stick and see how you find it. It'll run in RAM and after reboot you'll be back to your usual Windows install. Note that Linux isn't a single OS, it's made up of dozens of 'distributions' which have varying user interfaces and quirks. For a Windows-like experience try Cinnamon or KDE. If you've used a Mac before or don't mind trying something new, Gnome is nice when done right, especially v40.
 
I mention Ubuntu, not just because it's my favourite, but because it is very newbie friendly and the packages in Ubuntu are keep up to date.

Also it's probably the most popular distro amongst developers.
 
Linux Mint is a great distro. You could also try out Manjaro which is highly rated for beginners coming over from Windows. As has been mentioned previously, use a live distro first before committing yourself as it’s a painless exercise to burn to a USB stick. You’ll also be able to check that all the apps you want to work actually do work, and if they don’t then you can see if there are alternatives.
 
I've recently gone over to Linux Mint. I've got a duel boot going on, with Win 10 on one ssd and Linux on the other. I can say that I basically boot linux 6 out of 7 days in a week now. There are loads of books and online content to get you going in Terminal. One of the main things you have to watch out for is running the rm -rf command in Terminal, it deletes everything in your root directory. Apart from that, with a bit of research and playing about, it's great.
 
TheMenace said:
I've recently gone over to Linux Mint. I've got a duel boot going on, with Win 10 on one ssd and Linux on the other. I can say that I basically boot linux 6 out of 7 days in a week now. There are loads of books and online content to get you going in Terminal. One of the main things you have to watch out for is running the rm -rf command in Terminal, it deletes everything in your root directory. Apart from that, with a bit of research and playing about, it's great.
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Why on earth would you do that anyway, it's not something to watch out for considering you'd never accidentally trip onto your keyboard and type that out, right? And it doesn't delete everything in your 'root directory' - it'll recurisevely delete from whichever directory you're currently in, the 'f' flag forces it.
 
Spleen Sauce said:
Why on earth would you do that anyway, it's not something to watch out for considering you'd never accidentally trip onto your keyboard and type that out, right? And it doesn't delete everything in your 'root directory' - it'll recurisevely delete from whichever directory you're currently in, the 'f' flag forces it.
Click to expand...

This. 'rm -rf {folder name}' will force deletion of that folder. The '-r' flag means 'recursive', i.e. delete the specified dir and everything inside it. The '-f' flag (which isn't mandatory) means force the operation ahead. @TheMenace you're thinking of 'rm -rf /' (this 'tech' forum really ought to have code tags...). Note the slash on the end of the command, denoting the root of the drive.

Nowadays, terminals will throw up a lot of warnings if you issue that command, and you'd need to type something further to go ahead and hose the drive from the root. Around 20 years ago, when I started using Linux, not so much... I actually ran it once by accident. Do not recommend. :D
 
We use Linux at work for test automation, so it's very competent for that type of thing. You won't get the office products unless you run them through wine or a vm but libreoffice essentially does the same thing. Gaming compatibility is also very good now, all games on steam have the option to run using proton compatibility layer without any involvement setting it up. I unfortunately still have to use Windows as Valorant and other multiplayer games don't work because of the anti cheat. When I do use Linux, I use Manjaro as it's more light weight than Ubuntu but is still user friendly enough for me to use.
 
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