With the new computer and the newer Microsoft Windows updates they have really jam packed their OS with bloat and spyware. That being said I have no idea what I’m doing with Linux, need help with where to start.? What are some general tips? I understand there’s a lot of prebuilt Linux distributions or something what are some first timer friendly ones? Really any help is appreciated because the biggest barrier to entry is the perceived difficulty of actually doing it.
My best tip is not to worry too much about distro. I like mint, but it’s not too different from PopOS or ubuntu. They’re just some nice starting points.
If you look at a few and like how they look or feel, you should know the majority of that is the desktop environment not the distro. Meaning you can change it out without re-installing or losing all your apps.
If you like linux mint with cinimon, but want to try out xfce, then just go into the app centre, search ‘xfce’, install it, log out, select xfce, and log in. Nothing is lost and you can go back at any point in time. Same with plasma, gnome, lxqt, etc. (PopOS uses Gnome with the pop shell).
Only negative suggestion would be to avoid arch based distros for the time being. They assume a bit more knowlage and break much more often. I use EndeavorOS but I understand that life isn’t for everyone