is there a Linux alternative to windows 10/11 that is similar?
So ive use windows pretty much for everything and ive kinda had a enough of windows. i was thinking of trying linux on an old laptop that i just upgraded to 8gb of ram and im not sure wha tos to put on it. i was thinking something lightweight maybe ubuntu mate? i need somethign like windows that will allow me to game and do other things liek gaming maybe even streaming or reading? idk. also what are some neede dsoftware, browser so rthigs needed for linux. i com efrom a family who has never trie dlinux and hates it because its "the smar advanced coders os" somethign liek that.
anyways im a noob so go easy on me please als i may have ben linux distro hopping but i still feel lost.
Zorin is designed to be a Windows replacement, but my personal recommendation is LinuxMint. Sure it's not trying to be a carbon copy of Windows, but it's designed to be easy to learn, stable, functional, and support pretty much everything from the get go (just not bleeding edge), with a readily available store that lets you download everything you need (that isn't already included in the install).
Linux Mint Cinnamon is a good choice. Even as a sysadmin and DevOps engineer I use it on my workstation because it Just Works. It has good window management, settings management, file management and just stays out of the way. Flatpak is well integrated for things you may need that aren't natively packaged, like discord.
I've heard good things about PopOs too but haven't tried it.
So, how deep does the "similar to Windows" needs to go? Are you thinking in terms of ease of use, things that works out of the box, something that looks similar to Windows?
In terms of look and feel, I'd recommend something based on KDE. KDE out of the box looks a lot like Windows (in fact, Windows 11 has some stuff that looks like it's been ripped off KDE) Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Manjaro and Mint all have KDE versions you can install. I think Cinnamon also looks a fair bit like Windows. Although I wouldn't exactly rule out other desktops just yet - maybe you'll quickly realize hey, that other desktop I tried does look and function pretty neatly for my needs and you won't feel like you need something that looks like Windows.
In terms of tutorials and being able to look things up online, Ubuntu and Manjaro tends to be the two most popular and therefore most documented. pop_OS! is also fairly popular and they do a good job at making Linux accessible for newcomers, but it's based on Gnome so the experience will be different.
My personal advice is get VirtualBox, pick a few distros and try them out. You won't exactly be able to game on them, or if you do, you'll probably be limited to more lightweight games. But that should be plenty enough to install Discord, OBS, Steam and give a few distros a try. You can expect real world performance to mostly feel more responsive than Windows, and for games you can expect similar or maybe 5-10% lower performance in most cases. So don't look too much at how fast it runs in a VM - VMs are fantastic piece of technology (and I actually game in one with a VFIO setup, but don't bother just yet it's a whole rabbithole), but especially under VirtualBox or VMware you're not going to get the full performance.
Try a bunch of distros, try a few of the main Desktop Environments (DEs), see what you like, see what you dislike. Gnome on Ubuntu will be very different than Gnome on Fedora. Don't rule out a distro because the DE, and don't rule out a DE because of a distro. You can install as many as you want in VirtualBox, so take your time to get a feel of what you like and dislike and go from there. Once you've made your choice, you can partition your disk and keep Windows around if you want to have that safety net. Sometimes there's that one game that just won't work in Linux, and you can reboot to Windows to play it. I started this way, and found myself rebooting to Windows less and less until I reached a point where I was actively avoiding it and willing to make sacrifices just to avoid it because Linux had become my primary OS. If you have 2-3 distros you want to try, nothing stops you from installing all of them on hardware as well, they'll happily cohabitate for the most part. Spend a day in Ubuntu, spend another day in Manjaro. Get a feel of which one has less friction for you.
In the end, Linux is Linux. Some distros ships everything you need for gaming out of the box and are easier to set up, but ultimately, Linux is Linux, you can (with some effort) get anything that runs on one distro on another distro. Heck, on ArchLinux land, we have a whole bunch of Ubuntu-patched packages in the AUR to bring in some of Ubuntu's modifications in.
Speaking of ArchLinux. It's a pretty good distro, it's also become a bit of a meme distro. Don't feel like you have to jump in all the way and get into ArchLinux, Gentoo, VoidLinux, Alpine, etc. You can if you want - honestly, if you really want to dive in deep and learn Linux from the ground up they will get you there, but beware that the learning curve on that will be steep. Those distros are aimed at more advanced users that want to control every aspect of their system in great detail. There's no shame using a normie distro like Ubuntu or Fedora. Those are made to just kinda work and be reliable, whereas the ArchLinux installer is basically "here's a command line, install what you want, good luck have fun".
You don't have to "commit" to a distro. For some it becomes a bit of a religion, but it's perfectly normal to hop around distros a bit before you find the one that clicks with you. That's why there's so many of them: different goals for different people and different minds. I started with Ubuntu in 2007, ran to Debian around 2010 when they introduced Unity and I didn't like it, wasn't a fan of Debian either, ended up breaking it with Debian Sid, went to Fedora for a bit, and back to Ubuntu with a different DE before I felt like I had enough and wanted something I had more control over, and that's when I switched to Arch and stayed on Arch to this day. Meanwhile my fiancée put Arch on her laptop but increasingly feels like it's too much maintenance for her and wants a laptop that just kinda works to run Chromium and VSCode. So she might end up just switching to Ubuntu. That's perfectly fine! The computer should work for you, you shouldn't work for the computer.
If you end up not liking Linux, that's fine too! Most of us here swear by it, but maybe Windows just happens to be the best operating system for you, just like for some people that's macOS.
With that, good luck, hope you enjoy your Linux experience and ask questions. Lemmy is a great place to ask for help, there's also lots of still very active IRC channels on libera.chat, and there's some Discord servers too if that's your thing.
I would always recommend mint. If you want domething which looks a lot similar then zorin does that really well, and it also has you pay if you want some stuff preinstalled so that part is like windows too. Keep in mind that Linux is not windows and it will never be 1:1.
Gaming on Linux is pretty awesome if you use steam. It is painless in my experience.
Linux is used by a lot of professional programmers who might also have gotten training during uni, but honestly, I don't think that is needed anymore. It can be used by anyone who is willing to accept that Linux will never be 1:1 to windows.
I can 100% back this up. I never had any issues with any of the games I play. The most effort I put in was get dotnet for assetto corsa using protontricks, and that is pretty much the only game which required tweaking from me. I mostly play metroidvanias, and all of them work for me. I can also vouch for 99% of the games out there. Warframe and csgo also work really well.
The similarity is really only superficial. You would have to learn about the OS one way or the other, even if some distro has Interfaces similar to Windows. You might need to find software alternatives for example, or be comfortable with package manager.
For gaming, you want to checkout Steam w/ Proton and Heroic Game Launcher
If you want a familiar Windows-like experience, the general consensus is that Mint and Zorin are the best for helping people transitioning. Lightweight-wise, Mint MATE, Xubuntu, or Lubuntu would work. Could install MATE, LXDE, or XFCE on Arch, too. Might be a Fedora spin, too, for some or all of those.
If you want super lightweight, Void is awesome to play with, but you have to get it going yourself somewhat like old-school Arch. It’s definitely more advanced, but worth doing for the learning.
Linux is not Windows. Don't try to make Windows from Linux. It can be visually similar, but it will never be the same. Don't expect a seamless migration. Stay on Windows or be ready to learn new things.
I would encourage you to try a Linux distro with KDE plasma. It really looks like windows 10 now, and I always get comments from non tech people asking what it is and being surprised that it is linix but "looks good, like windows".
I'm on debian stable. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. My current beginner recommendation is to use m Linux mint, which is downstream from debian.
There are excellent suggestions in this thread. However, I want you to change your mindset. What you're asking is like "I don't want to drive my car. I'm sick of 4 wheelers. I want to ride this new thing called a motorbike. What are some good motorbikes? It should have AC and the safety and comfort of my previous car. Also are there any 4 seater bikes which is family friendly?"
When you are shifting from one platform, please be prepared to make some changes in the way you normally operate. You can't magically expect the new platform to be perfect when you have a decade of experience in the previous platform.
Iv been running garuda Linux GNOME edition on my gaming rig for years. Best Linux experience iv had. Honestly in my opinion and theres 2 schools of thought on this. The windows paradigm is literally shit workflow design, and thats just objective assessment. The only reason it has carried on is because people got real familiar with very shitty design choices.
I think you may want to consider opening yourself up to trying a whole new UX. Try out GNOME would be my suggestion. NixOS is another positive choice. You can install almost all your software graphically in basically 1 click using flatpak too these days and thanks to steam and their investment in proton. Most steam games work REALLY WELL on Linux.
I think it still isn't officially out yet. At least the new version and I wouldn't recommend the old one.
On integrated graphics (which I assume op has) gaming should work generally the same across ditros. I use mint personally and that's a great way to start off. Simple, similar layout to windows, and I have run into any issues with games.
Linux Mint felt like a really good start for me. Its a nice transition from Windows because you still get a lot of functions that can be done outside of the command line. There's a GUI for system updates, driver updates, and an app store of sorts. The interface is also just generally not all that different from Windows.
In my experience, I didnt have any issues running games on Mint. I was using a pretty powerful rig with AMD hardware, which tends to play nicer with Linux, but from what I've heard Mint seems to do well with gaming.
To play games, you'll obviously need Steam with Proton enabled. I picked the latest full release version and it generally worked pretty good with most games. Some games that wont work with Steam might need a separate app called Lutris. For me this was just Battlefield 4, which also worked fine through Lutris. You can check ProtonDB to see if the games you wanna play will work.
If you use Nvidia, I've heard good things about Pop!OS but i havent used it myself.
People usually recommend Linux mint or some Ubuntu version. I recommend neither.
Ubuntu is a proprietary-solution-ridden piece of hot garbage that tries to hinders what you do at any chance. I use it daily for work, unfortunately.
It’s been a few years since I tried mint. It looked good and felt nice for the first few hours, after that I don’t remember what happened, it was maybe lack of configurabilità or lack of support, but I noped out very quickly and I just remember that my thoughts were “never again”.
I never tried it, but it looks like Pop!_OS might be the thing to look out for in this space.
Besides that, know that Linux is different from windows starting from its very philosophy. Keep an open mind, it can be a confusing journey for a beginner (which is why I am holding back about telling you about the many possibilities).
One thing to keep in mind is that some software that you were used to will not be available, and that you might need to look for alternatives. But as far as the things you mentioned go, these are my recommendations:
I highly recommend trying Manjaro. I haven't moved past Windows 7, so I can't compare doesn't to Win 10/11, but it's the only Linux distro I've found that was Close Enough (TM) to Windows to make it possible for me to switch.
Like any Linux, things aren't going to Just Work (TM) as often as in Windows, but this is the closest I've gotten.
for someone who wants an arch-based distro without tinkering too much there are other alternatives like endeavourOs, and I think Garuda too.
For someone who wants something that looks like windows, no need for Manjaro, just something with a desktop environment that looks like windows. I'd recommend Linux Mint, very simple to use (and for low end computers there is the XFCE edition), or distributions with KDE (fedora KDE, Kubuntu...) or maybe ZorinOS.
edit: also nobara Linux (based on fedora)may be good for games, they have a version that kinda feels like windows
I've been using Manjaro for a couple of years now on my desktop (with an Nvidia GPU). Their package situation is not great. Updating the Linux kernel and Nvidia drivers is a process separate from pamac that you have to just know to do, or one day X will break and now you have to figure out how to fix it.
On top of that, because they delay the release of non-aur repo packages for stability testing, but don't delay aur, some aur packages will just break occasionally. I now manually install discord from their tar ball because of this.
Because of these little unnecessary quirks that you just have to know how to work around, I can't recommend it for new Linux users, and honestly don't recommend it to seasoned users either. I'm trying out endeavor OS on my laptop now and I think that is what I would recommend; but possibly only for more seasoned users because it's arch. Might be more stable if you install the linux-lts package and remove linux.
I would go for either Linux Mint or Pop!_OS. linux mint is probably the closest to windows you’ll get. Potentially go for the Debian Edition, but choosing either Cinnamon or Mate is up to you.
Steam will let you play most games, but you’ll need to enable Steam Play for all games in the settings first.
Check out Flathub for other software. There should be some kind of App Store type thing on either OS that’ll connect to flathub. Whilst you wont find Kindle on there, there should be plenty of alternatives for things like reading.
Linux Mint is the obvious recommendation. It looks pretty similar to windows and is really good for those unfamiliar with Linux.
I personally use fedora which is also pretty good for beginners but the installation process is pretty confusing and setting up dnf fusion might not be what a new linux user wants to fiddle around with right away, which is why I think mint might be better.
I use Mate everyday, it's my DE (Desktop Environment) of choice. I've used it through Ubuntu Mate and Opensuse. There's a huge difference between the two. The difference is, since the main developer of the Mate DE is the main developer of Ubuntu Mate, the experience is noticeably better there. Ubuntu has its flaws, but it's a fairly good all rounder.
Just on a side note, Mate is one of the most "Linux looking" DE. Which is cool since it's different and shows you a different (and in my opinion, more efficient) way to work! But if you want something Windows looking, well it's quite different. If you need light weight and windows looking, look for Lubuntu (or any distro with the LXQT DE)!
I run Mint 20.3 on a 10 year old laptop with 8gb with absolutely no problems for the basic stuff I do with it. Upgrading the hdd to an ssd made a huge improvement though.
I would however suggest you install mint 21 (current version)
The only reason the above laptop is on an older version is I'm worried about what I'm going to break if I do (I have a bunch of "non standard" stuff on it) and it currently just works and is still in support...so if it ain't broke...
Everyone reccomends Linux Mint, but I personally use Kubuntu.
You can use Discover to install apps such as Steam and you'd probably not need the terminal
Linux mint is often recommended for new people, and has a interface very similar to windows. In my own experience, it's very fast to get it up and running.
ubuntu mate is a good choice for a beginner, but if your computer is old enough, the system may slow down. This is due to the fact that snap images are slowly decompressed on older processors. You can try Linux Mint too.
About the software. The main thing is to accept the fact that not all Windows applications have analogues on Linux. some people actually make such a mistake. no need to try to install wine and migrate literally every exe file. Look at the software specifically for linux.
The default browser is firefox. But you can install chrome or chromium without any problems. There is OBS studio for linux for streaming. For games, you can put lutris. There is also an official steam client. if the game has an anti-cheat and this anti-cheat is not optimized for linux, you will not be able to play it.
Then you never re-format again, but just drag and drop any .iso-file you want to try. You can try any Linux distro in live mode without installing anything into your computer before you found your favorite distro.
Linux Mint is a good one to try out for starters. It is Ubuntu based so most of the time if you have an issue you can find tons on it in the Ubuntu help searches.
As for a browser, Firefox is likely pre installed and pretty excellent. All major browsers have a Linux client.
For gaming, steam had great support for windows games running on Linux. There is also Lutris and Heroic launcher which all have support for running games under a comparability layer.
I don't think I saw anyone here mention Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix (obviously free) or WindowsFX and LinuxFX (paid). Those are all pretty cool in my opinion.