Like the title says, my partner’s laptop was still running Windows 10 and they got infected with a backdoor malware. We’ll need to reset her computer. It’s an Asus Tuf Gaming A15.
She’s been using Windows 10 for as long as she could but support is running out. At her work the computers are on Windows 11 and she hates it. Plus she’s fervently anti-AI and wants none of that forced Copilot bullshit and privacy eroding features of Windows 11. She’s seen me use it for over a year now and I also installed it on our old OG 1st gen MS Surface Pro table and she sees how well it’s going. So now she wants Linux on her laptop.
After careful consideration and comparisons, I’ve decided to go with Zorin OS. I thought of Linux Mint, but it just looks so dated. There are inconistencies in the looks and I feel it lacks some features that I found that Zorin OS has. (It’s essentially Gnome with QoL extras.) My only concern is that Zorin has Snaps out of the box but I don’t think that’s a concern for her. I’ll install it on a BTRFS partition with automatic snapshots and grub-btrfs to recover from snapshots. And I’ll schedule monthly backups of her files through rsync, or whatever the built-in backup tool does, onto an external drive.
I’ve tried Zorin on a VM and it was already outstanding. On the live USB session it was able to detect her NVidia card and recommend either the nouveau or NVidia proprietary driver. Everything worked out of the box. So I’m fairly confident everything will work well. One concern I have is she uses her personal laptop for work, and needs to connect to her work’s Microsoft account. I see there’s an accounts section in the settings where this can be set up, but I’ve never used it, so that’ll be a first. Her work also requires Cisco AnyConnect VPN client. There is a Linux client, but you need a Cisco account to download it, and her work IT department does not support Linux, so I don’t know if she’ll be able to get it. One of the IT people has Linux on his machine and was able to set it up so maybe we’ll rely on him for that part. She’ll also need MS Office which uses a work license. I wonder how that will work on Bottles. We can try with Libre Office but I know the spacing and fonts get all wonky when you open a MS Word document or a Powerpoint presentation. Every other app she uses is open source apps like Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, etc. And she doesn’t game much, but I know this will work just fine. And the Gnome-Network-Displays will allow her to cast her screen onto our NVidia Shield device for watching movies.
Is there anything else I should be concerned about? Maybe hardware wise? Or anything to so with Snaps that could cause issues?
As somebody who converted to Linux about a yearish ago, I would like to provide some feedback.
Right now, your best options are: Mint (latest version of Cinnamon looks pretty modern in my opinion, if you haven’t looked at it for too long), Fedora (Workstation for GNOME, KDE for Plasma), and maybe one of the -buntus depending on how recent the hardware is. For a first-timer, I would avoid the atomic distros like Bazzite, as they will work fine until there’s a weird issue that is annoying to troubleshoot. It’s very good if you already have Linux installed and are e.g. installing it on a handheld or HTPC but not for a first-timer.
I would let her try in a LiveUSB with GNOME, Cinnamon, and KDE Plasma to see what interface she likes best (screenshots aren’t enough, the interfaces are different enough between them). Use VenToy for this I think, between Mint, Fedora Workstation, and Fedora KDE. Once that is decided, go with one of them.
Tip as somebody who first installed Fedora: make sure to enable proprietary drivers on first boot if you want access to Nvidia drivers + Steam! It’s very important, as otherwise you need to manuakky configure those repositories. I don’t believe this is an issue on Mint though, it’s mostly a Fedora thing.
As for Office, I mostly get around with LibreOffice, but if that doesn’t work, you can try OnlyOffice (but the company is Russian and a little shady, licensing issues, look into it), the web version of MS Office (ew, horrible), Windows in a VM, or dual-booting Windows (quite difficult to set up since MS does not play nice).
Yeah it was either Mint or Zorin and maybe Kubuntu, but the Snaps are a concern in 26.04. (Though Zorin has them too so… But they’re not as rooted into the OS as with *buntus)
I’m not considering fedora though. I rather stick with a Debian-based distro. I’m just more used to it and it’ll be easier for me to troubleshoot if trouble comes.
Fair enough, but I wouldn’t immediately overlook Fedora. It’s still a relatively easy to use distro!