I’d expect that most brand new users install Ubuntu or Linux Mint because of how often they are recommended.
Linux Mint is basically Ubuntu with Canonical/Snaps removed and some added polish. The default DE is laid out like windows before 11 (“start” button in lower left) which seems to make sense for new users.
I’m a knowledgable enough user, being a developer on embedded linux products, and I also stuck with Mint long term. It’s still a Linux system that I actually control. The fact that it was very user friendly and full featured it off the box doesn’t take away from that. It just meant that it wasn’t the learning experience you’d get with something like Arch.
KDE is better than Cinnamon, period. Apart from really old hardware (where Cinnamon is faster for some reason), KDE is way less restricting, way more modern and also very intuitive.
Cinnamon works, but is simply worse. Many powerful apps are KDE apps, while Cinnamon is GTK based, so you cannot even install them without loading an entire different graphics framework in RAM.
I get that a Debian->Ubuntu base is the most standard, and Ubuntu does weird stuff. But Mint also does weird stuff, like having a weird selection of apps, filtering flathub and more.
I’d expect that most brand new users install Ubuntu or Linux Mint because of how often they are recommended.
Linux Mint is basically Ubuntu with Canonical/Snaps removed and some added polish. The default DE is laid out like windows before 11 (“start” button in lower left) which seems to make sense for new users.
I’m a knowledgable enough user, being a developer on embedded linux products, and I also stuck with Mint long term. It’s still a Linux system that I actually control. The fact that it was very user friendly and full featured it off the box doesn’t take away from that. It just meant that it wasn’t the learning experience you’d get with something like Arch.
KDE is better than Cinnamon, period. Apart from really old hardware (where Cinnamon is faster for some reason), KDE is way less restricting, way more modern and also very intuitive.
Cinnamon works, but is simply worse. Many powerful apps are KDE apps, while Cinnamon is GTK based, so you cannot even install them without loading an entire different graphics framework in RAM.
I get that a Debian->Ubuntu base is the most standard, and Ubuntu does weird stuff. But Mint also does weird stuff, like having a weird selection of apps, filtering flathub and more.