Dont you worry, mint provides a detailed step by step tutorial on how to do things:

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

All of the mirrors listed on their website are safe. Just pick one close to you. If it downloads too slow, you can try a different mirror. If you know how to use bittorrent, you can use their torrent link. It will typically be the fastest.

To answer your first question, ALL of the mirrors are safe. The idea with mirrors is that you choose one that is geographically close to your location (same country, maybe the same region or state) to help reduce lag in downloading the files. Any selection is valid, all of the mirrors will have the same content, but for your location some mirrors may simply be faster or slower than others.

One other thing you might run in to is different types of installers. Some may be a very minimal install which only give you a command line, while others will provide a fully configured desktop. You might also see an option for a “Live” version – that is something you put on a bootable memory stick and you can test out a working version of the operating system without actually changing anything on your computer, but all of your settings will go away when you reboot.

I haven’t used Mint so I can’t provide specific info, however some things that are common to ANY linux desktop – You probably want to start with printer drivers (install CUPS) and some office software (install LibreOffice). For internet access, Firefox and Thunderbird are good choices. LicreOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird can all also be used on Windows if you want to check them out ahead of time. There are many lists online that can point you to equivalent software, so like if you use Lightroom on windows, you might try Darkroom on linux. basically you just need to make a list of what Windows software you use and then install a similar package in linux.

Yes you will need some time to learn the new operating system and all the new software, very little will be 100% exactly the same, but they are “close enough”. You figured out how to use all these things once before, so you can do it again, and it will definitely be worth the effort.

Then you have to install other software I have no knowledge of to make a bootable drive

Eh, this is the same for windows as well, you always need some sort of installation medium to boot and install from regardless of OS.

Welcome to the Linux community. Most of the software is free and open source. Most of the people who utilize this software are good people who want to help you. However, there are a few people who are total dick heads and who want to fuck you over. So because of that we build security into most of the things that we produce. For instance, if you were confused by why it instructs you to run a checksum after you download the software, that is because the actual authors of the software want to make sure that you downloaded their legitimate software and not some hack bullshit posted by somebody else. A checksum is just comparison of what you have installed to what you’re supposed to have installed and your computer will tell you if things don’t match up.

The process is actually simple.

It can be a little daunting at first because it’s new, but don’t let that discourage you. You can mostly ignore the whole mirrors thing, just pick one that is geographically close to you to hopefully get a better download speed. Outside of that, all the mirrors lead to the same file just in a different physical location.

Installing another software to make a bootable drive. You can use Rufus, which has a portable version so there’s no need to install it. I put a link below, there’s one in the downloads list that says portable.

https://rufus.ie/en/

There are plenty of step by step tutorials out there, however since Linux is very open, a lot of guides may give different advice and knowing what to/not to do can feel confusing. (For instance, if you have an SSD in your computer, you really shouldn’t use a swap partition unless you absolutely have to due to limited RAM.) In most cases though you can get by with the defaults when installing something like mint.

That being said. You could simply make the boot stick and try out the live version of the OS before committing to wiping any of your drives to install the OS. Just know that running the live version from the boot stick will be slow, it may take a little time for things to boot which is normal since you are running the os off of a USB stick.

If you would like some help I could try to give you some guidance. I would just want to know the specs/model of your computer so I can make sure I lead you in the right direction.

It really seems more complicated than it is. I switched to a dual boot of windows and Linux mint about a year ago and it was super smooth, have basically never used the terminal. if you still want to try and have any questions, feel free to ask. Linux is really a nice feeling of being away from MS bullshit.

Everyone always says Linux is easy these days. Until you start asking how to actually install it.

Ubuntu used to send you a CD-ROM ready to use free of charge back in the day.

I’ve done this whole process hundreds of times and it’s straightforward now, but the first times where really confusing, I totally understand you.

you basically want to put the installer file in a USB, but you can’t simply copy and paste it because it needs to be “bootable”, that’s why you use a tool like Etcher or similar.

any link in the official Linux Mint page will point you to reputable sources so just pick the first one. the beauty of open source is that it’s not as centralized as a big corporation’s software, you have choices, confusing at first, I know, but it’s worth it once you get past the learning stage

Download any mirror. Accept any prompt. Where you are going, chaos is your friend, and the beautiful electric sizzling is your orchestra.

Edit: also just watch a vid theres tons out there.

This is good feedback, the Mint team could definitely streamline things, maybe even with a “help pick”.

Because it’s not immediately apparent which to use (Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce).
I’m not sure how the resolve the mirror issue, sadly.
The cost of serving the data directly would be very high, but doing so would avoid scaring people. Unfortunately, it’s hard for them to 100% guarantee every mirror is safe (even though they are!), which means they have to leave instructions on how to verify.

Selling pre-loaded USB sticks would be very cool, but people would have to be interested enough to spend £20.

If you don’t want to do that, then you can buy a bootable drive (for example here: https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/mint21-usb.html)

Using a different tool to create a bootable drive is just a part of installing any operating system, not just Linux. If you ever need to install windows on a pc that doesn’t have it installed you will see the same process.

Depends on what you are playing, but gaming in Linux has come a long way. Some games won’t work due to companies not enabling their (rootkit) “anti-cheats” for Linux, but other than that, there’s more and more games that simply work by the day. Check out https://www.protondb.com/ to get an idea of what’s working at the moment.

Steam has built in Linux compatibility that you can turn on for all games and has been working great for me. Lutris and Wine provide other compatibility options.

Linux Mint (or Linux Mint Debian Edition), is one of the most user friendly Linux distributions out there. This is especially so for people used to Windows.

You can run Mint on a bootable USB drive, fire it up, and get a sense of how it feels running on your home setup. I’d highly recommend trying this with a few different Linux distros, to find one that you like.

Configuring automatic login shouldn’t be difficult. Here are instructions on Ubuntu (should work on any GNOME system), and here’s how to do it with pretty much any KDE system. This is a feature of desktop managers (like gdm or sddm), not desktop environments (like GNOME or KDE), so if neither works for you, you’re probably using a different one. If that’s the case, reply with your distro and as much info as you can provide.

That said, what exactly is the problem you’re trying to solve? It’s usually a lot easier to login remotely using SSH instead of remote desktop, and then use console commands to do whatever you need. To login with SSH:

ssh <user>@<IP address>

So if your username is tux and your IP is 1.2.3.4:

ssh [email protected]

And then if you want to reboot:

sudo reboot

And if you want to shutdown:

sudo shutdown -h now

I use an app on my phone to login, so I can get it done while sitting on the toilet in like 10s (I use it to unlock my computer so my kids can use it). If you’re accessing from your computer and just need to run a single command, provide it after the command in quotes (note, sudo commands won’t prompt for a password and will just fail).

I have three ideas: First, you could switch the desktop environment to one of the ones that has a GUI settings tool to set passwordless automatic sign in. I think Gnome 3 on Ubuntu, and Mate Desktop on Linux Mint have that feature. There are probably others.

Second, you could switch your display manager to “nodm”. The display manager is the thing that runs the X server or Wayland, and it starts the greeter (the greeter is the program that shows the login screen). nodm is a special display manager that doesn’t use a greeter or ask for a password. It immediately starts the session using the username and desktop environment specified in its configuration file.

I use nodm for my HTPC and it works very well. The only downside is that you have to edit its configuration file, /etc/default/nodm , using a text editor. I’m not aware of any GUI configuration tool for it. However, it’s pretty easy to configure.

Third, you could abandon all display managers, and start the session manually, either from a shell script, or over SSH. This is a little more complex. You will probably want to get comfortable with SSH before trying this (SSH is the command-line analog of remote desktop).

I think the first thing is actually recommend is enabling a daemon that launches Plex at boot without login. sudo systemctl enable plexmediaserver For something like a Minecraft server I’d recommend reading up on the setup process. (It’s a fair bit to summarize)

If the application doesn’t come with a systemd service I’d recommend making a cron. They’re scary looking but actually pretty easy to use, I use it for automating maintenance on my server.

It may feel counter intuitive but Linux servers don’t really need a desktop to manage them so most the tools don’t really come with graphical apps. If you want an interface to check on things I’d recommend installing and using cockpit web based graphical interface.

If you want to do it proper on a systemd system make a systemd.service it’s not as easy to learn but you get extra tools to manage it.

I’ve heard there’s a lot of work that has been done in kde and gnome to get rdp (remote desktop protocol) with remote login.

I hope this helps! If not, almost everything can be done through the terminal and ssh(secure shell) makes that process really easy. I installed and setup my Linux laptop and my server that way.

If you just want to transfer files there is sshfs(secure shell file system) and the ability to go to your file browser and type in an sftp(secure file transfer protocol) address. In kde dolphin for example you select network and type in the bar sftp://(IP address or hostname)@(user):(working directory). Make sure you have sshfs installed on both machines and sshd enabled on at least the system you want to access.

What about SSHing into it?

Yeah I also haven’t found a good alternative for a windows management host for RDP. I use my last remaining windows box as an “admin host” and the Linux alternative to this would be vnc or xrdp, both of which have their issues (no dynamic resize, clipboard issues, session restore issues)… I’ve also tried x2go recently which is closer but still not as slick/simple as a windows RDP session.

I have a pi5 at work (upgraded this year) that I use to administer my work network from home. I use ubutnu mate with xrdp for the desktop. Works great, even the sound works. No monitor and even if you hooked one up it would just show a login prompt.

Even if something like proxmox or a Debian install with docker is more customizable. It’s a steep learning curve.

But isn’t something like truenas scale a option? I run Emby(as my media Server) and the arr’s on it. All the apps are already in the “software store” including plex. And setup of the arr’s is just the same as normal. All installs are basically automatic.

I easy passthrough my intel gpu in the config page on the webportaal, but don’t how easy it is for Nvidia or amd. Especially with Nvidia due to drivers. But maybe someone here knows?

the barrier for getting Linux to work is too high right now for a very large part of the population

My elderly (late 80s) parents have Windows on their laptops and it would be impossible for them to use it without my regular intervention. I might as well take the plunge and set them up with Linux.

Also stuck on Windows but for specific software (Adobe & Revit). Zorin has looked like a promising distro for a little while now, at least coming from Windows.

Isn‘t it very easy to spin up a Debian with Docker installed and just pull those Docker container yml files straight from freedesktop.org using docker compose? (Portainer would be a webGUI for the containers)

Good luck! 😉 I think there is nearly no server task where windows is more easy than Linux 🤔 well, except proprietary ActiveDirectory/EntraID, of course.

I use ardour as DAW, but only for recording on Linux. It’s also available for macOS and windows. So you can check if it fits your work flow.

I mostly only use Linux, but sometimes you just need a program with out support. In my case it’s sometimes qlab, Linux show player is great(and I have used it for many shows). But it’s not feature compatibel with qlab

It sucks man, I feel you. There are a lot of free options out there you might want to check out!

I’m not experienced in this field but prosonus is working on a Linux version of their studio one app. I think they are trying to make VST extensions work at least on their software.

I’m probably not the best person to answer that question but maybe it helps. Most proprietary stuff is typically designed for Ubuntu or redhat so Ubuntu based or fedora is probably your best bet.

I don’t know what rizon - Linux is is but I guess that’s just the internet. I don’t know what to say other than I hope you have better luck next time.

NVIDIA spent many many years doing a very very poor job of providing drivers for Linux.

Many people have not forgiven them for that.

How are you accomplishing this? Provisioning the PCs to be part of the domain with a Powershell install script during automated setup? Because I was under the impression that this also had become a difficult task with 11. Because a Windows 11 machine doesn’t know it’s going to be part of the domain until it has been added to the domain. So, the only way I can see that working is like Powershell combined with WDS or something.

Source: Am small IT

EDIT: Also, the LTSC version of Windows 11 isn’t coming until later in 2024. So I’m very curious how this works with 11 specifically.

This. We tried to ban windows and literally the ELT blocked it because they personally didn’t want to learn MacOS despite the entire engineering, product, and medical team being on it. We now keep having to pay more for audits and for security solutions for the 15 people refusing to get off windows in mostly the finance part of the company

I also think the same, I’m afraid we live in a tech-savvy bubble

Maybe the execs don’t care and the IT folks don’t have the power to override them, but surely the legal department cares, right?

There isn’t a soul on lemmy that doesn’t know Linux exists

You enjoy using it? Any gripes? How’s it compared to Steam Deck? Why did you decide to get it over Steam Deck?

IIRC you are required to connect to internet to continue the setup process in newer versions.

This is the actual, real, subpoena-the-emails-you’ll-find-it answer.

They added telemetry. 100% of responses had internet access.

What chached login? This is talking about a fresh install on a clean (or wiped clean) drive.

Where would this be cached on a brand new PC never connected to the internet?

It’s not the IT folks who need to be pushed. It’s the users.