Buuuut knowing what I know now I worry Zorin's simplicity could turn people off of Linux. Zorin is a good OS for your grandmother but the average person who would consider installing Linux wants to be able to tinker. Heck, I would consider the very act of changing your operating to be tinkering. Nobody accidentally stumbles installing Linux.

The options with Zorin are either use it as-is or risk breaking it. That's why I would personally recommend a KDE distro, probably something immutable like Fedora Kinoite. That way you can tinker to your heart's content with no fear of breaking it.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 12 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I would dare say the "average person", as in, Windows refugee, probably doesn't want to tinker, they do want things to just kinda work as expected and just want freedom and options.

I don't see why Zorin couldn't be a valid jumping off point for new users to get their feet wet. As much as I love more tinkery distros, I will usually onboard somebody with something like Mint because it's just familiar enough but still lets you explore the how and why, without requiring it.

[–] zebathin@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If I wanted an "easy" Linux distro to do things like run a home server and media storage - I mean, it sounds perfect for that??? With kids, I don't have TIME to tinker with OS stuff anymore, I just need something that works and is more stable than Windows.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The best news is that most distros would be good for those kinds of tasks! :D

I can't personally speak to Zorin, although it looks fine! People say it comes with lots of stuff out of the box. Worth trying out!

Mint is really user friendly with an excellent forum and tons of support. The Cinnamon desktop environment is very Windows-esque in a usability way, and it tends to be slow to adopt new features that could break things, so by the time you update, most things should be fixed.

It doesn't require terminal usage at all, but I started to enjoy using it because it makes "computing" feel really fun. :)

For a home media server that'd be running all the time that can be a little bit of a hobby...(But a rewarding one!)

In depth to avoid more downvotes for my ADHD lol.

Definitely hit up online communities too, like searching for "selfhosted" here on lemmy! That's where you start learning to run stuff like Jellyfin for watching your movies and such.

BUT... for starters: You could totally just share SAMBA shared folders off any Linux machine if you wanted. Boom, technically a file server. Pretty sure this is easy in Mint with GUI.

For a more dedicated "headless server" system for this, I'd look into Open Media Vault

The important takeaway is that starting is really simple. Just be patient and try things, and make sure your data is always backed up.

Before you install anything bare metal, both have a "Live USB" feature where you can see how they'd be on your system without actually installing anything.

Sorry for the long reply!

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