Switching to Linux, looking for distro recommendations
Overview When I swapped the motherboard on my computer, I lost my Windows license and Microsoft support was useless. So I am switching my desktop over to Linux. I am planning on setting up dual...
Overview
When I swapped the motherboard on my computer, I lost my Windows license and Microsoft support was useless. So I am switching my desktop over to Linux. I am planning on setting up dual boot, so that I still have Windows 10 with the watermark for certain use cases, but hoping I can run primarily Linux.
Previous Linux Experience
I have swapped an old laptop to Linux (elementaryOS) before and was able to have it do the simple tasks I required of that computer. I also have an old desktop running proxmox, with various VMs, primarily a NAS running openmediavault. Also, I took a college class on Linux system admin, which focused on various tasks on ubuntu. So overall, I am pretty familiar with Debian-based Linux and doing stuff in the terminal, but I would prefer to not have to use the terminal often.
Workload
So I use my computer for fairly normal use cases that should not be too problematic for Linux. Things I plan to do are:
- Non-competitive gaming (Minecraft, Civilization V and VI, occassionally single player FPS games)
- Video editing via DaVinci Resolve
- General web browsing
- Libre Office is what I plan to switch to from MS Office
Plans for testing
I am going to setup a VM on my hypervisor to try out the basic interface of each distro, and try basic tasks. Testing will probably not involve running the heavier applications such as DaVinci Resolve or games. However, I will look into the install process of some of these. For games, I am just going to rely on the work Steam has done for Linux gaming recently.
Things I am looking for in a distro
The things I want in a distro are:
- Debian based preferable, but am considering others
- Simple tasks can be done graphically, instead of via terminal
- Upgrade in place is preferable (I believe similar to how ubuntu now allows for upgrades to the next LTS does not require a reinstall)
- Similar UI to Windows 10 is preferable
Planned distros to test
Distros I wanted to try before posting
- popOS
- Mint
Distros I am considering testing after being recommended them:
- Arch
- Fedora