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End Win10, rise of Mint and---Zorin?

tangor

8:07 am on Oct 22, 2025 (gmt 0)

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Over the years I have rescued perfectly good hardware that fell out of M$ love with an installation of Mint. These were for friends and family, and a few clients as well. Oct 14 was EOL for Win10 support and I find MYSELF very strongly looking at FINALLY making the FULL CHANGE to Linux only.

Mint is known to me. Stable. Kind of easy, not "too" command line... and I've played on Ubuntu and Fedora for clients time to time. But there are so MANY 'nix versions I haven't tried them all. Recently came across commentary regarding Zorin---watched a few YT vids for "look and feel". Any comments regarding same? From a support lens it appears that Zorin is a two person distro compared to Mint with a 1,000+. Since the core is Linux (and that always works) what benefits might be found?

I already "know" Mint, meaning I have one machine installed and play with it from time to time, but I have not SERIOUSLY considered moving off Windows until now. I refuse ditching three perfectly good machines running 4 to 8 cores simply because they don't have a "chip" M$ forces as a way to their grand scheme of monthly billing and paying for data storage ala 1950's mainframe big iron! Win11 is the road to terminals and YOUR STUFF on their machines---for AI to gut. And Governments to invade privacy.

Not allergic to command line, started on Assembly, C/PM, Dos 1x, OS/2 etc., but have become accustomed to graphic interface. Mint certainly qualifies. At this point (retired) I really don't have need of all those M$ applications. My production is more limited since what Web presence remains is primarily curation. Application wise I can find all I might need in the repository. That said, I do like the Win interface, possibly because I have been using it fordecades.

Any suggestions welcome. Name the distro and say WHY, keeping in mind the "windows experience".

I won't be completely free of Windows... Still have two machines running Win7. Perfectly happy. Perfectly useful. Sadly, my Win 3.11 486 finally died last year---fortunately the two legacy programs running pipeline instructions were FINALLY successfully replicated and installed on newer systems before the wheezing beast gave up the ghost!

mack

9:39 am on Oct 23, 2025 (gmt 0)

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I am a big fan of Kubuntu. It's Ubuntu with the KDE desktop environment. By default, it has a very similar look and feel to a Windows UI, with a "cog" where the start button would be. The menu system is also very familiar to a Windows user.

I hear you about saving old hardware. That's something I have always done. There is, however, something special about running Linux on brand new modern hardware. Running Linux on used hardware is brilliant, but you always know it would be so much better on new components.

In my most recent build, I had a need for Windows, so I installed 2 NVME drives. One for Windows 11 and one for Kubuntu. I run it as a dual-boot system, where it gives me a selection in the boot loader. I have a Ryzen 8 CPU and 128G of RAM and Kubuntu flies on it compared to Windows.

With Kubuntu, I have very little need to ever run anything in the comand line. From time to time, I do it through choice because I can work quickly from there (at some things). My partner also runs Kubunto on her Laptop (average tech ability) and she managed great with it. It just works.

One thing to check. Make sure you are using proprietary drivers as opposed to the open-source alternatives that most Linux distros install by default. They will never do as good a job of getting the most from your GPU or other hardware.

Mack.

tangor

8:34 am on Oct 25, 2025 (gmt 0)

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I have a horror to report. The machine I intended to save by moving to Linux passed away. Right in the Middle Of Something. Of course! While not one of the EXPRESSLY essential machines in my STRANGE and ODD "data center on on budget", it was part of a project and had to be replaced CHEAP. Called a friend to take me to a local computer giant (I'm in a wheel chair these days) and my specs to the salesman were: 16gb ram, 4 or more USB, HDMI (as that was the current monitor), 4 core or more, refurb no older than 2020. "Gonna nuke it to Linux" I remarked. "Won't be doing Win 11.": The price was RIGHT! Well South of what I had budgeted, but when I got home and connected this and that and turned on the power...

Did not look right. Functioned okay during install, though it took longer than remembered so I could download and install Linux ... and the dang thing was Win11 PRO! Pretty sure I will eventually (sooner rather than later) nuke with Mint (Zorin is off the list after a bit of research). That said, Kubuntu just shot up to the list of "what else is out there". Thanks!

mack

6:16 pm on Oct 30, 2025 (gmt 0)

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To be fair, Windows 11 isn't bad. 90% of my time is spent on my Linux system, but there are some things I genuinely need Windows for. For example, in video editing (a hobby of mine), I use DaVinci Resolve. I did have it running on Linux, but it's a nightmare. License restrictions make it a serious challenge to work with just about every audio and video format. Under Windows, it just works out the box. I'm not one of these Linux users who refuse to use Windows. If I need it, I will use it.

Sounds like you got yourself a good system and under budget. If you do decide you don't want Windows, you can always create a flash drive ISO and install it from there. With 16 gig of ram you will have a pretty fast system well capable of running Plasma/KDE.

My first experience of Linux was back in 2003 Suse Linux 8.0 and I bought it in a retail store and it came on 8 CDs lol. You got the OS and the repos on physical media. Now it's a fairly quick download for the OS, and all your repos are online. Back then, when you ran the package manager to install something, it would tell you what disk to insert lol.

Mack.

tangor

10:38 am on Oct 31, 2025 (gmt 0)

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Well... after five days I have nuked the stuff off Win11 I don't like/want and added what I need/use. So for, so good.

However, one fly in the ointment. One of my trusty tools does NOT work. ThumbsPlus 10. My conversion/search tool for graphic images when I don't need Photoshop. There's a single file "missing" from the MS C++ distribution installed (15) and research says that version 12 has the file needed. Found that distro at M$, downloaded, installed, and STILL no love.

Funny thing is... version 6 of ThumbsPlus actually works on W11. What I lose using it is auto-renaming files, prefix, suffix name controls, and a number of newer camera file formats, and an "unlimited" database size (SQL) as Ver 6 is stuck in Access and a 2 gigabyte max. Sadly, the creator/developer of ThumbsPlus passed away recently and the family took the program off market and is not supported at the moment. Hopefully they can find a "buyer/developer" to take over, but that is to be determined down the line.

Meanwhile, I'm kinda stuck on the dang fence! All the nags to up to Win11 had ticked me off to the point of switching, and the present use of W11 unexpectedly for less than expected, leaves me still in the grips of the Redmond Monster.