Linux

Yes it is. Pick a newbie friendly distribution. Say Ubuntu.

IMHO Windows is only "user friendly" because it's preinstalled on most PC's.

User friendliness comes with experience.

Stop using Brave, people.

It's better to ask which distro is dummy proof. Some are made for noobs and windows users, others are not, and they're all based on "Linux".

Mint, Debian, and Fedora are all good starter options, and all are made to get stuff done without having to use the command line.

Mint should be pretty easy to get used to, solid choice IMO, as for the programs

Word, Excel, ect(I'm fine with alternatives)

If you're fine with libreoffice, no problems

Spotify

Don't know.

Gimp (would have been a make or break, so I'm glad it's supported)

No problems

Brave browser (browser is a browser)

Not sure if there's a flatpak, U might need to add a PPA, but it's just a one time copy/paste a few commands.

Steam

Works fine, but some games might not run or require some tinkering, check games u play on protondb.com

Discord

It's a bit annoying because they require u to have the latest version all the time, it won't auto update, and the package might take a while to update, so u either download and update manually every time (it will be a different install than the flatpak package) or use the web version, peraonally i just run a script to download and extract the tar.gz version when there's an update.

Dumb user friendly (having no particular background): yes

Dumb user friendly (having Windows background): no

Windows knowledge makes learning other OS harder because Windows is the weirdest OS out there.

I don't think any Operating System is (dumb)user friendly yet.

I'll be slightly contrarian to others and give a different perspective: you may find yourself hitting some roadblocks, I'll try to explain.

I set up Linux Mint for my elderly parents. The key thing is, I set it up for them, functioning as the administrator for that machine, making sure they had a non admin account and configured their desktop to only show the shortcuts they cared about (firefox).

It worked fine, and I only got calls once every few months. They got scared if some popup occured, or if they accidentally saved something to their desktop that they wanted to get rid of. I don't know if that really meets the definition of seamless, and I don't know if you'd even consider those problems.

The other thing that can happen, is hardware interfaces. I know that you've listed out your use case. I'm just saying that if your birthday rolls around and someone buys you a 3d printer where you "just plug it in", you're going to be in for a long troubleshooting day, if it isn't natively supported.

With Steam games, you can often get away with enabling proton, but... Small issues like being able to select multiple drive folders have sent me down long troubleshooting avenues as well. And when I use the word troubleshoot, I'm inevitably referring to the command line.

Lots of people are encouraging you to try, and you can make that decision. I just want to toss out that it might not be seamless. But I don't think Windows is seamless either. It's just what most people are used to.

Hi there, I use nearly all the stuff you do and I am on Linux for like 2-3 years now.

I use PopOS. PopOS is a distro with a user interface that differs a bit from windows. But you will get used to it, its not like on Linux "up" is "down".

PopOS has a lot of programs preinstalled, that help "normal users". This includes drivers for Nvidia-GPUs and Flatpak which is a way to install software on all Linux-Systems opposed to the normal package managers, distros ship with, Flarpak e.g. has Spotify and Discord. But other distros might ship it too and you can definitely install it later on.

What you should definitely learn to use is the software-center (or App store or whatever some distros call it). This is a central place, where most software can be found and installed. Also all software installed through it can be updated here. So it's in a way like steam for all the non-games.

I currently use (natively, so no web app or smth):

• Spotify
• Steam
• Discord
• Libreoffice (instead of MS Office)
• Gimp
• Brave (as backup browser to test if it's Firefox' fault)

Libreoffice is enough for day to day usage, if you are no power user with VBA-Scripts or mayor macros.

Games work mostly well, but as others have said, look at ProtonDB to check your specific Steam-Games. I mostly play single player titles or PvE stuff without the need for anticheat. Nearly all those titles work.

If a game is not on steam, you can check lutris. Lutris has install scripts for a lot of Battle.net games as well as GoG among others. There is also the heroic games launcher, but you don't need to know all that yet.

PS: The great thing about Lemmy is that you don't have to ask your friend, you can ask here.

PPS: If you plan to game on your PC, may I suggest some games? (All work well for me, of course)

Dwarf fortress - is a city builder/sims-like game, on steam for money or on the official website for free, but with less art.

Core Keeper - a small Indy game about digging, crafting and fighting

Deep Rock Galactic - a first person shooter with mining and fighting bugs

Factorio - ~~an~~ THE automation game

Disco Elysium - probably the best RPG/Detective game ever

The Long journey home - a space exploration rogue-like

There's one case when you can't avoid using command line. If you ask someone on Internet to help you, he will say you to type some commands. No window clicking, no screenshots will help. All GUIs are different, but CLI is (almost) always the same, and its output is well searchable. That's why you see numerous command line listings in each topic discussing problems and could decide it's impossible to use Linux without coding.

Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon is a pretty painless transition.

Everyone is saying yes.

They are wrong.

You will absolutely have to troubleshoot in order to figure out how to do what you want to do.

Linux is different than windows or macos and you’re gonna have to gain an understanding (however dumbed down you might describe it) of those differences in order to use the computer.

If you can get over that hump of understanding then I think you’ll be fine.

If you really are so hopeless with computers that you can't figure out a modern popular Linux distribution, then you should not build your own computer, because that's much more complicated.

What do you typically use your computer for? That’s going to have a major impact. If it’s pretty basic stuff (web browsing, text editing, etc) you shouldn’t have any issue. If it’s something that’s more complicated or unusual, then sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes not, depending on what you want to do. In general, a little bit of comfort searching the web and working in the command line helps a lot with troubleshooting Linux

Really, you already use gimp, but not linux?

I've been on Linux for 20+ years now and it's not as effortless as Windows or Mac, but it is definitely easy now.

So many things have improved with Linux desktop it's crazy.

I mean, yes. But also no, it sort of depends.

If you have very low bar of needs (needing a web browser and some utility apps, without specific apps in mind) then it's actually never been easier. If you use a Silverblue based system, all updates are done in a transactional way and old versions can be booted into at any time in case something breaks (which basically never happens with silverblue, with some exceptions.) Read only systems means you can't muck around with the root files and can't accidentally "break" your system in the way you used to be able to on older OS designs. I would say that "Linux with Guardrails" is effectively invincible, and I would like to recommend that new users try OSTree based systems. For example, Fedora Silverblue, Ublue's Aurora / Bluefin, Bazzite (Steam OS clone), etc etc.

If you have more specific needs, it can be a crapshoot depending on whether or not the hobby in question has a strong linux presence. Particularly, bespoke non-game windows apps are still a bit tricky to get working and require some Wine (Windows process wrapper for compatibility) knowledge. There are edge cases where running certain applications in flatpak (Steam, Bitwig) can mean that, while it's impossible for these applications to break your system, you'll be very limited in options for these programs. For Steam, this can mean more difficulty with out-of-steam application management. For Bitwig, this can mean no choice in VST. These are all programs that have work arounds, but on a read-only system like Silverblue (which I would like to recommend for new users due to the indestructibility) those are all a little more difficult to implement and require you to know a thing or two about virtual desktops. (Thus, not new user friendly.)

I would still say that it's never been easier, but as you get more famililar with any system, you generally demand more and more from it. Thankfully, with linux, its always been a case of "if there's a will there's a way" and the UX utility applications being made by other people have been getting better and better.

My recommendation to you would be to try UBlue Aurora. It's familiar to Windows, it's being managed in a way that makes gaming relatively simple, and it has an active discord community to help new users. It also has that indestructability that I was talking about before, but has a lot of the "work arounds" pre-setup for new users.

I had a friend who was about as computer illiterate as they come, they had a crappy gateway laptop(netbook maybe) that had kubuntu on it they preferred it to when they had win vista(yes this was forever ago, i replaced vista with kubuntu because it was lighter than gnome at the time) they loved the kde interface and most of what they did was Myspace Tumblr and Facebook, but even they managed to figure out play on Linux and wine after a few months

Yes. If you want something easy, look at:

• Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
• Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
• Spiral Linux (Debian, easy to set up, rock solid)
• Aurora (Fedora Atomic based, hard to break, automatic updates)

Yes. Linux has become more user-friendly than Windows. Things stay were they are so it is reliable. It doesn't serve ads nor spies on the user so it is ethical. When updating one sees exactly what happens, and one can have perfect manual control of updates if one wants to. That and so much more.

Sidenote, perhaps consider using Vivaldi browser as it is superior for now, pre Manifest V3. However, if one wants to keep using uBlock Origin indefinitely regardless of the Manifest V3 transition, use LibreWolf which ships with uBlock Origin by default.

Over the years I went from Linux Mint to Xubuntu to EndeavourOS, and from desktop environment Xfce to KDE Plasma. To beginners who absolutely want the least amount of updates and don't mind older software versions I'd suggest a Debian based distribution, and to everyone else I'd suggest an Arch-based distribution, specifically EndeavourOS, or Manjaro if one cannot install the former for some reason, but both are fine. Why? I like to update as soon as possible and to have access to most software without it being a hassle to install. Moreover, Arch has a ridiculously comprehensive wiki which most of the time has the answer to one's problem.

KDE Plasma over Xfce because it's a remarkably configurable feature-rich powerhouse, but I honestly feel bad and wish I could merge them both. If old machines feel too slow for the former, the choice would be Xfce in a heartbeat because it is fast, minimalistic, and also highly configurable.

I moved away from the aforementioned Debian/Ubuntu based distributions because Mint was too bloated and slow for my taste. Specifically, as a former gamer I am highly sensitive to the responsiveness of the cursor, therefore the move to Xubuntu with Xfce where the mouse movement felt snappy again. Unfortunately Snap packages came to both which caused more problems than it solved, so I moved to Arch-based distributions and never looked back.

TL;DR: if new computers did not come with Windows pre-installed—the absurdity of this monopoly remains mind blowing—Linux would be significantly more pleasant to use for most of the populace. I bet my life on that.

You can try Linux out without installing it to get a feel for it before you make the jump. Set a weekend aside (or at least a couple of hours) to test drive a Linux distro and check if it is your cup of tea.

This is one way of doing this:

• Install Virtual Box on your (Widows) PC
• head over to https://getaurora.dev/ and download the latest iso
• In virtualbox create a new VM
  • set the OS Type to fedora (64 bit)
  • after that you can keep all the standard settings, just be aware that performance is not going to be representative of an actual install
• Then select the newly created VM and open the settings panel
  • here you go to "Storage" and click on the slot under "Controler: IDE" labeled "empty"
  • click on the CD symbol on the right side of the window, in line with "optical drive" and select "choose a disk file"
  • pick the iso file you downloaded in step 2
• close the settings window and start the VM
• go through the installation wizard to install Aurora OS in your Virtual Machine
• Profit

I know that these instructions can seem daunting but it is easier than it reads, I promise.

Why Aurora OS

Aurora OS is based on Fedora Silverblue meaning that it is what is known as a immutable distro. That in turn means that it's harder to mess stuff up and break your install. It also means that some things are harder to achieve. But I also think that you are probably not interested in the hard stuff anyway.

Aurora uses the KDE Plasma Desktop, the same desktop used by Valve on the Steamdeck. It has a familiar Windows like layout by default but also allows you to customise it like crazy to fit your particular need (whatever that may be).

Aurora flatpak as it's app format. To see what kind of software is available for this distro you can check flathub.org . It's not going to be as much software as Linux Mint for example (Mint uses flatpak and deb), but everything the average user needs should be there.

Most of that sounds pretty easy to pull off. I have a few thoughts, though:

• What games do you run in Steam?
• Just a bit of a warning: Discord is annoying about updates, at least with the Debian version. I can't remember what the Flatpak does.
• For MS Office, most distros should come with LibreOffice. If you have problems with LibreOffice, then Google Docs should be fine.
• You'll have to run Spotify from the browser, but I imagine that won't be a problem, as you're probably not an audiophile
• Run GIMP as a Flatpak, as distro versions tend to have weird bugs with the resynthesizer plugin.

Most operating systems these days are just micro-kernels to run the actual operating system, your browser. Most users will be perfectly happy using whatever in most cases as long as you can get one of the major browsers on it.

If they have special requirements, then you need to figure them out first.

Mint is pretty dumbass proof.

I think user friendly distros (like Mint) are very user friendly if you're just doing simple things like web browsing or using Steam. Mint (and other distros) have a realy nice software centre that can install a lot of software with a single click from https://flathub.org/ , which removes a lot of headaches that there used to be with installing software.

However, when things go wrong (which they do sometimes because computers are complicated), you may have to troubleshoot and play around with the command line.

... But that's honestly happened a lot with Windows in my experience as well. Only with less command line and more running esoteric exes.

Honestly, given that most Linux distros are free anyway, you may as well try it out and see if everything works. Worst comes to worst, you find something doesn't work and end up installing Windows over the top of it.

Ubuntu is much less user hostile than windows. My parents only used Ubuntu for the past several years because they inherited my old laptop. They just want to Google stuff, so all they need is a familiar browser.

Oh for the love of Linus, block all notifications requests from websites at the browser level. Comon people accept all notifications requests and get inundated by them.

Yes. Linux Mint works "straight out of the box".

It comes with a preinstalled browser (Firefox), so if you only use your computer for online stuff, then you dont need to do anything at all. Just use it.

The only technical thing you might want to do is to enter the WiFi password and find the software manager to install any additional apps you need.If you can install apps on your phone, then you can also install apps on Linux Mint.

I actually found that it was a lot easier to install Mint than setting up a new Windows pc. The most difficult part was using a windows pc to download it and making a bootable USB stick. Your friend can help you with that or you can follow a guide.

I have had zero issues and I have never written a single command line. It just works.

Make sure to go for an immutable distro with kde if you're a windows user, you'll never have to do any maintenance, I highly recommend fedora kinoite

I setup and use Linux on my home PC for the last 12 years, as a non IT person. I don't use the command line or any IT tools. It has to be user friendly. 99.9% of the time, me, and many others, enjoy a very good, modern experience. I'm happy with the Linux apps for home use. Installation, partitioning, app store and updates are all graphical. There might be the occasional glitch. Where you need online help. Ignore those who say the command line is the only way to solve it. They know nothing about GUI solutions. Nearly all issues are solvable. If you are unlucky, at worst, a reinstall is quick, and GUI based. Your learning can be confined to discovering the easy tools and GUI alternatives. I find Kubuntu good, because it allows me to solve things due to its flexibility.

In depends on how dumb the user is. If you want to see drive C:\ and don't want to learn why there's no such a thing, forget about Linux (and any other OS except the only one you are familiar with). If you are ready to learn new concepts and just don't want to remember numerous commands, that's OK, just pick up a distro with advanced DE and graphical admin tools.

No more tricky than windows these days. Nice thing is there's a lack of commercial BS - spyware, ads, unwanted apps etc. And pretty much no matter how old your computer gets, you can still run brand new linux on it.

Linux Mint LMDE is always my recommendation to friends & fam who are leaving Win & Mac environments. LMDE bc ease of use/install & stability.

Slight learning curve, but that goes with anything new to a person when it comes to tech. Linux Mint forums are also legit for quick answers.

Good luck regardless of what you choose! Don’t let the negative feedback get you down! 🍀

-sent from an old MacBook running LMDE

Depends what you use and how you use it. With how I use my computer, I have issues on Windows that require terminal input to solve and are more confusing than many of the Linux issues I face, but the way I use Linux also requires terminal. Some applications just work better or only on terminal whether you're on Windows or Linux and some debugging steps will inevitably take you down the dark road of decade old menus and terminal commands.

Day to day basic tasks though? It shouldn't need any special knowledge, provided that you don't follow the wrong online tutorials like I did when starting out. For example, Firefox was out of date so I looked up how to update Firefox. The package manager did not have a new version and I didn't think to manually go into settings and refresh the repository (stores auto update, right? Well, no actually...). Basically I ended up trying to install via a .deb package from their website... it didn't work and I felt Linux was dumb. What I should have done was update my OS and package manager first or simply sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade (yes this is terminal, sorry). My point is, sometimes you have to realise the question you are asking is flawed and not the system.