I'm a long time Windows user who has experience with WSL. Last year, I needed a laptop for university, and out of laziness, opted for a Macbook since, although they're expensive as hell, are reasonably reliable.
Since using the mac, I've absolutely fallen in love with it over Windows. Note that I refer to the non-iOS specific aspects. After not touching my desktop for several months, I now see that I absolutely hate Windows even more. I would like to move my desktop to a Linux system some time in the future. However, my education is limited, and so I'm here to ask for help.
Currently, I'm a student in Mathematics and Computer Science. But outside that, I am, for the most part, a programmer. I rarely game, but I would like the option for the rare occasion that I have the time to do so.
I've grown comfortably with the command line, through my in-depth knowledge of lower level knowledge is limited. So, I feel I'm comfortable enough to extend the possible domain of my options.
I would love to hear recommendations and suggestions. I'm also open to other options such as NixOS, but that would require some research to learn more, which is fine. I'm not doing this soon.
If you could provide any links and resources that I can follow to continue learning, especially if relevant to your suggestions, I would be deeply appreciative!
My Mac is the most Linux-like thing I've used for so long, and it's been so, so much easier to work with compared to Windows (I hate Windows PATH limitations so much).
Thanks, all ❤ 🐧
For your desktop, I suggest you install Linux Mint (Edge edition, to make sure the newer kernel included there supports your hardware better). After installing it, right click on the panel, and install the 'Cinnamenu' applet (it's available for download from the window that opens when you click Applets). Then, place it where you want after enabling "panel editing", and then right click the new menu to customize it as you like. Cinnamenu is a more modern-looking menu than the default Mint, with larger icons. Please note that in June or July, there's going to be a brand new, major version of Mint. Think of Mint as how Windows should have been, a better version of it. This is my Linux Mint laptop: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/253/256/932/509/491/original/6183bb790dcb8365.jpg
Now, if you want something that is closer to MacOS' look and feel, then you would need to install Gnome, and use Gnome extensions to enable the dock to stick to the main desktop. For a Gnome distro, there's Fedora 40, the new Ubuntu, or Debian (IMHO, the most stable of the lot, but slightly older software version). This is my Gnome desktop: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/349/393/342/603/119/original/3c3c5c7e35ac726e.png
And if you have a large hard drive, feel free to install 3 of these (e.g. Mint, Debian or Ubuntu with Gnome, Fedora KDE), to test drive them all. They can all happily live next to each other in separate partitions. Just make sure you create a /boot partition (this holds the bootloader for all OSes), and then 3 large ones to put the / (root) partitions of each distro (these will hold the actual OS for each).