I second everything above. If you use Fedora be sure to follow a post install guide, there’s plenty more of them out there. Otherwise, Mint, Ubuntu, and Pop!_OS are great options.

If you want a little more challenge, EndeavourOS and CachyOS are great introductions to Arch. Avoid Manjaro.

I’m really sick of everyone suggesting Bazzite non stop. I’m a serial distro hopper because I love learning about various distros as they grow and change, and bazzite and other immutables have always been problematic and janky for me, and their immutability makes it difficult to problem solve with tried and true resources and methods.

I knew 4chan would eventually immigrate to Lemmy.

I’m not recommending Nvidia. I’m making a point by giving an example of the procedure for installing drivers for the most common GPU (by a wide margin, amd and intel market share accounts for single digit market share) being far more difficult on Debian than other distributions that are more beginner friendly.

Did you even bother to read the thread?

I get so frustrated hearing this take over and over again.

https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

This is the process for installing the DKMS Nvidia GPU drivers on Debian.

The process to install said drivers on Ubuntu, Pop, Mint, etc, is literally clicking an icon.

Yes, following the manual is easy for you, and easy for me. It’s not easy for the tech illiterate elders in our lives. And it’s not easy for me to drop in weekly to solve their problems either.

I’ve ran Fedora on and off for years, by my measure, it’s not old man proof.

I run CachyOS with Hyprland, after using EndeavourOS for quite some time. I definitely recommend either one, if you’re willing to learn to do things via terminal.

After a fiasco with my 72 year old father in law’s laptop, I no longer recommend Linux Mint to people. On a fairly new Asus, multiple attempts at installing were needed to get it running, and he had constant issues that pushed him away from it. Installed Ubuntu for him, no issues over the past year. Sure it has snaps. He doesn’t know the difference and everything seems to be working fine. The goal is no IT support calls from the old man and Ubuntu achieved it.

Removed by mod

Being provided for is a biological urge that predates civilization and goes back to our lower primate kin. I don’t think it makes you a gold digger or a bad person to enjoy being provided for.

You too huh?

I’d say RAM is going to be the largest performance bottle neck for a desktop environment on an older machine. 4gb of RAM? don’t bother with cinnamon, you’ll likely have a much better experience with Mate or XFCE. 8gb is about where I’d even bother to test out cinnamon.

And yeah. It’s still extra steps for a worse experience. Just wait a few hours. You already waited 7 years.

If you don’t mind not having steam achievements.

Yep, I have the same story verbatim dude. Fuck Rockstar, permanently. Haven’t played one of their games in like 5 years, and I never will again.

I didn’t really enjoy YaST, but I’ve got a freed up secondary SSD, maybe it’s worth giving a try again.

The biggest difference? Arch forces you to the terminal more. The easier distros come pre packaged with GUI tools for things like graphics driver selection, adding and removing repositories, installing and removing software, etc.

Vanilla arch doesn’t come with any of that. EndeavourOS, the more fleshed out Arch based distro I use doesn’t either. You could use Mint, Ubuntu, Pop, or Fedora, without ever needing to see the command line. You CAN use it, and should from time to time to start learning, but Arch throws you right into the deep end of the pool of using the command line for almost everything you do.

Some of these people will likely try to say “well actually there are GUI frontends for pacman” or whatever, it’s not the same as using Mint where graphical tools that are easy to use are baked into the system.

I’ve only used yay but afaik paru is very similar and well put together.

Op was asking for advice. You have different advice? Give it. I don’t care what you think of my advice.

I have a 70 year old father running Ubuntu on a laptop without issue for a couple years now. Everyone’s mileage may vary.

Poor OP probably has no idea what to do now.

Yes start over.

Ubuntu, Mint, Pop_OS, Fedora.

Save your important files on a separate drive, install your new beginner friendly OS of choice, and don’t be afraid to break it. A reinstall from a USB stick takes like 15 minutes, and with your important files stored separately you don’t have to think twice about wiping the system and starting over.