104

Convinced my partner to install Linux on her laptop. Going with Zorin OS. Thoughts? (piefed.ca)

submitted 1 day ago by ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca to c/linux@programming.dev

109 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Like the title says, my partner's laptop was still running Windows 10 and they got infected with a backdoor malware. We'll need to reset her computer. It's an Asus Tuf Gaming A15.

She's been using Windows 10 for as long as she could but support is running out. At her work the computers are on Windows 11 and she hates it. Plus she's fervently anti-AI and wants none of that forced Copilot bullshit and privacy eroding features of Windows 11. She's seen me use it for over a year now and I also installed it on our old OG 1st gen MS Surface Pro table and she sees how well it's going. So now she wants Linux on her laptop.

After careful consideration and comparisons, I've decided to go with Zorin OS. I thought of Linux Mint, but it just looks so dated. There are inconistencies in the looks and I feel it lacks some features that I found that Zorin OS has. (It's essentially Gnome with QoL extras.) My only concern is that Zorin has Snaps out of the box but I don't think that's a concern for her. I'll install it on a BTRFS partition with automatic snapshots and grub-btrfs to recover from snapshots. And I'll schedule monthly backups of her files through rsync, or whatever the built-in backup tool does, onto an external drive.

I've tried Zorin on a VM and it was already outstanding. On the live USB session it was able to detect her NVidia card and recommend either the nouveau or NVidia proprietary driver. Everything worked out of the box. So I'm fairly confident everything will work well. One concern I have is she uses her personal laptop for work, and needs to connect to her work's Microsoft account. I see there's an accounts section in the settings where this can be set up, but I've never used it, so that'll be a first. Her work also requires Cisco AnyConnect VPN client. There is a Linux client, but you need a Cisco account to download it, and her work IT department does not support Linux, so I don't know if she'll be able to get it. One of the IT people has Linux on his machine and was able to set it up so maybe we'll rely on him for that part. She'll also need MS Office which uses a work license. I wonder how that will work on Bottles. We can try with Libre Office but I know the spacing and fonts get all wonky when you open a MS Word document or a Powerpoint presentation. Every other app she uses is open source apps like Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, etc. And she doesn't game much, but I know this will work just fine. And the Gnome-Network-Displays will allow her to cast her screen onto our NVidia Shield device for watching movies.

Is there anything else I should be concerned about? Maybe hardware wise? Or anything to so with Snaps that could cause issues?

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top new old

[-] dil@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 hours ago

Im less anti ai with local models using something like hermes, i like the idea of chat with your computer to get it to do stuff when not sitting at it, not that ive actually used it that way or thought of a usecase yet lol, I used it to make a web page using threejs and launch it, all I could think was damn, in the time I spent waiting I could've actually learned what I'm doing. I was just curious if it could, lowkey made something more decent than I probably would in a few days, demotivating af, forgot how much worse it is when the AI actually suceeds. At least when it fails you don't lose the motivation to learn.

[-] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 2 points 6 hours ago

LOL!!! Yeah, it's probably not nearly as fast as online services for sure. But you're not wrecking the environment while doing it.

I prefer to ask questions like "how do I ...?" than to ask it to do the task for me. This way I learn along the way.

"How do I declare an array in X language?"

"How do I write a foreach loop?

I don't give it much context so it gives me some generic example then I try to apply it to my problem.

[-] Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 hours ago

If she absolutely needs desktop microsoft office, you can always consider trying winapps. It runs a full windows VM but makes the applications show up on the linux desktop like they were native applications. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

[-] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 2 points 6 hours ago

I think Bottles will do the job just fine. But I will look into your solution just in case.

I didn't know about this. That's really cool. Thank you! :)

[-] roger.wood@feddit.online 1 points 11 hours ago

Just switched my wife and kids from windows to zorin. Most people don't super care about their os. They just don't want to be annoyed. A few months into it and I haven't heard any complaints.

[-] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 1 points 10 hours ago

Exactly. She just wants it out of her way. And I think Zorin can deliver that with style.

[-] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 day ago

As somebody who converted to Linux about a yearish ago, I would like to provide some feedback.

Right now, your best options are: Mint (latest version of Cinnamon looks pretty modern in my opinion, if you haven't looked at it for too long), Fedora (Workstation for GNOME, KDE for Plasma), and maybe one of the -buntus depending on how recent the hardware is. For a first-timer, I would avoid the atomic distros like Bazzite, as they will work fine until there's a weird issue that is annoying to troubleshoot. It's very good if you already have Linux installed and are e.g. installing it on a handheld or HTPC but not for a first-timer.

I would let her try in a LiveUSB with GNOME, Cinnamon, and KDE Plasma to see what interface she likes best (screenshots aren't enough, the interfaces are different enough between them). Use VenToy for this I think, between Mint, Fedora Workstation, and Fedora KDE. Once that is decided, go with one of them.

Tip as somebody who first installed Fedora: make sure to enable proprietary drivers on first boot if you want access to Nvidia drivers + Steam! It's very important, as otherwise you need to manuakky configure those repositories. I don't believe this is an issue on Mint though, it's mostly a Fedora thing.

As for Office, I mostly get around with LibreOffice, but if that doesn't work, you can try OnlyOffice (but the company is Russian and a little shady, licensing issues, look into it), the web version of MS Office (ew, horrible), Windows in a VM, or dual-booting Windows (quite difficult to set up since MS does not play nice).

load more comments (4 replies)

[-] mereo@piefed.ca 52 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

One concern I have is she uses her personal laptop for work.

I will never agree to use my personal laptop for work. When I finish work, I hide my work laptop under the sofa so that I don't think about it. I need to physically separate work and my personal life.

If, for any reason, she cannot get a work laptop, I would not recommend installing a Linux distro because her livelihood depends on it.

[-] artyom@piefed.social 34 points 1 day ago

My work tried to make me use my personal GrapheneOS phone for work. Unfortunately some things did not work. When they tried to fix it I said "look, your stuff doesn't work on my phone, if you want me to have a specific phone with specific software, you can send me one, but this one is mine" and so they did.

Although in this day and age I think it's plausible to say "I don't own a computer".

[-] toynbee@piefed.social 4 points 19 hours ago

My work wanted me to use my phone (which, like yours, is Graphene) to login to the messenger they use. I briefly tried; it worked, but mandated enabling MDM. I did consider it, but while researching how much control it would grant if constrained to a work profile, I discovered it's not currently supported in Graphene. So I just deleted the login and work profile and didn't try to login any further.

I have an old, unused phone that's still Android, so if they ever insist (and won't provide me with a device), I'll probably just set it up on that phone and use my actual phone as a hotspot ... But that seems pretty ridiculous and I'd definitely have some objections.

Similarly, any bureaucratic actions require a 2FA app. I couldn't really avoid that since I need to file my timesheets, but for reasons I've never ascertained, the app works on my tablet (which is also Graphene) but not my phone. I pretty much only ever turn my tablet on for that purpose and it's on an SSID with guest isolation, so I don't mind that as much.

load more comments (8 replies)

[-] Marija@programming.dev 2 points 20 hours ago

Linux fits Spyfree values nicely.

load more comments