[deleted] wrote (edited )
josefStallman wrote
I'm a tad biased, but I want to bring up a couple things.
Most distros designed for new users are shit. Mint is bad, Zorin is bad, elementary is bad. They try way too hard to be Windows when they're not Windows. Even if their goal isn't too look like Windows, most "beginner" distros fail to take advantage of the fantastic user-friendliness that Linux can provide if configured correctly. Their goal is to be a drop-in replacement for an OS that a user is used to, and they all fail.
If you want a really good distro for people who are uncomfortable using a terminal, check out an enterprise-focused distro. openSUSE Leap and Fedora are the best examples of this. They both come with a wealth of excellent graphical configuration options (YaST specifically), on top of an impressively polished overall user experience. I think they both come with Gnome by default, but Plasma looks really solid and modern these days and is just a couple clicks to install (not to say gnome can't look good with a lot of work, but out of the box Plasma is much better).
My best reccomendation would have to be Korora. It's based on Fedora with a couple tweaks for regular users who don't care that much about 100% of their software being free.
I've been using Fedora for almost 6 months now, and I've never had an instance where I have to open a terminal. I've used terminals plenty, because I really like using terminals, but you never have to. If you embrace the terminal, I find it makes doing a lot of things a lot easier, but if you don't want to, you genuinely don't have to.
captain_commerce wrote
Hey Mint user here, I'm offended! Mint is a good operating system.
ziq wrote
Beats the UIs on both those OS's IMO.
[deleted] wrote (edited )
josefStallman wrote
KDE Neon uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment, you can find a ton of examples through whatever search engine you use.
NEOalquimista wrote (edited )
Distrowatch Gallery, but it's not the best place (these are outdated images). You'll find more beautiful screenshots in the community forums where distros have a "show your desktop" thread. I don't know about KDE neon, though.
KDE Plasma is similar to Windows, but allows customizing at a greater depth. Any detail, no matter how small a change it is, will probably be possible, and all done through the KDE settings. It abuses on transparency and slide effects for its GUI, and promotes full featured applications with high configurability, such as video editor Kdenlive, Krita and others.
KDE's goal is to allow you to do anything without resorting to solutions that only interest advanced users. In other words, its graphical interface will provide you options for anything. It seeks to add features in a "one size fits all" philosophy, same as Windows.
Compared to KDE Plasma, GNOME seeks simplicity, as in not adding a feature if it's not a very common task. It keeps things clean, while focusing on doing what it does very well. Its logo is a feet, which means human. Tries to keep things simple, human, intuitive. Some may not agree.
Things used to be more "binary". KDE or GNOME? It was a simple choice. But now we have environments like Budgie, MATE, Cinnamon and many new ones. Each tries to fill the gaps GNOME or KDE has, they try an alternate way.
jaidedctrl wrote
You know, I'm a tad biased (mod of /f/lignux, jajaja, so of course I'm a shill) and I haven't used Windows since 8 and have only used macOS briefly:
GNU/Linux is pretty user-friendly, and depending on the distro, you won't have to touch the terminal. I've found, in most of my time as a GNU/Linux user, things Just Work™. In fact, for the first year or two I used it (Ubuntu, of course) I never touched the terminal-- at some point, though, I was curious and wanted to try it.
When it comes to UI, GNU/Linux is... OK at consistency. About as good at is as Windows. Windows has different UIs, even in their bloody system software-- one program is Metro-style, another classic desktop, and some Windows programs (despite being modern) strangely are only 98-style.
GNU/Linux has a similar issue to Windows there, I'd say, although it isn't quite as severe. The two majour camps you'll notice are the "GNOME-style" apps and the GTK2/QT apps. The "GNOME-style" (technically GTK3+) have a unified menu-bar and title-bar, kind of like macOS has started doing recently. The GTK2/QT apps have seperated title and menu-bars. This difference is slightly annoying, IMO, but the themes in most distros make this disrepency still look pretty cohesive. The difference isn't too bad-- it's better than the Windows desktop/Metro/retro inconsistency.
As far as UI looks, you really should take a look at the GNOME desktop environment video. Personally, I think it looks better than macOS and Windows (8 or 10). It all comes down to taste, though.
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