Hello!
I’m interested in moving my personal computer to running Linux but I’m not sure where to even begin. As background, I am a casual user and have a desktop with hardware from around 2014 running Windows. I am hoping to setup a NAS drive as a media server in the next year or so, offloading all of the files currently on the Windows desktop and have been interested in open source software such as Jellyfin. I also mostly game on an Xbox and Nintendo Switch, but have used the desktop in the past for gaming such as with an Oculus Rift Headset and some Steam games so not huge on getting games working on the computer. But, I do sometimes torrent using the computer so don’t want to lose that capability (especially with upkeep for the media server).
With all of that said, I didn’t know how to get started with choosing what Linux OS to use, setting it up, backing up my files to make sure I can use them with the new OS, etc. Making the switch seems to have great options for customization and “choosing a distro that works for you”, but I don’t know what would work for me or what will be user friendly for a beginner.
Any tips or pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Do most distributions not have those things? I imagined a taskbar/search/options to be pretty standardized and having the option for desktop with icons at least.
It’s complicated. Linux is extremely diverse, so there’s basically every desktop layout you can think of and many that you can’t. Some are similar to Windows by default (KDE, Cinnamon, sometimes XFCE or LXDE), others are similar to MacOS (Pantheon), and many are totally different from anything you’ve used before (GNOME, MATE, tiling window managers like Sway, Hyprland, or i3). However, almost all of them can be customized to work however you want. For example, GNOME is very unique by default (look at Fedora), but it can be changed to be a bit more traditional (Ubuntu) or heavily Windows-inspired (Zorin OS) by adding a few extensions. This is all while being known as one of the least customizable desktop environments, far surpassed by something like KDE.
GNOME is pretty much alone in offering no option for icons on the desktop. Distros like Ubuntu and PopOS use an extension to hring this functionality back and you can on any GNOME desktop yourself if you need to. Other DEs offer it by default.