This is the most disruptive thing on the site, and the one with the largest gap between how hard people expect it to be and how hard it is. A modern Linux desktop installs in twenty minutes, looks like what you are used to, and runs a browser, a video player and an office suite without you thinking about it. The friction is real but it is specific, and this guide is mostly about telling you where it is before you hit it.
01Why we suggest it
Be clear about what is established and what is suspicion, because the two get blurred constantly in this area.
Both Windows and macOS send substantial telemetry by default, and the settings that reduce it do not eliminate it. Both push account sign-in, cloud sync and device-linked identifiers. Both have shipped features that scan or index local files. None of this is contested, it is in the published documentation.
We believe it is likely that major commercial operating systems contain access mechanisms available to states, whether by deliberate arrangement, by legal compulsion, or by undisclosed vulnerability retention. We cannot demonstrate this, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. We are telling you it is what we assume, because it is what shapes our own choices and you are entitled to weigh it yourself.
The practical argument does not depend on the suspicion being right. On Linux the source code is public, the system does not phone home by default, updates are not used to add features you did not ask for, and nothing requires an account to use your own computer. Even at its least dramatic, that is a materially smaller surface than the alternative.
02Which one
There are hundreds of distributions and the choice paralyses people. It should not: for this purpose they are far more alike than different. Start with the first one and only read the rest if you have a reason to.
Not because it is the most private or the most technically elegant, it is neither. Because it has by far the largest community and the most documentation, and that is what actually decides whether someone switching stays switched. When something goes wrong and you search the error message, the answer that comes back will be written for Ubuntu. Hardware vendors test against it. Software ships packages for it first.
It is also genuinely friendly to someone arriving from Windows or macOS: it installs in twenty minutes, offers full-disk encryption in the installer, and asks nothing of you afterwards.
Ubuntu — start here
The most supported desktop Linux there is. Long-term-support releases are maintained for years, so you can install it and leave it alone. If you have no opinion, take this and skip the rest of this section.
ubuntu.com ↗Linux Mint
Built on Ubuntu, with Canonical's commercial additions removed and a layout closer to Windows. The choice if the notes below bother you but you still want Ubuntu's compatibility and its answers underneath.
linuxmint.com ↗Fedora Workstation
Newer software, strong security defaults, SELinux enabled out of the box, and the closest thing to the mainstream of Linux development. A little more change each year. Good if your hardware is very recent.
fedoraproject.org ↗Debian
The most conservative and the most independent, no company owns it. Software is older by design, which is a feature on a machine you want to be boring and reliable for years.
debian.org ↗Canonical is a company, and Ubuntu carries a few things that follow from that: snap packages are pushed in preference to the traditional ones and update on their own schedule, the installer offers to send hardware and usage data (decline it, it is a checkbox, not a fight), and some releases have advertised commercial services in the terminal.
None of it is hostile and none of it is hidden, but it is the reason Mint exists and the reason we are naming it here rather than letting you find out later. If it bothers you, Mint is the same system without it.
Arch and its relatives are excellent and are not a first Linux. Kali is a tool kit for security testing, not a desktop — running it as your daily system is a common and bad idea. Tails and Qubes solve different problems entirely; they have their own section in the main guide.
03Installing it without losing anything
Copy everything you care about to an external drive and verify you can open the files from that drive before you go any further. Installing an operating system is the most reliable way to discover your backup was not working.
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Try it before you commit
A Linux USB stick boots into a full working desktop without touching your disk. Use it for an hour. Check the things that would actually annoy you: does wifi work, does the trackpad feel right, does sound come out, does your printer appear, does your external monitor behave. This is the entire risk-reduction step and it costs one evening.
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Make the USB stick
Download the ISO from the distribution's own site, and check the published checksum, the page tells you how. Then write it to a USB stick with balenaEtcher or Rufus. The stick is erased in the process.
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Boot from it
Restart and press the boot-menu key as the machine starts, usually F12, F10, F2 or Esc, depending on the manufacturer. Choose the USB device. If it will not appear, you may need to disable Fast Startup in Windows, and on some machines temporarily turn off Secure Boot (Mint, Fedora and Debian all support Secure Boot, so you can usually leave it on).
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Decide: alongside, or replace
The installer offers to install alongside your existing system (dual boot) or to erase the disk. Dual boot is the gentle route and lets you go back; it also means the old system is still there, with everything you were trying to get away from. Replacing is cleaner. Choose honestly, a dual boot you never boot into is just a partition you forgot.
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Turn on full-disk encryption
The installer will offer it. Say yes. Without it, anyone who picks up the laptop reads everything on it by booting from their own USB stick, your login password stops nothing. Use a strong passphrase; you will type it once per boot.
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Let it install, then update
Twenty minutes or so. On first boot, run the updater and restart. That is the installation finished.
04The first week
Getting software
This is the biggest habit change, and it is a change for the better. You do not download installers from websites. You open the Software Manager, search, and click install. The packages come from a repository maintained by your distribution, cryptographically signed, and updated centrally, which removes an entire class of attack that dominates Windows.
Two other sources you will meet: Flatpak, which packages apps with their dependencies and runs them in a sandbox — good for third-party software, and already wired into Mint and Fedora. And the terminal, which is often the fastest route:
| Task | Debian / Mint / Ubuntu | Fedora |
|---|---|---|
| Update everything | sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade | sudo dnf upgrade |
| Install something | sudo apt install vlc | sudo dnf install vlc |
| Remove something | sudo apt remove vlc | sudo dnf remove vlc |
| Search | apt search video editor | dnf search video editor |
| Install a Flatpak | flatpak install flathub org.videolan.VLC | |
What replaces what
| You used | Use | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Office | LibreOffice / OnlyOffice | Both open and save Word and Excel files. OnlyOffice handles complex Microsoft formatting more faithfully. |
| Photoshop | GIMP / Krita / Photopea | The honest gap. GIMP is capable and different; Photopea runs in the browser and is closest to the original. |
| Video editing | Kdenlive / DaVinci Resolve | Kdenlive is free and good. Resolve is professional and runs natively on Linux. |
| Media player | VLC / mpv | Plays everything, as on every other platform. |
| Notes | Obsidian / Joplin / Logseq | All run natively. |
| Windows-only apps | Bottles / a VM | Many work through compatibility layers. For the ones that do not, run Windows in a virtual machine rather than dual-booting back. |
| Games | Steam | Steam's compatibility layer runs a large share of the Windows catalogue. Competitive games with kernel anti-cheat are the exception and generally will not run. |
The handful of commands worth knowing
You can use Linux for years without a terminal. Knowing these five makes you much faster when something goes wrong, and makes asking for help far more productive.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
ls · cd · pwd | List a folder, move into one, show where you are. |
sudo | Run the next command as administrator. It will ask for your password. Think before you use it. |
journalctl -xe | The system log, most recent last. This is where the reason lives when something failed silently. |
systemctl status <name> | Is that background service running, and what did it say when it stopped. |
df -h · free -h | Disk space and memory, in units meant for humans. |
Forum answers and AI assistants both produce commands that look plausible and occasionally
destroy data. sudo gives away everything. If you do not know what a command does,
ask what it does first, an assistant will happily explain its own suggestion line by line, and
that habit is worth more than any single command in the table above.
05Sensible defaults, and where to stop
A fresh desktop Linux install is already in decent shape. A handful of things are worth doing; the rest is beyond what a desktop actually needs.
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Turn the firewall on
Most desktop distributions ship it installed but inactive. In Mint, open Firewall Configuration and switch it on. From a terminal,
sudo ufw enable. Default-deny incoming is the correct posture for a laptop. -
Leave AppArmor or SELinux alone
Your distribution ships one of them enabled. Disabling it to make some piece of software work is the most common self-inflicted security hole on a Linux desktop. Fix the specific rule instead, or use a different tool.
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Do not install an SSH server you do not need
A desktop does not need to accept remote logins. If you do want to reach the machine remotely, prefer a private network between your own machines over opening a port to the internet.
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Keep updates on, and actually restart
Unattended security updates are fine to enable. Kernel updates only take effect after a reboot, so a machine that is never restarted is running the old one.
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Take a snapshot before you experiment
Timeshift makes system snapshots you can roll back to in minutes. Set it up in the first week and you will be far braver about changing things afterwards.
06What it does not do for you
- No telemetry by default, and no account required to use your own machine.
- Signed software from a central repository, which removes the download-an-installer attack almost entirely.
- Inspectable — you, or anyone, can read what it does.
- Mandatory access control on by default, and full-disk encryption offered in the installer.
- Old hardware keeps working, for a decade or more.
- Linux is not immune to malware. Desktop Linux is a smaller target, not an invulnerable one, and a malicious package or script runs perfectly well.
- It does not hide your traffic. Your network still sees what your network saw.
- It does not protect the browser, where most of the real risk lives.
- It does not stop targeted spyware. A well-funded attacker with a chain of exploits is not stopped by your choice of desktop.
- It cannot fix a compromised firmware layer beneath it.
07Questions people actually ask
Will my hardware work?
Almost certainly. Test it from the USB stick before installing and you will know rather than hope. The historically difficult pieces are certain wifi chipsets, fingerprint readers, and very new Nvidia graphics; all three have improved a great deal. Recent Apple Silicon Macs are the genuine exception — support exists but is a project rather than an installation.
Is it going to be a constant fight with the terminal?
No. What made Linux hard was often being alone in front of an error that meant nothing to you. An assistant can now explain the exact error, name the relevant tool and propose one diagnostic step at a time. That closes part of the knowledge gap; it does not make generated commands safe or make the assistant an administrator.
One rule travels with that: never paste a command you cannot explain back in your own words. Ask what it does first, it will tell you, and that habit is worth more than any single fix.
I game. Do I have to give that up?
No. Steam’s compatibility layer runs a large share of the Windows catalogue on Linux, and most single-player games simply install and play. The real exception is competitive multiplayer with kernel-level anti-cheat, which mostly refuses to run.
So dual boot, keep Windows on the machine for those games alone, and do your accounts, email, files and work on the Linux side. The installer sets it up for you. It is not the purist answer, and someone doing their real work on Linux is worth far more than someone who read a guide and changed nothing.
Can I still use Microsoft Office or Adobe?
The web versions run in a browser. The desktop versions do not run natively; you can run them in a Windows virtual machine if you need them. Be honest with yourself about whether you do, for most people LibreOffice or OnlyOffice is sufficient, and for a few people it absolutely is not, and those few should keep a Windows machine for that one task.
Which is more secure — Linux, macOS or Windows?
Against a targeted attacker, a fully updated macOS or a locked-down Windows with its modern protections is arguably harder to exploit than an average Linux desktop, because both have enormous security teams and tight hardware integration. That is a real answer and we are not going to dodge it. The reason we still suggest Linux is that the threat being addressed here is not only exploitation: it is the vendor itself, what it collects, what it can be compelled to hand over, and the fact that you cannot look. Linux is the only one of the three where looking is possible.
08Sources and further reading
- Linux Mint — official user guide linuxmint.com/documentation
- Fedora documentation docs.fedoraproject.org
- Arch Wiki, the best Linux documentation anywhere, useful on any distribution wiki.archlinux.org
- Lynis — audits your system and lists what to fix, in priority order cisofy.com/lynis
- Timeshift — system snapshots and rollback github.com/linuxmint/timeshift
Last reviewed: 25 September 2026