Linux

Ubuntu LTS is likely the easiest to live with for a layperson. It's got the stability, support and it's got the biggest body of information for how to do things and solve problems as well as the most users using it who can help. Ubuntu LTS derivatives would inherit a lot of that but not all. The changes made to turn Ubuntu into Kubuntu for example invalidate any info for Ubuntu related to GNOME. And so on.

What?

I'm a little lost. Could you try using a little less words? Maybe try bulleting the important parts.

Grab a bunch of ISO's from some of the more well known distros. Drop them on a removable drive and try each of them live.

Best way to do this if you have a larger drive is to install Ventoy, it lets you simply drop ISO files on it and it will make a menu and let you boot any of them.

During the live run check that everything you want works. If wifi works during live it will probably work when installed. Browse the web, play youtube, see if you can access shares on your LAN, play music, movies, check if it sees all your peripherals, run a graphics benchmark etc. This is how I landed on Manjaro a few years back when looking for a new distro.

My line of reasoning is that if a distro can do all this stuff in its live version (an has put enough care in it to make it work that well) it's a strong indicator that the actual distro will be good too.

Both use Ubuntu LTS so they have the same packages

Zorin has a more sustainable model of modifying GNOME, so Wayland support, modern stuff etc. But it lacks behind in versions and still simply is a hacked GNOME with inconsistencies.

Mint with Cinnamon has buggy Wayland support, Apps that are often really nice but dont really change much. Cinnamon and the apps are not often used outside of Linux mint.

Both are buggy in some cases.

I would honestly recommend Fedora (or if you want stability as in "the bugs dont change", Debian, Ubuntu LTS) with KDE Plasma or GNOME.

I use Fedora Kinoite myself, it is modern but the base model is soooo much better for stability than the traditional distros. I use most my apps as Flatpaks, QGis and RStudio through distrobox. All apps apart from QGis are using Wayland.

It is really really good and I hopped a lot.

I do not recomment Mint or Zorin. Same as with ElementaryOS, or stuff involvinf XFCE, Mate, Budgie, LXDE/LXQt.

Those will forever stay less supported.

Is it guaranteed that everything that works on a live USB will also work as the main OS ?

No but the packages are there. Example Fedora: if you install the minimal variant, the installer OS has wifi, but the install without a desktop will not.

If you install any reasonably packaged distro with a desktop, the packges for Wifi will be there.

But why worry? You have a phone and a data cable, even if it would not work, connect over usb, on the phone enable "usb tethering" and you will use it as a wifi or cell network dongle.

This works everywhere, I tested on a 12+ years old Laptop that didnt even have SATA drives or USB 2.0.

Also how do I switch back to windows lol ?

Linux is easy to install, windows is not.

Get 2 or 3 usb sticks/pendrives. On Windows download the "windows media creation tool" and create a boot media. Or download the ISO from their website and use rufus, which is better but you may not have needed drivers.

Unlike Linux, missing random vendor drivers are an issue on Windows and even blocked me from installing it once. This never happened on Linux.

So the better option, get a second SSD. Used one, SATA, as big as you need. 256GB is okay. A SATA-to-USB adapter is cheap. "External SSDs" are often a scam and overpriced.

If you want an NVME, I recommend the enclosures by Inatek which I use, had many nice parts and cables added and even heatpads. Really nice build quality.

Install linux on there and use it. Run it there. This will run on your hardware, if it works it works. The only component you wouldnt test is support for your SSD. I have a really modern NVME but Fedora supports it, so this is very unlikely.

A newer kernel supports more things, another point against Mint, Zorin, ElementaryOS, MXLinux, Debian, etc.

And if you like Linux and want to get windows to the external SSD, boot into a live USB of linux, and use dd to clone your windows drive to the external SSD. This works best if the drives have the same size, otherwise a tool called gdisk will help you very well. But please research before using those.

This will clone the drive bit by bit and it will be bootable, but Windows may not boot from USB because Windows. There is a tool called "win2usb" that can modify whatever is needed, and it worked for me.

And this was all without even opening the laptop. You could just switch drives. Still if you need windows it is always a pain to install, make bootable externally etc.

2 Also what is the message on mints website talking about having to do something else for newer devices ? I now use an old thinkpad and it isn't an issue but I'm planning to do an upgrade real soon

Linux, the kernel, has all the drivers. It is the core component of every distro.

Linux is developed by a biiig amount of developers, working for Google, Samsung, Microsoft and more. They all develop the kernel and produce different versions:

• unstable and testing versions: dont use these
• stable: This is what Arch testing, Fedora Rawhide, Debian unstable, etc. will ship. It is the latest, tested and working kernel with the newest features and hardware support. But it may have breakages, that only come out when it gets shipped to the public. So most distros will wait a bit to ship it and have testing versions for the very latest hot stuff.
• LTS kernel: more stable, more tested. Does not get feature upgrades until the new release, 2 years of support

Even very "leading edge" distros will not ship the latest "stable" kernel, so you will be somewhere in between.

When developing software, normally you would just have security fixes, bug fixes and features in a new version. But with these products developers may backport fixes to older versions.

Even though the kernel only has 2 years of support, many distros will increase that, maintain their own version and do more backported fixes.

The stable kernel only supports hardware that was supported when it had the "feature freeze". After this point it is stable, no new features, only fixes.

Release of hardware ≠ linux support. So if your hardware is newer than 2 years you should not use a stable kernel with it. It may be on the market for longer though.

I recommend Intel, all Intel for Latops. If you need graphics intense workloads, use AMD. They have good Linux support, Intel having by far the best in my experience. Avoid NVIDIA and Acer, Asus, Microsoft Surface, or anything you never heard of.

3 Also how does the process vary with RISC-V architecture ?

Checkout this chinese developer laptop

Jeff Geerling on youtube also makes many videos about it.

In general it is not ready. There are good ARM motherboards and Laptops are just starting. SiFive does a lot of Risc-V stuff, but really this takes time and money.

4

I dont recommend these "beginner distros" with custom easy Desktops. I tried it and really:

ZorinOS: just use vanilla GNOME with the extensions "dash to panel" and "application menu"

Mint: just use KDE Plasma

I love KDE Plasma, the new Plasma 6 on Fedora Kinoite is already great and doesnt really have bugs? And it has sooo many more features than anything else.

I highly recommend the atomic variants, for beginners or just anyone wanting a really well managed system (cant say stable as that is what I explained above) but modern and with a good Desktop.

I use uBlue Kinoite-main, it is a base image and they somehow just removed the guide on how to rebase it.

Here is the archived website on how to do it

1. Install Fedora Kinoite
2. Open the terminal

rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/kinoite-main:latest

After the reboot just a short fix:

rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/kinoite-main:latest

They use a different method for signing, the tool is in the image, so the verified version only works after rebasing to it.

From that on, you never have to manage updates again. The system will update and version upgrades automatically. You may never need to touch the terminal again, even though I recommend it.

If you want a more "specialized" version of their distro, you can use Bazzite or Aurora. They have even more "nice to have" things included.

You install the apps as flatpaks, or through distrobox, or via homebrew (yes the thing they also use on macs) or via rpm-ostree.

You will likely find all you need in the software store.

If you have questions, go to Fedora Discussion