Linux

Consider reading the content on Linuxjourney.com

Apparently ChatGPT is really good as a personal tutor. You can ask it specific questions and it will answer with detailed tutorials and step-by-step guides.

The best thing to do is to just jump in.Pick a distro, doesn't matter which and just start using it.

For software just browse the Music category of pamac, discover, or whatever app-front you decide to use. There's some really good stuff in there.

Eh, just use a super really easy linux distro like ZorinOS or Mint and stick with it.

t. Currently 39 years old and been using Linux since around 10 years ago.

The best advice I can give is to just use Linux. Back in early 2006 when I started switching over to Linux I would dual boot, and any time I ran into something that was hard to do on Linux I would just boot into Windows to save time. Eventually I decided to stick with it and not reboot when that would happen. Linux back then was not as user friendly as it is now, so for the most part this should be the exception and not the rule. Obviously some software is going to be Windows specific, but the best thing you can do to learn is just stick with Linux and use it.

As for distros, whatever is the most used which is probably Ubuntu right now, will be best as people will have plenty of answers and questions that will cover what you are going through compared to a niche distro. When you get more experience with Linux, you will get a better sense for what you want out of a distro like rolling releases like Arch, functional package management like with NixOS or whatever else may be important to you. So just stick with Ubuntu or whatever is more popular right now and reevaluate after you get to the point your comfortable with command line tools.

Get a pre-owned Thinkpad or Dell Latitude for cheap. Upgrade it if you want, especially with SSD & RAM. Get some Linux on it -- I recommend Linux Mint for ease of use.

I use OpenSUSE, because it has YaST, which is basically the Control Panel in Windows. Without it, I'd have to use the terminal. It also installs on just about anything.

The linux motto to any problem is "it's possible, but here are the pitfalls". You can do almost everything on linux (unlike windows), but the tradeoff is it can sometimes require more time to learn and troubleshoot issues. In my opinion, linux is great for those of us who dislike to use the mouse and take our hands off the homerow. Get used to using the terminal to launch apps, instead of clicking stuff on the desktop. Learn keyboard shortcuts. My recommendation is to use a window manager like i3 with an i3 status bar at the bottom. This will give you a minimal desktop, where you can move windows/tiles around all with keyboard shortcuts. Open apps with something similar to dmenu, where you just have to press a keyboard shortcut and type the first few letters of the app you want to open, and press enter. Learn vim-like keyboard navigation to edit text and reposition the cursor through the text all without the keyboard. Linux integration with this style of experience is vastly superior to Windows and Mac.

As a 40 something who's used Linux exclusively a few times before but always came back to windows for one reason or another, I now use a MacBook as my primary. I hate the ads served in windows and the poor handling of focus.

MacOS to me has been like a more polished Linux with broader support for applications.