What is the preferred way to make a bootable USB drive on Linux these days? I want to try a couple of distros on my very old mother’s PC before installing. When I googled it, I only found ways to do it in Windows. Perhaps my Google-fu is off? So I thought: why not ask Lemmy?

  • MartinXYZ@lemmy.mlOP
    0·
    1 year ago

    It’s an old laptop, so I want to try MXLINUX, but for ease and support I would like see if it might be able to run Ubuntu.

    Edit: switched “stability” for “ease”.

    • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.deMEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Alright.

      But here’s my opinon, if you’re interested: maybe, just maybe, don’t use Ubuntu. Of course, do what you want. If it appeals to you, that’s great! :)

      Ubuntu is often recommended as a good beginner Distro, but that’s not true anymore. That used to be a good choice a few years ago, but it is more and more hated by the community. The company developing it forces way too much of their own stuff onto new users, especially snaps (their own packaging format that sucks). In general, Ubuntu doesn’t provide you the best Linux impression anymore.

      If you want to know more, then take a look into this and this video from TheLinuxExperiment.

      Also, as long as your laptop isn’t super old (>10 years) it should pretty much run anything, not only those “revive your toaster-laptop”-distros. Try Mint or some other beginner-friendly-mainstream-distros too and take a look on how they perform :)

      I personally love Fedora for example (just ask me why) and believe it might also be a solid beginner distro, especially since the default desktop (Gnome) looks so alien compared to Mac or Windows, you automatically assume that it doesn’t work like those two.

        • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.deM
          2·
          1 year ago
          • Vanilla DEs: every spin provides a clean desktop, how the devs intended it.
          • Great update schedule: the 6 months release cycle provides a great compromise between stability (how often stuff changes), reliability (how often stuff breaks) and freshness. A rolling release (like Tumbleweed) downloads many GBs of downloads each week and feels like a testing ground with stuff often not working that smoothly, while Debian for example is super stale.
          • Community based and backed by RH (devs and $$$)
          • Sane defaults for me
          • Their immutable variants (Silverblue, etc.) are fantastic as well and a joy to use.
          • And more