Windows Sucks - Looking for Linux Distro

VM? GPU Passthrough?
Nothing is wrong with gnome, but it's a very different kind of desktop paradigm.
Here is what things would normally look like, clicking on activities in the top left or moving your mouse into the upper left corner as far as possible opens the application launching/switching menus.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/GNOME_Shell_-_Applications_menu_(v3.22).png
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/GNOME_Shell.png
KDE and some other DEs use a traditional start menu with search bar.

Attached: GNOME_System_Monitor_3.22_on_Debian_9.png (1280x720, 86K)

To add to this, the KDE image viewer is fantastic.

OP Again. I think I'm starting to understand the differences in these distros a little better.

Correct me if I'm wrong: GNOME, Cinnamon, KDE, MATE, etc. are all different UI types. Similar to different Android launchers.

Yes, GNOME does look very different - looks very much like a UI that would be pleasant for a tablet.

Correct.

Xubuntu would be the easiest to use. Xfce has a few issues which are to be patched out soon when v4.14 is released. You could also go for Ubuntu Mate or Kubuntu. KDE has the best software and has KDE Connect which is amazingly useful.

Extremely high resource usage and lack of ease of use compared to Xfce/KDE. You can achieve the same UI in KDE and Xfce.
Not that the idea of GNOME is bad, it's just that it's literally written in JavaScript and devours over 1GB RAM sometimes for literally doing nothing. If it actually became lighter with every feature they removed from it then it would be ok, as long as you can get an addon for that feature without it breaking compatibility every year.

Xubuntu might be the best choice. If you can't handle the screen tearing then just install and enable Compton, there's a 2 minute guide on YouTube. You'll probably have to do some tweaking to make it windows-like, shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.

>Correct me if I'm wrong
>different UI types
It's not just UI, it's also the default set of tools. All DEs come with different media players, text editors, image viewers and migh come with different software depending on distribution.
Yes, GNOME's UI is great. But it would probably choke a tablet with it's resource use. You can probably reduce it if you spend a few minutes disabling shit. But it's not a bad idea to try it first.

You could try a distro like ZorinOS or Zorin Lite first, just to ease yourself into Linux if you've only used windows. But that distro has a lot of issues of it's own and I would recommend against using it as a main OS for more than a week or two.

In Windows everything is integrated and you don't hear much of the OS components. For Linux you can pick. Note that DEs usually also include a file browser, an image viewer, a media player, a text editor and other basic GUI utilitys you'd expect.

Install Solus

Attached: solus.png (1323x927, 80K)

Check the wiki, it gives tons of info on beginner distros to try. As far as desktop environments go, I would recommend Cinnamon, KDE, Mate, or Xfce. All of them can be easily made to resemble windows UI pretty closely, you should feel right at home with any of the above. You could also try a standalone window manager like i3, dwm, openbox, etc. if you are a keyboard driven person who hates using trackpads.

Install gentoo

Debian, Ubuntu (or one of its flavours), Fedora or OpenSUSE. Try them in a VM and see with which you are most comfortable with, then install it for real.
Once you got the hang of things and know what you want in more detail (e.g. no systemd), you can look for more specialized distros.

What, don't most people on here use GNOME?

I don't think so.
>1. XFCE
>2. KDE
>3. no DE
At least if you judge it by how many anons recommend those.

Been distrohopping for the last week or so, so maybe I can be of some assistance.

I liked Budgie, both on Manjaro and Solus. Solus was missing some packages though, and Manjaro doesn't really provide the same Budgie experience, although it is pretty good.

KDE has blurred terminals, I like that. Ended up trying openSUSE and KDE Neon. openSUSE is bloated, their "wicked" network configuration increased my boot time by 20 seconds, and it was a pain to switch back to Network Manager. Also it took a while to log in from the login screen, would just hang for 10 seconds. KDE Neon is based on an older version of Ubuntu LTS, so it's stable but has old packages, but the latest KDE. You can update it to Bionic but it's not guaranteed to not break to your system.

Fedora was OK if you like GNOME, it's the flagship Fedora experience. But I found it to be lacking, namely a lot of hanging and freezing. Maybe it was using Nvidia graphics or something, but the performance was great except for the hiccups. Really liked the delta upgrades.

Ubuntu regular. Basically a bastardized GNOME that has been customized to resemble Unity, except without the good parts of Unity like globalmenu. Tried to get a more vanilla GNOME experience but gave up and wiped the partition.

Deepin Linux - basically Debian with a customized DE (and possibly chinese botnets). Gave it a shot since the new version just came out. deepin-wm was awful for me, consistently using 100% of a processor thread and often more. I also experienced massive screen tearing. Nice blur effects though.

Ended up installing Manjaro Xfce and installing i3-gaps. Really like it with compton providing blurred terminals and compositing, but had to disable window titlebars because it was causing artifacts, but pixel borders work just fine.

Attached: 2018-08-22-144327_2560x1440_scrot.png (2560x1440, 1.25M)

OP here again.

I would just like to thank everybody who contributed here. I feel like I've got a better understanding of what to look for. Many of you provided very useful insights. I will start test driving and hopefully, give useful insight to the next user who asks for help.

You all really are a fine group of Jow Forumsentlement

Gentoo