hextakatt wrote:March 2019 and I am still not receiving the October 2018 update. I like Windows, yes I do.
(sarcasm, I'm one step away from switching to GNU/Linux)
Any distro that you recommend to me?
Personally, I find Manjaro (based on Arch) to be quite good, though if you aren't already familiar with Linux, Ubuntu (based on Debian, and pretty much the 'default' currently) or Mint (based on Debian by way of Ubuntu) are a good deal more novice-friendly. If you are serious about this, well,
this video discusses how Linux differs from Windows and how to install the Mint distro. Just sayin'.
You might try going through
Libre Hunt and/or
Distro Chooser to get some recommendations based on you specific needs (or at leats, that's what is suppose to happen...).
If you are curious, it is pretty easy to set up a local mini-installation under Virtualbox, VMWare, or QEMU for Windows (or Hyper-X if you have a Pro version of Windows, I suppose), assuming you have 20 GB or so to spare for each of the virtual installations. If you do this, you'll want to make sure you have virtualization enabled in you BIOS - I've made that mistake before, quite recently in fact, and it is annoying because unless you know about it (or assume that it was enabled by default, as I did), you aren't likely to check the BIOS/UEFI settings and you'll go crazy trying to figure out the problem.
Even when doing this, make sure you Windows system is well backed up first - mistakes are always a possibility.
Alternately, most major distros have LiveDVD and/or LiveUSB support as part of their installers, so you can also get a box of blank DVDs or Flash drives, load the installers onto those, and boot from those drives temporarily as a 'test drive'. And I suppose you could also get a Raspberry Pi (or similar ARM SBC) and run Raspbian/Armbian a bit...
You might want to play around with a few different
desktop environments or
window managers before deciding which you like best; the biggest problem here is that there is an embarrassment of riches, with more available options than you are likely to want to try out. I generally stick to mid-weight options, mostly XFCE and MATE (pronounced ma-tay, like the herbal tea, BTW), but they range from lightweight tiling WMs such as Notion, Ratpoison, StumpWM, or Awesome, to massive DEs such as KDE, Gnome, or Cinnamon, with a whole spectrum of options, layouts, and configurations to try. Most DEs have a suite of associated applications, as well, though most will mix-and-match to some degree. You should be able to test several different ones out within a single installation, as most login managers will let you choose a DE or WM when logging in, though some DEs such as Cinnamon or Pantheon are closely associated with a specific distro.
The package managers different distros use could be a matter to look into, as well. While I like the idea of a source-based approach, the way it is done by Gentoo's Portage system, for example, tends to be a problem for me.
If you have any Windows apps or games you can't live without, I would recommend going to the extra trouble of dual-booting, just so there is a backup in case the Linux equivalent isn't suitable. Virtualization and/or WINE are more than adequate to let you run a lot of Windows programs, fortunately, but even with the recent Steam Proton fork or WINE, current-gen Windows games are likely to be a problem.
Also fortunately, there has been substantially improved support for Linux by game devs in general over the past 3-5 years, which has been largely thanks to Valve pushing the Linux-based SteamOS as an alternative, though the rapid rise of cross-platform tools such as Xamarin (for portability to mobile devices and consoles, mainly, but also to Linux) has also been a major factor. Even so, a dual-boot setup would at least give you another option.
