is there a Linux alternative to windows 10/11 that is similar?

Linux Mint Cinnamon is a good choice. Even as a sysadmin and DevOps engineer I use it on my workstation because it Just Works. It has good window management, settings management, file management and just stays out of the way. Flatpak is well integrated for things you may need that aren't natively packaged, like discord.

Linux mint is amazing for you, I personally would say its better than zorin

The similarity is really only superficial. You would have to learn about the OS one way or the other, even if some distro has Interfaces similar to Windows. You might need to find software alternatives for example, or be comfortable with package manager.

For gaming, you want to checkout Steam w/ Proton and Heroic Game Launcher

I would recommend that you check out Linux Mint. It is based on Ubuntu, but is in my experience easier to use out of the box.

They have a MATE version on their website.

No.

Linux is not Windows. Don't try to make Windows from Linux. It can be visually similar, but it will never be the same. Don't expect a seamless migration. Stay on Windows or be ready to learn new things.

There are excellent suggestions in this thread. However, I want you to change your mindset. What you're asking is like "I don't want to drive my car. I'm sick of 4 wheelers. I want to ride this new thing called a motorbike. What are some good motorbikes? It should have AC and the safety and comfort of my previous car. Also are there any 4 seater bikes which is family friendly?"

When you are shifting from one platform, please be prepared to make some changes in the way you normally operate. You can't magically expect the new platform to be perfect when you have a decade of experience in the previous platform.

I wish you all the best in your Linux journey.

ZorinOS or Linux Mint. Both are rock solid and very friendly to windows users :)

Linux Mint felt like a really good start for me. Its a nice transition from Windows because you still get a lot of functions that can be done outside of the command line. There's a GUI for system updates, driver updates, and an app store of sorts. The interface is also just generally not all that different from Windows.

In my experience, I didnt have any issues running games on Mint. I was using a pretty powerful rig with AMD hardware, which tends to play nicer with Linux, but from what I've heard Mint seems to do well with gaming.

To play games, you'll obviously need Steam with Proton enabled. I picked the latest full release version and it generally worked pretty good with most games. Some games that wont work with Steam might need a separate app called Lutris. For me this was just Battlefield 4, which also worked fine through Lutris. You can check ProtonDB to see if the games you wanna play will work.

If you use Nvidia, I've heard good things about Pop!OS but i havent used it myself.

Good luck finding a distro that works for you!

Zorin is designed to be a Windows replacement, but my personal recommendation is LinuxMint. Sure it's not trying to be a carbon copy of Windows, but it's designed to be easy to learn, stable, functional, and support pretty much everything from the get go (just not bleeding edge), with a readily available store that lets you download everything you need (that isn't already included in the install).

I think that linux mint will be perfect for you!

Linux Mint is the obvious recommendation. It looks pretty similar to windows and is really good for those unfamiliar with Linux.

I personally use fedora which is also pretty good for beginners but the installation process is pretty confusing and setting up dnf fusion might not be what a new linux user wants to fiddle around with right away, which is why I think mint might be better.

ubuntu mate is a good choice for a beginner, but if your computer is old enough, the system may slow down. This is due to the fact that snap images are slowly decompressed on older processors. You can try Linux Mint too.

About the software. The main thing is to accept the fact that not all Windows applications have analogues on Linux. some people actually make such a mistake. no need to try to install wine and migrate literally every exe file. Look at the software specifically for linux.

The default browser is firefox. But you can install chrome or chromium without any problems. There is OBS studio for linux for streaming. For games, you can put lutris. There is also an official steam client. if the game has an anti-cheat and this anti-cheat is not optimized for linux, you will not be able to play it.

I would go for either Linux Mint or Pop!_OS. linux mint is probably the closest to windows you’ll get. Potentially go for the Debian Edition, but choosing either Cinnamon or Mate is up to you.

Steam will let you play most games, but you’ll need to enable Steam Play for all games in the settings first.

Check out Flathub for other software. There should be some kind of App Store type thing on either OS that’ll connect to flathub. Whilst you wont find Kindle on there, there should be plenty of alternatives for things like reading.

I would encourage you to try a Linux distro with KDE plasma. It really looks like windows 10 now, and I always get comments from non tech people asking what it is and being surprised that it is linix but "looks good, like windows".

I'm on debian stable. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. My current beginner recommendation is to use m Linux mint, which is downstream from debian.

I would always recommend mint. If you want domething which looks a lot similar then zorin does that really well, and it also has you pay if you want some stuff preinstalled so that part is like windows too. Keep in mind that Linux is not windows and it will never be 1:1.

Gaming on Linux is pretty awesome if you use steam. It is painless in my experience.

Linux is used by a lot of professional programmers who might also have gotten training during uni, but honestly, I don't think that is needed anymore. It can be used by anyone who is willing to accept that Linux will never be 1:1 to windows.

If you want something that really looks like Windows (GUI) out of the box, I'd recommend looking at Zorin OS.

It's based on ubuntu and is easy to use.

https://zorinos.com

Everyone reccomends Linux Mint, but I personally use Kubuntu. You can use Discover to install apps such as Steam and you'd probably not need the terminal

Linux mint or kubuntu should match with your needs.

You grab your biggest usb stick and install a tool Ventoy2Disk into it: https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_ventoy2disk.html

Then you never re-format again, but just drag and drop any .iso-file you want to try. You can try any Linux distro in live mode without installing anything into your computer before you found your favorite distro.

Try at least these, Pop_OS!: https://pop.system76.com/

Linux Mint: https://linuxmint.com/download.php

If you don't have Nvidia gpu, then try LMDE5 instead and here's why: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=374128

Fedora KDE: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/kde/

If you want something totally different and fully keyboard driven distro (docs reading is mandatory), Manjaro Sway: https://manjaro-sway.download/

At this point it is only about the looks you like the most.

No, it's a different OS not intended as an alternative to Windows in any other sense that it's a desktop OS too.

But it won't be hard if you start with something common, like openSUSE or Debian.

Linux Mint is a good one to try out for starters. It is Ubuntu based so most of the time if you have an issue you can find tons on it in the Ubuntu help searches.

As for a browser, Firefox is likely pre installed and pretty excellent. All major browsers have a Linux client.

For gaming, steam had great support for windows games running on Linux. There is also Lutris and Heroic launcher which all have support for running games under a comparability layer.

Good luck and have fun!

just go with something like fedora. It'll be easy enough and you can do almost anything through graphical user interfaces.

If you want a familiar Windows-like experience, the general consensus is that Mint and Zorin are the best for helping people transitioning. Lightweight-wise, Mint MATE, Xubuntu, or Lubuntu would work. Could install MATE, LXDE, or XFCE on Arch, too. Might be a Fedora spin, too, for some or all of those.

If you want super lightweight, Void is awesome to play with, but you have to get it going yourself somewhat like old-school Arch. It’s definitely more advanced, but worth doing for the learning.

Linux mint is often recommended for new people, and has a interface very similar to windows. In my own experience, it's very fast to get it up and running.

People usually recommend Linux mint or some Ubuntu version. I recommend neither.

Ubuntu is a proprietary-solution-ridden piece of hot garbage that tries to hinders what you do at any chance. I use it daily for work, unfortunately.

It’s been a few years since I tried mint. It looked good and felt nice for the first few hours, after that I don’t remember what happened, it was maybe lack of configurabilità or lack of support, but I noped out very quickly and I just remember that my thoughts were “never again”.

I never tried it, but it looks like Pop!_OS might be the thing to look out for in this space.

Besides that, know that Linux is different from windows starting from its very philosophy. Keep an open mind, it can be a confusing journey for a beginner (which is why I am holding back about telling you about the many possibilities).

One thing to keep in mind is that some software that you were used to will not be available, and that you might need to look for alternatives. But as far as the things you mentioned go, these are my recommendations:

• browser: Firefox
• gaming: steam
• streaming: OBS

Linux Mint

Iv been running garuda Linux GNOME edition on my gaming rig for years. Best Linux experience iv had. Honestly in my opinion and theres 2 schools of thought on this. The windows paradigm is literally shit workflow design, and thats just objective assessment. The only reason it has carried on is because people got real familiar with very shitty design choices.

I think you may want to consider opening yourself up to trying a whole new UX. Try out GNOME would be my suggestion. NixOS is another positive choice. You can install almost all your software graphically in basically 1 click using flatpak too these days and thanks to steam and their investment in proton. Most steam games work REALLY WELL on Linux.

I don't think I saw anyone here mention Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix (obviously free) or WindowsFX and LinuxFX (paid). Those are all pretty cool in my opinion.

Have you considered steamOS? It runs a fair number of games and the Linux kernel.

OpenSuse Tumbleweed is easy to use and configure

I highly recommend trying Manjaro. I haven't moved past Windows 7, so I can't compare doesn't to Win 10/11, but it's the only Linux distro I've found that was Close Enough (TM) to Windows to make it possible for me to switch.

Like any Linux, things aren't going to Just Work (TM) as often as in Windows, but this is the closest I've gotten.