Not long ago and after months of being encouraged to do so by a friend who is really tech savvy, I switched over to Linux after years of always being frustrated by Microsoft products. So far my experience using Mint has been positive. I never have blue screens, I never have rogue updates that all of a sudden my computer is performing slower because of it, and my older computers run fast on it since it is lightweight and what not. The absence of "bloatware" is evident and I am one of those people that believe that Microsoft intentionally makes things run slower in an effort to not just make you be forced to buy more things made by them, but also to make you feel like you need a new computer every couple of years.
A friend of mine who has more money than sense recently bought yet another brand new laptop and he was just going to destroy his old one due to security precautions but I convinced him to wipe it and let me have it for super cheap, and he agreed.
I don't NEED another laptop but I wanted to try out another Linux distribution that I have been hearing about from other people called Pop_OS.
While reading this keep in mind that I am not a superuser at all and barely know how to use the terminal at all so please don't get upset about my opinions since I do indeed do not know what TF I am talking about outside of a very novice perspective.
The reason why I am keen on Linux is because like most people I don't really use my computer for anything particularly advanced. I use it for accessing the internet, for saving photos to, for using various messengers, and for doing "Office" documents. Linux is just as capable of doing all of these things as a Windows computer is and the only downside is that gaming on it can be pretty tough since very little software is written with it in mind.
Since I am not much of a gamer this hasn't been an issue with me at all.
One of the major disadvantages of Pop! from my perspective is that it is not Mint, which is what I have grown accustomed to and this is very common with nay OS. If we are just to look at Mac vs Windows users we can see that users of one have a very difficult time using the other because we are all used to what we are used to. Pop! is not Mint, and although it is similar it does have some differences just from the UI and overall experience and this is to be expected. I can normally navigate and get things done pretty easily and this is fine, but overall I prefer Mint and think that most people who are transitioning form Windows would prefer Mint. I still recommend Mint for people making the jump for the first time.
For one thing the omnipresent icons hovering in the middle of the screen annoy me. But just like anything else in a Linux environment, you can change this, you just have to look up how to do so.
It's a minor thing, but by default those icons are always going to be there until you change it and it isn't as simple as just right clicking on them and selecting "go away." I've been using Windows for so long I am used to a "start" button in the bottom left and this is something that Mint does by default. You can get Pop! to do this as well, but I simply haven't bothered to do so yet because my Pop! computer is something that is small and I only use it when traveling.
There is, according to some people, issue with various graphical cards working or not working with Pop! and according to the guy who put it on my machine for me, my new computer was one of those... so that kind of sucks. There's nothing worse than trying to switch over to Linux and having it not want to dance with the hardware. I suppose this is just part of the open-source community though and for reason that I do not know, Mint seems to have broader support or just simply working "right out of the box" than Pop! does.
I have noticed though that Pop! functions very quickly and is a very lightweight OS. This is especially true if you are like me and deactivate all the various cool-looking graphics that don't really serve that much of a purpose in my mind. The computer I am running it on is basically a potato-level Dell that was made 4 years ago and everything happens very quickly on it. It also appears to use very little of the battery and I am yet to need to have it plugged in in order to use it. However, I do recognize that this may have a lot to do with the various workings of the actual hardware, and is not specific to the OS itself.
All software is installed via the "Pop Shop" and all software in there has a user rating and has been approved by the community to some degree. As with any Linux OS, there isn't much of a fear of malware of any sort, and this is something that I quite enjoy about Linux in a general sense.
My bottom line at this point though is that if you are switching from Windows for the very first time, this probably isn't the distribution that you should aspire towards. Mint is far more beginner friendly IMO and you should do that if you are thinking of switching and honestly, I think you should be thinking of switching. Once Windows became "free" I feel as though it really has gone down the tubes and since there isn't anything that is truly free, you should be worried about Windows being distributed for nothing. A friend once told me "if you are getting a product for nothing, it is because YOU are the product." Windows is almost certainly collecting as much data as possible about you in order to remain one of the most valuable companies on the planet despite giving away their product for $0.
With Linux distributions, there is no actual company, so there is no real reason for the OS to ever be collecting anything from you.
My honest opinion is use Mint for your first ever transition operating system, and then maybe use Pop! for a computer that you are thinking of throwing out because it is performing too slow.