Which distro as a second choice?

[Trynna3]

OK, I have been having LMDE for a while and I am quite OK with that. Ubuntu on the second partition but not using it much. That is the laptop as in my footnote.
I also have an AIO HP ProOne 600 G5 21.5-in All-in-One Business PC that came with Win10, with upgraded RAM to 32GB, will swap the HDD for nvme and instead of HDD will be sata SSD for data, the computer has spaces for both.

I am wondering whether I should stick with LMDE or try something else?
What would be your choices? Something easy to use that doesn't need many tweaks. I plan to have a VM with Windoze in it, as there is one software that only works on Win or Mac and I don't want to mess up with wines or bottles (not too familiar with those yet). I have a VM in the laptop so I have some experience with that. Or should I try the Bottles, instead of VM?

I am not a distro hopper, I have a life D), so something that I will be likely happy with once set up. Stable, reliable, compatible with a lot of stuff. Some mentioned Zorin. Should I try it, or something else? I don't do gaming, but I have some games in a website from previous years that work with Windoze and I might like to play them again, too. Just simple HOG or adventure, nothing too hardware demanding, I played them when I had Win7.

 

[Brickwizard]

the choice is yours that machine should run any distribution,a few a tad lighter than Ubunt and Mint22, are

Mint LMDE [but looks exactly the same as mint 22]
Parrot home or MX- Linux both a little more secure than Mint [MX has a leaning to office use]
Peppermint [once a clone of mint now a stand alone light weight and faster than most
Debian stable with driver pack [this is the base distribution for all above except for peppermint]
all above will feel familiar and terminal commands you should have picked up in most cases are the same for all

my advice is you steer clear of Pop OS and pen-testing [hacking] distributions as they are often difficult to get working

 

[CaffeineAddict]

Here's an interesting list:

6 Linux Distros to Watch Out for in 2025

Some great Linux distributions are expected to be released in 2025. Here's what you should keep an eye out for.

news.itsfoss.com

 

[dos2unix]

Fedora Linux

An innovative platform for hardware, clouds, and containers, built with love by you.

fedoraproject.org

 

[Raluxs]

Many have forgoten Mageia Linux , derivative from mandrake linux. Easy to install, very good harware driver support and in my opinion one of the best support for different languages.
Mageia Linux

 

[KGIII]

bottles

I've been toying with Bottles lately. (I'm revisiting some old video games.)

It has been pretty painless. I did have to look up one issue but that was quickly figured out. I probably could have figured it out on my own but looking it up was easier. Once that was resolved, the rest has been intuitive and effective. In my case, I'm not running anything too complicated. It's just Fallout and Fallout 2.

Anyhow, if you're happy with LMDE then you can use that on your other computer. You don't need to pick something else. As you're already familiar with it, it'd be fairly easy for you to do.

I will also mention that WINE isn't that complicated and there are tools that make it easier. I have it installed just in case I need it for my retro gaming adventure.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I will also mention that WINE isn't that complicated and there are tools that make it easier.

I second that, most recent stable wine is v10.0 and it is able to run literary anything.
95% of games I have run fine with wine 10.0.
But wine is not for games only, it will run any Windows programs as long as you commit to adjust some setting if it does not.

 

[KGIII]

I second that, most recent stable wine is v10.0 and it is able to run literary anything.

I have been told, but have no personal experience, that WINE can sometimes run old Windows software better than the current versions of Windows. Again, I haven't tested this. I'm not sure how I would test it, though I'm sure someone mentioned some examples somewhere online.

Also, as an aside, I've also been told that LibreOffice works better on some old MSFT Office documents better than Office does, including supporting more of the ODT spec. That one has been brought up on Slashdot and HN multiple times. Again, I have no experience with this personally.

But, if you haven't done so already, get Bottles up and running. The Flatpak is easy to install and keep updated.

 

[Mike-W0BTU]

I have been told, but have no personal experience, that WINE can sometimes run old Windows software better than the current versions of Windows.

I can verify that. We occasionally run XP Pro in Virtualbox, and it runs much faster.

Reason being, Windows XP Pro will only use 2 cores. But Virtualbox gets around that by distributing the load across all four (in my case).

 

[Trynna3]

Thank you all, so far.
I have had a dig in the AI and found out that the VM is safer as it isolates stuff (Virtualbox even safer than QEMU/KVM using the Linux's own kernel), Wine or Bottles are less secure.
I'll give it a go on my learning bitch as that one doesn't have any sensitive info there yet.

 

[Trynna3]

I can verify that. We occasionally run XP Pro in Virtualbox, and it runs much faster.

Reason being, Windows XP Pro will only use 2 cores. But Virtualbox gets around that by distributing the load across all four (in my case).

That's encouraging. I used to play those not so demanding games on Win7. Is there some safe way to get an installation for this with a license these days?

 

[Mike-W0BTU]

That's encouraging. I used to play those not so demanding games on Win7. Is there some safe way to get an installation for this with a license these days?

Although I don't have any experience with newer versions of Windows, I simply used the boxed Microsoft Windows XP Pro disk that we purchased for computers (that I built) that are now running Linux.

Back then, a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) was not required to run XP. Hopefully, someone here can advise you about that.

 

[Trynna3]

Still not decided, having plenty of time. Came across Fedora Silverblue, that is of Redhat make and aqcuired by IBM a few years back. I like its security potential for being immutable and compartmentalised (like Android if I understand it right). But again, IBM is a corporation, RHEL is focusing more and more on the corporate world than individual users (also recent VMware changes under Broadcom corporate interests)... so I have doubts. I want something secure, long lasting, stable, that won't make me switch distro every couple years because someone ditched support for packages or the whole distro (like Ubuntu is known to abandon things).

 

[The Duck]

I want something secure, long lasting, stable, that won't make me switch distro every couple years because someone ditched support for packages or the whole distro (like Ubuntu is known to abandon things).

Dream on on that and good luck on that want.
I used to want the same thing than reality kicked in.

As the kernel changes so does the support with certain software and driver packages.
Took me awhile to realize and accept this but it's just the way it is and I reluctantly accepted it.

Want security give this a look although be willing to learn it's ways.

EasyOS Home — All categories

Here's the amazing thing about this Linux distro.

Totally isolated from drives

The boot menu has an option "Copy session to RAM & disable drives", which boots to a desktop with power of administrator (root) in all respects except totally isolated from the drives of the PC. This is an alternative to using containers, and is intended to be even more secure than containers. An introduction is here.

Read the whole page.

Ultra-secure web browsing

EasyOS - Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

www.forum.puppylinux.com

Most folks that bad mouth these type of Linux distros are arm chair users and have never actually installed and used these type of Linux distros.

Be willing to learn their ways or you will not have a good first experience with them.

Yes there is a learning curve although that can be accomplished if one is willing to learn their ways.