I have a Dell Venue Pro 11 that I would like to install another OS instead of Windows 10, what do you recommend that would be compatible, i.e. Ubuntu, Linux, Chrome (If possible)?

Gone away from Linux due to time & annoyance of using 2 OS', but Ubuntu & Mint are about the closest to windows & easiest to install/use. YOu can install them on a USB stick & boot/run them without installing or removing windows for a test drive.
Try YUMI - put multiple OS install .isos on USB, as well as some handy utilities that run from BIOS/EFI

Neither are difficult to use vs windows, but it gets annoying to remember where things are & what they are called.
I actually find it easier to use command line on linux because I don't use it very often in windows & don't confuse commands as much. That's mostly with Raspberry PI/Beaglebone or my Unraid media server at home, though.

Linux mint with the cinnamon UI is what I mainly use. I have a dual boot setup on both my laptop and desktop, but I rarely use windows.

Been reading and leaning towards Linux Mint so far. I'll give it a shot tonight when I get home.

I've played around with several flavors of Linux. They are OK, but IMO Windows is just easier to deal with on a daily basis as far as software and device compatibility.

I put Linux on old Win XP PCs and laptops, since XP no longer gets security updates, but other than that, it's not worth the hassle, to me.

quote:

Originally posted by rusbro:
I've played around with several flavors of Linux. They are OK, but IMO Windows is just easier to deal with on a daily basis as far as software and device compatibility.

I put Linux on old Win XP PCs and laptops, since XP no longer gets security updates, but other than that, it's not worth the hassle, to me.

Except...

Except if your work has you doing more than the typical "office" apps and Internet.

The recent update to Windows 10 (build 1903) has broken a lot of stuff I use, and I've had to upgrade, download, reconfigure and otherwise spend needless hours tweaking rather than being productive.

I use (and have used since 1984) a Mac as my primary, personal computer. Even though Apple has botched a number of things since the Mac's heyday, it's still head and shoulders better than Windows.

That said, I run a number of virtual machines so that I can test out different OSes. MX-Linux, elementaryOS, CentOS, Mint and PeppermintOS are the ones I currently have installed. At their heart, they generally use a Debian core (Ubuntu is the most noticeable in this camp, on which Mint is based, as are many others) or some issue of Red Hat (Fedora, CentOS). There are a few that are polyglot, but more for experimentation and not daily use.

Go to DistroWatch for the latest on all things *nix. There is an ever-updated list of the most popular distros there. At this writing, the top five are

• MX Linux
• Manjaro
• Mint
• Ubuntu
• elementary

Mx 18 Linux - all graphical - long term support - no viruses - no interminable " updates " disabling your computer - all FREE .
best .

I would probably go with a dual boot instead of jettisoning W10. There may be some Win stuff that you need but haven't thought about yet? I have an Ubuntu partition for testing .Net core compatibility. (That's the MS making things work across Linux/Win/OSx) It's pretty bullet proof so far but I'm only 3 months into testing. I am having a few issues with W10 updates but they're very minor.

I've been using Linux Mint Mate since 2009, when I switched from WinXP. I see no reason to try any other Linux distro or Linux Mint desktop such as Cinnamon. Linux Mint Mate just works. Always has.

But there are just some things that absolutely require Windows. Running any *.exe file for instance to upgrade firmware on an electronic device, be it camera or whatever. Sure I could install Wine, Winetricks, Play on Linux, Crossover or some such Windows emulation software on Linux Mint ... or dual boot. But, after running Linux Mint for 10 years, I find I only very rarely need Windows for anything. So I have a laptop, cheapest I could find with Win10 ... everything else, desktop and a couple of other laptops have Linux Mint and only Linux Mint.