Things to ponder while waiting for Win 10CE to stabilize

I'm in no rush to install the "creators update", I'll happily wait for all/most of the bugs to get squashed first. Since I'll be doing a clean install anyways, I'm wondering if I should take the time to give Linux a go. I've played round with Mint before, but never bothered to fully commit and after the initial novelty wore off; back to Windows. I guess this time out I could give myself a month or so - gotta imagine it'll take at least that long to get a stable Windows. And who knows, Linux just might stick this time.

So, what's the best builds nowadays? Mint, Kubuntu - keeping in mind I loathe shell/terminal/CLI (the reason I dropped Mint the last time was that getting my wifi running just reeked of effort)
The other thing I'm wondering is, how well does Win 10 run off a HDD? If I stick with Linux, it'll be my primary OS installed on my SSD and I might just install Win 10 on my HD as a dualboot for the occasional game I play.

Cheers

 

Ubuntu is typically a good choice for those who want Linux with full GUI functionality. I've used it on several occasions and never had to touch the terminal.

 

Tried the new Kubuntu... crashed alot, and the Plasma desktop was just weird
Went back to good ol Mint. Was working fine. Except I was getting no joy using Wine to get any of my Windows apps to run. I also sadly found out the my laptop battery life gets cut in half compared to Windows.

 

Feel your pain, OP.
I also had Mint on my old laptop. It was fun to poke around, and do some light tasks on it, but once I had to use my laptop for real work, I had to reinstall Windows 7 on it, because engineering programs I use run only on Windows. And before someone suggests Wine, I think it's not wise to do so, because you want your engineering programs to get as much performance as your system can give and to be as stable as they can be.

My favorite Linux these days is Mint Cinnamon. It's easy to use if you come from Windows, even some WinKey shortcuts work, i.e. Win+E launches File Explorer, just like in Windows.
Second favorite would be Mint MATE Edition or Ubuntu MATE. I have a soft spot for ol' Gnome 2, so that's the reason I like them.

If you want to just fool around in Windows 10, HDD should be fine. Not very good for proper work, but for simple tasks should be fine. Depending on the size of your SSD, you could partition it to have both Linux and Windows on it.

 

Cinnamon is a pretty nice desktop. I definitely found it easy to adapt. I just can't go back to 2 hrs. of battery life though. From my reading it doesn't sound like any Linux builds are very power effiicent. That and the fact there's enough Win only programs I use (seriously, why isn't there any decent music manager/player programs for Linux?) means it's back into the MS breach…

 

Try just regular old Ubuntu instead of Kubuntu