As far as toy computers go (as opposed to a lengthy career in mainframes) I'm a Windows (since v1.0) user who started out on DOS (v1.0). I've never used UNIX or Linux but I'm thinking it might be a good time to switch. I use Joplin extensively, probably 90% of what I do is done with Joplin, Firefox for reading the news and digiKam for photo collection (it supports only Linux on Intel apparently so I'd need a version that runs on Intel silicon). I'd need a basic photo editor (I currently use paint.net but have looked at Gimp which is, as another user politely put it, challenging). I'd need a video player but not an editor. My needs are therefore pretty basic and I would like to start with a version that is close to plug-and-play rather than having to wade through mounds of installation scripts. So, is there a good version for a beginner?
I’m assuming this is a typo but it’s worth double checking, do you mean Apple Silicon? Known as arm64 as a CPU architecture type? Are you using a recent Mac?
Otherwise, you’re going to get a lot of what comes down to simply opinion. Tackling this objectively, I’d recommend trying Ubuntu simply because it’s the most popular desktop Linux OS, as well as heavily used on servers. For all the criticisms in advance I can predict people would give, I’d also recommend other options like Mint (More community focused but based on Ubuntu), Debian (What Ubuntu itself is based on), or other stuff, like Fedora (no relation to the other 3), OpenSuse (also no relation to the other 3), and when you’re feeling more experimental, Arch. A lot of Linux users will say distrohopping at the start is part of the experience as you try to find something that aligns to your values, practicality, or both.
There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s more like choosing a Pokémon. Some will specialise in different ways and generally all of them will be capable of winning a battle with the right master. Alternatively, it’s more like choosing in Mortal Kombat; I don’t care what little variations the characters might have if I’m going to just go for the downwards leg swipe & grab every single time, keep things basic!
Given how you’ve described GIMP, I’d suggest you try Pinta as a replacement for Paint .NET - they even share some of the same code (although the split was 15 years ago, they’ve diverged heavily since). There’s recently a 3.1 beta which fixes a few odd problems with the recent development work on GTK4, should you try 3.0 and find it a bit lacking (relating to zoom operations mostly). https://www.pinta-project.com/
For video players, you will find no shortage of choice, VLC remains reliable as always, and other stuff exists like MPV. Almost every setup will give you a basic video player by default anyway, and the rest are easily acquired.
In reality, your use cases as described sound like generally anything would go at a technical level, they’re not demanding requirements at all. The rest is mostly just UI and support commitments.
What they have is “Linux Intel AppImage” so I’d assumed they meant Linux running on Intel CPU based machines. They also have “macOS Intel 10.15” which I assume means an Apple MacOS version that uses an Intel CPU. I haven’t used Apple since the Apple II. I’ve seen a few mentions of Ubuntu and Mint as being good but what “good” is I am unsure. As with everything else, there will likely be 100 different opinions and what is “best” will depend upon how familiar the person is with that version. I’m looking to buy a machine with it preinstalled. When I plug in all my cables and turn it on I want to see a pretty screen with a bunch of pretty icons and one should show me my network (or at least something asking for IP details) rather than having to read a 500-page manual to learn how to create a three page script in ancient Sanskrit to configure it. 
The manual I will read later once I figure out how to connect to the internet and download it. Provided connecting to the internet doesn’t require a 200-page manual. 
Intel in this context refers to the architecture from the 8086 days, known as X86.
X86 which then became X86_64 when AMD licensed 64bit extensions back to Intel, keeping them in a dependency to the other for 20 years since.
So, it’ll run on the vast majority of Intel/AMD systems which would be typical in desktops, it’s not specifically Intel, it’s meant in the context of X86_64 which 99% of desktop/laptops are.
For the rest, Ubuntu and Mint being “good” is usually by the context of user friendly for people like yourself. You wouldn’t go wrong with either. The major differences come mostly down to preselected packages since Mint and Ubuntu are in essence the same thing, but the Mint community only focuses on desktop users like themselves whereas Ubuntu is a commercialised distribution like RHEL, so splits needs on servers, robotics, and in places where people might not see value, saying this, I don’t think that matters much practically, and I prefer some commercial backing myself because it’s indirectly covering stuff like security fixes that I’d rather people were paid to do rather than did as community work. OTOH, if you’ve experience going back to DOS, I’d see those extra places as probably nice to haves incase your needs ever did change, but there’s nothing stopping Linux Mint being used for developer type work, just that you’d probably not use it on a server directly.
Ultimately, the only distributions that would require practising your penmanship in ancient lexicons are meme distributions, beta distributions, or things like Arch or Gentoo where looking up installation guides is kind of the whole point of them (they go a completely different approach that a lot of people like, but I cannot personally recommend for a first time user, save that for when you’re a bit more confident) - and even then, it comes down to mostly knowing the ecosystem and having confidence in what you’re doing moreso than these are hard to use environments by themselves. Arch runs the Steam Deck!
Ultimately, why not run one in a Virtual Machine and try 
- you’d probably be surprised if you’ve never used Linux to find out a lot of distributions run completely fine in memory from the USB stick that installs them. You can browse the internet and watch Youtube from the USB without ever installing it, anything you do is just lost as the OS only exists in RAM. It’s a portable on the go incognito mode for the entire OS. (You can also install to USBs permamently so changes are persistent, but I’d discourage it).
OK. I’ve got Joplin installed in Ubuntu on the Oracle virtual machine. This is looking pretty good other than there are some things that my eyes have trouble with. I have problems with bright white screens but I’ve got a lot of them turned dark now and most of Joplin is dark as well. There may be limitations on what can be done in a virtual environment. Things like menus are still white but I’ll play around and see what happens. At least it’s running (but virtually oh, so, slow) and I have something to play with. Thanks so much for the advice, Joplin runs, Firefox runs, Now I can start to explore.
When I used Virtualbox, I'd always increase the default GPU VRAM to 256mb from like 16mb. I never actually tried with just 16, but I can't imagine it's helping.
There's also a quirk with Virtualbox on Linux where you're supposed to install custom drivers to integrate better. This is done by using the Virtualbox GUI to emulate inserting a software CD into the machine that then loads custom kernel modules to boost the compatibility.
I love and hate Virtualbox for those reasons. It's very neat tech, but the difference in experience using it for real is probably huge based on just how limited the core graphics tech ends up being. There's not much better for free on Windows though, I'd recommend it still.
Endeavour is brilliant, Arch based but totally plug and play and rolling too
My 81 year old mum (not her age but her complete un-tech-iness that I wish to emphasise )has been using it for years now, I have zero stressed phone calls Like I did when she had Windows
She has the XFCE version, but the KDE Plasma is nice too (they have 8 desktops to choose from)
Using the ARM versions in virtualBox is sposed to be faster, makes sense
I have windows in my Virtualbox on my linux boot.
try Pinta on linux its a fork of paint.net
gthumb has a very basic editor
as does the viewer in Shotwell (more like Calibre for photos)
I started to use xnviewmp for organising photos as its linux and windows and I have to use both unfortunately, but had some probs
Parole is a nice simple vid player, for more complexity VLC
ONLYOFFICE is a good office suite (I think its just nicer IMO interface from Libreoffice?)
You cant go wrong with Linux these days, so easy, nothing like it used to be (unless you want it to be of course)
It's not really a quirk, as the reason why those drivers are separated is because they're not open source and are only licensed for personal use, so be careful if you intend to utilise them for work purposes.
When it comes to VM software on Windows, VirtualBox is really slow when compared to Hyper-V or even VMWare, but it's probably the most user friendly solution that is both free and (mostly) open source.
After playing around for a few hours I ordered a new “mini” PC to use. This virtual stuff is really handy, but slow, and running from USB even slower, but both have convinced me that Linux is worthwhile. I can’t dump Windows completely, I’ve got Win 11, Win 10 and I still have some old stuff that only runs on an ancient Win 7 box but it’s looking like Linux could easily be my main system once I get comfortable with it.
I would check out Mint for Linux.
Krita As a replacement for paint.
Vlc for playing media.
One of the important things about choosing a Linux distribution that people sometimes overlook is compatibility with devices in your home like your printers. Linux Mint does a very good job of detecting and working with a wide variety of printers. That is not true of all distributions.
If you choose a distribution like Ubuntu you can consider or should consider switching the desktop to cinnamon. It provides a look and feel similar to Microsoft Windows regarding the menus. You can load it and give it a try and if you don't like it you can go back to the default Ubuntu desktop.
Here is the command Syntax for loading the cinnamon desktop on Ubuntu. After it's installed you still need to choose it from the login screen there is an icon usually in the lower right corner that lets you choose your desktop.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment
I have been very happy with Mint as a windows replacement. Good printer and scanner support, and good community support. As a long time windows user it is very comfortable and being that it is based upon Ubuntu there is lots of software packaged and available for it.
I am using Pinta as a replacement for Paint.NET
Pinta was forked from an early version of Paint.Net and is not nearly as full featured. But for simple edits, cropping, resizing it is a comfortable replacement and what I use for my daily editing needs.
I agree with the other commenter that Krita is much easier than Gimp and quite full featured.
Yup. I completely overlooked that. I’ve only got a Brother mono laser from about 10 years ago and a Canon flatbed scanner that’s probably the same age. I am not overly concerned about those as I’m going to hang on to my Win 10 Surface Pro and my Win 11 laptop and both will handle printing and scanning. Thank for the cinnamon hint, that might make the migration a bit easier.
must look into Krita!
Some time back when I was looking for an image editor/paint package I downloaded Krita, Gimnp and paint-dot-net. Of the three, PDN covered everything I needed to do without too much extra that I didn’t need. Gimp I gave up on after a few minutes and Krita was eliminated as soon as I tried PDN. I’ll give Krita another look though, it may be different from what it was and while Pinta looks quite different from PDN, the keyboard shortcuts are what I’m used to.
When you install Ubuntu it gives you the option to load non-free drivers did you select that option?
Also, brother has Linux drivers on their website that you can load for their printers.
On that I’d agree, I keep trying to use HyperV and hating the experience everytime. Who the hell has time to figure out how to compile custom Pulseaudio Sinks and reconfigure XRDP to support funny vsocks and the instructions will change randomly overly the years until woops what X11 backend? And there goes your “enhanced session” support that was never that good when it worked. At least 24.04 briefly has PipeWire with a HyperV sink by default, for the brief time it remains the latest LTS.
For the majority of people trying things for fun and not work, Virtualbox is the go to every time lol. The only reason I say its quirky is because it’s using DKMS to do its job more than anything else. Usability wise, slow perhaps, but hard to beat for desktop use on Windows.
If you still want to look at Pinta - I highly recommend changing back to standard menus so you can find stuff (like PDN).
Click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines on the right) –> view –> Show/Hide –> Menu Bar
You then need to restart Pinta and suddenly the top menu where you would normally find all the functions you are looking for are back. I have no idea why exactly they made this change to remove the top menu but the outcry was so strong from the community that someone put this option in to put the menu back.
It still is a pale comparison of PDN but with this change it is comfortably similar.
Thanks. That makes a big difference! I’m doing a bit of playing with Krita (in Windows until my new box arrives) and compared to PDN or Pinta it seems really awkward but that is probably just because I’m familiar with PDN. New box won’t be here until Friday so until then I’ll keep reading and taking lots and lots of Joplin notes and tips on what’s what and how to do things. Looks like there’s a lot of stuff that will require the command line and the Linux equivalent of batch files to run but Joplin will help keep these tips and tricks organized.