Oh well that’s great news. I would still do a little legwork, like searching “DistroOfChoice on Intel Mac” just to make sure you don’t run into any unforeseen issues.

If you’re on an M-series chip, Apple silicon as opposed to the older intel based Macs, your only viable option is Asahi Linux, which is specifically made to run on Apple silicon. If you would like to try this out, I have no promises that you won’t brick your machine. I highly recommend you watch some tutorials and read some documentation about the Asahi install process to see if it is something you’re willing to attempt.

So, the other poster is correct. You need a new non-Apple device if you intend to use Linux freely like the rest of us.

There’s good news though. Linux runs wonderfully on older hardware. Depending on what level of gaming you intend to do, you could get a decent used gaming laptop with a discrete GPU, or even a Thinkpad with integrated graphics for fairly cheap. Carefully consider your hardware choices based on your needs. If you take this route, the world is your oyster, and I highly recommend doing some distro-hopping in your first year.

Linux mint is a great place to start. As far as I am aware the only proprietary software involved is multimedia codecs and Nvidia drivers, but you would want those on any distribution, because the user experience without them is severely lacking.

Fedora is great, but it won’t install the multimedia codecs for you like Linux mint will. You’ll need to start learning how to use the terminal straight away. I consider Fedora to be an intermediate level distribution, unlike Linux Mint or Ubuntu which are very beginner friendly. Fortunately there are plenty of step by step guides and support forum posts to help you through things if you’re willing to do the work.

Arch based distros like CachyOS, EndeavourOS and the like, will challenge you. But that challenge will teach you a lot. I would say after getting comfortable in something like Linux Mint after a few months, give EndeavourOS a try if you want to develop your knowledge.

That brings me to an important point. Back up your files. With either a secondary SSD, or an external HDD/SSD, literally drag and drop the files you can’t bear to lose. Linux is very easy to wipe and reinstall, and hopping from distro to distro until you find your home can be a lot of fun, but having a safe backup so that you can do so without any worry of losing data, is extremely important.

Recommending Omarchy, or any distro based around a tiling window manager to a beginner is probably the best way to make sure they don’t use Linux. I can’t believe I have to keep saying this.

You’re not even trying to help, you’re just saying “I use Omarchy BTW”

I’m currently running CachyOS, where I installed Hyprland and ML4W dot files (basically a well refined set of config files for Hyprland) alongside KDE Plasma. ML4W (MyLinux4Work) has great YouTube videos detailing their installation process.

Hyprland, like i3, is pretty amazing to use once you get used to it, but sometimes it can break, so having the option of rock solid KDE right at the login screen is a nice bit of insurance.

CachyOS is based on Arch, so you’ll need to get cozy with updating and installing software, both from the repository and flatpak, via the terminal. If you’re not already comfortable with that, it’s a great opportunity to learn.

I guess I just don’t expect most beginners to want to read the breaking changes. Like when firmware packages recently changed, pacman paru yay and octopi don’t tell you about those breaking changes. You just get an error when you try to update. If you read the notes, you know to uninstall the old package, install the new ones, problem solved. What about using meld to merge pacnew? I don’t expect someone in their first week of Linux to figure it out. Even if they can learn it, I don’t expect a lot of users to want to.

Maybe I need to have more faith in people? I stuck to Ubuntu derived distros for about a year before I took on Fedora, and then eventually EndeavourOS where I learned the ins and outs of managing an Arch based system. I learned a lot, and I learned it gradually, which worked well for me, so I don’t try to throw other new users in the deep end of the pool.

I am a cachy user, and this is the worst possible advice. Arch based distros are not for brand new Linux users.

I wonder if it could be a state actor? I can imagine that the powers that be in MANY countries could be motivated to keep users away from operating system software that isn’t spyware.