Suggestion: Add beginner-friendly setup level (Beginner, Advanced, Expert)

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#13,002 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Domain
desktop

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. First determine whether the installer is part of Cinnamon and clarify the scope and ownership of the proposed Beginner, Advanced, and Expert setup flow. Done would require an agreed design and implementation plan before coding begins.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

FEATURE REQUEST

Dear Linux Mint Team,

First of all, thank you for your hard work on providing such a clean and stable Linux experience. As someone who appreciates both freedom and usability, I have a humble suggestion that may significantly help new users.

### Problem
During the installation process, many beginners feel overwhelmed by terms such as:

  • ext4, ext3, swap
  • sda, sda1, EFI, grub
  • partitioning types
    These are important, yes, but extremely technical for first-time users switching from Windows or macOS.

### Suggestion
Introduce a simple welcome screen during installation that asks:

Who are you?
Beginner: I'm new to Linux. Let Linux Mint choose the best settings for me automatically.
Advanced: Ask me about partitioning, bootloader options, and privacy settings.
Expert: I want full control. Don't make decisions for me.

🛈 You can always change these settings after installation.

### What this solves:

  • Makes the first-time installation less scary.
  • Gives users confidence to try Linux.
  • Shows that Mint understands and welcomes all experience levels.
  • Reduces risk of incorrect partitioning or bootloader installation.

A small addition like this could have a big impact on adoption.

Thank you for considering this!

Kind regards,
A Linux Mint user

Dominant language
JavaScript
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Merged PRs (30d)
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