Mint for most users. OpenSUSE for more technically competent users.

Linux Mint. It was specifically created for this use case. It just works. That's it.

debian. friendly and large community, no weird antifeatures like ubuntu

I suggest Linux Mint, it just works. I have moved over 10 people to it in the last 2 years. Basically, giving life to their old laptops. Never heard a complaint! Here's the latest one, my niece: https://mastodon.social/...

Fedora

Hannah Montana Linux

To friends I usually recommend the distro I run myself, as I'm most familiar with it and troubleshoot it the best.

If it's someone who won't get constant tech support from me, I'd probably go with Mint.

As a power user Ubuntu sucks, but if you've never used Linux before it could also be a good starter distro. The vast amount of tutorials online are made for Ubuntu.

I'd say Mint as many others. But any major distro (except Arch) would do the trick if you're willing to learn.

The “want to learn” is gonna carry a lot of weight here but I think and arch based distro like cachy works well for this. Cachy was my first distro and I really wanted to learn so it gave we a working starting place from where I could tinker and replace parts one at a time until they fit my liking. If I were to reinstall today I’d do plain arch since I know what I want and don’t need Cachy’s defaults anymore. Obviously everyone has their preferences but I think cachy is a really solid approachable distro for beginners, there’s a reason it just passed steamOS to claim the throne of most used distro on the steam hardware survey

Learn basic desktop Linux? Mint. Learn how Linux works and really interested in more of the ins and outs? Arch (Artix if you want systemdless) Learn how Linux works in great depth and are very committed? Gentoo.

Arch
(this is a joke, do not use Arch unless you crave pain)

Everyone has their preferences. That's why there isn't one answer. The problem is almost every distro compares themselves to Windows, and so they all have the same "pros" from that perspective. Personally I have 2 recommendations, and I'll tell you which ones and why:

1. Zorin: Makes a good mesh of familiarity and ease of use. They maintain a database of different apps and will automatically point you to the most appropriate option. They greatly simplify the process of installing and using WINE. I happen to just like GNOME (looks more modern than KDE), and I like their modified version of it. Comes with a lot of what I consider "obvious" tweaks "out of the box" so you don't have to figure out how to implement them. Their GNOME is also super outdated though, so some extensions don't work.

2. Bazzite: If you want a console/PC hybrid, this is probably the best way to get it. If you just want a desktop gaming PC you can get that also. Either way it comes with a lot of gaming utilities pre-installed. Best of all is their "Bazzite Portal" which makes a bunch of common apps and tweaks that are otherwise complicated to install, easy, with the click of a button. There's also an app for updates that upgrades everything all in one place, with the click of a button, and also will run automatically in the background if your system is idle.

But if you need support I hope you're comfortable using corporate shithole platforms like Github, Discord, and Reddit, because if you don't want to, they don't give a shit.

I started my wife on fedora about 10 years ago, and my kids have grown up using fedora

I use and recommend CachyOS. PikaOS is cool too. So try either of those. I hear good things about Fedora as well. Whatever you do, use something with the KDE desktop environment. It's the best.

If you want to go rolling, try Tumbleweed or Slowroll from openSUSE, the former is right on the bleeding edge and the latter rolls a bit behind. They get a lot more testing than Arch so are less likely to have problems. The advantage of rolling is that you don't have a periodic big update. If rolling doesn't rock your boat, try Fedora or Mint. Fedora is more up to date.

The thing that will influence how you feel about a distro more than anything is the choice of desktop, so try a few out, at least Plasma, Gnome, Xfce, and Cinnamon. They can all be made to look different to a greater or lesser extent.

Edit: You can even test 100s of them out on distrosea.

People keep saying Mint, and now that it runs on Wayland at least they will be able to watch a movie without screen tearing. But I do feel like KDE Plasma is a much better first impression, since it doesn't look like a desktop from 2013 (no offense), and has so many customization options that showcase the freedom of a linix desktop.

So for gamers, Bazzite, otherwise Fedora KDE or something

CTT had a video about it I found quite nice: https://youtu.be/hnNjFysodRo In shortv

• if you want to game: bazzite
• if you are a power user: cachy
• for office/regular computer usage: mint

I'd go for bazzite. Clean, stable, user-friendly, gamer-friendly.

My number one recommendation is Fedora. Extremely stable, popular (so there are lots of q&a online), easy on resources. If you go Debian please don't go Ubuntu, its buggy for some people (me included) and snaps are 💩. If you want Debian go Linux Mint, which is very beginner friendly.

Wife of ten years, I stuck her on Ubuntu 16.04 back in the day. She ignored it and used a laptop. A few years later? Mint with Mate. She started on it long enough to set the background to the Windows 10 background, then went back to a Windows boot, since I dual booted. Last year, new computer, Fedora KDE, again dual booted. Haven't seen her in Windows yet. Me? I hop all over the place, but our HTPC and her laptop are now Fedora KDE.

There are 3 answers and only 3 answers:

• New and casual users: Mint.
• Gamers: Bazzite.
• Power users: just try a bunch and see which one(s) you like, you people are exactly why there's are so many distros.

Anything but Ubuntu, honestly. I have a few friends who chose Ubuntu as their first distro and after using it for a couple of weeks went back to Windows. Some of them still refuse to give Linux a second chance.

Ubuntu or Mint is quite okay, I have used both of them in the past and set it up for a friend with little money, little time, and very little PC expertise. Worked perfectly for them for over 10 years without a problem.

Today, if you can get a little help with setting up, I'd recommend Debian stable with either GNOME or KDE. It is more stable and has longer and better long term security support, which did become more important.

Also, it is now easy to set up with disk encryption, which matters for keeping private data secure on Laptops which can get lost or stolen.

Vanilla Debian or LMDE. Caveats are:

1. that you dont intend to seriously game on it, and
2. have at least 8GB RAM (for a smooth GNOME desktop experience).

Use system packages as much as you can and only use Flatpaks if you need the latest and greatest of a certain app (example being the LibreOffice suite for better document compatibility).

Learn how to backup your system with Timeshift and your data with Pika. You'll have a really wonderful system that you can will serve you well and at the same time be a good base to improve your Linux knowledge.

This is what worked for me when I first started. My workstation still runs Debian many years. Its rock solid and I have no reason to change to anything else.

My only regret its that I didn't move to Linux sooner. God luck on your journey.

If I'm forced to support it, Arch... It's really not that difficult to use, and I'll be damned if I have to remember all the Debian stuff 😂

Bazzite for people new to computers in general. CachyOS for long time Windows users.

Red Star OS

CachyOS or PikaOS. Nothing Fedora-based for god's sake

start with debian if you want a stable release update style or arch if you want a rolling release update style

the vast majority of other distros are just nonsense stacked on top of one of those two

most of the big distros that isn't true for are corporate (open suse, fedora, etc.) and should be avoided unless you have a pressing and specific reason

save yourself a headache and just start with debian or arch. what you learn with one of those two will be the most transferrable and they both have huge (comparatively) communities with well developed resources for learning and troubleshooting.

ZorinOS. Looks pretty and is easy to use for beginners.

If you want to learn Linux, install Gentoo. That'll give you a pretty good understanding of what's going on. It'll be an intense process though.

If you just want to install and use Linux, pick one of the usual suspects: Mint, Fedora, openSUSE Leap/Slowroll, whatever. If you come from Windows, picking KDE Plasma as your desktop environment (DE) is a good choice. Mint's Cinnamon should be good too. Picking a popular distro usually means troubleshooting is easier, since someone else out there most likely has the same issue you have, and documentation is more comprehensive.

Remember that many distros provide a live environment you can run from a USB stick. Try a couple with different DEs and see what fits your needs. Honestly, the distro doesn't matter that much, they all do the same thing, more or less. Maybe try to pick your DE first and then just go from there.

If you want a simple answer, pick Mint.

You're gonna get "this is my favourite distro and this is why it should be just fine for any purpose including ...what were we talking about again?"

Fir desktop use I personally think Fedora has the best balance between stability and being up-to-date, while staying fairly easy to use and with a large community. If the person wants something even harder to break and doesn't mind a bit of an extra learning curve, atomic variants like Silverblue are alo a nice pick. My cousin went for Silverblue and loved it.

I'd probably just stick with Ubuntu for now and mess around with desktop environments. Personally, I don't like Gnome. KDE might be alright for a win 10 replacement. XFCE is windows xp like. The list goes on and on.

As long as everything works (WiFi, sound, etc) then you can use the UI and get use to CLI tools.

Linux Mint or Zorin OS

It's Mint for beginners. Or openSUSE Leap, but they keep depending on su instead of sudo, so newcomers will get confused with this.

Debian based systems for systems you need more stable. Generally not a big concern for me unless you are setting up servers or really depend on specific software.

I wouldn't recommended Ubuntu, I would recommend something like mint if you're going that route. But Ubuntu is a safe feeling first choice and i get why people chose it. If you google a problem and just add the word Ubuntu generally speaking the google result or even googles ai summary has got you covered pretty good.

If you are more into gaming I would suggest something like bazzite, cachyos. Often they handle drivers for you super easily and comes with things like game scope too. Often you want more bleeding edge operating systems for gaming/newer hardware as updates seem to happen more frequently and with more noticeable improvements in the past 5 years.

If you just need a basic computer the choice doesn't really matter all that much its just kind of what looks good to you. You said its just for older computers so something like mint would be a fine choice in this scenario.

Generally speaking you are either picking a arch based system or a Debian based system. And all the distros are kind of the same, they just give you preinstalled software, technically you can pick any and get the features you wanted yourself.

Hopefully I didn't confuse you more or give you too much decision paralysis.

You seem to have already tried something and didn't liked it, what was it and why?

I feel most newcomers often overthink this question. You should pick something aimed at newcomers that's meant to be user friendly, that's the main idea behind most Ubuntu based distros, and why I have been recommending people to use Mint for almost two decades, and that's still my recommendation for new users.

There are lots of things to learn when migrating to Linux. The main one is to not expect it to be Windows. But most distros are essentially the same, their differences are mostly philosophical rather than technical, but philosophical differences can have technical impacts. For example, a distro with the philosophy that things need to be tested before given to users will have a smoother but outdated experience than one with the philosophy of latest is best, or for a more extreme example, a distro with the philosophy that your system should be declared as a configuration will require much more different kind of maintenance than one where it's more install things around to build your system.

Finally there's one thing that I think most new users don't realize, any distro can look like any other distro very easily. The difference between distros is not cosmetic, it's much more engrained into the core of how to use the distro, but most day-to-day stuff is identical. The graphical part of a Linux system is called a Desktop Environment (DE) or a Window Manager (WM), technically a DE is a full set of programs that includes a WM. I would strongly recommend you start with a DE, installing multiple DEs and playing around to figure out what you like is an excellent idea, personally I like Plasma even though I don't use it daily because I prefer tiling window managers (possibly not something to worry about now), but other people prefer Gnome, Cinnamon, etc, play around and figure out what you like, this will have a much larger impact in your experience than changing distro.

You mention hopping, but you don't say what you have already tried, what you dislike about them, and what you mainly want it for, or your hardware config.

Hopefully you have already settled on a Desktop Environment or WM) though?

• Ignore everyone who suggests ubuntu, mint, or debian; even though that will be many people (except for the debian suggestion, which is not a common suggestion, and it's bizarre that someone has already suggested that).

• Understand that most people will just suggest what they use, even if they have little experience with other distros, many of these people just went with what is marketed well, but they will often be adamant fans of it anyway.

• It's easier to remove ones that you do not like (for whatever reason), to reduce the options. That might be to do with: gui vs terminal focused, where they are from, their politics, commercialisation, their community attitude, ai, whatever. I would suggest trying to pick a base (arch, fedora, debian, ubuntu etc) and work from there. Something like the advanced search on https://distrowatch.com/ can help with that

look for screenshots of the distros you see here and choose the interface that interests you the best. or look up which one they use. i'm serious.

Sorry to say it, but if you've already found online opinions about what distros to use and what to avoid, you're just going to find the same thing here.

Bazzite and Nobara for newbies. NixOS is my true overall recommendation but you have to be a masochist to get through the steep learning curve.

Void.

On older PCs use Linux mint but I don't recommend it on newer PCs I have saw a lot of problems with them

I've been using MX for years, stable reliable Dedian distro, regardless of which kernel, KDE Plasma desktop keeps workflows clean & familiar. If I was a total newbie in 2026... I'd try ZORON... it's impossible to goose that up and can use ubuntu store.

I think their are many great options. But I do think a few shut be excluded at least in the beginning. Anything arch based I would not recommend you start on, Yes that includes CachyOS. They are great distros dont get me wrong. Also their is NixOS. And again a amazing distro but not something too start on. It is fundamentally so different then other distros it can be harder to fix issues if you are new.

Instead of giving you a "pick this" distro I will recommend you some flavors 😋. Most Ubuntu based distros are a good start as well as Fedora. Loads and loads of info online.

Maybe a odd choice but if I hat to recommend 1 distro. It is Opensuse Tumbleweed. She isn't the faster but she is a solid rolling release (so very updated) Distribution.

When I was looking into replacing W10 on my old laptop around 5 years ago, everyone on Reddit said Linux Mint. I ignored them and tried lots of different distros. I finally tested Mint, it worked so I installed it. I've been using it ever since. For me, I have Nvidia GPUs so Mint gets the correct driver without any hassle. It does have options for customising, but it's minimal which to me is useful if you have work to do. I have a standard set-up for my Mint desktops. Upon initial installation, Mint actually looks basic, simple and, to be honest, outdated. There are enough options to modernise it!

The only other one I use is Kubuntu (on a Huawei Matebook 13 2019) and that's for KDE's better screen scaling on my 2K 3:2 screen.

They are both easy to set up and get running.

It depends what the person wants to do, how "learning Linux" is interpreted and what it is installed on.

If someone is technically versed, likes commandline, wants to have the newest software and complete control and learn how Linux works, then something like EndeavourOS might be the right choice. If the focus is GUI tools only, maybe a laptop just to browse the web a bit and learn slowly what "this thing Linux" is all about, then something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu might be a good starting point, or even Fedora KDE. Is the person going to play games mostly, is experimenting a lot and wants to tap into the wild west of Linux, maybe Bazzite with its immutable concept.

There are a few more distributions I could recommend, for certain use cases. There is no single operating system that fits best for everyone.

Favourite, for beginners or for people who wanna learn?

That would be nixos, fedora kinoite (ublue main image) or anything you build up yourself a bit like debian or arch maybe

Ubuntu is a solid option to start, and stay. Llm's know it well, everything targets Ubuntu and the ecosystem covers server, workstation, IoT, containers and various architectures.

For non-corporate stuff I'm a fan of the antiX and MX ecosystems, Debian with rims on and a lot of user choice, control and toolkits to make things easy to manage.

I'd be wary of peeps saying 'distro XYZ is shit', try stuff and see what you think. Arch is a fragile restrictive toy ime, but loads seem to love it.

If it's just a basic workstation most distros likely fine, pick something you like the vibes of and see how you go.

Honestly? Gentoo. It's got a steep learning curve, but the docs are great and after your first install, you'll know more about Linux than most users.

@Grumpy404 Go for Linux Mint. You really need stability.
So many Linux OSes are unstable and can take a very long time to repair.
Linux Mint has the best hardware support while the underlying package manager
is the most supported of the bunch and you can explore from there.

For beginners stay away from these, from bad to worse:

• Controversial distros, Ubuntu and Manjaro (unfortunately, because I had fun using this)
• Breakaway distros, NixOS
• Niche distros, Red Star Linux, Alpine Linux, PostmarketOS, Artix, Hannah Montana Linux
• Downsized or Abandoned distros, Slackware, Knoppix, OpenMandriva
• Build-up distros, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Linux from Scratch
• Any GNU distros, Trisquel, Devuan, Parabola, Guix

I think the best approach is to completely step out of Windows. Don't use a desktop environment that is "Windows-esque". Choose something that feels completely off the rails but fun/interesting.

Arch seems intimidating? Try it out. Windows is all floating windows? Try tiling through hyprland. Don't like the look of base hyprland? Rice it with caelestia or noctalia shells. Find the quirkiness that feels too good to pass up.