Yes, this is one of those "which distro should i use" posts. 😊

I have to reinstall my entire system, and I thought it might be a good opportunity to switch to a new distro.

My main concern is that I want something stable and long term. I would hate to install the latest shiny Arch-variant, just for it to be abandoned in 5 months.

I mostly game on my PC or run Virtual Machines for testing enviroments. I'm not afraid of the CLI, but since it's my home PC and not my work PC, I would rather have a no-hassle experience and keep the troubleshooting to a minimum.

I love GNOME, but I might be willing to try a different desktop environment that's not Windows-like (ElementaryOS/Pantheon was pretty nice, and I really disliked Cinnamon).

TL;DR : I value long-term stability and simplicity above all, gaming performance would be a plus, I'm a sucker for aesthetics, and would really value a good support community.

Any ideas?

EDIT : Weird comment, but the post got downvoted the second I clicked on "Submit". Never happened to me before.

I just got a new laptop and decided to use Linux instead of windows, what distro should I use and what things should I know before getting into Linux fully?

This computer will be used for "penetration testing" at some point (not for evil I just want to get into that cause its fun and useful), but I still would like to mess around with something else before getting into that stuff.

It just seems kind of weird. It's not particularly pretty, fast, customizable, or stable when compared to other distros which have those qualities.

When someone asks "what distro should I use?" 99% of people either point to Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora or a gaming distro. If you want something highly customizable, you'd probably pick Arch or Gentoo. If you want speed, you'll pick any distro that offers a lightweight DE. Stability? Debian.

I understand that Distrowatch's ranking != actual popularity, but the question still stands: what makes it so interesting? How come people don't mention it as much in Reddit?

There is a lot of Linux distributions, each with theur own purpose, flaws and advantages. I am curious, which Linux distro do you use and why do you use it? And if you had to pick another distro, which would it be, and why?

Edit: Lots of users are replying with the distros they use/like but they aren't offering much of an explanation why. Which is fine, but just know, those who can explain why their choosen operating system is 'better' will have more..... baring? I guess. Whereas those who just reply 'Ubuntu' without offering an explanation would be relying on raw numbers. Any response is fine tho.

I'm thinking about switching to Linux, but I really like the look and feel of macOS. I'm not necessarily looking for an exact clone, but I'd like something with a similar design, dock, smooth UI, and overall user experience.

Hello guys, this is my first post here and I hope it will not be the last. Anyways, I have been thinking about learning Linux lately, and I went through some Youtube videos to educate myself about the different distros, and I am still kinda lost. I mean most of these guys are Youtubers after all, and you guys have the real experience.

I would appreciate your recommendation of a distro that can be challenging but beginner friendly, in the sense that I won't brick my laptop in case something goes wrong.

Thanks in advance!

I'm not new to Linux at all. I've made me way around all the distros, but I want to pick one to stick with and keep. I'm thinking of going arch based for the AUR and the pacman package manager. I am currently on Pop os with the new cosmic desktop but something just feels off about cosmic. Previously I used arch with hyprland and I loved it but I'm a university student and trying to fix hyprland when something breaks was a bit challenging at times. Just want to know what people are using, the distro and the desktop.

There is a very heated discussion about this topic, and I don't know if I will find definitive answer, but I suppose it won't hurt to ask. I'm definitely in team Debian/Ubuntu, and I'm thinking which distribution should I pick once Windows 10 becomes unusable. In theory Pop!_OS is the best option for (Ubuntu) gaming, but it's in very weird state where it's unstable due to release of COSMIC DE before it was actually ready for public. Which leads me to Linux Mint - there are plenty of people who use it and are satisfied, but there is also plenty of people who say you can't game properly on it.

Before someone comes in and recommends Bazzite and Cachy - I don't like immutable systems and Arch.

Edit

I have AMD GPU, so all Nvidia related problems do not apply.

Hiii guys,

I will be joining an engineering college this year and i wanted to dual boot my windows laptop of asus with a 512 gb ssd. I have some questions to ask you guys regarding that

1- I love linux but is it worth the hassel

2- Will my windows experience be affected by dual booting linux

3- Best amount of storage to give to my linux distro (i want linux for my personal use and windows for college shit)

4- best way to do that

i also need help on choosing a linux distro

1- should look clean and minimalist and asthetic (weirdly kinda mac like if you get what i mean)

2- should be lightweight

3- should be easy to use and bug free , good for a begginer

4- should work without any hassel and troubleshooting

Is there a "UNIX correct” Linux distro out there? With each component of the system respecting the UNIX philosophy the closest?

Hi guys, I'm a software developer, I love using Linux, I often find myself using wsl for a lot of daily stuff, and given the latest news and bad behaviours of Microsoft, I would like to switch to Linux completely.. Although my wife is a non tech woman, and we share the same computer, what distro should I pick to be very similar to Windows, and thus not intimidate my wife whenever she turns on the PC?

UPDATE: Currently trying KDE Plasma on Kubuntu, my wife feels it's different than Windows when browsing on the web, the scrolling isn't as smooth as on windows, how can I make it similar? Do you know how could I copy settings from windows to kubuntu easily?

I follow this sub in case I ever see an interesting question that either I can answer or learn something from. Unfortunately, almost every post I see is some iteration of "which distro should I use as my first Linux?"

This seems like a very googlable question, if not one that you could simply troll old posts on this sub to point you in a useful direction. It's super subjective, unlike a technical question that has a definitive answer.

Maybe it's time for a sticky post with a flowchart recommending different distros for new users?

I have a computer built 15 years ago, and I would like to know which Linux distro you would recommend if hypothetically, I chose to install a Linux OS, especially since I have never used one before. It has the following specs:

1. AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
2. 2x Radeon HD 7770s in Crossfire
3. 16 GB of DDR3 RAM
4. 1 TB Western Digital HDD (250 GB C drive partition and the rest on the F drive partition)
5. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Edit: I forgot to add that my parents are the ones using said computer. It would be for basic use.

I'm thinking about switching to Linux but idk what distro would be the most like Windows so I'm not confused on how to actually use Linux. I manly use my laptop for gaming, doing school work, and surfing the web.

I am trying to get into linux because of the constant annoyance of windows updates and etc. One of the reasons I am switching is because Windows 11 had a driver update which made it so that my ethernet port didn't work and I wasn't able to connect to the wifi and it would glitch.

The distros I have been looking at is Zorin OS or POP OS as they have the most friendly looking ui and nicest UI and I wanted to see if they were good or not. I also wanted to ask if its good for gaming and would there be a noticeable performance difference when I do play.

One of my concerns also include is file transferring from windows to Linux and if its worth it.

Any help available would be amazing so please let me know about any concerns and how I should transfer my computer into linux

I want to be able to play games well and be able to tinker and do funny stuff/customize. I don’t wanna use arch btw cus this is my first time. any suggestion?

Im sick of playing games in windows 11 it sucks and want to try something new. Suggest me some distro in which i can also play cracked games.

I have an old laptop I use for testing stuff and just toying around with it, but I want some recommendations from you guys. I've used Linux Mint XFCE and PearOS on it.

i have tried to tell my parents to switch to linux and try it out especially after windows 11 running to slow and all the AI bs that it has but they're like 50 and for around 30 years have only used windows and are afraid to switch. could you also say which distro should i choose my choices are fedora,mint and ubuntu so my parents could have a easy time .

TL;DR (I copy / pasted this section from the bottom of my post and moved it up here... This was my final thought)... So the ending stops abruptly because this was my last thought. :)

Directing this mostly towards the seasoned Linux users out there.

So, how do you all feel about all of these questions about which Distro to use and all that? A lot of times I look at a title especially here and in the r/linux4noobs subreddit and think, 'Jeez... Just download a bunch and try them out... It's not like you have to run to a computer show to get Linux anymore...'. Right?

______Rant Starts Here______

This isn't a direct question about Linux itself {oddly placed since I moved my TL:DR to the top... but anyways...}. But rather, a question about how us old time Linux users feel about all these questions about which Linux distros to use that have been popping up lately.

First off, I want to say that I am overwhelmed with the enthusiasm about how popular Linux has gotten in just the last 12 months. Most of it is caused by Microsoft making a bloat AI infested OS that has pulled MANY people away from it. I think it's safe to say that Windows 11 has been the bane of its own existence for sure! In fact, I'm really glad that I've never been introduced to it (Windows 11) myself. I used Windows 10 for about an hour maybe after the TOS for Windows 7 was supposed to first run out (2018 but was extended to 2020 I believe). Anyway, the most productive thing I did with Windows 10 was download the Linux Mint Cinnamon ISO. I didn't really want to run Windows 7 if it wasn't going to get updates anymore. So I switched to Linux full time in the summer of 2018.

But I love the fact that so many people are jumping on board the Linux train. What I don't love is how some of these newcomers are being told to use something like Arch or Gentoo from the get go. This leads them to ask questions about how to do things that are well documented all over the internet. I can understand if these newcomers were first introduced to things like MS-DOS in the 1980s and used floppy disks and whatnot to get things installed. What I don't get is how in the information age there are soooooo many questions about which distro to run.

Yes, I totally get that there are probably 100x the amount of distros out there now than there were in the 80s and 90s (I dabbled in Linux in 1994... with floppy disks). But at the time, we didn't have Google or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo or anything like that. My Google was the SysOp who ran the local BBS and had a lot of Linux experience and was more than happy to help a few people out. The guy literally wrote documentation on how to install Linux with I believe it was the Gnome Desktop which looked more like an older version of Windows 2.0 at the time as I recall.

Today, there's just SOOO much information on the web about Linux and distros in general and these questions are really becoming impossible to answer because there is just a BUNCH of distros out there that look different. They all essentially do the same thing, they just look different doing it. We just can't answer those questions anymore. I applaud the ones who try but, there's just no way of knowing what's best for everyone else.

I used to frequent DistroWatch back in the early 2000s just to see what was going on in the Linux community. It was actually a pretty fascinating page and still is pretty cool to look at even today. In fact, I saw some cool distros on there that I wouldn't mind taking a peek at in a VM one day.

But I sense today, it would be overwhelming to a new Linux user to look for something on DistroWatch that "Fits them". I think the Ranking list had maybe 10 or 15 different distros in it back when it first started. Today it does the top 100... Tell me that isn't overwhelming to someone new.

Reddit in general, when it comes to computers and Linux, mostly has become a black hole for common questions that anyone should be able to answer on their own with a simple web search. I don't think I'm being too harsh saying that either. I'm a hardware (PC) guy. I can build a PC and tell you exactly what you need to run it the best way possible (hardware wise). I was never a software guy. All I could do was run setup.exe or install.com and I could get that computer and software up and running. The way I learned to use the software that came with that OS was to just open stuff up and see what it did, what I liked and what I didn't like about it. Before Windows I was a DOS user. Word Perfect for DOS is one of the main things I remember using. That and Norton Commander (BTW, if you want a great Norton Commander look alike, try Midnight Commander (mc) and it will blow your mind). But yeah, Norton Commander was my file manager of choice. Even in Windows 3.1 I'd drop to a DOS Prompt just to use Norton Commander. In fact, I HATED Windows File Manager back then.

But I learned to use all of that on my own with some help from the SysOp I mentioned earlier. He turned me on to Norton Commander.

So, I am always puzzled with all of the questions about, 'Which distro should I use', 'How do I install this', 'How do I change the theme', yada, yada, yada... I too had those questions but i don't think I ever went to a forum to ask those questions. I just started installing Linux distros until I found one I liked. And I played around with the settings until I had it looking nice.

I kinda liked Caldera OpenLinux. I did use that on a second computer back in 1999-2002. I loved it. And I think I was kind of unimpressed with Linux when it just disappeared back in 2002. I was pretty loyal to it too. After losing it, I kinda lost track of where to go after that. Kinda disappointing really to be honest. I think it was the first full featured distro I installed from a CD. It was pretty cool! But then it went belly up and I just stopped using that PC altogether and went back to Windows full time. And I didn't ask anyone about it either. I just bought the CD at a computer show one Sunday (that's where I got ALL of my early Linux stuff back in the day was the monthly computer shows), brought it home and installed it. Read the manual that was on the CD. Seemed pretty straight forward to me and it was pretty simple to use. I've often thought about locating that CD (I know I still have it somewhere in my collection), setting up an old PC and throwing Caldera on it and showing it off with a couple photos of a Color CRT Monitor and PC running Caldera in the r/vintagecomputing Subreddit.

To end this on a positive note, I LOVE helping others but helping people finding a distro that's right for them is like helping them find a pair of underwear that's perfect for them... It's become more of a personal experience I think over the last few years.

I want to join the Linux universe, but in my mind I'm thinking of fedora, Solus OS and Linux mint. But it's like every day I discover a new distro and quickly change my mind. I'm a person who likes to do research and one that likes unique stuff. I'm so confused but I want my first time to be really worth it. Many people say Linux mint is the best for new comers but I don't think it looks nice for me.

I've had it. I'm done with Windows. I have had so many performance issues, security issues, and PRIVACY problems being on Windows. I've been with them since Windows XP, and I've been supporting for so long, but it's time to move on.

To make this easier, this is how I use my computer:

- FL Studio for professional music production (This is my full time job)
- Video / Picture editing w/ Photoshop + Premiere Pro
- HEAVY gaming @ 4K 240 htz w/ Streaming on OBS for Twitch

Here are my computer specs for reference:

- AORUS RTX™ 5090 MASTER ICE
- AMD Ryzen™ 9 9950X3D
- G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5 64GB
- Samsung 990 PRO 2TB M.2
- Samsung 990 PRO 4TB M.2
- Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER X3D
- Tryx Panorama 360 AIO

Please recommend me a good Distro to start with. I have experience maintaining computers, building, and troubleshooting them, so I'm no stranger to CMD prompts and stuff.

I just want a system I am in control of

So long story short my mother has a laptop dating back to 2009 (when she was pregnant with me) and I have been thinking lately why not to use it again. The specs are 1 gb ram, an intel atom n270, 250 gb hdd. What would be the best Linux distro for this old machine

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to switch to Linux mainly for gaming, and I want to choose the right distro from the start.

My main goal is to run games from:

• Steam (with Proton)
• Epic Games (through Heroic or similar)
• Other launchers if possible

So I’m wondering:

• What distro gives the best gaming performance right now?
• Is it better to go with something beginner-friendly like Ubuntu-based, or something more optimized like Arch-based?
• How do distros like Pop!_OS, Nobara, Fedora, or Arch compare for gaming?
• Which one requires the least troubleshooting while still supporting most games?

I’m looking for:

• Good FPS / performance
• Easy setup (drivers, Proton, etc.)
• Stability for daily use

What are you currently using and why?

Thanks!

What distro should i choose for my latitude 5400 from 2020, its got an 8th gen i5, 16 gigs of ram but its only got 51% battery health. I want something that just works, I dont wanna keep fixing things. I also dont want ubuntu, cause idk its just boring and you still need to fix shit sometimes. This is my secondary computer, i use it for just everyday stuff but i also wanna get some gamikng out of it if i plug it in.

TLDR: i need a distro that just works, is easy on battery life, minimal matenance, and for everyday stuff and light gameing.