Fedora Silverblue. The family of Fedora Atomic desktops which Silverblue is one of brings almost unbreakable user oriented systems. Fedora Silverblue provides highly customizable via extensions Gnome Desktop experience, stability of an immutable OS, and a wide range of apps installable using Flatpak from Flathub.

Mint is the best distro for the average user who doesnt want to tinker with their OS or doesnt want to waste time fixing issues.

IF Mint doesnt go well with your laptop, I would try out Fedora, which is more up to date with stuff and also very user friendly choose Fedora Workstation if you're feeling adventurous. choose Fedora KDE if you want a Windows like experience.

It's hilarious how uncool it is to suggest Ubuntu but it often just works, including very recent hardware if it's from Canonical partners like Lenovo or Dell. And the kerfuffle about things like snaps are way overblown.

memes dunking on mint are irrelevant. use what works for you & ignore the noise.

personally, mint lmde, based on debian, might be worth a once over. sounds like the stability aspect might be up your alley.

Linux Mint. I'm a pretty hardcore Linux person, used a dozen different distros, Mint is by far the closest I've experienced to #JustWorks.

It's reliable and simple enough that earlier this year I switched my tech-illiterate parents from Windows to Mint. Works great for them so far.

I've done dozens of distros and Linux mint is the most familiar, unexciting, and stable one I have found. Ignore the hate. Real Linux fans don't care how you participate in open source, other than being toxic. Consequently, do whatever you want and install whatever seems like it would be something you'd want to use.

Id highly suggest having a separate hard drive for Linux as it can be easy to break dual boot if you don't know what you are doing. Last thing you want to do is panic and decide you need to reinstall Windows.

Thanks for the input ya nerds. Much love from the geek side of lemmy. I'll be taking the advice of poking around with multiple distros before committing to one, because it sounds a whole lot less painful than I was imagining.

Quick question though, what the hell is a gnome? Or a KDE for that matter?

Mint gets dunked on for being slow and HDR variable refresh rate and Wayland is not on the cutting edge. Nobody hates it for being stable though.

When first coming from Windows, starting with Mint is the safest bet for a good transition because things will work pretty much as you expect them to, and there's a very helpful forum if you have any questions. But I always say to try several distros and Desktop Environments to see how you like them. Everyone is different and it's all a matter of preference.

I suggest that once you've got whatever distro you decided on up and running, install a virtual machine software such as Boxes (very simple) or Virtual Box (a little more complicated but with more options). Then just download various distros and make VMs for them to try them out easily. Have fun!

Go ahead with mint. It's the only distro I know with a fully featured setup wizard that holds your hand through the entire process. I am confident anyone who has used computers can use it.

But honestly, most modern distros are about as difficult as picking up an iOS/android phone for the first time. There are different ways of doing things, but they're still phones and can't be too different anyway. Same with mint, it's just a computer, it isn't all that different.

mint

• generally a solid choice

• you have a friend who uses it! big advantage

people who make memes about linux distros are in a lot deeper than you want to be. they have different goals.

Go with Mint, it's my daily drive on both my laptop and HTPC. If you choose the regular edition Ubuntu based you have also hardware enablement (hwe) kernels which could be useful on newer hardware.

Mint is one of the best bets for beginners, it's very similar to windows 10 UI wise by default and generally very user friendly

Linux Mint.

ITT: 100 people naming their favourite distro and making that fit whatever OP needs.

• Mint
• Kubuntu
• Fedora KDE Edition
• OpenSuSE
• Pop!OS

These are all easy to use desktop distros (or variants). Use them with their respective default desktop environment. Check screenshots first or try them out in a VM or via live USB before installation, to see whether you like the look&feel.

You can go with mint. It's a solid choice. I prefer opensuse tumbleweed since I find it easier to work with. It also has a great selection of desktop enviroments witch is the thing you interact with and what you use to manage your open programs. If you want something like modern windows you can go with KDE or cinnamon and if you want something more minimal and windoes XP like you can use xfce.

Fedora's KDE spin

I really hope more beginner distros switch to kde from GNOME. When I was first getting into linux and did not know about what a DE was, GNOME put me off from fully switching to linux and themeing it was hell with it not playing nice with qt applications, of course as a newbie i did not know what "qt" or "Gtk" was and did not understand at the time why some applications were not following theme.

while kde default is not pretty it can be anything you want it to look like and its easy to customize and plays nice with gtk applications. GNOME IS very customizable that you might even be able to make it into a usable desktop.

Linux Mint is one of the most common gateway drug for getting into linux.

It's incredibly easy to set up and use. And it has plenty of resources if you ran into any issue.

Pop!_OS is neat. I've been running it on my desktop and laptop for over a year now. I like that it doesn't look like Windows and has enough difference to it to not be a macOS clone either. Plus I think System76 is doing some great things with hardware design.

Pop OS has been pretty pain free for me

I'm going to go out on a limb and say fedora silverblue or bazzite

Basic user? Use flat packs and enjoy easy graphics support, as well as all of the windows compatibility for gaming

Advanced user? Learn to do things in pods/containers or distrobox, it's easy even if the quick start docs aren't great (I can find my cheat sheets if anyone is going down that road)

Pro: most stuff just works, and it's harder to config yourself into a corner you have to research your way out of

Cons: normal Linux install guides need to be modified a bit, it's not hard but you do have to learn how to do it

I've got one friend who uses mint, but I've also seen memes dunking on it so who knows. I actually really only know what I've seen from you all shitposting in other communities

Every distro gets shit on in memes, because each distro does things its own way that some don't agree with. As a new user, most of that doesn't matter much, the biggest changes between distros are how stuff works in the background. What matters more is your choice of Desktop Environment (DE). Essentially "the coat of paint on top". Most distros offer a couple different options when downloading the ISO, or when installing it.

I'd reccomend starting out by trying GNOME and KDE Plasma (if they're easily available for your distro), with GNOME being slightly more macOS-like, and KDE being somewhat similar in feel to Windows. Those are "the big two" DEs, but there's plenty of other options available if you don't like them.

As for distros, whatever works for you is the option you should go with. There's only two distros I recommend against using, Ubuntu (/ close derivatives) and Manjaro. Ubuntu is becoming extremely corporate, going against the "spirit" of a Linux distro. There's "Ubuntu Pro", a subscription for security updates, and "snap", an "alternative to" flatpak that forces you on Ubuntu managed repositories, along with many other issues. Manjaro is often marketed as "an easy Arch-based distro", but is in fact only very loosely derived from Arch. This combined with Manjaro team's inability to maintain the distro properly, causes nothing but issues.

As for every other distro, if it's being updated, and it works for you, then it's a great option. Because that second one is very personal, there is no "single best Linux distro". I would personally suggest to check out Mint and Fedora, those are often great options.

As someone else mentioned, with a "new laptop", hardware compatibility may be an issue. Most distros allow you to try them off the USB before installing, that's probably a good idea.

Generally I agree with everyone else, Linux Mint is great.

However, if you really want to not worry at all, you could just buy a laptop from e.g. Tuxedo or System76. They come with Linux preinstalled (I think in the case of Tuxedo at least, you even have a choice of which Linux Distro?), and are guaranteed to have no hardware "difficulties" with Linux, i.e. even if you put another distro on it, you won't encounter driver issues.

(Those have become very rare anyways, but do put a damper on the "Firsttime Linux Experience" if you do encounter them...)

I think Mint is good enough. People will dunk on anything popular.

I use my laptop as a tool - no real idea how it works. If Linux nerds are mechanics then I’m just a taxi driver. Use mint. I do. Zero regrets. Caveman compatible.

Personally I would recommend Fedora, most distros people have recommended here works.

I had less issues installing Fedora on a new laptop than I did with the win11 and win10 attempts, I'm never switching back to windows

I'll drop this: https://www.techradar.com/best/best-linux-distros It's written by an actual journo and not a bunch of nerds in nerdville!

Getting into Linux is a bit like Windows back in the day - interesting and a lot of fun ... and rather nerdy. My first Windows version was 1.0 and my last was 7. Mind you I do run a MS Silver Partner and worry about a lot of Windows servers and desktops but my daily driver is Linux.

Mint is a great choice, even though it isn't mentioned in the article I linked because you get a great community, which is pretty important. Its basically Ubuntu and therefore Debian too, so a lot of howtos will work.

I personally rock Kubuntu but I have a requirement for enterprisey stuff - ESET and Veeam and AD integration and all that. I also get Secure Boot out of the box and not all Linux distros work with that.

Your smart new laptop will have Secure Boot enabled so you will have to deal with that if you deploy a distro that doesn't. So with say Arch, you will need to turn it off or learn how to sign your kernels etc and that is not a beginner topic! I suggest you turn off Secure Boot if your chosen distro doesn't support it, rather than insisting on it. Its a nice to have but not the most important security feature ever.

You might want to show a bit of ankle and try out a few to start with. Most distros have a live CD that you can boot and try out first. I suggest trying out Mint, Ubuntu and Kubuntu. That gets you three modern interfaces to play with.

If you are into gaming then it kooks like Pop!OS would be a good place to start instead.

There is no real best option - it's what suits you and you have choice.

I really like Fedora. Swapped to it a few months ago, my first time using Linux, and I've since only been using the Linux machine. With the KDE Plasma spin, it really is a near 1:1 UI to Windows.

What spec of laptop are you thinking of getting?

I’ve been using Mint and Pop!_OS on two different machines for a few years.

Neither has really required much from me as the user, although I have needed to use the terminal once on each of them.

Personally, I really like the way Pop does window tiling and workspaces.

You got a lot of distro recommendations from across the spectrum and it's honestly hard to go wrong with any of them. It's mostly a matter of preference. As such I'll give you two pieces of advice:

1. Set up a multi-boot flash drive (assuming you're currently using Windows, YUMI is a great utility) so that your can try a bunch of them and see what jives with you most. A great feature of Linux installers is that you can actually run the entire OS, full-featured, from the ISO. So grab a whole slew of them, throw them on the flash drive, and spend some time taking them for a spin.
2. Do your research on compatibility. Laptop makers often don't make Linux drivers, so the latest hardware has compatibility problems until the community covers the gap. There are also some laptop manufacturers that have Linux in mind when they make their products, like System 76 and Framework.

Good luck! IMO getting into Linux for the first time is a fun journey. Enjoy it!

Mint or Zorin

The process for installation is more or less the same for all of them.

Linux Mint and PopOS are the "go to" suggestions. I really don't like the way either of them look. I'm partial to GNOME for aesthetics and ease of use.

Bazzite comes with most of the stuff you will want pre-loaded, and also the cool Steam Deck Gamescope interface. It's the only one I've used with seamless background updates like you might be accustomed to on Android or iOS. That's my recommendation.