Which distribution should I recommend to beginners to scare them?

When I was first looking into Linux I asked the only friend I knew who used it and he unironically recommended me Arch...

A year later I actually gave Arch a try, but by then he apparently hated Arch and switched to Gentoo and I stopped asking him for advice at that point.

NixOS:

Gentoo:

https://archiveos.org/hannah-montana/

To scare them? Windows.

It's the absolute best way to make someone become a Linux user for life.:-)

NixOS: How do I install OBS?

edit /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

locate environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [

and add

linuxPackages.v4l2loopback
(wrapOBS {
  plugins = with pkgs.obs-studio-plugins; [
    obs-backgroundremoval
    obs-shaderfilter
    obs-vintage-filter
    
  ];
})

Then you need to install the kernel driver

you can find the instructions here:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/OBS_Studio

make sure you follow the part about boot.extraModulePackages = with config.boot.kernelPackages; [ v4l2loopback ];

if you want to use the virtual cam driver.

You may find out that you want to install this in home-manager or flakes instead, but those are novels themselves.

edit: ohh yeah almost forgot run

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

after you edit the configs to install

NixOS: How do I update the version of OBS after it's installed?

sudo nix-channel --update

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

If it breaks, the errors are mostly unhelpful, you need to poke around and make educated guesses.

If it bricks you can go back to the previous version in grub by selecting the second to the top entry

make sure you garbage collect every now and then or the app store gets huge.

Neither existed when I installed Linux the first time.

Gentoo obviously :
To install, easy just get this iso, with no GUI, then whip your hard drive, create partition, copy the Linux core, config your core based on the hardware technical details of every components you have and will use, compile it, add extra core drivers, compile them, add all the software you'll use to get a GUI (Desktop environment), compile them,. Now you can finally restart without usb stick! Add all the software, configure and compile them. And for every update of every software you may check the details to be sure it doesn't break your config.
Easy no? It just took you a month to get all the steps right!

Hannah Montana Linux or Biebian

Arch is fine... It has good documentation.

NixOS or Gentoo is probably my pick.

Ya there's Arch. There's NixOS. There's still Slackware.
But have you heard of 9front?
9front is useless. You won't be gaming or working with it.
Mostly, you'd learn how operating systems are constructed.

Or DoomOS or DoomLinux. It's a basic linux system where DOOM is the shell.
I forked this and tried to get it running. Learned some interesting things. Still doesn't work for me. :]
https://github.com/fl64/DoomLinux

Slackware still exists, if they survive they'll be nigh immortal.

Make them use an old, abandoned distro.

Like Brazil's own Knoppix fork Kurumin.

The nixOS slander in these comments would be valid if nixOS were simply a distro and not a cult…

Since people fear parentheses, GNU Guix.

Who TF is scared by Mint?

Did a clean upgrade/install of Mint about 10 hours ago. I'm back to business as usual. Minor tweaks, no tinkering.

Obviously Hannah Montana Linux.

gnu guix?

Is that a really young Brodie Robertson on the right??

Don't run Linux, run the OG Unix. Don't use a desktop, get a mainframe.

LFS

Nixos, Legacy of the greybeard.

Great, now I've got the phonk walk in my head

Mint is goat

Remember to make a backup pipeline with Timeshift and you’ll be fine

Any BSD folk 'round here?

Puppy.

Kali Linux as daily driver

The one you toggle into the switches on a PiDP-11.

Don't? Arch is less scary and more annoying.

I'm planning to go Arch on my secondary that had popos on it. I've only used mint and Ubuntu before.

I vote for LFS and maybe Guix

The obvious answer, for true fear, is to either run TempleOS or Red Star