Looking to switch to Linux in the somewhat distant future

Thinking of using Linux mint, anything else?

Linux mint

I recommend first switching Windows-only software to crossplatform software so you won’t have to get used to another operating system and different software at the same time.

Mint is my recommendation, having using it myself for many years now.

If you have a Nvidia GPU, a case could be made for POP! due to the built in drivers, but installing Nvidia drivers is rather painless in Mint.

Then do it? It's a free operating system -- just download whatever distro pleases you, give it a spin, see what happens.

Try it with a Live USB stick. And maybe don't listen to the people recommending Ubuntu. It's somewhat okay, but they regularly do annoying business decisions that affect their users. I'd rather start with Mint or something.

There are many other websites dedicated to this question:

• https://distrochooser.de/ / https://distrochooser.snehit.dev/
• https://linuxnewbieguide.org/overview-of-chapters/chapter-3-choosing-a-linux-distribution/

I'd go for Linux Mint/Fedora Linux.

Another thing, I would've play with it first on a VM, like VirtualBox.

I wouldn't immediately wipe Windows if I were you. I'd do dualboot with Windows.

Then, when you're ready, stay with dualboot system or go full neckbeard /j

Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are great options

First time? Use Ubuntu. Not only is it easy to use and a good UX overall, most tutorials assume a Ubuntu based distro (there are differences between distros that can be...hard to translate over). That's going to be really useful when you're looking up how to do stuff

Why don't you try becoming comfortable with Linux while using it in a Virtual Machine? I tried different distros too, and then I decided which one was the best for me.

We can't really suggest you one, if we don't know what you are going to use it for.

You may want to do some research, because different distros have different purposes (gaming, privacy, programming, easy to use etc etc).

Let us know, what your use cases will be?

Mint is the most mentioned choice and an extremely great beginner distro with an huge community.

ZorinOS will get a big update very soon and is also a very good choice. It was my first distro, especially because it looks very modern and pleasing.

If you're a tiny bit more advanced and get the basics, then you might take a look at the immutable Fedora variants like Silverblue.

They have many advantages compared to traditional distros like the two mentioned above, but atomic Linux is a relatively new concept. I also find them easier to understand and use, and, imo, they're even more user friendly, but not as refined.

I would recommend using one of the distros backed by a big company or have very long track records. They are less likely to break on updates, and have a higher chance of supporting any uncommon hardware you may have.

• Fedora
• Ubuntu
• Mint
• Pop OS

If you have new hardware (e.g. GPU newer than 6 months) you will probably have issues. Follow the recommendations from the hardware supplier, or use something arch based. I used Manjaro a while when I got new hardware.

Besides those tips, you should decide which desktop environment you like best. I prefer gnome, as I enjoy to spend time in apps and not on in settings. Others prefer customization. Have a look at https://youtu.be/09cYQJBgKEs?si=KX8FZeMRcMlPTzG2

Mint

I'd start with Ubuntu. If there's any niche software, it will probably run on Ubuntu/debian distros.

I've been linux-curious on-and-off for years. I've toyed with it several times but always gone back to Windows eventually. I have a laptop with a 7th gen Intel CPU that is not supported on Windows 11, so I decided to wipe it and threw the latest version of Linux Mint on it. Everything (except for a fingerprint reader) worked straight out of the figurative box, and I've been happily running it on that machine for about 6 months now. I think Mint is a good choice if you want a simple windows-like experience.

I still have a desktop PC running Windows for games and Adobe Lightroom and stuff, but I won't be going back to Windows on that laptop.

A couple of assumptions I will be making:

• Your hardware is supported; consider to check driver support over at linux-hardware.org. Honestly, most hardware should be well-supported, unless it has been released very recently or is hardware from known troublemakers (i.e. Nvidia GPUs or Broadcom etc).
• Your 'computer-literacy' is at least (slightly) higher than average.
• You've primarily used Windows in the past.
• You prefer asking others instead of finding it out for yourself; the existence of this post supports that. (It's either that or you like to have a second opinion in all cases; but I would have expected more input from you if that was the case 😅.)
• Your hardware is somewhat modern.
• You will mostly stick to defaults (at least initially).
• You're aware that while hundreds of actively maintained distros exist, most of them are either niche or not worth your time in the first place. If, from the remaining ones, the less impactful derivatives are surgically removed, followed by the removal of newbie-unfriendly distros, then only 10-20 distros would remain; most of which have been named in this thread already. And your needs dictate which one out of these would suit you best.
• You will educate yourself regarding desktop environments like GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, Xfce etc. Perhaps you will even boot into a live environment to check them out for yourself; loading a bunch of distros on your USB through Ventoy is excellent for that. This is important as they're arguably the biggest contributor to how you perceive your Linux system. You should also be aware that in almost all cases a second (or heck; even third, fourth etc) desktop environment can be installed on your system and you should be able to switch between them relatively easily. However, in most cases, the one provided on first installation works close to flawless while others that have been tacked on later on are generally less polished.
• You will educate yourself (eventually) regarding universal package managers (read: AppImage, Flatpak, Nix and Snap) and Distrobox as collectively they've (mostly) ridden the Linux ecosystem of problems related to software not being packaged in the native repos. Don't feel the need to indulge into all of them simultaneously from the get-go. But be aware that they exist and that they enable one to install (almost) any package that has been made available to Linux regardless of their chosen distro.

Any distro I should use?

Typically, distros like Arch, Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, openSUSE, Pop!_OS and Ubuntu (or their derivatives) will be mentioned in these kinds of queries. And it becomes mostly a popularity poll that measures what the community thinks is the preferred distro for beginners. And honestly, I don't blame them as you haven't really given us a lot to work with. My entry to that popularity poll would be Linux Mint. If you prefer to use GNOME or KDE Plasma instead, then consider either Fedora or openSUSE Tumbleweed. Additionally, Pop!_OS should be considered if Nvidia causes problems on all the others.

Feel free to inquire if you so desire!

EDIT: I just noticed how you mentioned to someone that your use case will be primarily gaming. First of all, gaming is somewhat equal on most distros; especially with the likes of Bazzite-Arch and Conty providing excellent environments for gaming regardless of installed distro. Though, these containers do still rely on the hosts kernel, therefore any perceived difference on same hardware but different kernels might be attributed to said kernels. Newer kernels generally come with improved performance; at least for newer hardware*. Though, perhaps more performance could be gained through other means as well. I will spare you the details, however, as this is potentially another rabbit hole within the initial rabbit hole. Therefore, instead, I will name a couple of distros known for being excellent for gaming purposes: Bazzite, Garuda Linux, Nobara Linux, PikaOS and RegataOS. If you want a no-nonsense system, just go for Bazzite; while initial setup might seem slightly more involved, it's by far the most robust system out of these. This does come at the cost of being 'unique' amongst the others, but I believe it's a great fit for your use case.

Use a VM and play with different DEs

Fedora is a good base and comes with most DEs as spins so you don't have to swap live.

Choose the one you like the most.

Personally, XFCE for all around customization amd performance, KDE for out of box solid functionality (and wayland if you care).

Once you feel comfortable, then go ahead and install or dual boot.

Silverblue is okay but kinda overrated because Flatpaks are not a silver bullet and will break or have basic FS dependency issues. Plus, it's not a great intro to Linux experience because you can't shoot yourself in the foot easily most tutorials on Linux will be for a regular system.

As for the distros themselves:

Personally, I have stuck with Fedora for a long time. Debian or OpenSUSE would be second choice. Arch only if I'm forced to like the steam deck lol.

Also ArchWiki is your friend. Even if you're on any other distro, it has a wealth of the latest information and tutorials for whatever you want or need.

Most distros are running the same software. The biggest difference is your package manager & community. Personal preference is NixOS but that ain’t beginner-friendly even if the rollbacks from bad states would help. Arch isn’t as difficult to set up as it used to be & has been more stable than a lot of distros in my experience so I wouldn’t discount it but .pacnew files can bite you if modifying in /etc instead of in the home folder (when possible). Of the things folks normally suggest as a first go, Fedora would probably be my pick (not yet had a problem) as everything Ubuntu-based still rubs me wrong for support & leadership.

EndeavorOS. It’s based on arch which has great nvidia driver packages if that's your thing and the arch wiki is amazing.

A nice package manager wrapper is bundled. Do yay \ to search for any package and install it; do yay (nothing else) to upgrade everything, and yay -Rcns \ to remove stuff and all their unused dependencies. I also recommend chaoticAUR which is also easy to setup. What is the AUR, you ask? A repository for user-created ways to install TONS of stuff, think homebrew (including cask, unseparated) but on Linux

For the DE I recommend MATE but you can select any of the major ones in the installer
Get synapse for a spotlight-like search; it uses the alt+space keybind by default

Start off with Gentoo to get the hang of the basics. Switch to Arch because compile times and heat burns. Try Linux from Scratch for a laugh, giggle and move on, but with a new found respect for distro maintainers.

What's your use case? If it involves AAA games then that will narrow things a bit but if you simply want a bit of docs n that and, internet browsing and a spot of email and realtime sound and CAD then we'll need a broader chat.

Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Mint - those would be my starters for 10 in no particular order. Pick yours and your hip angle. I personally run Arch (actually) and Gentoo. I don't recommend them as a dip your toe in the water job 8)

Feel free to dive in, the water is lovely.

Switched from Windows to Linux Mint few months ago, customized the look a bit and love it so far.

To break from the trend (because I recommend Mint as well),

Check out the options on distrowatch.com, test out any live distros you can. When you have some understanding of GRUB then dual boot, and then triple.

Inevitably, you're going to end up using Arch because it's so easily managed and you get to choose each component. But it's better if you have experience with the different components first. I completely missed out on learning RPM (package manager), I went from Mint (apt) to Arch (pacman). I did resurrect a lot of old laptops and desktops with various different distros though, and I learned Gnome and xfce, LXDE, MATE, and i3, xmonad..

There's a lot to learn but it's all fun, and it's all different. When you go to a tiling window manager, you'll understand why Windows adopted (albeit shittily) tiling in it's latest version.

mint if you are after a general purpose distro more specialised ones I might be able to recommend if you specify your interests

Don't use Manjaro, wordt mistake you could make

From my experience, download many distros from Linux Mint to Zorin, maybe Fedora and OpenSuse if you want something non Ubuntu bases, or Manjaro and Endeavor OS if you are up for a challenge.

Then install them in a Virtual Machine like Virtual Box. This way you can test which OS you like, and see if the software you want works.

In my experience the Desktop Environment makes the biggest impact on your user experience.

Followed by the package manager (app store)

Then available software (steam lutris libre office)

Finally the terminal for when things go south (or you installed arch)

93 comments after a post like this, are you guys nuts?

https://neon.kde.org/

KDE is the best desktop environment, period. Why not go with a stable OS base but enjoy all the current updates of your desktop, app suite? Introduction: KDE Neon

If you want something that looks and behaves much like the Windows desktop environment, use Linux Mint. If you want something closer to the macOS environment, use Pop OS.

Would recommend Fedora Silverblue.

Mint is a good beginner distro and has many guides available. Try LMDE

I have a blog article about this. Here is the short version:

I can tell you how not to choose a distro: what its screenshots look like or what its default desktop environment is. Many begin shopping around for a distro that suits them best, which means visiting a website like DistroWatch.com, looking at the various screen shots, and picking one that looks nice. But any Linux distro can be made to look like any other distro without too much effort, what you see in the screen shots is just the default look. Really, the the screen shots should be the least of your concerns.

So don't worry about Xfce, KDE, Gnome, LXDE, LXQt or whatever else right now, you can try all of those in good time. First, just get Linux and, worry about figuring out which apps that you can get that work best for your work flow. Almost none of the apps you use now are available in Linux, the hardest part is figuring out how to replace the apps you use daily right now.

You should choose the distribution with the best web service, and the best apps.

• Is the service reliable? Do they have a good team of people making sure the packages are always online, and making sure they are providing timely security updates?

• Do they have corporate, or non-profit, sources of funding? Do you trust the people who are running it?

• Do they have the apps you want, are the apps up to date? Do they have things you need, like word processing, presentation software, photo scrap booking, file sharing, video editing, music editing, personal organizers, video conferencing (can you install Zoom, for example?). Can you easily install Flatpaks or AppImages?

Many of the really big Linux distros all provide completely reliable service, which satisfy the above requirements, but I recommend any of the following four:

• Mint
• Fedora
• Ubuntu
• Pop!_OS

Mint and Fedora are community-run with backing from various sponsors, Ubuntu is run by the Canonical corporation, Pop!_OS is developed by the System 76 company (a medium sized US-based business that sells laptops and PCs).

Get Ubuntu, Mint, or PopOS don't bother with the others at first as it will be more difficult to find help on forums with lesser known versions of Linux. If you have an Nvidia as your main graphics card you might have a better time with PopOS as it comes pre configured with the right drivers and everything.

If you game, and especially if you use nvidiva, I'd recommend Pop!_OS or Nobara.

Use Archlinux. Reason ? Because you will be able to say " I use Arch btw".

Btw, I use Arch.

Know that you'll probably hate what you try first. Personally I say you shouldn't use Pop_OS!, but its better than being scared of making a wrong choice. "distrohopping" is a great way to learn.

tldr: just do it

Fedora is neat

Get a cheap 1-2 tb drive and start dual-booting with whatever system you're running now. This way you can play around with different distros while retaining your current settup to fall back on!

update: currently testing mini cinnamon on a VM at the moment

Looks pretty good, tho I haven't really gotten in the setup yet (really close tho!)

https://files.catbox.moe/twr0yl.png (image link dw)

1. Switch over the software you use to stuff that also works on Linux. alternativeto.net
2. Get an external SSD case if you are on a laptop, or just a second one and install it there
3. Extract your Windows License key!
4. Fedora kinoite from ublue.it

Here are some of my default choices: Linux Mint, Pop!OS, Nobara, MXLinux (if your PC is kind of a potato).

These distros should work regardless of your configuration with very minimal effort on your side.

I approached Fedora workstation with little knowledge of Linux, as a former windows and Mac user. My workflows involved graphic, print, UX design, DFP, front end web dev, and some light 3D modelling. Getting acquainted with alternatives to certain apps (namely adobe suite) took some getting used to, but it's wonderful to no longer feel as if your industrial skill set is beholden to a massive, shitty company.

It was surprisingly easy to get along with. I feel like your experience in will mostly depend on your desktop environment rather than the distro itself, bear in mind that you can use any DE with any distro.

You don't really need to touch the command line anymore to get going, though I got familiar with it as I found it faster for certain tasks.

KDE plasma is probably more familiar for Windows users. I use the GNOME desktop with some plugins.

As a bonus, Fedora 39 is more performant for me in AAA gaming than windows 10/11.

1. It doesn't really matter much which distro you choose.
2. Use flatpaks - flatpaks sandbox your apps more than traditional packages. As a side effect, the package manager of the distro won't matter anymore.
3. There are thousand of distros, stick to a popular one.
4. Install packages on distrobox instead of directly onto your system if you use the terminal. Stay as close to the base image as possible. If you want to have access to all packages, install arch/endeavouros on distrobox and use the aur. If a package is not on aur, it's not published yet. With distrobox there's no reason to switch to another distribution because of package availability.
5. Use a distro with which you can roll back to a previous state easily. If things go downhill, youcan always fall back. There are many distros that provide a very easy out of the box experience for that. If you can't fall back easily, ignore the distro or be prepared for the worst case
6. Arch is for advanced people because you may set up your system as you like. There are many great distros that choose the base packages for you. You will have a great experience on most big distros. Most of them use GNOME. GNOME is great. KDE is awesome. Tough decision. Watch youtube vidoes about both. Install the other one in a VM to check it out. You may use an immutable distro like fedora silverblue/kinoite. You can switch back and forth by rebasing to the respective desktop environment.

Following is a good source for anyone looking into desktops https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/ they focus on an educated distro choice.

Read the arch wiki whenever you want to do something or want to know something. https://wiki.archlinux.org/ you want to know more abiut piewire? aw! You want to know about GNOME? KDE? Type !aw KDE into ddg, qwant or brave. Read the respecting documentation of your distro. Follow them on mastodon. Register to the forum. Join a matrix community.

Watch great channels like "the linux experiment" on peertube. Yes peertube, why should you watch it on youtube if it's on peertube?

Archcraft and Arco.

In the somewhat distant future you're looking to switch to Linux. Okay, the question of distros can wait.

What you want to do in the not-too-distant-future if possible is start finding FOSS alternatives to the software you use. Stuff like LibreOffice and Krita have Windows versions, so in the meantime start learning and using those apps. Because that's the real pain point.

As for distro...distros don't really matter. Most of the user experience comes from the desktop environment, and that's a matter of preference so personal that the real answer is "try several and use the one you like."

I had several drives in my PC, so I wiped a small one and just installed a few different distros and figured out what I liked. I ended up sticking with nobara with KDE.

I use Nobara which comes with drivers for Nvidia and stuff just works. It's very noob friendly.

I started with Zoro which is a windows look alike, tried mint and a few other distros but ultimately landed on Fedora.

Fedora has been great and I haven't been tempted to leave since trying it out a few years ago.

Honestly, I recommend everyone without existing Linux experience to use Fedora: it's reasonable modern (nice for, e.g. gaming), while also not being a full rolling release model like Arch (which needs expertise to fix in case something breaks). It's also reasonably popular, meaning you will find enough guidance in case something does break.