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it is OBJECTIVELY linux mint. Why? Because.
this comment was written on June 2025. So as of this day Mint is fabulous. And if I were to save a single distro from a burning building of all the popular distros, i would grab mint twice.
I know I know, there are many good distros, even texhnically better ones. But having used Mint as a secondary dual boot to my primary Windows, I have felt that Mint has been least annoying and actually worth retaining and updating and maintaining.
Mint is great I use it on my desktop and laptop and have been for years (I switched when Ubuntu has that unity desktop period). For Linux it's the most "it just works" distro for me. My second choice would be manjaro, but mint also has the advantage that there is so much help for Ubuntu you can find online, that usually also works for mint.
Pretty much any distro can do any of the things Windows/Mac users are hoping a computer can do. So just pick one and stick with it. Once you're familiar with Linux, the benefits/drawbacks of each distro will become clearer, and you'll be able to make an informed decision. People will tell you "Arch is more lightweight than Mint" but compared to Windows/MacOS, all Linux distros are going to feel blazingly fast and lightweight. The only decent advice is, if you are just starting out and you have an Nvidia GPU, use a distro that sets that up for you automatically. It's not super complicated to set up, but it's definitely going to feel like a foreign experience the first time.
I use coasters, btw.
Toss up between Slackware, Gentoo or Linux From Scratch. Learn the hard way.
Easy! The only I use. The rest are too bloated and/or have too little built in and are too easy/hard. Real Linux wizards agree
I don't use arch btw
Daily driven Mint, OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Fedora. They're all great, with their own pros and cons.
It depends on what you're using it for.
I like Ubuntu but Rocky is also fun.
All of them except the wrong one.
Once you slack, you never go back.
I don't have time to mess around with Arch or customizing things. I tried a couple live boots and went with Mint. Spent 2 hours picking a theme, wallpaper, and menu icon. Boom, done.