I'm a noob myself and have found Kubuntu the best experience so far, although my laptop is a bit niche so a lot of the other distros didn't work correctly.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Elementary OS, it is a really intuitive desktop, really solid.
personally i went with linux mint because it was ubuntu based (and much of my it work was dealing in debian/ubuntu virtual machines).
linux mint is also very user friendly though i haven't tried the debian flavour yet.
Debian with KDE or Linux Mint
Man, we need to be able to pin some posts and answer these quesrions once.
I'm not saying there's a single answer (I use Arch btw), but if we could just group all these Q&As in 1 post...
What's the point of a linux community if you cant ask these kinds of questions? A pinned post like that would get stale over time. You are free to just keep scrolling. You also didn't answer the question...so you contributed nothing except to complain about my post.
I think you've read me wrong there.
First up, I presume you searched for other posts like this one? If not, a pinned post might've made that easier for you to get started (ie Mint)
Second, the pinned post doesn't become a final answer, it's a starting point to add to the discussion, (ie you tried Mint, but didn't like X, Y & Z)
From my pov there are a lot of posts asking this same question and this was simply a reflection on how we could improve the community... and your experience.
You mean you're experience...I dont think i to you wrong at all. You don't want to see these kinds of posts.
I think the usual consensus is Linux Mint (and its a solid distro) but I think the best advice is not to be afraid of trying different ones and finding out what works best for you.
Mint is step 1. Shit just works. Welcome to graduation.
Adding to this, I’m a new Linux user, and I’m distro hopping a bit. I started with Mint, now I’m currently using Bazzite (basically Fedora Kinoite with some drivers and apps preinstalled for gaming to basically be plug and play), but I find rpm-ostree to be more confusing than whatever Ubuntu is based on so I might switch to another Ubuntu-based distro. It’s fun to discover what you like best though, so OP if you’re reading this, that’s my advice as someone in the same boat as you. Bounce around and see what works best.
Do you just keep all your files separate and write down your list of software?
I don’t use a whole bunch of software honestly, so it’s pretty easy to remember everything. I’m also dual booting still for a bit, so my windows partition has all the software too. All my games are on an external hard drive (I mostly play older games so the slower speed of an external HDD doesn’t really matter too much).
Are you suggesting distrohopping to a new user? For shame! (Use virtualbox)
I'd recommend mint too, but testing stuff around with ventoy or just live-usb images is a good way to get to know what you like and what you don't.
I was thinking more booting to a few from a usb and playing around.
with a usb drive (live usb) you can boot most distros without making changes to your actual system, try that and see which you like the most.
you'll probably break your install a bunch of times anyway so don't feel like your choice now is permanent
Oh, thats a solid idea! Thanks for the suggestion!
Also, spinning up VMs and practicing setting up your programs is a great way to get used to things and know what to expect.
If you want to do UI customization, be sure to look up some videos on how to do it for your chosen Desktop Environment (like Gnome, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, XFCE, etc.).
That's why I always recommend openSUSE. It automatically makes snapshots when updating so you always have working point to go back to.
Meanwhile timeshift:
I know of timeshift. The nice part about openSUSE snapper is it's all automatic and simply uses btrfs cow.
Desktop environment will be the most impactful for you. I recommend picking a distro with KDE Plasma, which will feel like the best version of Windows you’ve never seen before.
If you are almost exclusively gaming and don’t want to fiddle much, Bazzite.
If you like to fiddle: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora. If you want more Ubuntu compatibility, Kubuntu.
There are lots of options and it’s hard to go wrong. Bazzite is special in that the system is immutable, so everything needs to be run as a container.
I do a lot of game development if that makes any difference, using Unreal.
In that case you are best off with Kubuntu, since UE for Linux is distributed as a .deb.
If you prefer to compile the engine yourself, then you can use anything you like, but OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is worth a look since it’s a rolling distro and stays up-to-date (especially handy for GPU drivers).
Awesome thanks, will try out kubuntu and see how it goes!
Zorin OS
Well Microsoft's sure started doing good stuff lately
For your question, consider fedora with KDE plasma
Thanks will take a look at those. I should ammendment it post. I do game dev with Unreal, another user pointed out that might affect the distro I choose.
There is not really one best distro out there - or else there would only be one distro. But for someone new you will find basically any mainstream/popular distro good enough for your usecase. The best one for you will come down to personal preference and will likely - at least at the start - be centered on which desktop environment you like the most. KDE will probably feel more like Windows. Though gnome I think tends to be the default on most distros. You will find popular distros have multiple flavors with various desktop environments as well. Your best bet is to download a few and put them on a usb and try them out before installing. That will give you a better idea of what you want.Or just pick one and go for it if you don't care that much - it will probably be good enough.
If you are familiar with Ubuntu still I recommend you fallback to that or if you hate canonical and telemetry then use mint. Honestly bro it depends on what you wanna use it for.
Generally:
Noobs -> popos, Ubuntu, mint, Devs -> fedora, Ubuntu (ease of access), debian Power users -> Arch, Nix, tails, (a bunch of other distros ig since any distro can be used in a powerful way tbh) Neckbeard -> Gentoo, LFS (not really a distro tho but amazing for learning)
But seriously speaking it's your choice bud. All Linux distros work amazing and are all the same to the kernel. You can always install multiple distros on an ext. SSD if you can't decide.
Debian is not as easy as Ubuntu to set up, but much easier than in the past. And once set up, it's rock solid and has long term security updates, so if one can get a little help with the installation, I'd recommend it even to novice users.
And Arch is fantastic if somebody wants to learn more about Linux, because of its fantastic wiki.
LFS or Gentoo probably
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