I’d rather someone’s first choice about Linux was which DE to use. This plays a way bigger part in first impressions.
The obvious choice is KDE, ofcThat’s a strange way to spell Xfce.
Maybe you misheard LXQT?
DEs are clearly bloat, so the best DE is no DE.
Definitely not just because I prefer i3I totally agree, that’s a way more important factor when you’re starting out with Linux.
Gotta be Gnome though
You missed the step where you tell everyone what distro you use, and that its the best.
Five minutes after you installed it and haven’t tried anything else.
Okay, but when most people are looking for advice on which distro to use it’s because they don’t know what they want.
Searched, not googled. Google is bad, M’kay?
Reference
Drugs are bad, M’kay? Don’t do drugs.
me and the boys out here still asking Jeeves
Honestly from experience I’ve learnt that the yes answer also usually applies to the no answer because it’s important to everyone. Advanced users tend to hit advanced issues and surprise, surprise, then community size matters all the same!
So since Linux is highly customizable and the choice of e.g. desktop environment matters little (just install whatever you want on any distro, including DE), community size is the most hard-earned property and thus usually trumps all.
So I personally try to keep closest to upstream regardless experienced or less experienced users => Debian if you adore those DEB packages and management, Fedora if you love those RPM packages and management, indie ones for indie packages e.g. Alpine, Arch… If you still run into issues it’s usually you, not the distro because it’s already battle hardened. :) But no worries, then you’ll find a lot of help and the problem has usually already even been discussed and is googleable! It’s 2023, none of the huge distros are plain shit and annoying, that’s been ironed out like a decade ago. So just go with a (big) flow somewhere.
If beginner, use PopOS.
If Linux nerd, use Arch.
That’s my guide. I don’t like any other distros. :)
I started with Ubuntu and then migrated to Arch. I learned a ton about Linux and how tune everything for optimal performance!
…And then I went back to Ubuntu because I just want to work with my computer, not on it.
Yeah many people say that but Ubuntu is not very good in my opinion. Outdated packages, snaps, commercials in the installer and so on. I would pick PopOS any day over that myself. But it’s because I’m really sensitive to those things.
Yeah, I honestly agree that Ubuntu is getting worse. For better or worse though, it’s a base that I’m familiar with. I end up customizing and tweaking it, but I’ve automated enough of that to where I can just run a few scripts on a fresh install and be back up and running.
Basically, I built myself a shittier, highly specific version of Nix in self-defence. 😁
Install Gentoo
I was a huge distro hopper until I started using immutable distros. One thing no one tells beginners is that you do have to maintain your system more on Linux than other OSs because Linux gives you the rope to hang yourself with. I would always bloat my OS and things would get unruly, everything would slow down or become unstable and I would lose track of how I had everything set up. Immutability make things so much cleaner.
Started with Ubuntu ended up with arch