Jimzamjimmyy

RHEL actually has a version which is priced extremely closely to Windows pricing. Few hundred dollars or euros isn't unreasonable in my opinion to having the ability to use an os which you have no knowledge of and you know nobody to help you, but I do agree that it can be expensive for many people. On the other hand some people do not know how to research anything and I would be really interested if they can offer usable os for normies. But you are probably right that it could be completely separate topic.
 
I really would like them to try both Gnome and KDE. Personally I do not customize the looks, only functionality and even that super lightly. Yes sure, my keyboard layout is custom and I have a plenty of Gnome extensions, but I do not really care how it works if it works and I get my work done. I see the appeal of KDE, but when I tried it I wasted way too much time in settings which could have been used for real work.

I tried to comment this on YouTube, but it keeps deleting my comments so I have to post here:
 
As a (Fedora) linux user I would say pick RHEL and Fedora (or Manjaro or PopOS)
 
My personal choice is Fedora, but I see a plenty of reasons using PopOS or Manjaro. EDIT: after writing this "comment" I watched the rest of the wan show, and I trust Anthony at picking the best distros for them. 🙂
 
I really would like you to try Red Hat or SUSE technical support, since I haven't heard anyone trying them. It would be extremely interesting to hear some comments. Also an average user does not have Anthony at home so this support as a service will replace him partially. I picked RHEL, because it is more widely known, but SUSE is great distro too with a support team available.
 
Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.
 
PopOS is great option because it is Ubuntu based and to my knowledge it has quite new packages, not as fresh as Fedora but still. And System76 customizes Gnome quite heavily which is useful, but I do not like.
 
I do not have personal experience with Manjaro, but I expect ithas some greatness from Arch and also the risk of bricking things easily. Sure it would be the closest comparison to the Steam Deck.
 
I would not recommend Arch or Gentoo, because you have to figure so many things out before using them, and your experience would not be standardized like most new linux users have. You can customize other distros extremely well too, but it will be more interesting to see you using some distro which an average ex windows user would choose. The ability to pick and buid your distro is great but it isn’t useful to the viewers whose experience would be extremely different and again, an average person doesn't have Anthony helping them at home to fix their problems.
 
I would not pick Mint, yes it is fine distro, but it is based on Ubuntu, so no difference with other Ubuntu based distros and Mint has the oldschool Gnome. I do not see a reason to learn using that, because Gnome 41 is awesome I am just really subjective. Use Mint if you have specific reason to do so.
 
I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

I tried to comment this on YouTube, but it keeps deleting my comments so I have to post here:
 
As a (Fedora) linux user I would say pick RHEL and Fedora (or Manjaro or PopOS)
 
My personal choice is Fedora, but I see a plenty of reasons using PopOS or Manjaro. EDIT: after writing this "comment" I watched the rest of the wan show, and I trust Anthony at picking the best distros for them. 🙂
 
I really would like you to try Red Hat or SUSE technical support, since I haven't heard anyone trying them. It would be extremely interesting to hear some comments. Also an average user does not have Anthony at home so this support as a service will replace him partially. I picked RHEL, because it is more widely known, but SUSE is great distro too with a support team available.
 
Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.
 
PopOS is great option because it is Ubuntu based and to my knowledge it has quite new packages, not as fresh as Fedora but still. And System76 customizes Gnome quite heavily which is useful, but I do not like.
 
I do not have personal experience with Manjaro, but I expect ithas some greatness from Arch and also the risk of bricking things easily. Sure it would be the closest comparison to the Steam Deck.
 
I would not recommend Arch or Gentoo, because you have to figure so many things out before using them, and your experience would not be standardized like most new linux users have. You can customize other distros extremely well too, but it will be more interesting to see you using some distro which an average ex windows user would choose. The ability to pick and buid your distro is great but it isn’t useful to the viewers whose experience would be extremely different and again, an average person doesn't have Anthony helping them at home to fix their problems.
 
I would not pick Mint, yes it is fine distro, but it is based on Ubuntu, so no difference with other Ubuntu based distros and Mint has the oldschool Gnome. I do not see a reason to learn using that, because Gnome 41 is awesome I am just really subjective. Use Mint if you have specific reason to do so.
 
I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

I tried to comment this on YouTube, but it keeps deleting my comments so I have to post here:
 
As a (Fedora) linux user I would say pick RHEL and Fedora (or Manjaro or PopOS)
 
My personal choice is Fedora, but I see a plenty of reasons using PopOS or Manjaro. EDIT: after writing this "comment" I watched the rest of the wan show, and I trust Anthony at picking the best distros for them. 🙂
 
I really would like you to try Red Hat or SUSE technical support, since I haven't heard anyone trying them. It would be extremely interesting to hear some comments. Also an average user does not have Anthony at home so this support as a service will replace him partially. I picked RHEL, because it is more widely known, but SUSE is great distro too with a support team available.
 
Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.
 
PopOS is great option because it is Ubuntu based and to my knowledge it has quite new packages, not as fresh as Fedora but still. And System76 customizes Gnome quite heavily which is useful, but I do not like.
 
I do not have personal experience with Manjaro, but I expect ithas some greatness from Arch and also the risk of bricking things easily. Sure it would be the closest comparison to the Steam Deck.
 
I would not recommend Arch or Gentoo, because you have to figure so many things out before using them, and your experience would not be standardized like most new linux users have. You can customize other distros extremely well too, but it will be more interesting to see you using some distro which an average ex windows user would choose. The ability to pick and buid your distro is great but it isn’t useful to the viewers whose experience would be extremely different and again, an average person doesn't have Anthony helping them at home to fix their problems.
 
I would not pick Mint, yes it is fine distro, but it is based on Ubuntu, so no difference with other Ubuntu based distros and Mint has the oldschool Gnome. I do not see a reason to learn using that, because Gnome 41 is awesome I am just really subjective. Use Mint if you have specific reason to do so.
 
I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

I tried to comment this on YouTube, but it keeps deleting my comments so I have to post here:
 
As a (Fedora) linux user I would say pick RHEL and Fedora (or Manjaro or PopOS)
 
My personal choice is Fedora, but I see a plenty of reasons using PopOS or Manjaro. EDIT: after writing this "comment" I watched the rest of the wan show, and I trust Anthony at picking the best distros for them. 🙂
 
I really would like you to try Red Hat or SUSE technical support, since I haven't heard anyone trying them. It would be extremely interesting to hear some comments. Also an average user does not have Anthony at home so this support as a service will replace him partially. I picked RHEL, because it is more widely known, but SUSE is great distro too with a support team available.
 
Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.
 
PopOS is great option because it is Ubuntu based and to my knowledge it has quite new packages, not as fresh as Fedora but still. And System76 customizes Gnome quite heavily which is useful, but I do not like.
 
I do not have personal experience with Manjaro, but I expect ithas some greatness from Arch and also the risk of bricking things easily. Sure it would be the closest comparison to the Steam Deck.
 
I would not recommend Arch or Gentoo, because you have to figure so many things out before using them, and your experience would not be standardized like most new linux users have. You can customize other distros extremely well too, but it will be more interesting to see you using some distro which an average ex windows user would choose. The ability to pick and buid your distro is great but it isn’t useful to the viewers whose experience would be extremely different and again, an average person doesn't have Anthony helping them at home to fix their problems.
 
I would not pick Mint, yes it is fine distro, but it is based on Ubuntu, so no difference with other Ubuntu based distros and Mint has the oldschool Gnome. I do not see a reason to learn using that, because Gnome 41 is awesome I am just really subjective. Use Mint if you have specific reason to do so.
 
I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

I also forgot to mention that Fedora Linux is also available preloaded on a number of computers from Lenovo (there's a recent video from the Nest with Fedora conference on this) and Slimbook.
 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available for free for individuals for up to 16 machines, and supported subscriptions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation are US$299/system/year, which entitles you to technical and engineering support from Red Hat as well. There's also AlmaLinux, which has support options through TuxCare (though that's aimed mostly at businesses/servers, I think).
 
Another great option is openSUSE Leap, which is built by SUSE and the openSUSE community as a freely available rock-solid stable and somewhat fresh distribution. For commercially supported options, SUSE offers SUSE Linux Enterprise with a desktop variant that's available for US$120/system/year with support from SUSE. There's a more advanced Workstation variant that's available with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (US$799/system/year) with the workstation extension (US$50/system/year).
 
The benefit of paying for RHEL or SLE is that these companies take that money and pour into further developing the Linux platform. Red Hat and SUSE both spend a lot of time and money on developing Linux for the cloud, the server, and the desktop. This results in Fedora Linux and openSUSE Linux both getting improvements as a result of that money going in, and because it's all FOSS, it benefits the wider Linux ecosystem. Many of the things people enjoy on Ubuntu/Pop, Arch, Manjaro, etc. all start in either Fedora or openSUSE.

RHEL actually has a version which is priced extremely closely to Windows pricing. Few hundred dollars or euros isn't unreasonable in my opinion to having the ability to use an os which you have no knowledge of and you know nobody to help you, but I do agree that it can be expensive for many people. On the other hand some people do not know how to research anything and I would be really interested if they can offer usable os for normies. But you are probably right that it could be completely separate topic.
 
I really would like them to try both Gnome and KDE. Personally I do not customize the looks, only functionality and even that super lightly. Yes sure, my keyboard layout is custom and I have a plenty of Gnome extensions, but I do not really care how it works if it works and I get my work done. I see the appeal of KDE, but when I tried it I wasted way too much time in settings which could have been used for real work.

RHEL and SUSE cost thousands of dollars, there is absolutely no point in buying those for a home user. Maybe it could make sense to buy an Ubuntu support subscription, but again, it's a server-oriented service, I really have doubts they'll be able to help you with, e.g., troubleshooting game launching under Wine or Proton.
 
I dislike GNOME for its aesthetic choices, for its usage of resources, and even more so for the arrogance of its creator (who believes that his aesthetic choices are the best in the world so any customization is not officially supported and extremely discouraged). KDE is my favourite because it gives users a choice.

As someone who uses and helps develop Fedora Linux, I was really sad and hurt to hear @LinusTechcompletely laugh off Fedora Linux as if it was ludicrous. As one of the folks who helps develop Fedora Linux and uses it as a daily driver specifically for desktop and gaming, I was really shocked to hear that neither Linus nor @Slick would even consider it.
 
In the past year alone (with Fedora 33 and 34), we've done a ton of work around the desktop and gaming:
Btrfs by default with zstd transparent compression to simplify storage and improve I/O performance Swap on ZRAM, desktop process resource reservation, and adding systemd-oomd to improve responsiveness in situations with low memory and high memory pressure DXVK for Fedora Wine to match Proton for non-Steam Windows games (and non-games!) Adding thermald to improve thermal and Intel CPU performance for ultrabooks and other laptops Routing all audio through PipeWire to simplify audio and improve the quality of life for pro-audio setups And with the upcoming Fedora 35 (releasing at the end of the month, beta out now), we've got a bit more in the pipe:
Adding power-profiles-daemon to extend battery life and enable easy power management flexibility Using a shim library to have old SDL1 games use SDL2 to improve game performance and compatibility with newer technologies Easier user third-party repository enablement to easily access third-party software like Steam, Google Chrome, and the NVIDIA driver Select Flatpaks from Flathub made available so stuff like Zoom, Discord, etc. are all just a click away Even with that, there's more coming down the pipe in the future, as Red Hat and the community work with folks like Valve, NVIDIA, and others to make the desktop and gaming awesome. Christian Schaller (the manager for the Red Hat Desktop team), wrote a blog post about what his team is working on for improving Fedora Workstation. He's written plenty of blog posts about the state of things and where his team is working to move things.

I wish they would consider using Fedora Linux, because I think we've done a stellar job trying to make an awesome easy to use Linux desktop and I think they'd love the stuff we've done to make gaming on Linux awesome.

Fedora isn't that bad for a new user. Really the struggle is in setting up rpm fusion but really you can just copy paste the terminal commands (every one of them) setup the nvidia driver and assign the package groups properly it'll be no sweat to maintain it.
 
That said, don't use Gentoo. I'm even hesitate to mention Arch to a new user.

If this happens to catch your attention hi @LinusTech and @Slick. I've been using Linux since high school (10 years now) and have experience with almost all the distros on your poll. First off I'd like to give some input on the challenge. I think it's awesome that you're doing this and bringing more attention to Linux and the improvements the community has made in the last decade or so. That being said if you choose the wrong distro you could make all of Linux look really bad. Every distro is different and targeted to a different audience. To explain I will give a brief explanation of each distro on the poll, but I trust @GabenJr will be a good filter for you.
 
Most of these distros have several different versions with different UIs or "desktop environments". For each of them I would recommend the "normal/standard" version.
 
Ubuntu
This is my number one recommendation for both of you it gives the best combination of ease of use, stability, and freshness. Ubuntu is the only distro on the poll created by an actual dedicated corporation with hundreds of employees, plus community contributors. I run Ubuntu on most my machines at work, on my spare machines, and Ubuntu Server on my homelab.
 
Pop!_OS
This is the next best option, if Ubuntu was 100 Pop is at least 95. Pop is a derivative of Ubuntu created by System76, primarily for their computers. It inherits many of the qualities of Ubuntu plus improved gaming support, but it is a little more rough around the edges imo. Pop was my daily driver for the last 1-2 years and I liked it just fine.
 
Arch Linux
As you know Arch is a bit of a meme distro, but it is a very good place to really get to learn the underpinnings of Linux, once you have already got a healthy amount of experience. Many seasoned Linux users do use Arch, it can be very powerful, but it is much easier to break than the other options on this list. I think it would make a very entertaining video for you to try to install Arch on your own, but I doubt you will be able to do it without help from Anthony.
 
Linux Mint
Linux Mint used to be the go to noob distro, but Ubuntu has made significant improvements over the last 5 or so years while Linux Mint has stagnated some. I would not recommend it if you want a "modern" Linux experience.
 
Manjaro
Manjaro has made a lot of noise lately. They make Arch easy to install and more stable while still being very modern. But they also make some bold choices that not everybody agrees with (though what choices do the Linux community agree on?). I feel rather neutral about it.
 
Debian
Debian is the base of many popular Linux distros, most notably Ubuntu. It is incredibly stable but to do so it lacks some of the modern features of other distros. This can actually make it harder to use when you want to work with new hardware or software.
 
Elementary
Elementary is a smaller distro made by a few very passionate and opinionated developers. It is pretty stable and designed to be very user friendly (gets compared a lot to macOS), but it isn't a great example of the Linux experience because to accomplish this it is a very rigid experience. I like it and its developers a lot, but it's not something I would use personally.
 
Drauger OS
I have honestly never heard of this before. I'd guess it provides an improved gaming experience while risking stability. I don't think it's a good sign that their last blog post includes "Drauger OS is NOT being discontinued."
 
Gentoo
Gentoo is one of the earlier Linux distros and relatively few people use it. It is effectively a more intense version of Arch.
 
Other Notable Distros
 
Fedora
Fedora is my current daily driver and despite the name a very serious distro. Fedora is effectively the free beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL (pronounced Rell like Dell not R-Hell Linus). I wouldn't recommend it for a total noob, but one could manage with it fine.
 
OpenSUSE
openSUSE is to SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) as Fedora is to RHEL, I'd say it is a little less noob friendly than Fedora.
 
Ranking
If I had to sort my recommendations:
Ubuntu Pop Fedora Manjaro Elementary Debian Mint SUSE Arch Gentoo  
There are many more Linux distros out there and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me, but that's the beauty of Linux, there is something for everybody.

So are you actually asking why Linus does his job and gives fair evaluation of products disregarding his bias? Or why he even tries with Apple when those videos are most watched on the channel?
 
Seems to me that you have some issues with Apple, and I have very easy solution. Stop watching Apple related videos.

Bloatware needs to be locked to the ROM!