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Which Linux distribution would you recommend?

blazesword2008
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Go to solution Solved by GoldDragon007,

I've just copy here some text from here that I've found a few days ago when I looked for the same question:

Your use case will define what you need to install. What you need to remember is:

- All distros can virtually run the exact same software nowadays, so choosing one doesn’t close any doors
- All desktop user focused distros can play games.

 

With that out of the way, we can boil down your choice to 2 factors:

- What desktop environment do you want to use
- Do you prefer to use something stable, or do you want the latest software available

 

Desktop environments:
GNOME is the one that ships by default on most distributions, including the biggest one, Ubuntu. GNOME is very simple, sleek and minimalistic. It’s really easy to handle once you’ve spent 5 minutes with it. It can be customized using extensions, but these aren’t always super stable. GNOME is the default for Ubuntu, Fedora, and a GNOME variant is also shipped by almost all distributions.

 

KDE or Plasma is the second big one. it offers customization options for almost everything. From the position of the panel, the widgets you want to add to it, the whole layout of the desktop, the behaviour of the windows, the position of the window controls, everything can be adjusted to your liking. KDE is the default on KDE Neon, its flagship distribution, and KDE variants are available for most major distros.

 

Now you get many smaller desktop environments.

 

Cinnamon is the pendant of KDE, but using GNOME-like technologies and applications. Its default layout is also very close to wht you’d get on Windows, but it can be changed to your liking easily.

 

XFCE is a lightweight desktop environment, which might not look as good by default as the big ones, but is still very easy to customize, and runs on lower end machines without a hitch.

 

Mac users might prefer Pantheon, which ships on elementary OS, and uses a layout reminiscent of OSX, with a similar dock and top bar, minus the global menu.

 

You can also use MATE, which is using the same technologies as GNOME, but with a more traditional desktop behavior, or Budgie, which is a derivative of GNOME as well, with its own notification center and more customization options.

 

If your PC is not that fast, I’d recommend XFCE, although KDE can run pretty well with little system resources as well.

The distribution

 

Ok, so now you’ve chosen the desktop environment you want to go with. Now you need to decide which distribution you’re going to get.

 

GNOME:
If you’ve chosen GNOME, and you want stability, your options are either Ubuntu LTS, which has a very stable base, but older software, or Fedora, if you’d rather avoid proprietary software. If you’re allergic to the Ubuntu Orange, Zorin OS is also a very good choice, it uses the same base as Ubuntu LTS, but has tweaks that make it look a lot more modern, in my opinion.

 

If you’ve chosen GNOME and want the latest software versions and updates, you can go with Manjaro GNOME edition. It’s what we call a rolling release: this means it doesn’t have “versions”, it’s just continually updated with the latest software as they come out.If you want a healthy middle ground between stability, and up to date programs, go for the latest Ubuntu release. ubuntu has long term support releases, OR LTS, but it also has a new version every 6 months.

 

Pop!OS would also be a nice contender

 

KDE
If you’ve chosen KDE, the stable choice is KDE Neon. It’s a distribution based on Ubuntu LTS, so it’s rock solid, and has the latest KDE Plasma updates as a rolling release.If you’d prefer a more bleeding edge system all around, go for Manjaro KDE, or the latest Kubuntu release

 

Cinnamon
If you’ve elected to use Cinnamon, your stable option is Linux Mint. It’s also based on Ubuntu LTS, and has the latest Cinnamon updates. It’s customizable, simple to use, and won’t die or crash on you.Once again, the less stable route will be Manjaro Cinnamon

 

XFCE
XFCE has less choices, but you can get a very stable one in the form of Xubuntu, the XFCE based Ubuntu variant. Zorin OS Lite also offers a very good looking XFCE.Manjaro XFCE will give you a great, bleeding edge experience.

 

Pantheon
Your only real choice for Pantheon is elementary OS. elementary OS developers actually develop Pantheon as well, and they ship it in a beautiful package.

 

The above well describes what you need to consider, however a little sidenode, he says "All desktop user focused distros can play games" that's true, but the amount of time and hate affinity you may need to put into may differ.

On top of that I would not say that linux is beginner friendly, so if you change, be prepared (I mean, I using for my work linux for 8 years by now, and I still hate it, but I have no other choice, because the developer tools aren't existing for windows... yet).

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3 hours ago, sp331yi said:

If a potential User gives info on the machine specs of his or her PC to be used, User's intended usage of Linux, User's experience base with PCs in general, and User's desires for a distro (there are many hundreds of distributions to choose from, literally), THEN maybe a reasonable recommendation can be made.

To ask a question like the one posed it to, as you said, cause controversy unnecessarily -- hence, trolling. In this case, ignorance is protecting you from this. Just take note for the future.

We're good.

Alright. Thanks.

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20 hours ago, blazesword2008 said:

Hello. I hope this doesn't start a war, but I was wondering, which Linux distro do you think is the absolute best, and which one you'd recommend overall? (just doing this out of curiosity, since I've never really thought about it until now) 

 

I think which one is best is highly dependent on your skillset, hardware, and use case.  Typically for users with very little tech savvy I would recommend Peppermint, Mint, or maybe Ubuntu.  For semi-power users on a desktop I would recommend either Fedora or MX depending on their hardware and use case.  On a laptop I would almost always recommend Fedora because you will have the fewest "my wifi doesnt work" type of problems with that distro.  All that being said, it can often depend on hardware.  Fedora is almost exclusively Wayland now and even though Wayland is clearly the future, Nvidia has refused to support it so....

 

Also, if you are going to work in the IT field, you should know debian derivative systems for web servers and such, but 90% of the rest of the linux world is going to be rhel based systems. 

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5 hours ago, KarsusTG said:

 

I think which one is best is highly dependent on your skillset, hardware, and use case.  Typically for users with very little tech savvy I would recommend Peppermint, Mint, or maybe Ubuntu.  For semi-power users on a desktop I would recommend either Fedora or MX depending on their hardware and use case.  On a laptop I would almost always recommend Fedora because you will have the fewest "my wifi doesnt work" type of problems with that distro.  All that being said, it can often depend on hardware.  Fedora is almost exclusively Wayland now and even though Wayland is clearly the future, Nvidia has refused to support it so....

 

Also, if you are going to work in the IT field, you should know debian derivative systems for web servers and such, but 90% of the rest of the linux world is going to be rhel based systems. 

Thanks! :)

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7 hours ago, KarsusTG said:

 

I think which one is best is highly dependent on your skillset, hardware, and use case.  Typically for users with very little tech savvy I would recommend Peppermint, Mint, or maybe Ubuntu.  For semi-power users on a desktop I would recommend either Fedora or MX depending on their hardware and use case.  On a laptop I would almost always recommend Fedora because you will have the fewest "my wifi doesnt work" type of problems with that distro.  All that being said, it can often depend on hardware.  Fedora is almost exclusively Wayland now and even though Wayland is clearly the future, Nvidia has refused to support it so....

 

Also, if you are going to work in the IT field, you should know debian derivative systems for web servers and such, but 90% of the rest of the linux world is going to be rhel based systems. 

Nvidia's history with Wayland is weird. But, for what it's worth, there is an implementation in GNOME for the Nvidia driver. It is just disabled by default and needs to be turned back on manually.

 

Insofar as what's used on web servers, it's pretty evenly split between CentOS (a Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivative) and Debian. In most enterprise sectors, you will see either CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Some European and Asian shops will use SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE Leap instead, and a lot of high performance computing stuff is done on SUSE Linux Enterprise as well.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

The one I like using is CentOS but I like playing around with other distros within a VMWARE Workstation environment. 

 

I still have to use Windows 10 due the fact a few of my programs I use do not run or not very well or with limitations with Wine on Linux. Otherwise I would use Linux all the time.

  

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On 8/11/2020 at 5:09 PM, Cvet76 said:

Yeah, I mean. I'm learning (lazily) to be a linux sys admin and at first I started with RHEL since the RHCSA is a well paid and great way to enter the IT world.

But RHEL is archaic as hell, as Caroline said about Arch, it also has a bunch of dependencies you need to install for most everything you need. So you're back to head banging against the wall when something inevitably doesn't work. And searching for info and troubleshooting can take hours because every tutorial and guide ever for linux was written only for Ubuntu apparently.
Fedora on the other hand is basically a much more user friendly version of RHEL with actual features installed. Then there's CentOS which is an open source RHEL and very cutting edge among the three in terms of testing features that end up in RHEL and Fedora. These three are all supported and/or developed by Red Hat.

I disagree, RHEL is far from archaic. It is the Linux platform of choice for the IT industry, outside of containerized environments. 

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