what is the best linux

[drtalon64]

what is the best linux for a PC old laptop (to a "PC") and hand held

 

[1ball]

14 minutes ago, drtalon64 said:

best linux for a PC old laptop (to a "PC")

The best Linux distro is the one that works best for you. If your laptop is within like a decade old, I would personally recommend something like Fedora, or Arch if you want to DIY it. If it is much older than that or on more exotic hardware, I would recommend Gentoo.

[Thomas53]

There are a number of Distros, some of which are more suitable for what you want to do.

Generally for older hardware MX Linux, Q4OS, Slax and Peppermint seem to be among the most highly recommended, along with Lubuntu, LinuxLite, Crunchbang+ and a number of others. These are especially good if you're a beginner to Linux

I know that MXLite and Crunchbang+ work on 32-bit systems but I'm not sure of the others.

Of if, you're familiar with Linux as 1ball says Fedora, Arch, and Gentoo are good choices  -especially Gentoo, if you have more exotic hardware.

[BoomerDutch]

According to distrowatch website CachyOS is the best linux at this moment.

 

Although i would think that result is made by users with decent linux knowledge and love.

 

So.. if gaming is requirement then bazzite or steamos itself depending on hardware.

[drtalon64]

28 minutes ago, 1ball said:

The best Linux distro is the one that works best for you. If your laptop is within like a decade old, I would personally recommend something like Fedora, or Arch if you want to DIY it. If it is much older than that or on more exotic hardware, I would recommend Gentoo.

10 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

According to distrowatch website CachyOS is the best linux at this moment.

 

Although i would think that result is made by users with decent linux knowledge and love.

 

So.. if gaming is requirement then bazzite or steamos itself depending on hardware.

 

10 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

According to distrowatch website CachyOS is the best linux at this moment.

 

Although i would think that result is made by users with decent linux knowledge and love.

 

So.. if gaming is requirement then bazzite or steamos itself depending on hardware.

thank both of you I just 

 

21 minutes ago, Thomas53 said:

There are a number of Distros, some of which are more suitable for what you want to do.

Generally for older hardware MX Linux, Q4OS, Slax and Peppermint seem to be among the most highly recommended, along with Lubuntu, LinuxLite, Crunchbang+ and a number of others. These are especially good if you're a beginner to Linux

I know that MXLite and Crunchbang+ work on 32-bit systems but I'm not sure of the others.

Of if, you're familiar with Linux as 1ball says Fedora, Arch, and Gentoo are good choices  -especially Gentoo, if you have more exotic hardware.

thank you to both of you I am also wondering if there is a website for all the Distros and every thing

[1ball]

3 minutes ago, drtalon64 said:

website for all the Distros and every thing

Elaborate. BoomerDutch mentioned Distrowatch, which I recommend you check out.

 

If you want to learn more about what is going on in the Linux world, whats new, whats good, whats not so good, there are plenty of Linux news sites out there, it might be worth it to give a couple a scroll. My personal favorite is Phoronix.

If you would prefer to watch something, there are plenty of great Linux youtubers out there. I would recommend Brodie Robertson.

[drtalon64]

4 minutes ago, 1ball said:

Elaborate. BoomerDutch mentioned Distrowatch, which I recommend you check out.

 

If you want to learn more about what is going on in the Linux world, whats new, whats good, whats not so good, there are plenty of Linux news sites out there, it might be worth it to give a couple a scroll. My personal favorite is Phoronix.

If you would prefer to watch something, there are plenty of great Linux youtubers out there. I would recommend Brodie Robertson.

thanks man

 

[RollyShed]

I put Mint Cinnamon on everything. Another laptop on the table at present being installed because of Win10 closing and Win11 not working on it.

 

That would mean nearly 60 laptops done so far and over 50 desktops.

 

Easy, straightforward and reliable. Very easy for all those exWindows users to use it.

[Potatoes__]

16 hours ago, 1ball said:

Elaborate. BoomerDutch mentioned Distrowatch, which I recommend you check out.

 

If you want to learn more about what is going on in the Linux world, whats new, whats good, whats not so good, there are plenty of Linux news sites out there, it might be worth it to give a couple a scroll. My personal favorite is Phoronix.

If you would prefer to watch something, there are plenty of great Linux youtubers out there. I would recommend Brodie Robertson.

Correct me if I'm wrong but distrowatch is not really accurate or representative of the actual user numbers, let alone the "bestness". I read they only count the visits of the distro pages on their site so if everyone looks up MXLinux on distrowatch it will be in the top, and there were cases of people boosting specific distros because everything has to be a stupid little competition. 

As for Youtubers, I highly recommend The Linux Experiment - the guy is really down to earth and his content is super friendly for beginners yet very informative and relevant to a regular noob nerd Linux user. Brodie is great too but sometimes the guy can indulge in endless rants about things irrelevant to Linux newbies and catering more to people who care about Rust rewrites of kernel modules or whatever.

 

I would recommend staying the hell away from Michael Horn, the guy seems to be covering simpler topics just like The Linux Experiment but even with my relatively low level of experience with Linux distros I have an impression that he talks about stuff he does not even engage with and has no experience with. Almost like he writes his topics with a crap LLM thing that regurgitates decade old reddit threads instead of doing proper research or using the stuff yourself.

[BoomerDutch]

1 hour ago, Potatoes2241 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but distrowatch is not really accurate or representative of the actual user numbers, let alone the "bestness". I read they only count the visits of the distro pages on their site so if everyone looks up MXLinux on distrowatch it will be in the top, and there were cases of people boosting specific distros because everything has to be a stupid little competition. 

But competition is good to be honest I've gone from many distros from youtubers recommendations but all of those distros fell short for me so I've kept looking until I've found distrowatch website at that moment mxlinux was the best until changed to CachyOS I've tried both and they were better than all other distros I've encountered and now I'm sitting on CachyOS for while now.

 

So yes it's not entirely useless tbh.

It may be also small but it does show interest regardless.

[xAcid9]

20 hours ago, drtalon64 said:

what is the best linux for a PC old laptop (to a "PC") and hand held

Specs? 

[Potatoes__]

1 hour ago, BoomerDutch said:

So yes it's not entirely useless tbh.

It may be also small but it does show interest regardless.

Not to start an argument over this, but again - it only shows the interest distrowatch users have in certain distros, so it may follow the common sentiment over the internet but it can be skewed. For example I can't believe Arch is several dozens of entries below everything else since it has a sizable and very vocal userbase that swears by it. But eh, glad it helped anyway.

[NoLeafClover]

8 hours ago, Potatoes2241 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but distrowatch is not really accurate or representative of the actual user numbers, let alone the "bestness". I read they only count the visits of the distro pages on their site so if everyone looks up MXLinux on distrowatch it will be in the top, and there were cases of people boosting specific distros because everything has to be a stupid little competition. 

Indeed. Distro Watch is not at all a good website to gauge popularity let alone "what is best". It is and always has been a "just for fun" metric, not really based on any reliable data. As you've pointed out it's pretty easy to, albeit anecdotally, come to a reasonable conclusion that Arch would be far more popular than something like ZorinOS, even though the latter is much higher up. CachyOS would also most likely end up significantly lower down the list in practice, even though it shows up at the top.

 

On 8/3/2025 at 8:05 PM, 1ball said:

The best Linux distro is the one that works best for you. If your laptop is within like a decade old, I would personally recommend something like Fedora, or Arch if you want to DIY it. If it is much older than that or on more exotic hardware, I would recommend Gentoo.

I would second this. OP should bear in mind that Linux distros, overall, are far more similar than they are different and the reality is that for the most part it really doesn't matter. Choices often come down to choices of package management, update cadence, and philosophical stance (e.g. FLOSS-only 1st party packages or inclusion of patent encumbered software). Gentoo is perhaps an exception as it takes a very different approach to packaging, but such exceptions are generally few and far between. It's not the whole story, of course, otherwise there wouldn't be so many but from a day-to-day user's perspective these are the most significant differences. In other words, any modern distro should work just fine on reasonably modern hardware. One can't go [too] wrong with any well known distros - Fedora, Mint, Arch, Gentoo (steep but rewarding learning curve), and maybe even Ubuntu (and its variants) are all good choices. Debian too, if you're happy with the slow 2-yearly release cycle.

 

Some distros are de facto the same and should not even be considered separate, e.g. Kubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu are all the exact same Ubuntu with a different default desktop selection. Same with Fedora and most of its "spins".

[Dat Guy]

Now that Linux has dropped a few 32-bit architectures, OpenBSD/NetBSD might be the wiser option (= more longevity).

[NoLeafClover]

10 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

Now that Linux has dropped a few 32-bit architectures, OpenBSD/NetBSD might be the wiser option (= more longevity).

Linux itself has not [yet] dropped 32-bit x86, but some distros have.

 

For completeness, there are two sides to longevity - hardware and software. For hardware longevity, picking a distro that still supports 32-bit architectures or indeed BSD is reasonable for old devices.

 

Software longevity, on the other hand, is less of a concern far more dependent on what packages/libraries are available. 32-bit libraries are still available on Debian amd64 and there's no issue running 32-bit software on 64-bit platform as it is today. As far as games are concerned, 32-bit libraries are often bundled within the runtime itself (e.g. Steam runtime, and Steam from Flatpak) and should continue to run as usual regardless of the distro's packages. For software that relies on distro-provided packages it could be an issue. How long we're going to see 32-bit libraries provided by various distros' maintainers is difficult to tell.

 

In any case, I suspect some distros will keep 32-bit around for some time or new distros will pop-up that include 32-bit builds.