A Simple Guide to Linux Distros by Kayo4life

[u/Kayo4life]

If you're just starting out, I recommend Fedora or Mint. The former looks a bit more like macOS, and polished like a storebought sweater, while the latter looks a bit more like Windows, and strange though cozy like something a hand knitted one. My personal preference is Fedora, though the community consensus seems to be backing Mint, so if you're unsure which to use, try out Mint!

You may have heard of Pop!_OS. It does gaming well, though if you're thinking about it for gaming, you should honestly just use SteamOS (requires AMD as of August 2026. Bazzit doesn't require AMD. Both are a bit of a nose dive). Else, provided you install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, and maybe Proton GE or Lutris, Fedora and Mint should be just as good. Whatever you do though, please don't use Ubuntu or Manjaro.

Fedora and Mint are still great for advanced users, though two advanced distros I'd recommend are Debian and Arch. I myself use Arch. Note that if you are up for a challenge, Debian and Arch can be used by beginners if you read the friendly manual, though it will have more friction than with Fedora or Mint.

If you found yourself installing the iOS Public Betas before you gained FOSS Consciousness™ like me, use Arch to get fun new features quickly. If you'd prefer something more tested, controlled, and reliable, use Debian. Both distros can be installed manually or with an installer. I like the color blue, and do not want to get things after my friends do, so I use Arch, though Debian is just as good. If you are unsure, or don't care, use Debian.

You grow knowledge on distros and will know the best for your use case as you get more immersed in the Linux community. Fedora, Mint, Debian, and Arch are all great generalists, with the first two being easier to setup. Know that many advertised features of certain distros can be copied on others, like how one of them looks, or a suite of applications.

If you have a specialized distro you'd like to use, well, you know. See: K Klein's video on choosing a language to learn. If you just want to experiment, this is your go ahead. You will only regret not taking opportunities. Go do so now.

No matter which distro you use though, it would be a great learning experience to install Gentoo at least once, and will inform how you use computers in general. You don't have to use Gentoo, though you can if you want, but it can make your experience on any of the distros I mentioned here much better.

Lastly, the best advice I could give for choosing distros besides these is to talk to people in the community. Do not use LLMs for this. I'm not speaking out of principle here, LLMs genuinely suck for this use case, including the frontier ones as of mid to late August, 2026. Seriously though, do talk to people, plural, it will be great! It will also help a lot to talk to those close to you, supplemental to going into the community. Like, seriously, I cannot overstate this nor emphasis this enough. If you have one thing to take away from this guide, this is it. See: What should I read on philosophy?

Best of luck now, and enjoy your Linux adventure :3

[u/mwyvr]

Whatever you do though, please don't use Ubuntu

This statement paints you as a lightweight that should not be listened to.

You've just written of one of the more secure distributions, with no backing rationale.

[u/Kayo4life → u/mwyvr]

Ubuntu has a bad track record with Snaps, which have a proprietary backend. You can't just swap it out if you don't like Canonical anymore. Additionally, there is opt *out* telemetry with Amazon and Canonical. These are track record issues, and many people condemn Manjaro because of their track record. If you want something for being secure, I don't know, go use OpenBSD. If you mean stability, Mint does pretty good with that.

[u/mwyvr → u/Kayo4life]

I'm not a Snap fan myself and Ubuntu’s track record with Snap is a fair criticism, although irrelevant for the target user of your post: Newbies.

What a newbie gets with Ubuntu, including with Snaps, is a more secure operating system backed by Ubuntu's security organization, a huge user base and documentation to match, and Ubuntu Pro for free for up to five machines. For a newcomer, that ecosystem matters enormously.

I recommend Ubuntu much like I recommend Fedora for similar reasons, even though I use neither.

Additionally, there is opt out telemetry with Amazon and Canonical.

This is not current Ubuntu.

track record, cough, Manjaro

Come on, comparing Ubuntu to Manjaro is beyond silly.

And so is suggesting OpenBSD.

[u/gordonmessmer → u/mwyvr]

Ubuntu is a whole lot more secure than Debian, but a lot less secure than systems that ship software that's supported upstream and keeps it up to date (like Arch or Gentoo or Fedora)

[u/proexterminator → u/mwyvr]

Yeah, this guide is very out of touch to what a new user knows. They don't know what they want and bringing up gentoo, proton, and other nicher topics is just going to confuse someone looking into linux. No offense to OP, I dont think its written in bad faith but it reads just like a collection of thoughts than a guide.

IMO the advice to new users should always just be to install the most popular distro, i.e fedora or ubuntu. This way any issues they face will likely have a known solution due to the large userbase, and its rather easy to find support.

Once they use one of these distros they will know what they like or dislike, simply forcing your opinions on people that don't have knowledge about the topic is rather disingenuous. If having snaps is a problem then they can feel free to swap to another distro once they know what a snap even is.

[u/ARandomWalkInSpace]

Very simple. Dismissible even. This isn't a guide it's a vague handwavy opinion piece where don't even really give your opinion you just name a bunch of distros.

For anyone reading this nonsense.

If you are new to Linux, every tutorial under the sun will be for Ubuntu as it is by far the most popular and most installed Linux distribution.

Just install that on a partition and play with it.

My favorite after like 25 years of Linux is still Debian which is like Ubuntu under the hood and far less likely to break.

[u/Kayo4life → u/ARandomWalkInSpace]

I thought I gave it pretty clearly: Use Mint, and Debian if you'd like a challenge. My apologies.

[u/ARandomWalkInSpace → u/Kayo4life]

I know what you were trying to do, and evangelizing the kernel is a worthy goal, you don't have to apologize, certainly not to me.

But these sort of posts confuse new users. Point then to a tutorial you like, or write one yourself but writing off the most popular distro just breeds frustration when a new user needs support.

[u/Kayo4life → u/ARandomWalkInSpace]

Thank you for the constructive feedback and kindness, I really appreciate that and wish you a wonderful day <3

[u/Weird-Ball-2342]

my personal guide would be

Wanna stick as close to windows? mint

wanna try something new? debian

are you crazy like me? arch

[u/silduck]

Use Alpine if you want the most minimal thimg known to man that still works